Reflections on the future of civil society and the United Nations

In the following speech which was delivered to the 'We the Peoples Conference', held in San Francisco on 24 June 1995 as part of the 50th Anniversary of the UN celebrations, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz argues that the future of the UN and that of social movements are very much interlinked.

By Victoria Tauli-Corpuz

Introduction

I would like to thank the organisers of the conference who invited me to speak in this historic meeting. While I understand that this is mainly a conference of US citizens' organisations and networks, since the discussion is on the UN it is but appropriate to bring in voices from the South and also of indigenous peoples. It would have been even better if one American Indian is here to bring in perspectives of the original peoples of this land. Since there is not one of them around, I will try my very best to raise points which they would have said. But since I am from the Third World I will speak from that angle as well.

For the past three days we heard the history of how the UN came into being. We also heard stories and accounts of how the NGOs or the broader civil society interphased with the various UN processes and agencies. It is humbling to hear the four women who spoke at the plenary two days ago. When one of them spoke about how their phones are tapped and how they were subjected to surveillance because of their peace activism, I said to myself, these stories sound very familiar. It seems like the world has not really gone very far from how it was in the 1940s. Sometimes, I think it has even become worse.

Yesterday, we have heard how NGOs and major groups tried to influence the UN agenda, policies, and programmes, both from the NGOs, themselves, and heads of UN agencies. We, meaning members of my organisations and I, also did our best to influence the outcomes of the UN Conferences from Rio to Copenhagen, and now Beijing. My mother organisation, the Cordillera Peoples' Alliance, has been attending the sessions of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations since it started in l982. I had not been as active in international lobbying, then, as my involvement was more in organising and educating our own indigenous communities. I was very much involved in the anti-dictatorship struggle. It was by accident that I found myself thrown into lobbying from the 4th UNCED PrepCom up to the present.

The Third World Network undoubtedly figured as one of the key NGOs who influenced the recent UN conferences. It worked very hard to articulate the analysis, concerns, and issues of the South. Before I became a part of the Third World Network, I was with a team who did an external evaluation of its international lobbying work. We evaluated its impacts on the UN, the Southern governments, the Northern governments, Northern NGOs, and the national and local levels. This exercise has been very educational for me because I understood better how intergovernmental bodies work and what globalisation is all about. It also made me see what NGOs and peoples' movements can do within an international arena like the United Nations. My reflections this morning spring from this whole background.

Lobbying at the UN

For activists from the Third World who are very much part of a national social movement, this is the question that bugs us every time. If we consider the demands of the empowerment work we have to do back home, should we be spending our time at the UN? Wouldn't I be more useful and effective if I stayed back home and persist in doing my organising and awareness-raising work? If we are successful in democratising international bodies like the UN will this trickle down to the local communities? Just one week ago, Mr Maurice Strong was in the Philippines, and he said that the world environment crisis has deteriorated even further since Rio. So we ask ourselves, what then have we really accomplished in Rio? Are we also going to hear Ambassador Juan Somavia say in l998, that social disintegration has multiplied several times over three years after Copenhagen?

Big business

We cannot afford to be pessimistic at this time that the forces against change are becoming more consolidated and globalised. We always have to find sources of inspiration, hope and strength. However, yesterday a speaker also said that we should not also have a false sense of tranquility. We cannot and should not be complacent with our small victories. It would also be very helpful if we talk more about the lobbying work that is done by big business, and the most powerful nations in the world. We talk of democratisation but we have not really made a dent in cracking the unaccountability, non-transparency, and absence of democracy at the UN Security Council. We know that the absence of a substantial discussion and process for coming up with a code of conduct for transnational corporations, is due to the lobbying of these powers. All the talk about global governance, economic security council, and human ecological security, scares some Third World governments and many Third World NGOs because these might further reinforce the strength of the powerful nations.

The glaring inequity among nations stares at us every time we lobby at the UN. There is a tendency among NGOs and even within the UN, to deny the North-South divide. Yet in a world which is fast globalising this becomes more pronounced. So for some of us, NGOs from the South, who are always at odds with our own governments back home, we find ourselves working with them at the international arena because we see how they are bullied by the powerful nations. The universalisation of Western norms and values are sometimes facilitated even by the United Nations. We believe in the need to maintain a diversity of systems, cultures, norms and values, which some Southern governments are also concerned about. So in these areas there are also convergences.

While indeed, there are a lot of changes in the world today, I think the balance of power has not really changed substantially. The colonial powers of the past, are still very much around. They have transnational corporations which are neither accountable to them, to their host countries, nor to the UN system. The Bretton Woods Institutions and the newly born World Trade Organisation, will still be controlled significantly by these powerful nations and TNCs. Third World governments are so scared to speak up because they might antagonise the next source of loans or grants. Sometimes they don't speak up because the ones in power are under the control of some transnational corporations.

