Alliance Online - September 2006
Tackling the issues that won’t go away
Caroline Hartnell
EVENT 6TH CIVICUS World Assembly
Date 21-25 June
Venue Glasgow, Scotland
Theme Acting Together for a Just World
‘Acting Together for a Just World’ was the theme of this year’s CIVICUS World Assembly. At the opening plenary, participants were asked what they saw as the main problem facing the world today. Using hand-held voting devices, 33 per cent chose ‘unaccountable leaders’. But, as Mary Robinson stressed, ‘we must hold ourselves accountable before we seek justice from others.’ If civil society is to tackle the problem of unaccountable leaders and make sure that human rights matter ‘in the corridors of power’ as well as in ‘small places close to home’, CSOs must look to their own accountability.
Sure enough, out of no fewer than ten sessions looking at the question of accountability, two focused on holding government accountable and one on international governmental organizations; the rest focused on CSO accountability.
Kumi Naidoo, CIVICUS Secretary General, echoing the conference theme, stressed the importance of ‘acting together’. Our problems will not be solved, he said, unless we find ways of working together both within civil society – NGOs, trade unions, secular and faith-based organizations – and with other sectors. He welcomed those from other sectors, though these were not greatly in evidence.
He then went on to talk about justice, and the four subthemes of the conference: political justice, economic justice, social justice and civic justice. He ended with his own dream for the world:
‘My dream is that in the coming decades the vast inequalities between the rich and poor within individual countries and the vast inequalities that exist between rich and poor countries will be significantly reversed and that one of the keys to realizing this dream, the elimination of the vast and unjust inequalities between men and women, will become a reality.’
Putting on the gender glasses
Gender equality was highlighted in the opening plenary as a ‘cross-cutting theme’ of the Assembly. Yet the strong message to emerge from a session on gender equality was that whatever is done, women will need to do for themselves.
The women’s movement needs to be stronger, said Sylvia Borren of Novib. Governments are not engaging with civil society in general and women’s movements in particular. Gender mainstreaming has become a game, she said. Apparently only 20 per cent of EU aid goes to development and only 3 per cent to education. ‘We need women to take leadership positions in mainstream organizations not just women’s organizations,’ said Borren.
But Bisi Adeleye Fayemi of the African Women’s Development Fund stressed the need for ‘transformational feminist leaders’ if women are to see any benefit from the doubling of aid that the international community has promised to Africa. ‘Even money going to development and earmarked for women doesn’t necessarily benefit women.’
In Morocco, Nouzha Skalli (an MP) pointed out, changes in the family code that benefit women (eg women keeping assets on divorce) have come about through pressure from civil society, but they are often implemented only when women are in charge, ie in government. She urged her audience – almost all women, she pointed out – to look at the world through gender glasses.
So what can CIVICUS do?
So where does this leave a global organization like CIVICUS? Women need to go it alone; it is community-level organizations that achieve real change. The dilemma was also apparent in a session looking at civic justice, where it was stressed that it is often individual civic activists, who do not necessarily belong to any organization, even a community-level one, that make the most difference. How can CIVICUS support them? As Rajesh Tandon expressed it, ‘The solidarity is human and the roots are civic, so I’m not sure where infrastructure comes in.’
Defining the role of a global organization in supporting all these efforts remains an issue for CIVICUS.
The new Charter of Accountability
One concrete area where CIVICUS has been active recently is bringing together the group of 17 international advocacy NGOs that have launched a new Charter of Accountability. The starting point for IANGO (International Advocacy NGOs and Networks) is that trust in international NGOs is threatened by recent lapses. After the tsunami, Oxfam response was not up to its own standards, and a fraud has recently been uncovered in Aceh. The Red Cross failure after 9/11 damaged the whole international NGO sector. In order to maintain trust and credibility, standards are needed. A draft charter now exists for consultation; meanwhile, IANGO is working with the Global Reporting Initiative to develop indicators.
One question that arose at the session looking at the new charter was enforcement. Will there be a complaints process? A mechanism for enforcement? This is difficult to institute in the absence of a legal entity. To whom are international NGOs accountable? All stakeholders have a vital interest, said one session participant, and there’s no point in privileging one over the other. This is a statement about participating organizations’ own values and wish for excellence, said another.
Accountability in international philanthropy
The potential weakness of a code of practice that is more about aspirations than enforcement also became apparent at a session looking at draft Principles of Accountability for International Philanthropy which have been drawn up by the European Foundation Centre and Council on Foundations jointly. The Principles focus on accountability to grantees and beneficiaries. Consultations have taken place in South Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Lisa Jordan of the Ford Foundation pointed out that the Principles seem to embody exemplary practice but don’t really address accountability. There is no distinction between legal responsibilities and best practices. Buzz Schmidt of Civil Society Systems raised the issue of reporting: isn’t reporting left out? How do we know how funders are doing?
Ezra Mbogori of Mwengo was present at the consultative meeting in Cape Town, and his comments throw light on the intrinsic difficulties of donor-NGO relations. ‘Have we been called in to rubber-stamp what they’re doing or are they looking for real engagement?’ he had asked himself. The problem with the latter, said Mbogori, was that ‘none of us could speak of sustained and mutually fulfilling engagements. The power balance got in the way of every relationship.’
For this very reason, though, the EFC/CoF ‘soft’ approach does make some sense. Eight years ago, Mbogori recalled, Mwengo tried to put together a donor effectiveness index. Although anonymity was guaranteed, grantees were too nervous to take part. Lisa Jordan recalled another initiative at around the same time to establish a donor ombudsman who could help negotiate difficulties, but this initiative had also died, for similar reasons. Nevertheless, she reiterated, if you have principles, how do you enforce them?
The Intelligent Funder Fellowship
Relations with grantees will surely be one of the topics covered under the three-year Intelligent Funder Fellowship, launched at the CIVICUS Assembly. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) will work in partnership with CIVICUS to develop a programme that will explore how funding can be most effectively delivered in order to have a lasting impact on the communities and individuals most in need. Funding of £250,000 has come from the Big Lottery Fund. The fact that the CIVICUS World Assembly will be held in Glasgow for the next two years means that funders and CSOs will be able to engage directly, and on equal terms, as part of this process.
What next? A coordinator will be appointed to draw up a framework and appoint five fellows from the international community.
The changing role of foundations in civil society
‘The changing role of independent foundations in supporting civil society’ was the title of one of seven special ‘Intelligent Funding’ sessions that were sponsored by the Intelligent Funder Fellowship, including a plenary session called ‘Philanthropy or Foolanthropy?’
The issues of donor-grantee relations and accountability were not going to go away. ‘There’s an elephant in the room and we know what it is,’ said Gerry Salole, CEO of the European Foundation Centre. ‘It’s the relationship between foundations and NGOs.’ How do we get away from euphemistic ideas about partnership and glib treatment of power, he asked. One thing that’s needed, he said, is accountability to beneficiaries.
For more information visit www.civicus.org and www.civicusassembly.org
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