One month gone, eleven to go: Is 2005 the year civil society focuses on its common shared values and agrees to disagree on strategy and tactics?
Release Date: 4 February, 2005
By Kumi Naidoo, CIVICUS Secretary General
I write this from my flat in Johannesburg, South Africa, after a month on the road which has taken me to the east and west coast of the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Even though I did not make it to the World Social Forum this year, I was regularly in touch with my colleagues from CIVICUS who were running various workshops on strengthening civil society and looking to hold governing institutions accountable for the way in which they engage with civil society.
I was also in daily contact with the team from the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, which did a great job in launching the global campaign that we have been planning for six months.
Allow me to reflect on some of these representational activities in the hope that this might be helpful for your work. My first commitment was with the Grantmakers Without Borders and their partners in San Francisco, to reflect on what another four years of the Bush Administration will mean for international philanthropy. While the mood was somewhat sombre, participants felt that an organised and united philanthropic community in the US should be able to continue with bold international grant-making notwithstanding various measures brought about by the Patriot Act which puts various barriers to international giving. I argued the case that civil society in the US now has to put greater pressure within the US itself to ensure that national public opinion shifts in a direction that puts greater pressure on the Bush Administration to ensure that it meets its various international obligations, while not neglecting to provide the solidarity and support for social and economic justice efforts in the developing world.
Another effort worth tracking is one led by Mary Robinson, called Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalisation Initiative. I have been serving on the advisory board of this unique initiative which seeks to use the existing human rights instruments to make progress around trade justice, migration, HIV/AIDS and gender equality. The primary geographical focus of this initiative is Africa. Using her considerable networks and drawing on her deep commitment to human rights, Mary Robinson has positioned this initiative to work closely with a range of civil society efforts to work for a more just, democratic and ethical global order.
As we have mentioned in the past two issues of e-CIVICUS, the momentum has been growing around uniting civil society to push for accountability of world leaders to deliver on their minimalist development goals and for them to go beyond these modest goals. Last week, the Make Poverty History Coalition, which is the UK arm of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, organised a rally of more than 20 000 people in Trafalgar Square, London, to pressure the G7 Finance Ministers who were meeting in London over the weekend. While early announcements emerging from the meeting suggest that some headway has been made towards canceling third world debt, the commitments do not suggest the urgency they deserve. Nelson Mandela, wearing the symbolic campaign white band on his wrist, called on citizens around the world to wear white bands as a unifying symbol to show that “poverty is not natural, just as slavery and apartheid are unnatural”.
Civil society efforts at the World Economic Forum in Davos has led to some, such as the CEO of the Confederation of British Industries, claiming that NGOs have hijacked the agenda. Please read the detailed article www.civicus.org/new/content/cbi.htm. While identifying poverty, climate change, global governance, education and inequitable globalisation as the key issues facing the planet, is a move in the positive direction, the key challenge for business and political leaders is whether they will commit themselves to the fundamental structural transformations that are needed or whether they will primarily put forward “band aid” solutions.
With all these efforts currently underway, and in several meetings we have held over the last couple of months, we have now secured the participation of trade unions, faith based organisations, NGOs and other civil society groupings for the campaign. While this does not mean that all the participating organisations agree on everything, there is a growing agreement that civil society organisations should unite around their common agendas and work collectively around these, while agreeing to respectfully disagree on issues of tactics and strategy, as well as, sometimes, on the detailed policy positions being advocated for.
The first joint mobilisation being promoted by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty is the Women’s Rights Week from 1-8 March 2005. Please feel encouraged to join the Global Call by joining the campaign at www.whiteband.org.
I hope this week brings much optimism in the work that you are doing in building a more just, peaceful and democratic world.
Warmest regards,
Kumi Naidoo
Please send your comments and suggestions to e-mail kumi@civicus.org.
