Asian CSO Leaders Call for Support to Civil Society
Sixto Donato C. Macasaet
Asia civil society leaders gathered last September 8-10, 2014 in Jakarta, Indonesia for the Asian Civil Society Experience Summit (CSES).
The CSES was organized by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), The Asia Foundation (TAF) and Kemitraan, with the aim of directly informing and strengthening development programming in Asia, through the exchange of experience and best practice in strengthening civil society organizations (CSOs), understanding barriers to and identifying means to improve the legal/enabling environment for CSOs in Asia, identifying means to improve and strengthen multi-lateral coordination in support of civil society, and identifying and reinforcing new and innovative ways to provide technical, financial, and institutional support for civil society.
The Summit participants issued a Joint Statement which called on civil society, governments and the international community to act on the following essential issues:
1) Build an enabling environment for civil society: All governments should build an enabling legal, social, and economic environment in which diverse societies can grow and flourish. Human rights defenders should be allowed to work for the vulnerable communities without fear or intimidation. Civil society and the international community should engage and demonstrate to regional, national and local governments the vital role of civil society, build safe meaningful and inclusive mechanisms through which civil society can engage state actors.
2) Promote innovative partnerships with diverse actors and change agents: All governments should recognize and engage civil society as a trusted development partner. Modalities of engagement should be revised and broadened to be inclusive of the whole diverse range of civil society as well as other actors such as the private sector.
3) Leverage information and communication technologies to build and strengthen local and regional networks: Civil society and the international community can utilize online and telecommunication technologies to strengthen coordination and build virtual communities of practice to share information, data, best practices, lessons learned, and contribute each organization’s strength to the community as a whole. Importantly, the virtual communities can serve as a communication nexus where civil society will further engage academic institutions, think tanks, and the international community on policy and strategic discourse.
4) Explore innovative means to provide technical, institutional, and financial support to civil society: The international community should improve donor coordination and explore novel approaches to support the development of civil society, including local CSOs and sub-national, national and regional CSO networks, which play an important role in strengthening civil society. Sustainability of CSOs can be improved by promoting combined donor granting, philanthropy, and social business income generating models.
5) Build and strengthen civil society transparency, accountability and effective governance: The participants commit to build and strengthen initiatives to strengthen transparency, accountability and effective governance within the sector, especially through self-regulatory mechanisms such as Code of Conduct, self-assessment and certification systems. Governments and the international community should support these efforts.
The Filipino participants at the CSES included Oman Jiao of the Association of Foundations, Jazmin Gutierrez of Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), Luis Morales of Philippine Council for NGO Certification (PCNC), Ed Amistad of League of Corporate Foundations (LCF), Beckie Malay of Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), Loi Manalansan of Bantay Kita, Gerry Porta of USAID and Dodo Macasaet of CODE-NGO.
For more information on the Summit, including a copy of the Joint Statement, go to the CSES public site – https://sites.google.com/site/asiaregionc/home.
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Sixto Donato C. Macasaet is the Executive Director of Caucus of Development NGO Networks (CODE-NGO).