Civil Society groups strongly urged decision makers to tackle the global democratic deficit, rising inequality and abuses by transnational corporations at the recently concluded global thematic consultation on governance and the post 2015 development agenda in Johannesburg.
The consultation, organised by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Development Programme from 28 February–1 March, brought together 170 participants representing civil society, academia, international organisations, grassroots movements, indigenous groups and the private sector.
Following are some key recommendations from civil society that emerged from the consultation:
- The widespread global democratic deficit currently evident at national and international levels results in the exclusion of majority of citizens around the world from key decision-making processes affecting them. Thus people must be placed at the centre of the new development paradigm and any new framework should be underpinned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which gives equal precedence to economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.
- Citizen participation must be a key priority for the post-2015 development framework. Civil Society must be included in processes aimed at framing the agenda at national, regional and global levels and in the implementation and monitoring to ensure people's ownership at all levels.
- The divide between the rich and the poor continues to widen because of the dominant economic growth model for development being propagated by democratic and authoritarian governments alike around the world. The richest one percent of the world's population continues to prosper while the overwhelming majority and the impoverished struggle to make ends meet. Inequalities within and between countries across the globe as well as discriminatory practices based on income, gender and ethnicity undermine development gains.
- Strong pressures from powerful transnational corporations towards privatization of natural resources and public goods create situations where people who traditionally depend on rivers, forests and communal grazing grounds for their subsistence are increasingly being displaced by big corporations. Basic public services, which are the responsibility of governments to provide, are being outsourced to private players in abdication of the basic social contract by governments. There is an urgent need to review current notions of public-private partnerships to enable citizens to be served better.
- The new framework must be inclusive of the promises made by world leaders in the Millennium Declaration on the common values of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility.
- Notably, the post 2015 scenario should be consistent with commitments made at the Rio+20 Summit and Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness and create an enabling environment for Civil Society in line with agreed international rights which take full cognizance of the contributions of Civil Society to development. Thus an enabling environment is a prerequisite for the formulation, implementation and monitoring of a post-2015 agenda. Anything short of this will lead to uneven and skewed results.
David Kode, Policy and Advocacy Officer at CIVICUS said:
"The post-2015 scenario must take into account lessons on governance failures and the glaring absence of democratic accountability from the current formulation of the Millennium Development Goals. Development must be about freedom from fear and freedom from want."