The United Nations and civil society: a new step in the right direction.

• Author: Gagain, John R. Jr.
• Position: NGO Watch

It seems the combination of Kofi Annan as Secretary-General of the United Nations and the various UN conferences during the 1990s has been a good thing for the participation of civil society in the activities of the UN system. That said, however, it did take the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) for a more formal breakthrough--the establishment of the Civil Society Bureau as an integral part of the WSIS.

The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, saw the participation of over 20,000 individuals from various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other elements of civil society. At the Summit, officially known as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the need to create a place for the civil society and business sectors to interact with the United Nations became clear, especially given the effects that such borderless issues as the environment and development have on all of us.

UNCED drafted an agenda for the twenty-first century: Agenda 21. The outcome included the classification of nine "major groups"--women, children and youth, indigenous people, NGOs, local authorities, trade unions, business and industry, the scientific and technological community, and farmers. They now participate regularly in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development through a mechanism commonly referred to as the "multi-stakeholder dialogue"; this includes representatives of Governments, civil society and the private sector with a stake or interest in the issues or problems confronting society. However, certain longtime civil society enthusiasts have described the multi-stakeholder dialogue as "frosting without the cake".

The World Summit on Sustainable Development [WSSD] in Johannesburg in August 2002 could be considered a case in point. Tens of thousands of civil society participants and NGOs convened for the ten-year review of the Earth Summit. The WSSD placed a limit on the amount of interaction possible between NGOs and Governments, with daily tickets needed to get into the Sandton Convention Center that housed the negotiations. It was not until the last day--the final hours of the Summit--that the multi-stakeholder dialogue was able to take place between government delegations and the hopeful youth, business, trade unions and NGOs who had travelled across the world to contribute to changing this planet on which we all live. The general sentiments of civil society representatives could be summed up as...