Representing issues and/or constituents

NGOs/CBOs expressing a desire to participate in the network should be able to do so without any exclusion for whatever reason. This will ensure as broad a perspective as possible.⁶⁴

How do individual organizations or umbrella groups determine their issues and constituents? Groups that claim the right to exclude some organizations from the NGO community may define themselves with no reference to their UN status, but rather to the issue they "represent". An ELCI Survey of key member organizations asked respondents on what basis they felt they acquired their representative status as NGOs. Respondents were offered choices such as their ECOSOC or other UN status, the issue they represented, or self-definition. The overwhelming majority saw self-definition as their source of legitimacy. The other options received hardly any attention.⁶⁵ The debate among CSOs about rights to "representation" tends not to make distinctions between CSOs in the basis of differential power and money. However, as has been noted, these disequilibria clearly are very strongly felt within the CSO community.

The inclusiveness and broadness of such notions of "representation" are shared by many CSOs. Many NGOs make broad claims to speak on behalf of a human or natural "constituency". Although the constituencies claimed are often marginalized groups, the very generalized claims are difficult to substantiate. Asked "who does your organization represent?", respondents to the Benchmark Survey of NGOs, for example, claimed very broad representivity, from "children" to "the excluded"⁶⁶ (see box 6).

From a procedural point of view, even the most supportive of governments and businesses, as well as established CSOs, may find it difficult to engage in direct negotiation with groups who make such broad claims. These groups cannot refer back to their membership for guidance, cannot agree or disagree with certain specific language on behalf of their constituency; and cannot commit their constituency to take any follow-up action. More importantly, there is no clear way to resolve differences in views between two NGOs that each claim to "represent" an equally broad constituency.

It is understandable that so many CSOs characterize themselves as having a broad purview. They claim to represent constituencies that are generally under-represented in national political fora and even more under-represented at global conferences. At the same time, such claims are probably the source of the greatest difficulty for governments and international organizations in working out a procedure for effective consultation.

In contrast, some CSO representatives define their groups precisely, representing clearly articulated constituencies, such as the World Federalist Union or the Ecuatoria Committee on Human Rights. Such organizations represent a specific issue or a common concern among its members. Because international agreements drafted by intergovernmental bodies are generally written as a set of prescriptions or recommendations by and for governments, it can be difficult to incorporate in the final document the interests of these non-governmental groups, even when they claim to represent specific constituencies.

Given the difficulty of unraveling who speaks for whom and for what, the procedural improvements for NGO access, such as the ECOSOC Review of NGO relations, are complex and fraught with difficulties. Any procedures will create some limitations on access. This creates a tension between NGOs claiming "representative" status and the right to participate in international decision-making on the one hand, and institutional bureaucratic requirements on the other. Inevitably, NGOs caught in this dynamic feel that they are being pigeonholed. In turn, they feel that governments stereotype them as anti-democratic, left-wing and communist, or as merely creating anarchy and disorder.⁶⁷
 

Changes in the CSO Community

Although the broadness of the term CSO has always created some complexity, the problem now has new dimensions. The CSO community has grown exponentially, and it has also changed in character. In the early days of their involvement in the UN, the largest categories of NGOs that were accredited were religious groups, professional, trade, hobby and specialized organizations with active international programmes or affiliates. When the UN Charter was drafted, the US government sought advice from groups such as the American Bar Association, the Farmers Union, the American Association of University Women, the American Jewish Committee, the Lions Association, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Rotary International and the National Education Association.⁶⁸ Most of these organizations are still active in domestic and international issues, attesting to their strong institutional histories and entrenched positions as players in global governance issues, particularly at the UN.

