All La Coordinadora’s members share a common outlook and basic principles about the model we want to promote, as well as the causes of poverty and inequalities against which we fight.
Our values promote gender equality, respect for the environment, and the defense of human rights everywhere in the world.
The principles and values that unite us are set out in our Code of Conduct. This is what we mean when we say:
1
Development
We believe development is a process of social, economic, political, cultural, and technological change, among others, that arises from the collective will and in which everyone involved has a role to plays. The development we believe in respects and cares for the commons of current and future societies; protects the planet we inhabit and its resources; and ensures that every single person´s human rights, no matter where in the world, are guaranteed.
2
Poverty and its causes
We fight against poverty and its causes. We see poverty as the deprivation of all essentials necessary to develop in physical, mental, and spiritual dignity. Poverty implies that people will lack access to vital resources and will be excluded in the decision-making processes that affect them personally.
Poverty is fundamentally the result of the exploitation of peoples and nature. This exploitation, we might add, is imposed by a minority that benefits at the expense of a vast majority.
3
Cooperation
We are committed to a model of cooperation that guarantees exchanges between and among equals. This allows for the mutual enrichment of organisations and people on all sides of our globalised world.
Horizontal participation and mutual learning are key to our work, which is rooted in the concept of connected citizens in a global world.
4
Policy coherence for sustainable development
All our policies must be consistent with sustainable human development. In this sense, the cooperation policy must be framed, along with other policies (economic, cultural, migratory, educational, agricultural, etc.), in a context of international relations in which human rights, the fight against the causes of poverty, and respect for the environment are promoted and safeguarded.
5
Gender equality
Gender equality is essential to achieve the human development of individuals, people, and peoples. We work to guarantee and implement women’s rights.
We are committed to a development model that addresses the structural causes of gender discrimination, a model in which women participate in decision-making, where their work is made visible, and where they play an active role in all the actions implemented, in order to guarantee equal access to and control of resources and their benefits.
6
Environment
We are committed to a development model that respects the planet’s environmental limits. To this end, we defend a rational and equitable use of natural resources – water, biomass, forests, soil, seas, air – and advocate for the halting of the alarming loss of biodiversity and climate change. These must be core elements in the policies we advocate nationally and internationally.
7
Human rights
Without human rights there can be no development; their effective exercise is the cornerstone of the social, economic, political, cultural, and global model that we defend.
We are committed to the human rights approach as the focal point of our work; this approach places people and their capacities at the centre of our analysis and requires the fulfilment of the duties that states have in guaranteeing those rights.
8
Self-regulation
Transparency and good governance are the linchpins of our work. To this end, we use the Transparency and Good Governance Tool our member organisations must adhere to; this tool helps us account for the use we make of our funds and for our internal organisation.
This is in addition to compliance with our Code of Conduct, and there are other external transparency requirements to which we are subject.