25 Years of CPLP: Successes, Challenges and Opportunities

In 2021, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) completes 25 years of existence. The community was formally created in 1996 by Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe, and now has a total of nine member countries, following the entry of East Timor and Equatorial Guinea. 

To celebrate the 25 years of CPLP's existence, Conjuntura Austral: Journal of the Global South is planning a special issue under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Marques (Webster University, Geneva) as guest editor. All those interested in the topic are invited to send contributions – in Portuguese, English or Spanish – for this special issue which will be published in July 2022. This is a general call, with an international scope, and aims to bring together a set of reflections on the CPLP and the relationship between it and its members from the perspective of each one of its member countries, ensuring a diversity of approaches and thematic approaches.

If, on the one hand, the promotion of the Portuguese language has been CPLP’s main objective together with political-diplomatic concertation and economic cooperation, there remains a long list of themes with great potential for citizens of member countries which deserve urgent attention. After 25 years, the CPLP is still striving to impose itself in the international arena against a growing number of new political actors and multiple agendas. The special edition of Conjuntura Austral: Journal of the Global South aims to bring together texts that reflect on the importance of CPLP over the past 25 years, identifying successes and challenges from the point of view of each member country as well as the relevance of CPLP in the international arena. How to resolve the difference between the organization’s official discourse and the public opinion of civil societies in the different member countries? How to move from a community of countries to a community of peoples? What are the lessons to be drawn between official action and the multiple autonomous initiatives of groups spread across the world which aim to add informal synergies between the various Portuguese-speaking diasporas? What are the organization's possible future options? What are the current concrete challenges of leadership, availability of resources and different levels of priority given to the CPLP in the foreign policies of member countries? We hope that this special issue will foster greater dialogue between the authors and our readers, generate ideas and strategies for the block as a whole and for each of the member countries, and encourage further investigation and study by the academic community.

Articles must be submitted by February 15, 2022, and submitted through the journal's entry system. All articles will go through a double-blind peer review process, and there is no charge of any kind for publication. Publication guidelines and rules, as well as submission instructions, can be found on the journal's website at this link.

Any questions or concerns regarding this special issue of the magazine can be sent directly to the guest editor directly via email: joseph.marques@webster.ch