Address to Commonwealth Civil Society

Good morning ladies and gentlemen: I am delighted to address the 11^th Commonwealth civil society consultation.

It’s also my 11^th, and my last before I leave office on 31^st March.

Some of you have perhaps heard me too often, saying that the Commonwealth is an alliance of governments and of peoples, and that it is – amongst many other things – a civil society organisation.

Allow me just to say those things one more time this morning, and as passionately as ever.

I’d like to do three things today.

First, to ask where civil society at large has come from and to during the period of my Secretary-Generalship, from 2000 to 2008.

Second, to ask the same question specifically of Commonwealth civil society. I’ll look at Commonwealth civil society two ways:

• both ‘at large’ in our 53 member countries…
• … and more specifically here, in the form of many of the organisations which sit around this table and which play such a key part in the policy and political aspects of Commonwealth life.

And thirdly, to ask the same question of civil society at large, and Commonwealth civil society in particular, looking beyond my tenure.

In what direction might it be headed?

What lights should guide it, and what trip-wires lie in wait?

So let us start wide, and zoom in.

Where has global civil society got to, in January 2008?

Can I claim to have been conscious of it when I started out in political life 30 years ago?

Not really, and certainly not as a political force.

Can I smile along with President - and General - Museveni when he told us in Kampala in November that he had, quote, ‘certainly heard talk of civil society organisations, even if he had never actually got around to joining one’.…?!

The idea of civil society, of course, is as old as the hills.

We call it a space: it’s where activities are undertaken for the public good by groups or individuals outside three other ‘spaces’, those of the family, the state and the market.

Historically, civil society operated at the micro level and the local level.

But these last years have seen it go higher and wider – acting on behalf of the state, especially in situations of crisis and conflict – and interacting with the state in policy and dialogue.

And it has also extended into a new political space, where it seeks to shape the rules, the norms and the social structures which govern aspects of our social life.

Think back to the thousands of civil society people at the Rio Earth Summit in ’92, or the Women’s Conference in Beijing in ‘95.

In 1990 The Yearbook of International Organisations listed 6,000 NGOs – in 2004, the figure was 38,000.

I see three ways in which civil society has moved further into that public, political space, even in the last 8 years – at the international level, the regional level, and the national level.

First at the international level.

The Millennium Assembly of 2000, and the Millennium Development Goals, made an explicit case that centralised, government-led approaches to the many ills of the world were simply not making the grade.

The challenges of the new Millennium were to be met by all, with civil society very much to the fore – an argument strengthened when Kofi Annan commissioned the Cardoso Report in 2004.

Second, at the regional level, where we have seen increasing governmental moves towards integration.

The key thing is, that civil society is very much a part of these new moves – SADC and ECOWAS in Africa, for instance, have their own civil society councils, and PIANGO, the organisaion of Pacific NGOs, is now of course a much valued organization accredited to the Commonwealth.

Third, at the national level.

The World Bank’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers explicitly call for civil society involvement in, and ownership of, countries’ long-term social and economic plans.

And that call is being heeded.

So it has been a decade of difference for civil society on the global stage – and on the Commonwealth stage, too.

If I look at our member countries themselves, then I see a huge growth in civil society in places like India and Uganda.

I see the role of local civil society in responding to Pakistan’s earthquake of October 2005, or the extraordinary vibrancy of organisations like the BRAC in Bangladesh.

And if I look at the ‘inner sanctum’ of Commonwealth civil society – in other words, to the people round this table, and to the Commonwealth civil society groups which influence wider Commonwealth intergovernmental policy and thinking – then I see similarly extended tentacles.

The Commonwealth’s worldwide network of 86 professional and advocacy organisations which bear its name, has continued to grow in the last 8 years, from 69 in 2000.

A third of these (eight years ago, a quarter) are based outside the UK.

Our organic growth has attracted others to the fold.

Since we regularised the procedures four years ago, over 60 organisations are now formally ‘Accredited to the Commonwealth’, including organizations like CIVICUS, the umbrella organization that is the World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

Another is Amnesty, which has a Commonwealth chapter and which obviously sees us as another effective channel through which to lobby.

It is a boost to us that others join us, and a boost to them that they do so.

Those new accreditation procedures were meant to tighten the categories and criteria of accreditation, but they were also supposed to help us find out who was who, and to liberalise the process and facilitate growth.

That explains the growth in the numbers of regional groupings now accredited to us, and also the numbers of genuinely campaigning civil society organizations, as opposed to professional bodies.

We can trace the growth through official channels:

• through the invitation to civil society to take part in the Coolum Committee;
• through specific mentions of you and your work by Heads in their Communiques at the last two CHOGMs;
• through these very civil society consultations;
• and through the growing reach of the Commonwealth Foundation itself.

The Foundation may have disbursed over £6 million over the last 8 years in support both of Commonwealth associations and of individual NGO projects … but it has done more, much more.

