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4. Strategies and Impact
It is indisputable that civil society has been successful
at bringing new issues to global attention. The UN and the international conferences of
the past decade have been an effective venue for this. Environment, sustainable
development, population, food security, urbanization, women's rights and human rights:
these complex and substantive global issues are not only on the international policy
horizon, they have been integrated into public policy thinking, university education,
media attention and intergovernmental negotiations.
More direct methods have also been adopted, such as
campaigns and boycotts, which are intended to have a more direct impact. The boycott of
Nestlé because of its marketing of breastmilk substitutes has resulted in a change in the
way international corporations understand and manage public policy.100 The boycott of international companies with investments in South
Africa was a major factor in the external pressures that resulted in the collapse of
apartheid. The campaign against sweatshop labour in factories subcontracted to large
apparel companies resulted in several firms, including Levi Strauss and Gap, adopting
codes of conduct for their firms and their subcontractors.
Civil society now has the power to achieve what appears to
be spontaneous action in new areas. Arriving without warning to those outside the CSO
community, these campaigns are actually the result of years of consciousness-raising,
education, organization and network-building. These channels alone may not be sufficient
to achieve responsible global governance, but civil society is showing remarkable
creativity at keeping elements of undemocratic global power on the defensive and
continually raising the issues of equity, justice, human rights, sustainable development,
community empowerment and health.
Clearly, civil society has put considerable global
pressure on a range of issues and fora. But overall, when it comes to global governance,
it remains difficult to assess its impact. Growth in numbers does not assure commensurate
influence. The urgency of some of the issues raised by CSOs, and the strength of their
moral authority, does not always mean that CSO energies are used strategically. Success in
specific areas like human rights (see box 7) may not translate into success in others.
This section will therefore try to lay out the process of global decision-making and
evaluate the impact of civil society at various points in this process. Of course,
different opportunities will result in different approaches and strategies. At the UN,
where civil society integration is relatively well developed, a range of methods are used
to influence decision-making. At fora such as the WTO, where access is limited or denied
and there are few processes for the integration of civil society, NGOs are inventing and
re-inventing new ways to make their voices heard.
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At the United Nations
Framing
the issues for international UN conferences
It is the voice of civil society on global issues that is
framing public understanding of issues and catalyzing international conferences at the UN.
Seventy-three per cent of respondents to the Benchmark Survey of NGOs were pleased
at their success in defining problem areas for international conferences. Other actors may
attempt to redefine the language of "human rights" or "sustainable
development", but they are often reacting to a public discourse generated by a global
network of CSOs.102
Defining international issues is a key area of NGO
success. In many ways, the last 10 years of international conferences are a testament to
NGO activism and lobbying. Issues such as the global environment, social development,
gender relations, population and habitat have not typically fit into the national
political discourse. Civil society has played a central role in defining the issues and in
pressuring governments to adopt positions on them that can be implemented at international
and national levels.
International UN conferences and the preparatory
committees leading up to them are generally occasions when governments articulate their
policy objectives and make policy announcements. NGOs, in their traditional lobbying role,
can use international events to pursue their ongoing domestic efforts to affect their own
governments' activities and take advantage of the ease of access to senior government
officials away from their capitals. This extension of domestic democratic activity can
often pay dividends in framing or influencing the acceptance of compromises that arise
during negotiations and in creating increased access for NGOs to their respective
government officials after the international conference.
NGOs accredited to ECOSOC have the right to formally state
their views and participate in the intergovernmental component of a global conference or
meeting. They can, for example, make their views known in position papers circulated via
UN distribution channels along with the other official documents. They can also attend all
open plenary sessions of ECOSOC or its committees and may be invited by the chair of a
meeting to address the session. Recently, non-accredited NGOs and NGOs accredited to other
UN agencies have been able to distribute their publications to delegates through an
informal display table and have been asked on occasion, by meeting chairs, to express
their views to the plenary sessions.103
It can be argued that civil society has been more
successful at gaining international attention and setting agenda than in getting results.
While many of respondents to the Benchmark Survey were pleased with their success
in defining the problem area, only 52 per cent of respondents felt that they were
successful in altering the final text of the event,104 — and even this may be optimistic (see figure 4). This
disparity was acknowledged by Juan Somavía, Secretary General of the World Summit for
Social Development in an emotional address to the Women's Caucus on International Women's
Day in 1995, during which he acknowledged the pivotal role that women-focused NGOs had
played in bringing global social development to the international stage, and apologized
for the lame response from the United Nations.105 The
capacity of civil society to continue to use such fora may now be over as the spurt of
global conferences seems to be declining.