At the 50th Anniversary of the San Francisco Conference where the Charter of the United Nations was signed, the participation of American groups was quite different. In addition to older organizations came a variety of NGOs representing issues that were not on the agenda in 1945: feminism, the environment, world trade. These were represented by organizations such as Earth Action, WEDO, the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), the Citizens' Network for Sustainable Development, Worldwatch, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), and the Sierra Club.⁶⁹

Not only active in the UN, these newer organizations are also active in education and lobbying at the portals of other institutions of global governance. WEDO, IATP, the Sierra Club and PAN, for example, are very active contributors to education and lobbying against the "free trade" agenda. They lobby against the World Bank's structural adjustment programmes and against the usurpation of power from national governments and from the UN by the Bretton Woods institutions and by TNCs. For the most part, this type of agenda is not shared with the older NGOs — although there are some exceptions.

For these CSOs, new forms of participatory democracy and civil governance are crucial not only within the UN context, but also within economic, financial and military institutions. Now that CSO networks have a degree of international political power, global civil society needs to understand more about these other systems of global governance.
 

NGOs and the New International Economic Agenda

While the UN-NGO dynamic is an active arena for global governance, in some areas it has been superseded in significance by a new combination of actors in global governance. Dominant now are the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), the World Trade Organization and transnational corporations. These international economic organizations already overshadow the UN General Assembly in terms of capacity to manage international affairs. They have reframed economic rules and rule-making and are sketching out a new phase of global governance quite different in spirit from that of the UN Charter.

Their operating methodologies and options for access by CSOs also differ. In addition, new international trade laws are increasing the status and strength of other business-oriented organizations. International economic institutions have generally not welcomed CSO participation. Although the door to CSOs has been opened somewhat at the World Bank, it was done largely in order to use these groups for specific Bank project needs. Advocacy groups still have limited access to decision-making in the Bank. The doors to the WTO and most TNCs are essentially closed; access is more firmly denied. The result is that advocacy groups are excluded from crucial debates and decisions that structure globalization and its effects.
 

Conclusion

Whereas the status of CSOs at the UN in the early days derived from their membership base, the credibility of CSOs has always come from their moral authority as well. A hundred years ago, the capacity of the suffragists to claim that they spoke on behalf of all women in their country did not come from a tallying of formal membership lists, dues and democratic procedures, but from a conviction that women have a right to political representation. More recently, environmental groups have argued that neither local nor global environmental issues are well represented in governmental decision-making — but that these and other crucial issues — ranging from local issues like crustaceans in the Philippines to regional issues like hardwood forests in North America or global issues such as water rights — need human advocates.

While some CSOs may not be "representative", many national governments are not fully "representative" either, although the right of a government to speak on behalf of its citizens at the United Nations assumes that it is the legitimate representative. There are some exceptions: apartheid South Africa was denied participation for some years. But for the most part, the UN does not distinguish between the "representativeness" of the governments of Suriname, Saudi Arabia or Somalia. The argument is that the UN should not generally intervene in sovereign issues. If there is any distinction made by the UN system among nations, it is on the basis of economic, military and other forms of power and on historical participation. Undemocratic régimes that control their citizens by military force are admitted alongside democratic governments. The Security Council gives extraordinary powers to a small group powerful nations, and unlike the UN as a whole, the Security Council is impervious to CSO input.⁷⁰

While it may be fair to criticize some CSOs as "unrepresentative", as with national governments, this complaint may not be an appropriate basis for deciding on their rights of access to global governance or to the UN. It would certainly be unreasonable to require that CSOs demonstrate greater representativeness than governments.

64 ELCI, Code of Practice for NGO Networks, ELCI, Nairobi, 1996.

65 Sheila Aggarwal-Kahn, ELCI Survey of their members prior to the Nairobi meeting, 7-8 March, 1996.

66 "Examples of overly vague claims to represent a human constituency by respondents", in Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., Box 1, p. 51.

67 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, op. cit., p. 54.

68 Dorothy B. Robins, Experiment in Democracy, The Parkside Press, New York, 1971, pp. 200-201.

69 UN50 Committee of San Francisco, We the Peoples: The Role of Civil Society in the History and Future of the United Nations, a conference exploring the past, present, and future of UN-NGO relations, attendee list, San Francisco, 21-24 June 1995.

70 James Paul, Security Council Reform, Arguments about the Future of the UN System, http://www.globalpolicy.org/secref.html, 1995.