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Civil Society: Helping to Shape Policy
An Interview with Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, South Africa |
 Kumi Naidoo is the Secretary General and CEO of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, an international alliance of organizations dedicated to strengthening citizen participation and civil society worldwide. He was the founding director of the South African NGO Coalition and served on the task team which drafted new NGO legislation for that country. He was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to the Panel of Eminent Persons on UN Civil Society Relations and is also a member of the steering committee of the World Economic Forum’s Global Governance Initiative. Dr Naidoo holds a doctorate in political science from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He currently serves as the chairperson of the Partnership for Transparency Fund, which supports civil society efforts to eradicate corruption, and as the chairperson of the International Facilitation Group of the Global Call to Action against Poverty campaign. | |
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|  Do you see civil society as essential to the MDGs and if so, are
we moving towards the right goals? |  First, when the MDGs were promulgated in the Millennium
Declaration of September 2000, there was a very muted response from civil
society. Civil society was hesitant then, and in many cases still is, because
the MDGs are actually setbacks on earlier commitments made in global UN summits.
For example, the gender equality MDG is actually a setback on commitments made
by governments at the UN Conference on Women
in Beijing in 2000 and beyond. Secondly, while Millennium Development Goals
1-7 all have very clear benchmarks, timelines and targets that are the
responsibilities of developing countries, Goal 8 which deals with the
responsibilities of rich countries has no benchmarks, no timelines, no targets,
or even sufficient targets. Thirdly, even though civil society champions many of
the issues tackled by the MDGs, there was virtually no consultation with civil
society in the development of these goals. Finally, many organizations do not
think that the goals themselves are all that great, but that the framework of
the Millennium Declaration itself provides civil society with a framework for
lobbying and pushing beyond the MDGs. Having said that, if we look at where the
energy for achieving the MDGs is coming from, it has grown significantly in both
the North and the South over the past three years. As a result, a great many
NGOs use the MDG framework as a framework now for advocacy and for pushing for
social and economic justice, given that almost all governments are signed on to
the MDGs. This is partly in recognition of the reality about how the so-called
war on terrorism is being prosecuted as a rise in militarization and a move away
from development investments. As Roberto Bissio of Social Watch puts it in a
tongue-in-cheek observation: "in the current global context, the MDGs now read
as a revolutionary document".
|  | | What is the attitude of civil society toward the MDGs today?
| I don’t think there’s been a shift in opinion on the goals
themselves. Let me give you a very simple example. If you are a grassroots
activist working in a community and you have a goal that you want to halve
hunger and extreme poverty in 10 years, how do you, as an activist on the
ground, make a determination of which half you take out of poverty, and which
half you actually leave behind? Civil society largely feels, I think, that if
there were much greater political commitment, particularly on the part of the
rich countries, then there can be significant movement toward meeting the MDGs.
Look at all the commitment to a 0.7% GNP target for aid that was made 35 years
ago—and that’s a long time to wait for less than 1%. Even if you take the UK
government which supposedly is in the forefront of all these movements with its
Africa Commission and so on, it is only committing to the 0.7% target being met
in 2013 which is two years before the MDG targets are supposed to be met. If
there are going to be significant government breakthroughs, civil society is
going to have to actually send the message of confidence about anti-corruption
and ensure that governments are held accountable. The Global Call to Action Against Poverty is
really about a long-term framework, of pushing for rapid movement on debt, trade
justice and aid on the part of the rich countries, and simultaneously pushing
our governments to do much better on the things that are within their domain of
control.
Civil society also argues with regard to developing country
governments that there could be more development effectiveness now than there
has been because of corruption. While we should not seek to dehistoricise the
reality of poverty, you also can’t blame colonialism, slavery, or the way
developing countries were kicked around as a political football during the Cold
War as excuses for being unable to make progress on issues like gender equality
or anti-corruption. That struggle has to be fought in the South, as well as
people from the South wanting a greater voice around Northern responsibilities
on issues of trade justice, debt and aid. I think that what we’re seeing in the
majority of countries around the world is a movement in that direction on the
part of civil society organizations.
| | | What role is civil society playing in influencing donors,
solidifying commitments on aid harmonization and collaboration to meet the
MDGs? | For years, African governments have been quietly grinning
and bearing it as one foreign aid delegation after another has come for meetings
sapping up their limited time and resources. There are some interesting
statistics about how much time is eaten up by the bureaucratic ways that aid is
administered. Developing these funding relations are so time- and
resource-consuming. It was civil society that first put harmonization on the
development agenda; we will continue to raise awareness about this and push for
a better, more coherent, more harmonized system of development support. At first
look you may think harmonization has nothing to do with issues such as culture,
North-South relationships and so on, but it’s fundamental. The way that
development partnerships are actually arranged at the moment, apart from the
fact that every bilateral wants to have its own relationship and plant its own
flag, developing country governments are burdened with the cultural exchange
that this is about charity. Part of aid harmonization has to be a paradigm shift
in mindset where we understand that this is about addressing historical
injustices and developing a level playing field for all nations to be able to
compete on an even basis. Unless harmonization also includes these more nuanced
issues, we will never get any meaning out of [aid] harmonization.
| | | OECD has had an aid harmonization Task Force since 2003. Could you
elaborate on how civil society has promoted the harmonization issue?
| For example, civil society in Tanzania working with their
partners in the North produced several reports in 2001 that highlighted the
incoherence in development aid in that country. One role of NGOs is to provide
research, publishing, and taking issues to development conferences and
highlighting them. Another role for NGOs is quite practical because a country’s
bilateral government agencies also directly fund civil society organizations.
