Reference: Invitation the Annual Platform Meeting, March 17-19th in
Bilbao
Annex: Agenda for the Platform Meeting in Bilbao


Utrecht, January 19th, 2005


Dear Friends,

In November we sent you a pre-announcement for our upcoming Platform Meeting and we would like to thank all those members who already responded positively to this invitation. For you, and for those of you who have not yet responded we would, once again, like to invite you to participate in this meeting which will be held on March 17th to 19th , in Bilbao. This year’s meeting will be organised in cooperation with Elkarri, an NGO which focuses on dialogue in the Basque Country. The meeting promises to be very interesting as we will, next to our normal Platform meeting participants, also have additional representation from the NGO community in Spain, Southern Europe and from the Western CIS countries, the Balkans and Caucasus.

In this letter we will share with you our ideas about a programme for those three days and specifically ask for your input in this programme to better pinpoint what you, as a platform member, would like to discuss during this meeting.

The focus of this year’s Platform Meeting -proposed agenda
One of the major topics during this year’s Platform meeting will be the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). With only a few months to go before the conference at the UN headquarters in New York in July we plan to
ÿ update you on the state of affairs of this conference
ÿ give you a chance to comment on the first draft of the Global Action Agenda
ÿ discuss the strategy activities to be planned in June to raise awareness about the field of conflict prevention and peacebuilding
ÿ look to the future tasks of the European Platform and
ÿ have topical working groups on issues such as CS-UN mechanisms for interaction, interaction and networking and Code of Conduct (to only mention a few)

The Global Partnership, the Conference and the Global Action Agenda
The regional processes, which are at the core of the Global Partnership are well under way. Following the successful conference most of you attended in Dublin last year six other regions have already had their national and regional conferences with key NGOs, governments, UN officials and regional organisation. These regional conferences have resulted in Regional Action Agenda’s in Western and Northern Europe, Latin-America and the Caribbean, West-Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern and Central Africa, North America and the Balkans. The other Regional Action Agendas are on their way and drawing on these agendas we are planning to have a first outline or draft of the Global Action Agenda ready for the Platform meeting and its participants will therefore have a first opportunity to give direct comments and briefly discuss this document to be presented to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan during the conference in July. Especially for those of you who attended the Dublin Conference and were involved in the drafting of the Dublin Action Agenda for our region this promises to be a very interesting follow-up.

The programme for the meeting in Bilbao will also include an update on the state of affairs on the process of selecting conference participants from Europe. As you all know, the International Steering Group (ISG) of the Global Partnership have decided on the number of participants from each regional process to attend the conference following set criteria.

At the meeting in Bilbao, with only three months to go before the conference, it will also be crucial to focus on maximising our outreach and develop a strategy on how we can use the momentum of this event to raise the profile of the field of conflict prevention and peacebuilding as a whole through different awareness raising, media and lobby activities.
The strategy discussion will begin at a meeting in London in the second half of January but we hope to present the outcome of that meeting in Bilbao and discuss with this larger group how to take this process further.

Furthermore, as the Global Partnership has been an important activity of the European Platform for the last three years we would also like to look to the future tasks of the European Platform after the conference and the role of ECCP as the secretariat, evaluate the Platform’s current membership set-up, mission statement and objectives at the meeting in Bilbao.

Finally, we are pleased to announce that thanks to our partnership with Elkarri we will be able to dedicate half a day of the Platform meeting to the Basque situation.

Request for your input
In the enclosed draft programme you can see that we would also like to organise parallel working groups during the meeting. Some suggestions of working groups might be:
ÿ The implementation/ follow-up of the Dublin Action Agenda
ÿ UK: EU and G8 leadership opportunities
ÿ CS-UN mechanisms for interaction (Millennium Declaration, High Level Panel reports, etc.)
ÿ Humanitarian Aid in conflict areas
ÿ The future of the European Platform/ links to the Global Partnership
ÿ Interaction/ Networking
ÿ Code of Conduct

However, to make the Platform Meeting as fruitful as possible, we would like to ask you to suggest other topics for the working groups that you would like to organise. Please send us this input by January 27th so that we can develop the agenda further.

Logistical Information
Izaskun Fernandez de Castillo is helping logistically and if you contact her, she can help arrange your hotel stay as part of a block booking. We will be staying at the BC Barceló Hotel Avenida located at: Avda. Zumalacárregui 40, 48006 Bilbao. The hotel charge per night including breakfast will be ¤ 94,00 (+ 7% tax) and dinner at the hotel will cost ¤ 14,00 (+ 7% tax). You can contact Izaskun via email izaskun@xabide.es or telephone: +34 945 121 403.

Please note: We advise you to arrive for the welcome reception on Wednesday evening at 20:00, March 16th as the meeting will start early morning the following day. We will end the meeting on Saturday March 19th at 13:00.

The meeting will be held at the Chamber of Commerce in the Centro de Negocios (Business Centre) building Alameda de Recalde, 50, 48008, Bilbao. Persons will be available at the Hotel lobby every morning to help you with any questions including how to get to the Chamber of Commerce.

Please let ECCP know if you’re planning to attend!

We look forward to meet you all in March in Bilbao.

Best regards,

Paul van Tongeren
Executive Director, European Centre for Conflict Prevention