FROM THE DESK OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

CIVICUS World Assembly needs you to set the agenda

Release Date: 17 May 2007

By Kumi Naidoo, CIVICUS Secretary-General

Dear e-CIVICUS Subscriber,  

As you all know by now, this year's CIVICUS World Assembly takes place on 23-27 May 2007 in Glasgow, Scotland under the guidance of our overall theme 'Acting Together for a Just World'. For CIVICUS, acting together is not just an empty catch phrase. In my close to nine years at CIVICUS I have always voiced it as one of CIVICUS’ core tasks to enable people to act together to exist, express and engage as citizens at the local and the global level.  

One of the crystallisations of this core aim that we have set ourselves is the World Assembly. Hence, CIVICUS is keen to ensure that our World Assembly is as accessible as possible for the majority of people across the world. This year Glasgow will once again witness numerous people from around the world acting together to realise a more just world. CIVICUS is very grateful for all those that blocked their agenda’s and allocated their resources to attend our World Assembly, the 7^th edition already.  

However, even though the number of people attending our World Assembly is impressive with delegates from over 100 countries, we are well aware that at least double the number of people would attend if they had the resources to do so. Thus many important voices of our friends cannot be present. At CIVICUS we have taken measures to answer this challenge to the best of our abilities.  

First, with the generous assistance of our donors, we have made available a significant amount of bursaries for people from the global south. Although we are simultaneously humbled and honoured by the overwhelming amount of applications, we are sad to have not been able to accommodate all of them. Despite the significant amount of available bursaries, we had to disappoint at least half of the applicants. So, regardless of the fact that we have been able to empower over a hundred of our friends to engage with us in Glasgow, we will strive to increase this number for next year’s Assembly. 

The number of applicants that we had to turn down made us aware that we have to increase our efforts to involve those who are not able to attend. Fortunately, thanks to new technologies, we can increase are outreach through the internet.  

Besides using www.civicusassembly.org to display the latest programme, the lists of speakers, biographies of key speakers and so on, we will create several ways for you to directly interact with us in Glasgow. This means that although you may not be able to find the time or resources to join us in person, you will be able ask questions and feed in your comments from your own home base. Although you will not be able to participate 'live', you will be able to feed through any comments or questions you may have 3 hours prior to the session, and an on-line moderator will make those comments or questions available to the panellists in the discussion so that your voice is heard. Please go to the World Assembly website and obtain an updated programme of the sessions. From the morning of Thursday 24 May until lunchtime on Sunday 27 May (UK time), you will be able to participate in all the plenary sessions, the CIVICUS members meeting and a number of mini-plenary sessions focusing on current 'hot topics'.

Thirdly, besides just feeding us with your thoughts, you'll also be able to watch and listen to the plenaries and some other events. You can access the Assembly sessions using Media Player (an integral part of most Windows-run PCs) and there'll be an option for those using Real Player software as well - both will be downloadable on the site. Broadband connections work best but there will be an option to choose from high or low quality options, depending on the speed and capacity of your on-line connection. The CIVICUS World Assembly would like to invite you to participate in all the sessions (all times UK ). If you are in a time zone which makes this difficult you can view the session the next day since they will be stored on the website for your review.  

As you can see, on this occasion we have done our utmost to remain close to and even realise our aim to enable popular and global citizen participation by allowing the many of you to express and engage through the internet. Sadly we know that not all our friends can access this opportunity due to technical challenges and the digital divide. Because of that, our weekly newsletter e-CIVICUS will turn into a daily newsletter for the occasion. Running five thematic special World Assembly editions, the editorial team of e-CIVICUS will be providing you with daily updates, thematic background information, workshop reports, press releases, important links to for instance the daily Terra Viva World Asembly newspaper, and much more. Yet, one of the most important contributions to those e-CIVICUS editions will hopefully be your views, comments and questions with regards to the World Assembly, so we strongly encourage you to share these with us. For all your contributions to these WA editions of e-CIVICUS , send your thoughts to editor@civicus.org. The first World Assembly edition on the Wednesday the 23d will provide you with an overview of all CIVICUS workshops as well as further outline of the World Assembly e-CIVICUS production.  

A final effort to maximise our outreach is not at all the least. BBC World Debate will be recording a special plenary on aid accountability on Thursday the 24^th. This edition of World Debate will be broadcasted on BBC World and on the BBC World Website. Please check the BBC World and our website for broadcasting details. Of course, at the time of broadcast, our website will feature a weblink to the web broadcast for your convenience. For this event BBC World has approached Salil Shetty, Mohamed Ibrahim, Myles Wickstead, Judith Robertson and Ms Musyimi-Ogana. Much like with our other plenaries, through our website, you would be able to post questions that you would like to be asked during this debate up to noon Thursday the 24^th. In doing so, you are question might reach the millions around the world watching BBC World.  

At CIVICUS we know that even all these efforts will not be enough to engage with all our friends. Partially because of a lack of resources, but also because many of our activist friends cannot join at all. In a growing number of countries, peaceful activism results in imprisonment. Together with Amnesty International at the CIVICUS World Assembly we will campaign for 14 civil society activists in prison or on trial because of their human rights work. The 2006 World Assembly also profiled the cases of 14 activists in detention - five of whom continue to be detained, and will be featured again this year. Six of those mentioned last year have since been released. Sadly, one was murdered in prison, and the whereabouts of another is unknown.  

To show solidarity with our imprisoned friends, the World Assembly delegates will be asked to send postcard petitions, urging the unconditional release of the activists and respect for freedom of expression, assembly and association. If you want to join our campaign, the website of our Civil Society Watch programme (www.civilsocietywatch.org) will soon feature the details of this campaign. The value of such messages for these imprisoned activists simply can’t be overestimated. As Kamal al Labwani, son of a Syrian activist, physician and artist, wrote to us in a message to be read during the World Assembly:  

“Our Dad still dreams in prison – and thousands of people share the same dream. People like you, ladies and gentlemen, make anger vanish and dreams possible. Thank you for sharing our sorrows and our dreams,”  

It is to face these challenges like these that we must act together for a just world, for they can imprison one of us, but never all of us. It is to overcome challenges like these that I thus invite you to make maximum use of our interactive possibilities to participate in our 7^th World Assembly from anywhere in the world. For, it is because of your voice and solidarity, and because of us acting together, that we can make changes for a more just world.

Warmest regards,  

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