/ 7 April 2004

Balancing activism with diplomacy

It may not have had the size or cachet of the World Social Forum held earlier this year, but the recent biennial conference of the World Alliance for Citizen Participation (Civicus) also threw a spotlight on the role — and effectiveness — of civil society.

About 700 delegates from more than 100 countries descended on Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, for the meeting under the theme Acting Together for a Just World. Civicus, a Johannesburg-based alliance of NGOs, attempts to give citizens a voice in the political and economic affairs of their countries — particularly those states that do not observe democracy.

After five days of plenaries and workshops that featured the likes of former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, delegates passed a number of resolutions — including a pledge to do more in the fight for human rights, while maintaining good relations with governments.

Civicus executive director Vic Sutton said this was motivated by the belief that civic groups — often viewed simply as providers of services — could do more if they were engaged at a political level about important social issues.

“But, this means they have to [be in a position] to talk with governments. They have to maintain independence, but it is sometimes counterproductive for them to take a confrontational stand,” he said.

Sutton acknowledged that there are limits to this approach in situations where any attempt to speak truth to power elicits a negative response. For some of the Zimbabwean activists present in Gaborone, this point had clearly been reached.

“We want to see a lot more public criticism. We want African governments, especially SADC [the Southern African Development Community], to be a bit more robust and question one another about the crisis that has been unfolding in Zimbabwe,” said Everjoice Win, a women’s rights activist from that country.

However, she admitted that leaders might tread cautiously as a result of President Robert Mugabe’s role in Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence: “He [Mugabe] is a leader of one of the most celebrated liberation movements on the continent whose achievements in the first 10 years of independence, economically and socially, cannot be ignored.”

Another resolution focused on the need for civic groups to review their activities and make them more effective. Closer cooperation between NGOs at a local and international level was envisaged.

“There is a lot of networking that goes on already,” observed Sutton. But, he said, this tended to be sectoral. “Church groups speak to each other, environmental groups and trade unions talk to one another.”

Civicus believes there are areas where nothing less than a full-scale mobilisation of civil society will achieve results: the implementation of appropriate laws governing the operations of NGOs, for example.

The drive to make institutions like the United Nations Security Council more representative of the global community could probably be considered another of these areas — and the conference duly called for progress in this regard.

However, Sutton sees the democratisation of the Security Council, the World Bank and other organisations less in terms of a sudden change in leadership, than a growing sensitivity to voices in civil society.

“Dramatic change in intergovernmental organisations is hard to attain. But, you can expect improvements in how ordinary individuals are able to seed their ideas into these organisations,” he said.

Earlier, the World Bank had been the target of vigorous criticism from delegates. “The bank needs to open its institutions and accommodate inputs from the masses … Its top-down approach … has proved to do more harm than good,” said Sandy Tjaronda, chairperson of the Namibia NGO Forum. — IPS