As I said at the People’s Forum opening ceremony in Kampala, from modest resources, the Foundation generates real policy power and real convening power.

Its Civil Society Advisory Committee is represented on its Board.

Its People’s Forum in the margins of CHOGM is the biggest testimony to the central position of civil society within the Commonwealth.

Your workshops in Kampala were massively over-subscribed – more witness to the openness and dynamism of the event.

But perhaps my greatest satisfaction in the last 8 years has been the way in which the inter-governmental Commonwealth and Commonwealth civil society are not just talking together – which is valuable enough – but acting together.

There are many examples.

They involve civil society’s role alongside Ministers.

Last year civil society had a huge presence – intellectual and physical – at the Education Ministers Meeting in Cape Town and the Women’s Affairs Meeting in Kampala.

Civil society also produced real results over climate change.

Commonwealth foresters, meteorologists, planners and statisticians played their part in getting Commonwealth Environment Ministers to agree to a climate change strategy in Nairobi in February.

Then NGOs were at the forefront of presenting some of the economic arguments against climate change, to Commonwealth Finance Ministers in Georgetown in October.

Just as important, civil society has worked with us on policy between Ministerial meetings.

Where would the Civil Paths to Peace report have been without civil society consultation?

Where would the Commonwealth’s Latimer House Principles have been, without help from Commonwealth Magistrates, Judges and Lawyers?

Increasingly, you have seen the value in forming unions of like-minded Commonwealth CSOs, to maximize your own voice and reach.

That’s why I welcome the 18 members of the Commonwealth Consortium for Education, and the 4 members of the newly formed BEPIC, Built Environment Professionals in the Commonwealth.

There are more clusters out there, still to be made – amongst our legal and our media bodies, for instance.

I am proud and pleased that all this has happened on my watch.

I am proud that civil society was again at the core of the Heads of Government communiqué.

Perhaps I can tease those of you who take note of Paragraph numbers in Communiques – but it’s all there, in 65, 71, 77, 80, 87, 90 – see for yourselves….

Let’s make sure that we revisit these in 2009 in Trinidad and Tobago. .

So where to now, for civil society at large and for Commonwealth civil society in particular?

A tree that grows tall can lose sight of its roots – and its new and wider canopy can starve those roots of life.

Perhaps the main challenges for global civil society lie in the need to stay close to its roots, preserving its identity and its standards.

By going global, is civil society remaining true to its local roots?

By becoming more professional, has civil society become, if I may use the word, ‘corporatised’?

Has a profit motive crept in?

Has the independence of the advocate been compromised by a co-option into power?

Where citizens lose faith in political systems – and just look at both the voter inertia at so many Commonwealth elections, particularly the oldest and wealthiest democracies, and at the furore when they are seen to go egregiously wrong – are they losing faith in civil society as much as in government?

Has business pulled the rug from underneath civil society by embracing its values – and commodifying them?

How accountable are civil society organizations, given that they are unelected?

Accountability goes beyond having accounts and Constitutions – it goes further, and asks if civil society always has the political, moral, legal or technical base on which to stake its claims?

Does the much-vaunted theory of three-way partnership – between the public sector, the private sector and the Third Sector – really operate as it should?

Is civil society doomed to be its junior partner?

These are some of the questions which we must ask as we look to the future for civil society.

In posing them, I am not asking loaded questions.

For every instance of civil society failing itself and its constituents, there are 10 times more where it doesn’t.

And where must Commonwealth civil society raise its game, and build on the successes of these last eight years?

I leave you with three challenges.

First, play to civil society’s role as a promoter of democracy.

Commonwealth Observer Groups comprise three types of people: parliamentarians present and former, election specialists, and ‘civil society’ – a broad term which could in fact mean media, young people, or organizations like yourselves.

Let’s look again, and be vigilant to see that that third component really does reflect the voice of society.

Second, capitalise on the fact that we are – to the best of my knowledge – the only intergovernmental organization with an actual mandate to engage with civil society.

That is why Commonwealth governments created the Commonwealth Foundation in 1965.

I think the challenge is to make even greater use of that today, and to make it a point of principle that we inject an element of civil society – its opinions, its expertise, its contacts – into everything we do.

We have started to do that; we can do it better.

The third is an extension of the second.

And it revolves around the fact that the People’s Forum Communique from Kampala was in itself a massive extension of anything a People’s Forum has ever produced.

It’s very long, very comprehensive, very political.

I welcome that.

Already, new things have come out of it – a new Commonwealth Disability Forum, for instance, a new report on urbanization, and more civil society work on climate change.

You have momentum: keep it up.

I began today by saying how civil society had raised its stakes from the local to the global, from the practical to the political.

The People’s Forum Communique is a challenge for it to do the same in the Commonwealth, in really giving civil society the chance to engage on a political level.

I wish it well in that task, and thank you all for the support you have given me these last eight years.

Thank you.

ENDS