May 18, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Non-profit groups have grown into an important force on the world policy stage, but they must be made more effective at strengthening democracy, Kumi Naidoo, secretary general of Civicus, an international organization that promotes citizen participation, writes in The Nation (May 8).
A move toward “global activism” is occurring “at a time when many citizens of the world have, for the first time, achieved representative electoral democracy at the national level,” writes Mr. Naidoo, who grew up in South Africa. “Even so, we often have the form of democracy but not the substance.”
In reviewing the work of nongovernmental organizations that are engaged in such issues as environmental protection, human rights, and gender equality, Mr. Naidoo says that a “new civic globalism” is producing a range of positive effects. “Citizen-inspired organizations are developing the capacity to relate globally to the organized power of global business as well as global institutions” such as the United Nations and the World Bank, he writes. “This trend has allowed activists at the national level who might not be able to get a foot in the door with their own governments to be able to push for global commitments.”
Indeed, Mr. Naidoo writes, civil-society groups are “serving to check the power and practice of the nation-state system.” Perhaps most important, he says, “they have challenged the self-interested geopolitical policies of the wealthy nations of the world.”
Still, international civil-society groups continue to face challenges, Mr. Naidoo says.
“Although some may believe that the recent growth of global activism has successfully created a global civil society, realistically we have not yet reached that stage. We have developed only transnational civil-society movements, because there are no networks or organizations that can claim representation in all the countries of the world.”
The key challenge, he says, is to ensure “that there are effective ways in which we can connect local civil-society action with national and global civil-society movements.”
The article is available at http://www.thenation.com.
