COPLA-Peru has been launched in a context marked by the negotiations of possible free-trade agreements with important commercial partners and the upcoming European Union-Latin America and APEC Forums. This process of openness to international trade presents opportunities and challenges for the poorest. This is why COPLA-Peru will focus its actions on the small agrarian sector, which is the main livelihood source for the rural poor and one of the most sensitive sectors to the changes in the international trade environment.

Three are the action pillars that constitute COPLA-Peru: research, communications and incidence, and capacity development. During 2007, the project will be mainly focussed on the production of multidisciplinary evidence that will reveal the differentiated impacts of international trade in the agrarian sector, showing the multidimensional relation between international trade and poverty. These research inputs will feed the communications and incidence pillar, which includes actions to raise awareness about the opportunities presented by pro-poor commerce among decision-makers, MPs, policy makers, press, etc. On the other hand, the capacity-development pillar is based on a multi-level partnership strategy to strength the incidence and lobby capacities related to pro-poor commerce among the organizations that represent the small agrarian producers, MPs working commissions and journalists.