About Focus on the Global South - Secondary

Welcome to Focus on the Global South

An activist think tank based in Asia.

Established in 1995 to challenge neoliberalism, militarism and corporate-driven globalisation while strengthening just and equitable alternatives, we work in solidarity with peoples’ movements to challenge neoliberalism, corporate-driven globalization, and imperial domination, and to build just, democratic, and sustainable alternatives.

The Philippines

June 18, 2026

Civil Society Groups Mark Anniversary of Welgang Bayan Against BNPP, Renew Call to Reject Nuclear Revival

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June 2026, Quezon City — On the anniversary of the historic Welgang Bayan against the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), civil society organizations, environmental defenders, and community groups renewed their opposition to reviving the facility and expanding nuclear energy development in the Philippines. The commemoration comes as Mark Cojuangco, one of the most prominent advocates for the rehabilitation of the BNPP, is scheduled to visit the facility on the 19th, coinciding with the historic Welgang Bayan Laban sa BNPP. The media sortie is part of increasingly aggressive efforts of pro-nuclear lobbyists to manufacture consent for these problematic energy projects. For...

Civil Society Groups Mark Anniversary of Welgang Bayan Against BNPP, Renew Call to Reject Nuclear Revival

The Philippines

June 11, 2026

Invisible by Design: How the EU-Philippines FTA Protects Algorithms, Weakens Workers, and Locks In Digital Dependency

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SENTRO and Trade Justice Pilipinas Critique on the Digital Trade Chapter of the EU-Philippines FTA The proposed Digital Trade Chapter of the EU-Philippines Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is presented as a framework for promoting an open, secure and trustworthy online environment. Yet behind the language of innovation, connectivity, and modernization lies a deeper restructuring of economic governance in favor of digital trade liberalization and corporate control over data and digital infrastructure. Big corporations already wield so much power and influence over the existing digital trade regime that many have in fact referred to them as new data sovereigns. Not...

Invisible by Design: How the EU-Philippines FTA Protects Algorithms, Weakens Workers, and Locks In Digital Dependency

Asia/World

June 5, 2026

ISDS is a threat to climate action and should be removed from the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA (AANZFTA)

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The ten ASEAN countries and Australia and New Zealand have agreed to review investor rights to sue governments known as Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in the updated AANZFTA agreement in the second half of 2026. Consensus of all governments is needed to remove or change ISDS in AANZFTA. ISDS is a set of rules in some trade and investment agreements that allows foreign (but not local) investors to claim billions of dollars from governments in compensation for law or policy changes, or even planning and judicial decisions, if they can convince an international tribunal that these will reduce their...

ISDS is a threat to climate action and should be removed from the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA (AANZFTA)

Mekong Region

May 29, 2026

Commoditizing Rivers: When the Fish Never Returned; Life After Pak Mun and Rasi Salai

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“Multipurpose Dam” is a major tool to advance post-1970s development discourse in the countries and territories of the Global South. Being the US’s close allies, the Global South’s government such as in Thailand internalized developmental agenda to subject the country, especially its rural area, as an object of development to the Bretton Woods financial institutions - the IMF and World Bank, drawing foreign direct investments as the engine of the process. In northeastern Thailand, the story of development is written in the water. Decades of dam construction have changed how rivers flow, how people live, how their communities harmonize and...

Commoditizing Rivers: When the Fish Never Returned; Life After Pak Mun and Rasi Salai

Asia/World

May 16, 2026

Book Reviews: The Political Economy of Post-Capitalism: Financialization, Globalization and Neofeudalism

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Reviewed by Walden Bello Race and Class (May , 2026) Book Reviews The Political Economy of Post-Capitalism: Financialization, Globalization and Neofeudalism By RICHARD WESTRA (London and New York: Routledge, 2025), 145 pp., Hardcover, £116. Your senses tell you the sun goes around the earth. But the opposite is true. Likewise, our daily experience of economic life, our acts of selling, buying, being paid wages, and, if we are entrepreneurs or managers, investing and profiting from our investments, tell us we are living in a capitalist system. But it’s not true. Whatever the perception of our senses or our lived experience...

Book Reviews: The Political Economy of Post-Capitalism: Financialization, Globalization and Neofeudalism

The Philippines

May 14, 2026

ASEAN CSOs gather in the Philippines, resist “business as usual,” and call on ASEAN to address regional crises while upholding the fundamental rights of the peoples

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May 2026, Quezon City — More than civil society organizations (CSOs) from across Southeast Asia gathered in Quezon City on – May 2026 for the Regional Consultative Meeting (RCM) of the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN Peoples’ Forum (ACSC/APF), calling on ASEAN governments to move beyond rhetoric and take urgent action on the region’s worsening political, economic, social, and environmental crises. Participants from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam adopted the theme for this year’s Forum: “Resist Business as Usual: Disrupt, Reclaim, Rebuild.” Established in 2005, the ACSC/APF serves as a regional platform for civil...

