CIVIL SOCIETY AND MANIPULATION… WHEN WILL IT END ?

           WebForce International Federation and the group United NGO have repeated on several occasions that the notion of CIVIL SOCIETY, although it has no real, sociological or legal definition and no meaning in itself, leads to all kind of confusion, and to ambiguities, whose goal is precisely to serve the ideological interests of the moment or the ambitions of a minority.

            It is therefore easy to create on one’s own, without being asked to, a civil society coordination group bringing together foundation and associations with different statuses and created by the coordination’s founders themselves.

            Then, there will be a question of a CIVIL SOCIETY BUREAU, OFFICE or SECRETARIAT… But of which civil society do we speak?

            On the basis of their real representativeness, national and international NGOs can request for a consultative status with diverse UN bodies or other intergovernmental institutions, possibly in their respective States. The reason why some of them do not benefit from any recognition is the following one: they do not seek recognition or they do not fulfill validation or representativeness conditions. Gathering them into an evanescent civil society is nonsense and an affront to the UN, which does not even seem to realize…

            All sorts of manipulation are possible possible with this multiform notion of “civil society”. And some people seem to find many advantages in it…

            Other manipulation techniques are obvious. The CONGO, for example, used to be considered as an honest coordination of NGOs recognized by the UNO.

Quite oddly, it then became an NGO itself, defined as such by the UN since 2002. Nevertheless, although it no longer had an office at the UNO, the CONGO long benefited from confusion. Most NGOs, above all in the third world, were badly informed and thought the CONGO depended on the UN and that membership (and so contribution) was compulsory. As the CONGO itself is an NGO, it is an inessential intermediary between recognized NGOs and the UN. Here again, confusion seems not to be useless for everybody…

            As for the self-proclaimed representatives of the civil society “families” and “caucuses” in the WSIS, we do not question their right to have accurate political opinions (we need not share them!) but these cannot represent the whole civil society opinions.

The two former directors of the Civil Society division in the Executive Secretariat of the WSIS (phase I) as well as the President of the CONGO established themselves as leaders and “briefers” during the PrepComs and gave us to understand that they had an official function as representatives of the “Civil Society”. This is almost a breach of trust towards uninformed people. This is how they created confusion and managed to bring people and organizations together under their leadership in a pseudo-bureau of the civil society. , for these organizations, it was a first contact with the United Nations. At the same time, they are using rather unorthodox methods to put aside organizations and real experts that have been working with the United Nations for years.

Neither will we question their numerous titles and qualifications; we simply observe that their skills are little related to communication sciences or new information technologies.

            For the second phase, nwe recommend the scrupulous creation of a real democratic representativeness of new spokespersons for the Civil Society and that the staff of the Civil Society division of the Executive Secretariat is limited to a role of administrative management. 

For more transparency, honesty and fairness, the Civil Society division of the Executive Secretariat should include United Nations civil servants from the General Secretariat in charge of the relations with NGOs, both from the New York’s section and the Liaison Office with the UNO Director-General in Geneva. This solution is the only way to get a democratic and honest expression of all trends of the “Civil Society” during the second phase. .

We think it is essential for the United Nations General Secretariat to evaluate this situation seriously and independently after auditing all stakeholders of the WSIS. This would clarify many ambiguities of the first phase and above all make this second phase a real success.

The “families” or “caucuses” system is completely ridiculous; if you imagine, for example, a worldwide “family” of education, you will see, unless you are blind, ignorant or dishonest, that education within Europe is different from one country to another. Differences are even larger from one continent to another. So it is concerning methods used by trade unions, businesses, and so on.

The only effective way consists in a reorganization by themes and, within these themes, by regional groups. It is absolutely essential for the host State not to be influenced by a voluntarily ambiguous first phase. It has to show to the entire world that its democratic and imaginative organizational capacity is at least as good as many western countries’, if not better.