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Civil Societies

At times it may be easier to say what a thing is not than what it is. The Secretary-General's annual report, his overview of what the UN is up to, has a section on "uncivil society" (the drug trade, money laundering), but this year nothing on "civil society." The UN Charter is pragmatically negative: non-governmental organizations, NGOs. In logic, NGO should be the same as civil society; but, because NGO has been equated with those organizations formally affiliated with the UN, those three little letters have acquired a restricted connotation. "Civil society" is to take us out of that corral.

This is happening in a big way as "civil society" gets more and more into basic issues of development and globalization. This is, after all, what the great gathering of NGOs was doing at the Rio conference in 1992. Their influence surely penetrated the G7 on the issue of debt relief for poor countries; and even the Washington citadel of the IMF and World Bank in their focus on poverty. In July 1999, responding to an invitation by ECOSOC President Paolo Fulci, NGOs ("Civil Society") presented a joint statement on "Promoting People-Centred Economic Growth." This is a splendid advocacy document which touches on key lines of international and national action, a crystal "agenda for development." The big citizen's protest at the November WTO meeting in Seattle was a critical factor in reining in TRADE and dragging its mercenaries into civilization. NGO advocacy continues at the Commission on Sustainable Development and related UN meetings, and at the current UNCTAD millennium meeting in Bangkok. The indispensable role of civil society was also recognized by the Secretary-General in his challenge to Big Business at Davos: his proposed Compact is tripartite-- UN - business - civil society. Elsewhere in this report I have also discussed the presence of organized labour at the UN.

On issues of human rights, NGOs have continued active in promoting the Beijing Platform of Action for Women; and helped a lot in getting adoption of the Protocol to the Convention on Discrimination against Women. The same goes for the Protocol (on age of military recruitment) to the Child Rights Convention. Continuing from banning land-mines, NGOS have formed an active alliance to maintain pressure towards regulating small arms, right now getting into preparations for the 2001 conference on this. The NGO network continues its participation in the preparations for the International Criminal Court.

The NGO Millennium Forum at the UN 22-26 May will be an occasion to bring all these strands together. It is odd, isn't it, that at the UN it is the most democratic governments that are the most receptive to prodding by their own citizens. (You'd think that being elected once would be enough.) The ambivalent General Assembly has yet to overcome its reluctance to hear the voice of "the people": no open access, only the occasional welcome. Nevertheless, committed serious NGOs must sustain the stimulus and support that the UN needs to resuscitate our jaded terranauts.