SALO’s work broadly falls into seven strategic focus areas (with some overlap between them):
- Building international, regional and national consensus on peace, human security and development
- Engaging, influencing and interpreting SA foreign policy
- Deepening North-South partnerships
- Deepening South-South partnerships
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Combating xenophobia, focusing on migration and diaspora - Mainstreaming for Gender as well as promoting women’s, children’s and LGBTI rights
- Advancing climate justice, the just transition, and equitable natural resource governance, with an emphasis on extractives – especially critical minerals
SALO’s focus is on bringing divergent and diverse positions and interests together through various forms of dialogue to generate evidence-informed decision-making in crisis and conflict situations. Our strategic initiatives therefore encompass particular themes as well as different groups of people in policy, issue and interest groups. SALO’s main activities include:
- Multi-stakeholder dialogues (public or closed-door)
- Small-scale dialogue meetings, often closed and with specific focus groups
- Informal meetings/soft advocacy/networking
- Information sharing with policy-makers
- Building relationships among stakeholders
- Awareness-raising through media and other platforms
- Meetings with regional and national civil society networks and grassroots communites
- Research and publication
- Multi-media production and dissemination
In some cases, a single activity may be part of several strategic focus areas, as when a dialogue conference about Swaziland brings together a range of Southern diplomatic actors and integrates a discussion around gender. Some strategic focus areas include specific time-bound projects while others are on-going, long-term processes with multiple supporters.