The Asia Development Alliance (ADA) is a not for profit and non-governmental regional civil society platform in Asia, established on 2 February 2013 at the founding assembly in Bangkok, Thailand. The founding assembly was initiated by four national CSO/NGO platforms – VANI (India), CCC (Cambodia), Code-NGO (Philippines) and KCOC (Korea) – with the support from Forus, CIVICUS Affinity Group of National Associations (AGNA) and Good Neighbours International (GNI) in partnership with Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) Asia to represent the national CSO platforms in Asia and serve as key connector to governments, UN organisations and other stakeholders and to create a strong enabling environment for civil society organisations and the rights of citizens for action and participation.
As a legitimate catalyst and representative of the voice of the CSOs from across Asia, ADA works to strengthen the capacities of civil society to ensure the effective and efficient participation of civil society actors in official negotiations. ADA also advocates for an enabling environment for civil society organisations in the context of continued shrinking civic space to influence public policy at the national, regional and international level.
ADA envisions strong national CSO platforms in all the countries of Asia being representatives of ‘inclusive voice’ and where the citizens enjoy all human rights’ addressing power imbalance to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities and achieving social justice, peace and democracy.
Facilitate, Collaborate and Capacitate national platforms to promote and advance justice, equality and peace at all levels of society towards promoting civic space, right to association and expression and safeguarding the rights of all and including people in the decision making process.
ADA together with its members aims to strengthen the capacity of national CSO platforms of Asia to enhance and influence public policies and effectiveness and impact of civic engagement and advocacy for inclusive participation in decision making process and promoting transparent and accountable governance.
Hence, ADA has been actively working on its outreach activities in order to ensure the national civil society voices
ADA has been doing strong advocacy through its reports and position papers on CSos’ engagement in the VNR process since last four years and Goal 16+ by being part of regional networks like APRCEM, ADN, APSD and Global networks like Forus, A4SD, TAP Network, CIVICUS, AGNA , UN2020 and other like minded organizations besides engaging with the UN at the regional and the global level.
Since last couple of years, ADA has been co-organizing various democracy forums in Busan, Ulaanbaatar, Tokyo ) emphasising the inter-linkages of various SDGs , especially Goal 16+ ADA also organized the Ulaanbaatar democracy forum in early February along with Asia Democracy Network, Community of Democracy , UNDP and other stakeholders on Goal 16 + being strong regional voice in advocating for institutionalising goal 16 by recognizing the same as an enabler and accelerators of all the other goals and calling the CSOs apart from the UN institutions and the member states for robust review and monitoring of the same.
ADA actively participated with its members and partners at various sub-regional forums , organized by the UN ESCAP in north-east Asia and South Asia to hold the state accountable for SDGs implementation, monitoring and review process by proposing strong recommendations. We have organized various side events during the Asia Pacific Civil Society Forum , at UN ESCAP, Bangkok. The side events were organized on the voluntary national review, Goal 16 and localizing VNRs. During these events, there have been efforts made to connect to the members states (Timor Leste, Mongolia, etc.)
ADA has participated in the global events like High Level Political Forums since 2013, Rome Conference called by the UNDESA, IDLO and the government of Italy in Rome in the last week of May, 2019. C20’s, and ADA has emerged as a strong , credible southern voice of the CSOs ADA has also been actively engaged in the goal 16 report in partnership with Forus and TAP network. The research study is based on 11 national case studies from all across the globe (including 4 from Asia, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia and Timor Leste).
ADA has been organising various national/sub-regional/regional training program on SDGs called Glocal Advocacy Leadership Academy (GALA) in the last 7 years in Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Myanmar, Bhutan, Vietnam, Kazakhstan ( for 5 countries of central Asia) Mongolia, with participation from the CSOs across Asia, apart from Pacific, Europe and Africa in order to capacitate the CSO professionals to actively engage in the national SDGs implementation, monitoring and review mechanism by providing training on VNRs, SDGs plus and linking them with the human rights issues and many GALA trainees were able to make CSO statements and actively got engaged in the HLPFs during the past HLPFs (S. Korea, Timor Leste, Mongolia, Cambodia, Pakistan , Kazakhstan, to name a few) ADA has also been closely monitoring the VNR process in these countries and helping the members getting engaged in the process at the regional and global levels.
In the last 7 years, ADA has emerged as a strong network for members; credible, legitimate, effective and sustainable with national members actively contributing to building it as an international community with growing membership.
ADA has also come up as an international CSO learning platform, bringing together and strengthen CSO networks on global, regional and national level through join collaborative efforts on preparing reports on national VNR process since last four years ,tool kit on CSOs engagement in the VNR process, national indicators for goal 16, global report on goal 16 on the basis on national case studies in collaboration with the global platforms like TAP network, Forus etc.
ADA reclaiming the discourse of development and connecting language, bringing forward diverse opinions of members, prioritizing areas linked to SDGs, deploying civic diplomacy to secure resources for CSO networks and helping in pushing the local agenda and defending the CS space (Central Asia, NE Asia)