If NGOs, like governments, attend in order to influence
the discussions and the outcome of the event, or the text of the conference document, then
this type of lobbying activity would be consistent with their formal role in consultative
status to ECOSOC. In practice, however, many NGOs go, not so much to influence
governments, but to "influence other NGOs" and define their major success as "linkage
with NGOs".106 African NGOs consulted in the Benchmark Survey saw the
split interest in working with other NGOs and in working on the conference topic itself as
necessary and consistent with their experience. In their view, effective access to
governments and the intergovernmental process at the international conferences was
difficult. Access to their governments may not give them influence. Their strategy is to
learn as much as possible about the issues and to lobby larger Northern NGOs with better
or more effective access to funding and to sympathetic governments.107
Participation:
NGOs on government delegations
Governments frequently invite non-governmental experts to
join national delegations attending international conferences. Business and
industry-oriented NGOs (BINGOs) often have been allowed to participate as part of official
delegations and some governments have begun to include citizen groups as well. The
relationship between NGOs and their governments will change as more civic groups are
included in government delegations. By so doing, governments increase the chance that NGO
experience and the views of their constituencies are heard by national officials and the
other participants at an international conference. Despite the fact that many NGO
respondents to the Benchmark Survey considered that access to their national
governments was restrictive, 68 per cent of NGOs cited "meeting their own government"
as an important reason for attending intergovernmental events; and a majority of
respondents answered that being on their own government's delegation was their preferred
tactic at intergovernmental meetings.108
From the point of view of lobbying government, being a
member of an official delegation is the best strategic position. When asked who NGOs most
need unrestricted access to when attending intergovernmental conferences, 52 per cent of
the NGOs that responded to the Benchmark Survey felt they most needed unrestricted
access to their own government's delegation, which rated far higher as a group to
influence than UN conference staff, NGO support staff, other government delegations or the
media. Clearly, given the opportunity to lobby, most NGOs are keen to do so.
Intergovernmental conferences have become the forum of
choice for general NGO information sharing and strategic thinking. This takes place during
the conferences and preparatory conferences themselves, and also by rigorously "working
the system" and utilizing all the space made available for formal and informal NGO
influencing with governments. Equal attention, however, is typically given to information
sharing and consensual agreements before each meeting, through timely mailings and
e-mailings to the organizations' global network.109
Winning
friends and influencing people
A method of influencing the newly strengthened economic
institutions may be through highly placed and influential individuals. In reaction to
information from civil society advocates, generally mixed with their own career
experience, a small number of leading individuals have started to voice concerns about
democracy, equity, human rights, environment and development in relation to globalization.
They do not form a team of equals, or a team at all. Nevertheless, these individuals have
felt moved to form CSOs or NGOs with strong interests in democracy and globalization. From
the intergovernmental world have come the recently deceased Erskine Childers, previously
with the UN; Herman Daly, previously with the World Bank; and David Korten, previously
with Harvard Business School, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the
Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). From government
have come former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, founder of Green Cross; and former US
President Jimmy Carter, founder of the Carter Center. From business have come Sir James
Goldsmith, a millionaire industrialist who has taken a strong stand against globalization
and the GATT; and Maurice Strong. All of these individuals have taken their new personal
perspectives into their past networks, and have unique opportunities to effect change.
Building
capacity at the NGO Forum
When NGOs attend UN conferences, they are interested not
only in the official conference, but also in the NGO events that have now become
institutionalized with the framework of UN conferences. The importance of the "NGO
Forum" is now well-known and respected. Indeed, at the Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing, one witnessed the irony of the UN feeling pressured to support the right
of the NGO conference to proceed unimpeded against the right of a member country —
China — to impose its sovereignty. But this is a view of the NGO community from the
outside. Within the community, there are many NGOs who are uninterested in the UN and UN
conferences per se. Perhaps these groups cannot get accreditation to the
intergovernmental conference; it may also be because many NGOs use the opportunity of an
international conference primarily to meet with other NGO colleagues and pursue activities
other than direct lobbying, including education and information exchange. It also no doubt
includes the pragmatic lobbying of major NGOs for their attention and resources.
One of the findings of the Benchmark Survey was
that much of the international NGO community is relatively new to the international arena.