A big gap

This is where some NGOs are effective because they are not constrained by such circumstances, and therefore can say things which representatives of governments or UN agencies cannot say. NGOs and major groups should continue playing this role. We have seen how NGOs have effectively influenced the agenda or contents of discussions of the UN conferences. In Rio, the end result of having the issue of development being integrated into environment was a result of NGO lobbying. It was the same case with the Social Summit, where NGOs persistently ensured that not only social welfare issues were discussed. They are the ones who pushed the focus on to the issues of foreign debt, structural adjustment policies, and the Bretton Woods Institutions.

Still, there is a big gap between the wonderful rhetoric we find in the final documents and how they are implemented. But for NGOs who are not only into lobbying but are very much involved in the social movements in their countries, the agreements reached can be used to exert further pressure on governments.

What is the future for the UN and civil society?

I have a big problem with the term 'civil society'. While I have heard many definitions and descriptions of what it is since I was here, I'm afraid I still don't feel comfortable to use it. My main problem with it is that it is as if everybody outside of the government has common interests and therefore should cooperate at all times. In the real world this is not true. I cannot tell this to indigenous peoples whose ancestral territories, resources, and all sources of life, have been appropriated by corporations through complicity of the governments. I like even better the presentation of Thierry Lemaresquier, earlier, where he gave the triad of civil society, the market, and the state. I would prefer to use the terms 'peoples' organisations (POs), NGOs, social movements'. These to me are the forces which can effectively bring about change.

So what is the future for NGOs, POs, and social movements?

Globalisation and trade liberalisation is going to further erode the capacity of local communities and the poorer sections of society to determine what development is. We are already witness to how our laws are being changed even if it works against the interests of the majority of the population. In the Third World, patent laws, investment codes, mining codes, etc. are being hastily revised to suit the WTO framework. Noeleen Heyzer, the head of UNIFEM, yesterday said that the globalised market is growing stronger and the states are becoming weaker. This is the context where we should locate our roles.

So the challenge for the NGOs/POs and social movements is to persist in being the purveyors of truth. We should persist in being the conscience, as being the independent forces who are not beholden to the powerful. We must continue to demand for the democratisation, accountability and transparency of international institutions like the Bretton Woods Institutions, Security Council, WTO, and the UN. The setting of policies, whether economic, social, or political should be brought back to the UN and not remain with the WB-IMF or the WTO. Retribution should be done to the local communities which have been destroyed by World Bank- supported projects or by transnational corporations.

Social movements, NGOs/POs should also persist in demanding for a code of conduct for transnational corporations. The TNCs should be made accountable to the UN, their host countries, and to people, in general.

We should build on the gains we have achieved so far in the UN conferences. For instance, in the Social Summit, NGOs were instrumental in ensuring that the issues of structural adjustment, debt, and quality of aid, became key issues. What needs to be done now is to monitor and pressure governments to keep addressing these issues in favour of the people.

Indigenous peoples have worked closely with the UN-Working Group on Indigenous Populations to come up with the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Now, this draft is with the Commission of Human Rights for approval. In its 51st session the CHR came up with a resolution to set up another open-ended working group to further elaborate on the draft. There is a fear that this might be mangled beyond recognition by governments. There are already indications towards this in the last session. Indigenous peoples are asking NGOs to support them in their struggle to have this approved in its final draft form.

However, we also do not have the illusion that this will come easily. In a world where natural resources are fast depleting, our demands for ancestral land rights and for self-determination will be seen as threats by governments and TNCs. It is not surprising that many of the existing conflicts today are found in indigenous peoples' lands. These are conflicts over who will control the land and the resources over and under it.

There is a need to strengthen and broaden the campaign against the patenting of life forms and also the demand for a biosafety protocol to be developed in the Biological Diversity Convention. Another demand is the recognition of the rights of farmers and indigenous peoples to their traditional knowledge and their genetic resources versus the intellectual property rights of corporations. These initiatives and gains should be sustained.

These are just some of the challenges for the NGOs/POs and social movements.

In a world which is increasingly becoming unipolar in favour of the forces of the neoliberal order, the countervailing force will be social movements. We should strengthen our base organisations, networks, and alliances, and not allow fragmentation to take place. Keeping our movements alive and strong and sustaining our efforts to influence the UN and assert our space within, will be crucial in saving the United Nations. The future of the UN and the social movements and NGOs are very much interlinked with each other, and this should be realised and acknowledged on the 50th birthday of the United Nations.]

Vicky Tauli-Corpuz is the convenor of the Asian Indigenous Network and a representative of the Third World Network in the Philippines.