Any NGO leader you speak to will tell you that one of the most difficult and
frustrating things about the job is managing these different funding proposals
and contracts. Sharing knowledge about these mechanisms is critically important
because then it gets on the agendas of powerful global institutions and other
bilateral agencies for them to tackle. I think that unfortunately too many
governments operate on the basis of 'business as usual' and so clearly it will
take public pressure to ensure that progressive changes are achieved.
| | | What is civil society’s position toward the G8 Summit?
| There is an immense level of mobilization, unprecedented I
would say, organizing against the July G8 Summit in the UK. With the Global Call
to Action against Poverty WhiteBand campaign, we had 10,000 people in several
African countries involved in various activities on the day of the African Child
on 16 June 2005. It is a public education exercise because people need to
understand what it is that they can hold their governments accountable for. They
also need to understand what developing country governments actually have no
control over, and add their voice to a global movement of putting pressure on
the G8 leaders.
There are four things that we are pushing for. Firstly
on aid; we’re saying we want better quality of aid, for it to be less tied and
more harmonized, and for more aid. Basically saying 0.7% is not a huge demand.
Let’s remember that after WWII, as part of the Marshall Plan, the U.S. invested
1% of its gross national income for European reconstruction efforts. Given the
way that most of the developing world still carries scars of slavery, indentured
labor, and colonization, there is an historical debt, an issue of addressing a
legacy of injustice that should be remedied. So clearly, civil society
organizations do not see aid as charity but as compensation for historical
injustices. Secondly, we believe you cannot address the global policy agenda
without having movement on trade justice, so we’re looking at movement in a
positive direction with regard to trade. Third, debt cancellation is obviously
key. The announcements of the G8 dropping the debt to 18 countries was a small
step in the right direction, but far short of expectations and what is required
at this moment. We wanted a larger number of countries, in excess of 60
countries in total, and a much larger debt cancellation package. You could take
the case of Iraq’s debt--$US 30 billion was written off in the space of six
months in not only multilateral debt but also bilateral debt--and this country
sits on supposedly one of the biggest concentrations of oil in the world. In
terms of conditionality, we still remain unhappy that the conditionalities
constantly dominate because, in part, they promote privatization as a panacea,
including the privatization of basic services. This has proven a disaster in the
rich countries of the world so I don’t see why anybody should expect that
privatization, particularly of basic services, is going to work in developing
countries. Finally, the top area of policy focus is to get some movement on
climate change. There is really shocking cognitive dissonance here. All the
facts are stunning; serious environmental disaster for future generations is
clearly a reality and there’s just so little political movement to actually
address this.
| | | How pivotal is the MDG+5 Summit to the Civil Society
community? | Due to lobbying by GCAP (Global Call to Action against
Poverty), UN held civil society hearings in the build-up to the MDG+5 Summit in
June 2005. The views of civil society were canvassed around the same themes as
the heads of government gathering at the UN General Assembly. During the General
Assembly itself, we have a big mobilization period which we’ve called WhiteBand
Day 2 on the 10th of September, a few days before the leaders gather in New
York. We’re also planning high profile concerts and other popular events that
can broaden the constituency of citizens who become committed to the social and
economic justice agenda and there will be mobilization around the world on those
days as well. And the third is on International Human Rights day which is the
10th of December and this will focus on trade justice in the run up to the WTO
Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong.
| | | What future role can civil society play in determining aid
policy? | I will just say that right now, critical to the whole
development nexus and partnership, is the recognition of the role that civil
society has to play. The majority of civil society energies go toward providing
services to people who are vulnerable and in need, and that will continue.
Governments generally do not have a problem with that, but when we try to
deliver services—whether it’s on HIV/AIDS, early childhood development or adult
education—we have found that policies need to be changed if we are to have
lasting impact. Civil society can provide free policy intelligence that can
actually help governments make better policy decisions. As a result, governments
should work in partnership with civil society, opening up possibilities for
their experiential wisdom to be fed into the policy process. Also, if you put
all your eggs in the policy basket and don’t ask yourself the question “what is
the framework within which the policy has been made, what are the governance
arrangements within which policy gets made?”, you come to the recognition that
the governance framework is wrong, as is the case with the World Bank. Even if
you have a good management team which is more responsive, it always gets to a
point where they will say, well, on that issue the board of the Bank has to
decide. If the board is governed in an undemocratic, one-dollar-one-vote basis,
then you can put all your energies into policy change, but you have a glass
ceiling that you’re not going to be able to go through. If we are going to have
a breakthrough around poverty, if we are going to have aid harmonization,
governments and global institutions need to recognize that civil society has a
legitimate voice and rigThe requested resource (/editor/default/) is not availableht to be involved, not only in delivery, not only in
policy making but crucially in working for more democratic governance from the
local to the global level.
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 How did Development Gateway members respond to our Aid Harmonization Survey questions?
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| How does donor support for the MDGs stack up? Charts and graphs measuring aid flows and public support- click here. |
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