Statement to the World Civil Society Forum by Inspector Francesco Mezzalama of the Joint Inspection Unit

Geneva, 16 July 2002—World Civil Society Forum

Audio

I take the floor as a member of the Joint Inspection Unit and I am grateful to the organizers of this forum for the invitation to participate. Almost as if it anticipated the present event, the Joint Inspection Unit, has recently produced a report, for which I am responsible, dealing with the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) involvement in technical cooperation activities of the United Nations system. The report will be examined during the next session of the United Nations General Assembly.

But let me first introduce the Joint Inspection Unit, an institution of which I have been a member since 1992. I do this because although many of the participants to the Forum may have heard of the JIU, probably not so many are aware of its functions. In this way it will also be easier to understand the reasons why the Unit has addressed its attention to the timely and topical subject of the Civil Society.

The JIU is the only system-wide oversight body engaged in inspection, control, investigation and evaluation of the entire spectrum of the United Nations activities. It is competent for the United Nations organizations, its programmes and funds as well as for most of the specialized agencies. It carries out its activities in full independence. The Inspectors are appointed by the General Assembly and are responsible only to Member States. The specificity of its mandate is such that the Unit's programme of work includes topics that represent new areas of interest for the United Nations, a global institution in constant progress and particularly sensitive and open to new challenges and needs. The Civil Society is one of these realities and a very important one. No wonder then that the JIU has decided to examine this expanding phenomenon in its different facets. We have, on one hand felt the need to help the Civil Society in its strenuous efforts to get better organized in its dealings with the UN and be in a condition to make its voice more effectively heard in its forum and on the other hand responded to the appeals of the General Assembly, the legislative bodies of the specialized agencies and their secretariats and of the Secretary General who has repeatedly called on the international community to mobilize the potentialities of the Civil Society as an indispensable tool for implementing the goals of the United Nations.

At this point, let us ask how the Civil Society has emerged more and more as an actor in a variety of segments, from economic and social development to environment, from human rights to the fight against poverty and diseases, from good governance to democratic progress and conflict prevention, just to mention some crucial situations. There is undoubtedly a growing awareness of Member States about these sometimes dramatic realities, but what is more important is the recognition that the related problems cannot be faced and solved in isolation. The support and the cooperation of the Civil Society are in these cases indispensable as is the contribution of the international organizations, especially the United Nations. It transpires that if a mechanism has to be developed to tackle efficiently the issues, it cannot disregard the necessity of a tripartite involvement: the State, the United Nations and the Civil Society Organizations. This is a crucial point and as such is duly highlighted in the JIU report.

If we agree with this analysis, and it cannot be denied that there is a wide consensus on it, it is obvious that the profile of such an important factor, that is the Civil Society, needs to be defined. I have been confronted in the preparation of the JIU report with the question: what is the Civil Society? I found out that I was not alone in facing the difficulty of giving a comprehensive satisfactory definition. I have therefore tried in my report to come up with a definition which can be improved and refined: "A civil society is the result of different components of population and communities and refers to the sphere in which citizens and social initiatives organize themselves around objectives, constituencies and thematic interests. They act collectively through their organizations known as Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) which include movements, entities, institutions autonomous from the State which in principle are non-profit making, act locally, nationally and internationally in defence and promotion of social, economic and cultural interests and for mutual benefit. They intermediate between their constituencies/members, with the State as well as with the United Nations bodies. They do this through lobbying and/or provision of services. Though belonging to the non-State actor category, they are different from the private sector and NGOs as they may not be registered, may replace the public sector, are not always structured and often their members are not officially recognized".

One of the main features is that the Civil Society Organizations are gradually acquiring autonomy of their own and cover sectors that have been so far covered insufficiently or not covered at all. An incomplete and tentative list includes professional associations, cooperatives, village development communities, indigenous peoples, women and youth groups, networks for homework, religious and cultural associations, academia, media and business promoters, intellectual and research entities. The message to be conveyed is to recognize that the world of the civil society has gone through a progressive process of diversification. New forces have emerged and they are getting more and more organized, but they have not reached yet that level of recognition necessary to establish a full and useful cooperation with the United Nations system.

One of the main arguments stems from the long-time existence of one traditional expression of Civil Society that is NGOs. It is evident that NGOs cover already the different aspects of the civil society. They are well structured at international and national levels, many have acquired consultative status with ECOSOC, and their multilateral cooperation is governed with precise guidelines in terms of accountability. Why then, it is asked, to introduce a specific consideration of the Civil Society organizations and propose structures and mechanisms of cooperation with the United Nations distinct from the existing ones already applied to NGOs?

This is the crux of the matter. Let us dispel immediately any misunderstanding. There should be no risk of confusion of roles or competition among the components of the civil society, namely NGOs, the private sector and the CSOs, the third component being the youngest. It shows a tremendous vitality, is requesting a wider space of action and recognition of its role that should not be blurred or undervalued. Incidentally as I mentioned above, the JIU pays great attention to new developments in the United Nations and tries to assess their potentialities. It has in the past produced two reports on NGOs when they were gradually and vibrantly emerging and more recently a report on the private sector when member states were invited to support and regulate a more substantive involvement of the business community in the Organizations' activities for development. Along the same vein, because CSOs are seen to emerge as a vital reality and show their specificity, we share the opinion that they deserve separate consideration connected with but distinct from NGOs in view of their visibility and prominence. With the report on CSOs, the Unit has coherently expanded its exploration, on the cooperation between the United Nations system and non-State actors.

The approach outlined above is shared and incorporated in several documents of the Secretary General as well as of legislative bodies. From the Global Compact launched at the Davos Forum in 1998 to a number of General Assembly resolutions, from the Millennium Declaration to the global partnership resolution, the Civil Society is specifically referred to together with NGOs and the private sector. It is equally significant that programmes like UNDP/UNFPA, agencies such us UNIDO, WHO, ILO, WIPO, the World Bank have increasingly recognized the specificity of CSOs and established internal offices and procedures devoted exclusively to them. UNCTAD has recently issued a publication about the dialogue with civil society. The report of the JIU on the subject devotes an entire chapter to the relationship of CSOs with the United Nations system organizations to show how the trend towards distinction between NGOs and CSOs has gradually progressed without prejudice for mutual understanding and cooperation.

It is against this background that the JIU report contains a set of recommendations aimed at (a) involving CSOs in all stages of elaboration of technical cooperation programmes especially at community level; (b) establishing their legitimacy and accountability; (c) proposing flexible guide-lines to govern the partnership including focal points; (d) training and empowering CSOs, and strengthening their organizational structures including through women's participation.

These are some of the recommendations complemented with others on more specific points. The initiative of the Joint Inspection Unit is meant to clarify further situations in progress, to constitute an input and a contribution to the discussions under way in different fora on the issue and may help secretariats and legislative bodies of the United Nations system to consider CSOs not only as beneficiaries, but as actors in the implementation of their mandates.