In November 2008 findings of our pilot project on Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance were presented at the United Nations. 

The Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance project presented findings and recommendations at a specially convened conference at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Even on the morning after the US Presidential election around 100 civil society actors, officials from government delegations, researchers and UN staff attended the meeting, which was hosted by the United Nations University Office in New York. 

The Presentations

The CS-AGG panel at the UN comprised a subset of the project authors. Jan Aart Scholte of the University of Warwick and London School of Economics presented the project conceptual framework on ‘Global Governance, Accountability and Civil Society’. Kerstin Martens of the University of Bremen presented her analysis of ‘Civil Society and Accountability in the United Nations System’. Alnoor Ebrahim presented the study of ‘The World Bank and Democratic Accountability: The Role of Civil Society’. Carolyn Long and Nata Duvvury presented their work on ‘Civil Society and Accountability Promotion in the Global Fund’. The event was chaired by Jean-Marc Coicaud, Director of the UNU Office in New York. Discussant was Salil Shetty, Director of the Millennium Development Goals Campaign at the UN.

Role of the Civil Society in Global Governance

The presentations sparked a good discussion about how civil society could and could not  contribute to greater legitimacy for global governance agencies. Some members of the audience expressed optimism that civil society interventions could, for example, provide independent monitoring of institutions like the United Nations and thereby push forward important agenda items such as the Millennium Development Goals. However, other participants suggested that more efforts were required to raise civil society competence to address global governance issues. It was also argued that civil society campaigns on global policies were not doing enough to use the mass media or to build coalitions with the private sector. Commentators also urged that civil society organisations should better fulfil their role of connecting global governance with grassroots contexts.  

The UN event was important in furthering the Building Global Democracy programme aim of putting the public spotlight on problems of global democracy. An accumulation of these sorts of presentations will help to promote questions of democracy on the agenda of global governance. The UN event also effected the kind of practitioner-researcher exchange that lies at the heart of the BGD initiative. The dozens of civil society and official actors present were given academic concepts and analyses that can improve their interchanges. Meanwhile the researchers obtained ‘reality checks’ on their work with feedback from the practitioners that will help in refinements of the studies before publication. The event at the UN also broadened networks for democratizations of global governance, as scores of participants in the event have been added to the BGD mailing list to keep up with the further development of the programme.

Read more about the event and see additional photos on UNU's website . All photos on this page are by Durlabh S. Maharishi