ASEAN CSOs gather in the Philippines, resist “business as usual,” and call on ASEAN to address regional crises while upholding the fundamental rights of the peoples

India

May 1, 2026

Solidarity with the Indian Working People: A Continued Legacy of Collective Struggle against the Erosion of Labour Protections, Systemic Exclusion and Dispossession

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International Workers’ Day 2026 Solidarity with the Indian Working People: A Continued Legacy of Collective Struggle against the Erosion of Labour Protections, Systemic Exclusion and Dispossession May 2026 In the midst of war, continuing corporate loot and a climate crisis, this International Workers’ Day, we stand in solidarity with working people across the world in their steadfast struggles and unflinching spirit against the grim and imposed realities of capitalist exploitation, insecure and contractual employment, weakening labour standards, precarious safety and occupational health, social discrimination, state repression, loss of social protection and unaffordable living costs. The present moment demands...

Solidarity with the Indian Working People: A Continued Legacy of Collective Struggle against the Erosion of Labour Protections, Systemic Exclusion and Dispossession

The Philippines

April 30, 2026

Peasant Groups Mark the International Day of Peasant Struggles with Renewed Calls for Land, Food, and Justice

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April , 2026 Every year on April , peasant, fisherfolk, rural women, Indigenous peoples, and other allied movements across the world and in the Philippines, commemorate the International Day of Peasant Struggles in solidarity with the farmers in Eldorado dos Carajás who gave their lives to fight for the rights to land in 1996. From that sacrifice, a day of global resistance was born, one that does not mourn passively but pushes back, year after year, against a system that has consistently failed to deliver land, dignity, and justice to those who feed the world. This resistance took on a...

Peasant Groups Mark the International Day of Peasant Struggles with Renewed Calls for Land, Food, and Justice

Asia/World

April 24, 2026

Focus on the Global South joins 340+ organizations in global statement on ISDS

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Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) threatens a just transition from fossil fuels and the urgent need for a social and ecological transformation for people and the planet. We welcome the recognition and inclusion of this risk within the thematic pillars of the First Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels. We call on governments to begin building a coalition of countries committed to freeing themselves from ISDS. ISDS mechanisms are written into many trade and investment agreements. They entitle transnational corporations to sue governments in secretive tribunals outside of the national legal system over law and policy changes that they fear...

Focus on the Global South joins 340+ organizations in global statement on ISDS

Asia/World

April 23, 2026

Civil Society Demands World Bank Withdraw from the Board of Peace; Terminate Facilitation of Funding

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April 2026 Summary Amidst the ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian Territory, over 180 civil society groups and human rights advocates have signed this joint statement to express our unequivocal denunciation of the World Banks role as the limited Trustee for the BoP-associated Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) for Gaza Reconstruction and Development (GRAD) and as a member of executive board of the Board of Peace (BoP). The statement below highlights how the establishment of the BoP and proposed role in the reconstruction of Gaza stand in clear violation of international law, entrench Israels illegal military occupation and denial of Palestinians’...

Civil Society Demands World Bank Withdraw from the Board of Peace; Terminate Facilitation of Funding

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Recent Publications

CARE AND RESISTANCE ZINE

12 Aug 2025

This zine gathers the voices, visions, and everyday practices of five grassroots movements across the world, each weaving care into…

LORDS OF THE LAND

3 Jun 2025

LORDS OF THE LAND Transnational Landowners, Inequality and the Case for Redistribution AUTHORS: Philip Seufert, Sofía Monsalve, Luciana Rolón, Shalmali…

70th Anniversary of the Bandung Conference

7 May 2025

In April 1955, leaders and delegates from 29 Asian and African countries gathered in the city of Bandung, Indonesia, to…

Contemporary Crisis in India’s Dairy Sector

19 Dec 2024

The dairy industry in India is at a critical juncture. This policy brief Contemporary Crisis in India’s Dairy Sector explores…

Feminist Climate Justice Think Pieces

29 Oct 2024

Originally published here This series features short papers by leading researchers on the gender–climate nexus. These think pieces were commissioned…

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Longreads

Longread

Invisible by Design: How the EU-Philippines FTA Protects Algorithms, Weakens Workers, and Locks In Digital Dependency

11 Jun 2026

SENTRO and Trade Justice Pilipinas Critique on the Digital Trade Chapter of the EU-Philippines FTA The proposed Digital Trade Chapter of the EU-Philippines Free…

Longread

AGAINST THE TIDES: UPRISINGS AND PROTESTS IN TROUBLED WATERS

2 Apr 2026

By Galileo de Guzman Castillo Introduction In the last five years, uprisings and mass protests have rocked countries in South and Southeast Asia by turns.…

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