An International Resource Centre for National Platforms of NGOs has been launched by a coalition of platforms from four continents to strengthen southern voices in global and regional policy arenas and advance “non-governmental diplomacy.”
The web portal, supported by the UN Development Programme UNDP, is a partnership among four national platforms – ABONG (Brazil), ACCION (Chile), CONGAD (Senegal), VANI (India) and Coordination SUD (France). It features 50 national NGO platforms, selected with criteria such as democratic governance, transparency, and ethics.
As a resource centre, it envisages sharing information, presenting NGO position papers, better articulating the experience and understanding of civil society, and helping to further the work of the UN by advancing shared goals and collaboration at national and global levels.
Henri Rouille d’Orfeuil, President of Coordination SUD (Solidarité, Urgence et Développement), said diplomacy can no longer be considered the sole business of states or the diplomatic corps, given the extensive impact that non-governmental actors have had in recent decades on global issues such as environment and sustainable development, trade, debt, ODA and globalization, and their influence on emerging issues such as climate change, migration, and aid harmonization.
Opening the way to a more democratic international debate is a critical objective of the resource centre. – Global issues are not a prerogative of global actors alone, they are the concern of every citizen of the world. We have to find a way therefore of taking everybody on board towards the places where those issues are debated and negotiated, noted he.
An essential aspect of non-governmental diplomacy is the ability of “voices of Southern NGOs to express themselves and be heard on the international stage,” stressed K.S. Gopal, member of the Voluntary Action Network of India (VANI).
National NGO platforms and the regional coalitions they build constitute one of these ways. VANI is currently in the process of building an Asian network and has till date brought together five national NGO platforms.
National platforms present a special opportunity for African NGOs to take their place in international debates and negotiations, said Voré Seck, President of the Conseil des ONG d’Appui au Développement (CONGAD) in Senegal.
– We must be able to speak about the reality of our work and the conditions that will allow us to win the fight against poverty and inequality, said she.
CONGAD has launched the process of creating a regional network for Africa known as REPAOC which gathers eight national NGO platforms (from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo). By identifying national platforms the resource centre can help improve civil society engagement with the United Nations in these countries, Ms. Seck said.
– National platforms could be a way to show the UN who the civil society actors are in different countries and how to improve collaboration, added she.
Presenting an overview of the resource centre website (www.ong-ngo.org), Fabrice Ferrier, international cooperation manager at Coordination SUD, said it serves as an information tool for international platforms.
– It is also a communication tool, which allows them to analyse their positions and, if the need arises, to elaborate common proposals, he noted.
Coordination SUD and 22 national NGO platforms are part of CONCORD, the European regional network
The importance of such an easily accessed, centralized resource centre is critical for the countries involved, since “democracy starts with access to information and international cooperation with information sharing,” said Tacciana L., advisor from Associação Brasileira de Organizações Não-Governamentais (ABONG).
As a coordinating mechanism, the resource centre could become “tool to support a large international movement that would be emerging from national platforms, one that will build and develop international cooperation,” said Miguel Santibanez, President of ACCION. ABONG and ACCION, amongst other national and regional networks, have set up a regional coalition known as Mesa de Articulación which includes 15 National Platforms of the region.
Global in scope but also mindful of regional dynamics, the web site of the resource centre is directly linked to the regional webs created by the three NGO national platforms: www.repaoc.org (for Western and Central African platforms presided over by CONGAD), www.ngo-asia.org (for the regional coalition of South and east Asian NGO platforms presided over by VANI), and www.mesadearticulacion.org (for Mesa de Articulación (Latin America) coordinated by ABONG).
It provides information about their structure, history and positioning; permanent UN and WTO representatives to facilitate contact with public authorities; the right to association; and inter-governmental agendas and major upcoming international summits, to help NGO platforms and coalitions to position themselves to be heard in these debates.
The resource centre is accessible in four languages (English, French, Spanish and Portuguese).
Representatives from DPI, DPA, the Office of the President of the General Assembly, UN-NGLS, UN-Habitat, Global Compact Office, UNV, and UNDP were among those who participated in this launch event at UNDP in New York.
Participants lauded the initiative as a long-overdue step in networking civil society organizations and coalitions in developing countries and facilitating their engagement in regional and global development processes.
Emphasizing the need for more southern civil society voices in UN debates, Elisa Peter, deputy coordinator of the UN Non-governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS), said the resource centre must help to improve representation of the South at the UN and ensure that the civil society perspectives it presents are widely disseminated among the media and decision makers.
Shamina De Gonzaga, Civil Society Advisor to the General Assembly President, confirmed the need for the UN to find ways to involve civil society within its process, adding that such a structure as the IRC could help identifying and centralizing a group of civil society experts within the United Nations.
Ms. Olajobi Makinwa from the Global Compact Office suggested that such coalitions should also begin to focus on developing the capacity of CSOs to address the issue of corporate social responsibility and the power of multinational corporations.
Yamina Djacta, deputy chief of the New York office of UN-HABITAT, stressed the need for translation into Arabic and expand the network to the North Africa and Middle East region, where existing national and regional NGO platforms are in need of capacity development and networking.
In its next phase, the resource centre aims to deepen linkages with platforms that are already members of national coalitions, and explore partnerships with new members.
Kilde: UNDPs nyhedsservice
