RIGHTS: The Growing ‘Globalisation of Solidarity’

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 22 1999 (IPS) - “The revolution of solidarity is coming,” Juan Carr enthusiastically announces, and predicts that “future globalisation won’t just be economic and financial like it is now, but will become a globalisation of solidarity.”

Carr is the founder of Solidarity Network, one of Argentina’s 40,000 non-governmental organisations (NGO), and he is one of the 3.5 million activists who feel their place is in the civil society movement rather than political parties.

Carr says he is attracted to this “chaotic and structureless” social movement because it is always there when a child needs help or when a community kitchen is in need of a refrigerator.

Just 13 percent of young Argentinians identify with any political party, but 40 percent say they have a “great social sensitivity” to community work, according to a poll taken by Demoskopia.

So a new “activist” profile has developed. Far from participating in political parties or their student centres, young people now assist at rural schools, indigenous communities, nature reserves, or retirement homes.

In part, they are filling up the gap left by the state’s withdrawal from its traditional function as provider of social services and assistance to the poor. But they also reflect the deep discrediting of political parties and their leaders.

Nilda Perez, a psychologist who interviews a dozen candidates per day for the Solidarity Network (Red Solidaria), told IPS that there are many young people who don’t believe in politics and would rather focus their time on social work.

“We take them on to chat with the elderly, play cards or chess, or to work with poor children. Many of them like to read them stories, or they are concerned about the state of the natural environment,” said Perez.

Over the last 20 years, the non-governmental sector in Argentina has grown enormously. Currently the country’s 40,000 NGOs employ more than 300,000 people, in addition to volunteers.

Sebastian Lavesolo, age 19, is one of the 50 members of Iniciativa (Initiative), an organisation focusing on adolescents, who participates in leadership training seminars for community work.

“I don’t believe much in political parties, and I don’t agree with what they are saying,” Lavesolo told IPS. On the other hand, in Iniciativa, “we are simply ourselves, motivated by social action, without parties or religion.”

But NGOs are not just bringing in young people. Women and men older than age 35 are also finding their place.

Pablo Bergel, an environmental leader, says he was a party activist in the 1970s but is now looking to channel his work to create social change. “Political parties are machines that fight over electoral spaces,” he said.

Bergel’s generation suffered the tremendous blow of the military dictatorship (1976-1983), which detained, tortured and killed thousands of people, whose bodies have rarely been found.

As a result of the dictatorship’s illegal repression, a dozen human rights organisations were founded in Argentina by the survivors of torture, and the victims’ families.

Many of these political activists who changed course to work in civil society’s organisations believe that through NGOs they are able to carry out concrete actions, make changes – even if they are only partial.

But Perez also warns that some of these organisations, which did not come about to represent society or rule the country, like the political parties, are also turning into bureaucracies that may alienate people who come to them to help.

“I meet a lot of middle-aged people who have worked as volunteers for many years, and now find themselves prisoners of the hierarchy, of power disputes, and who want to return to a grass-roots organisation,” the psychologist said.

In the 1970s, this form of non-party participation, where people of different religions, social classes, or opinions could come together, was often rejected for being too individualistic or merely charitable.

Some politicians attribute the phenomenal growth of NGOs to the government’s pullback from its role as provider of community services over the last 15 years, while others recognise that politicians have distanced themselves from society.

For Juan Carr, beyond the current debates about globalisation and competition, the non-governmental sector envisions itself as the instigator of a great social transformation, a role political parties had traditionally set aside for themselves.