Citizen action groups are proliferating worldwide and have become valuable and important counterpoints to the power of impersonal governments and the profit-driven market, say two international observers.

Miguel Darcy de Oliveira is the executive secretary of the Institute of Cultural Action (IDAC) in Rio de Janeiro. Currently he is chair of the Excutive Committee of CIVICUS, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Rajesh Tandon, a CIVICUS board member, is founder and coordinator of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA).

This article has been adapted from Citizens Strengthening Global Civil Society, the authors' report published by CIVICUS in 1994, and includes updated information provided by Darcy de Oliveira.

In the past two decades, people of all classes, creeds, and ethnic backgrounds have organized themselves to defend democracy and human rights, to fight for more equitable development and a safer environment, or, more simply, just to help those in need to improve the quality of daily lives.

Such citizen action ranges from women in India hugging trees to save them from being felled, to global environmental organizations lobbying governments to come to terms with ecological imbalance. From students in Scandinavia donating the proceeds of their voluntary work for educational projects in the Third World, to the mothers of political prisoners in Argentina confronting a military dictatorship. From Polish workers challenging a totalitarian regime to entire villages in Asia mobilizing for self-governance and self-development. From medical doctors disregarding national frontiers to rescue the victims of civil strife, to millions of Americans reading for the blind, collecting money for a health charity, or doing volunteer work in the local library, art gallery or soup kitchen. From courageous Arab women standing up for their rights, to citizens worldwide demanding safety and freedom for persecuted people whose names they can hardly pronounce and whose political beliefs they often do not share.

The sources of inspiration may be spiritual, religious, moral, or political. However, the common thread in this ever-changing quilt is to be found in the realm of values: solidarity and compassion for the fate and well-being of others, including unknown, distant others; a sense of personal responsibility and reliance on one's own initiative to do the right thing; the impulse toward altruistic giving and sharing; the refusal of inequality, violence, and oppression.

In the past, governments in many areas of the world tended to oppose civil society. The collapse of the communist regimes and of many repressive military dictatorships in Latin America and Asia, combined with the crisis of the welfare state in the North and state-promoted development in the South, has given rise to a much more open and complex political environment.

Civil society institutions may be fragile, but they are many and have been growing steadily in scope and reach during the past two decades. The breathtaking peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe, the democratic transitions in so many countries of the South, and the dramatic changes in South Africa all bear witness to the strength of civic action.

In the past five years, we have been consistently moving beyond the market-versus-state polarization of the cold war era. The narrow ideological alternative between market and state can now be recast to answer these questions: What kind of state? What kind of market? And, therefore, what kind of third sector?


The Case for Global Civil Society

The prevailing global trends toward poverty and ecological imbalance cannot be reversed by actions undertaken only at the local and national levels. Regional coalitions and networks have recently been formed in many parts of the world to address specific themes and concerns such as protection of the environment; human rights; adult education; women, children and indigenous peoples' rights; health and habitat issues, and so on. Networking has characterized the emergence of global civil society.

In contrast to the structures of governments and corporations, networks tend to operate horizontally. Their centers are everywhere, their peripheries nowhere. Their leaderships rotate. Their aim is not self-preservation, but to get a job done. Networks adjust quickly to changing circumstances and may disappear when no longer needed.

Women have taken the lead in this process. For decades now they have been pursuing, with energy and consistency, an agenda that aims to eliminate all forms of gender-based discrimination. Action organizations such as Amnesty International and Medicins sans Frontieres have been working on behalf of political prisoners and civilian victims of armed conflicts wherever human rights violations occur.

The People's Plan for the 21st Century (PP21), is a recent coalition-building example from the Asia-Pacific region. Cutting across social sectors, PP21 has built coalitions between women's groups, indigenous people, workers, human rights groups and social activists to propose an alternative development paradigm.

On the global level, NGO networking and advocacy efforts have produced some landmark events. The most comprehensive and best planned of these processes was Rio's Global Forum and Earth Summit in June 1992. It is fair to say that at this United Nations conference, citizens not only educated the public on environmental issues but also -- for the first time -- insisted on a shared responsibility with states for the governance of the planet. Similar mobilization drives were carried out for the Vienna Human Rights Conference in 1993, the Cairo Population Conference in 1994, the World Summit for Social Development in 1995, and the Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995.

International associations of consumer groups are scrutinizing the affairs of the market, calling for greater transparency in the actions of multinationals, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. For example, the International Organization of Consumers' Unions (IOCU), a global association for consumer organizations from more than 80 countries, has contributed significantly to ensuring greater public accountability of market enterprises.

The very fact that parts of the "North" are also facing unemployment, urban violence, drugs, AIDs and environmental degradation opens up new opportunities for more horizontal international linkages between geographic areas and nations, transcending the old donor/donee and grant-maker/grant-seeker relationships.

In Latin America, major players such as the Interamerican Development Bank, CIVICUS (the World Alliance for Citizen Participation), the Synergos Institute (an anti-poverty development organization), and the Ford, Interamerican and Mott foundations have joined forces with national consortia of NGOs to implement a common action agenda in support of civil society. Governments are also being challenged to open up to new partnerships with citizen organizations to promote social development.


Bold Action Needed

These emerging coalitions between civil society, state and market are rooted in the realization that traditional approaches to alleviate poverty and underdevelopment need to be revised. Analysts realize that market mechanisms alone tend to increase the fragmentation of society, rather than close the gap between haves and have-nots. Governments, on the other hand, are confronted with diminishing revenues and increasingly are incapable of providing basic social services for all.

Citizens and their organizations are, therefore, called upon to assume greater responsibility in addressing the needs of the community. But more than that, they monitor the efficiency of government-implemented policies, and they urge greater social involvement and accountability of the private sector.

The emergence of these new coalitions and networks confirms that the time is ripe to act boldly to strengthen citizen participation and civil society both at the national and global levels.

Global citizen participation is rising at a time marked by a sharp decline, especially in the North, of such traditional forms of political participation as voting, party affiliation, and labor union membership. While the struggle in the South is to extend newly gained democracy and citizenship to the economic and social spheres, the North is confronted with an increasing drift toward civic disaffection and apathy. There is a growing disillusionment with politics. Many citizens feel that they have lost control over the political and economic mechanisms that determine their lives.

Threatened by processes that seem beyond their understanding and capacity to influence, suffering from the alienation produced by global cultural homogenization, many react defensively by going back to ethnocentrism and parochialism. A renewal of the sense of concern and solidarity among citizens could be a powerful alternative to social fragmentation and the aggressive affirmation of ethnic or religious identities.

This sense of common belonging, however, cannot be sustained by ignoring differences in cultures, religions, languages, or ethnicity. Cutting across traditional boundaries of caste, class, religion and nation-state, the option of global citizen action, rooted in a common set of values, implies the acknowledgement and acceptance of diversity as one of the most distinctive characteristics of humankind.

Issues of Democracy, USIA Electronic Journals, Vol. 1, No. 8, July 1996