For 59 per cent of the respondents, their first experience at an international conference
was in the 1990s. This most likely is a reflection of the sea change wrought by the UNCED
process in opening up the UN to greater NGO participation.110 The NGO community therefore has to deal with a relatively
inexperienced population of activists. Education and capacity building are continual
challenges. Many spend their time at international conferences building capacity within
the NGO movement. When asked why they attend international conferences, 52 per cent of
NGOs replied that they attend in order to "strengthen their own NGO", and 46 per
cent to "learn more about an issue", — compared to 40 per cent who want to "influence
[their] own national government" and 36 per cent who want to "alter the final
outcome". There was a sense among African NGOs at the March 1996 ELCI meeting that
their attendance was the pragmatic tactic for poorer, newer and smaller NGOs.111
When asked how they would divide a hypothetical sum of US$
20,000 between nine areas with the goal of improving participation, respondents to the Benchmark
Survey allocated the highest share of funds to an NGO pre-meeting where NGOs could
organize and develop a common position (28 per cent of the resources). The respondents
also indicated the importance of providing NGOs with funds so that they could send for
additional participants (18 per cent of the resources) and 16 per cent to facilitate the
participation of NGOs that have never attended a global event.112
Faced with the reality that only some NGOs are focused on
the UN conference and related NGO Forum, one is forced to ask whether other activities
should not receive relatively more attention. Clearly there are other ways to use NGO
resources. Decisions about how best to use resources, however, are often influenced by
outside factors. There may be funds available and a momentum set up around international
conferences that are hard to resist. It is also interesting to see how few of the
processes of international decision-making are understood by CSOs. At a meeting of African
environmental NGOs to consider how best to affect global governance, it was clear that
influence is not systematically thought through as a question of strategic resource
allocation across a spectrum of decision-making. The question of governance in light of
the new international economic order quickly surfaced, and the group lacked information
about intergovernmental meetings and procedures that should form the basis of advocacy and
campaign planning.113
Monitoring,
implementation and follow-up
NGOs themselves frequently note that monitoring and
follow-up are much needed and inadequately pursued. This is partly a comment on the
stop-start momentum of the intergovernmental process. Some have recommended that the
Commission on Sustainable Development establish a procedural rule: any proposed text that
restated or reneged on previous commitments should be deemed out of order.114 At other times it is a self-critical comment directed towards the
CSO movement as a whole to focus not just on advocacy but on monitoring follow-up on gains
and ensuring that they are implemented.115
WEDO's mandate is to monitor and follow-up on
international conferences and UN activities. This organization's appraisal of the effect
of the Beijing Conference on women's issues shows that there are important areas where
international commitments are being implemented at national level. In Latin America and
Asia, where there is little tradition of involving women in public life and
decision-making, there is a new willingness to involve women's NGOs. NGOs from Pakistan
and Korea, for example, were involved as consulting partners with their government
delegations at the Beijing conference and after. Many countries, from Bangladesh and
Botswana to South Africa and Turkey, are developing national plans of action to implement
the Beijing Platform of Action. Family violence is receiving national policy attention in
Columbia, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Peru and Puerto Rico. Egypt sustained its Beijing momentum
and banned female genital mutilation. In most of these countries, such public policy
decisions and legislation were very controversial and adopted only after protracted
debate. Similar gains were tracked by WEDO in other themes, including women's health,
political participation, peace-keeping and economic justice.116
100 S. Prakash Sephi, Multinational Corporations and the Impact of Public
Advocacy on Corporate Strategy: Nestlé and the Infant Formula Controversy, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, Boston, 1994.
101 Felice Gaer, "Reality check: Human rights NGOs confront governments at
the UN", in Thomas Weiss and Leon Gordenker (eds.), Non-governmental
Organizations, the United Nations and Global Governance, op. cit.
102 See Harris Gleckman, "Transnational corporations and 'sustainable
development': Reflections on the debate", Green
Globe 1995, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.
103 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., p. 74.
104 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., p. 65.
105 Juan Somavía, Secretary General of the WSSD, in his keynote address to the
Women's Caucus on International Women's Day, WSSD, Copenhagen, 8 March 1995.
106 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., pp. 65-67.
107 ELCI/UNEP, UNEP's Policy Statement on Non-Governmental Organizations and
Other Major Groups, draft, 25 February 1996; UNDP, UNDP and Organizations of Civil
Society, San Francisco, June 1995.
108 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., pp. 68 and 75.
109 Martha Alter Chen, "Engendering world conferences: The international women's movement
and the United Nations", op. cit.
110 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., p. 9.
111 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., p. 44.
112 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., p. 82.
113 ELCI meeting to discuss the findings of the Benchmark Survey of NGOs,
UNEP, Nairobi, 8 March 1996.
114 Barbara Bramble, The Future of the CSD or Bringing Agenda 21 into the
Twenty-First Century, statement on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation/US at
the High Level Segment of the Fourth Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development,
United Nations, New York, 2 May 1996.
115 Bill Pace, World Federalists, comment in reaction to a presentation on the Benchmark
Survey of NGOs, to the DPI-NGO Thursday morning briefing at the Dag Hammerskjold
Auditorium, United Nations, New York, 14 December 1995.
116 WEDO, Beyond Promises - Governments in Motion: One Year After the Beijing
Women's Conference, WEDO, New York, September 1996.
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