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NGOs Do Some Soul-Searching to Improve Watchdog Role

Brian Kenety

With the clock fast running out on the LDC-III conference, a number of participants in the NGO Forum yesterday afternoon questioned the effectiveness of their own organisation in informing its members on the progress of official deliberations, which could impact on the effectiveness of their response.

Arjun Karki, a member of the NGO Forum steering committee, opened yesterday's 'Plenary Discussion on Conference Results' with a reminder that the group had two more plenary sessions, but as most people were leaving that evening or this morning, it was high-time for people to get in their interventions.

"We would really like to reflect on the work we have done and also the assessment of the Conference and our concerns," he said, noting that the body would deliver a statement in the closing session Sunday, to which they could contribute.

"We are thinking of circulating this statement as a political declaration of the NGO Forum… this Plenary would play a very important role and contribute to framing our statement for tomorrow (Sunday)," he said, inviting comment and "some direction" for the declaration, a draft of which had already been circulated.

Two participants stressed the importance of specific mechanisms for civil society to monitor the 'deliverables' of the LDC-III. Such monitoring should happen at the local, regional and international level.

Paul Tennessee of the Washington office of the World Confederation of Labour said the body's regional African organisation was already taking action along those lines, but would like also to work with the NGOs at the national and sub-regional levels.

Karki replied it was generally agreed that a co-ordinating centre should be established in an LDC country, and that monitoring action should be organised on the national level.

Subsequent comments centred on some participants' discontent with the performance of the NGO Forum itself, following on sentiments expressed by Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, Director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre based in Fiji.

Lini said she felt that efforts to keep members informed had been insufficient. "Up to now, I don't know if anyone [from the NGO Forum] has given us any analysis … there have been people following the sessions, but do they really come back to report to us".

Rukia Hayata, Social Development Expert/NGO Advisor to the Appropriate Technologies and Environment Conservation Society (ATECOS) in Dar es Salaam, said she shared that basic assessment, adding that some people within the NGO Forum felt marginalised.

"Do we think that we have organised ourselves properly? I think we need to do a self-evaluation," she said.

Hayata took the opportunity to distribute a proposed structure for a 'UN-NGO co-ordinating committee', with a bilingual (French-English) chair from Francophone Africa and six regional chairs (one each for Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa and Haiti, Asia, the Pacific, America and Europe).

She stressed that NGOs had the shared "responsibility" to convince their respective governments to be prepared and willing to work with civil society. But if the NGOs were "seen as just people fighting, their groups fighting endlessly" they would have trouble advancing their agenda.

In one workshop in Dar es Salaam, she said, a representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) cautioned civil society that they should work to be more diplomatic and "learn to use a certain language". She said the NGO Forum should likewise be very careful with how it articulated its demands in its statement to the LDC-III.

"As far as I am concerned, I must say, with all the inputs that have been made (thus far), the results and the efficiency of our talk has no value. Because as our sister has said, there is no co-ordination," said a representative from Ethiopia, who felt that co-ordination between northern and southern NGOs, in particular, had been disappointing.

Grace Manyonga Kanyanga said she felt that the NGO Forum's briefings to participants in the mornings and at the end of the day had not been a success.

"We have shared and talked, but at the end of those briefings, one was left with the feeling: 'what is the conclusion?' We were never, ever clear what we have agreed, what we were going to be doing tomorrow, what is going to be our focus," said Kanyanga, executive director of the NGO Co-ordinating Committee Zambia for Gender and Development.

"And I think this is the same problem we are experiencing right now. We are talking and talking, we are not coming to any great conclusion, to say, 'Yes, these have been the problems, these have been the successful points, this is the way forward'… This has been the problem, basically, from Day One," she said, calling for a definitive conclusion.

Towards the end of Saturday's plenary session, Karki again stressed that there were still two more plenary sessions left and called for volunteers to work with the various regional caucuses, focus groups and other NGO Forum structures to put their good ideas to work.

The NGO Forum is due to close at 16:00 hours today. At 16:15 they will hold a press conference to present their final statements; concurrent to the delivery of the political statement at the closing plenary of the official LDC-III conference.