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Mariya Y. Omelicheva, Purdue University
IGOs jointly with civil society organizations develop guidelines or principles of
collaborative work. The Global Compact is one of the international normative
instruments developed within the framework of the United Nations. The Global Compact
encourages greater accountability, transparency, and the enlightened self-interest of
companies, labor, and civil society in pursuing fundamental principles in the areas of
human rights, labor, and the environment
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. Many UN agencies or UN-affiliated
organizations have established and formalized operational relations with NGOs (see, for
example, the Oslo Declaration and Plan of Action (1994) containing an impressive set of
guidelines for NGO – UNHCR collaboration).
Vast number of global civil society organizations recognizes the importance of
normative frameworks guiding their activities and internal management: 87 per cent of
the participants of my survey indicated that they followed a code of conduct or ethics,
code of practice, or similar self-regulatory frameworks, adopted individually or by a
network of civil society organizations. Many acknowledge the need for systematic
interpretation and commemoration of relations with national governments: 45 per cent of
global civil society organizations that took part in the survey are parties to compacts with
governments and businesses; 66 per cent regularly engage relevant policy makers and
institutions in dialogue related to their mission; and over 90 per cent of organizations get
actively engaged in strategic partnerships with other organizations.
Goals of global civil society. Are global civil society organizations aware of their
historical mission? Do they have a shared understanding of the purpose and meaning of
global civil society? In the earlier survey of Pianta and Silva (2003a) conducted on the
participants of social forums, some respondents seemed to overlook a broader mission of
global civil society in democratizing global politics. Asked about why they participated
in global civil society events, many participants of the survey pointed at somewhat
narrower purposes of their involvement in global politics, such as building international
networks of civil society organizations (about 60 per cent) or strengthening identity and
consciousness raising (44 per cent). Proposing alternative policies and lobbying
representatives were listed as goals by at least 50 per cent of the surveyed organizations;
while 20 per cent mentioned protesting against global powers as their goal. Accordingly,
from one-quarter to one-half of the organizations surveyed in 2003 recognized that a
strong global civil society was needed to compete with states and the global businesses
for guidance in different aspects of global politics (Pianta and Silva 2003a)
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.
The results of my survey indicate a greater consensus of global civil society
organizations on their role in global politics: 69 per cent of the respondents agree that
increasing the responsiveness of political institutions is the purpose of global civil
society. There is less of an agreement on strategies to be used to extort this
responsiveness: 18 and 41 per cent of the respondents strongly agree or agree with a
cooperative strategy of the creation of a more supportive climate by facilitating
partnerships with political institutions; while 25 per cent remain neutral and almost 10
per cent disagree with the strategy of cooperation. A less cooperative strategy aimed at
weakening the role of hostile institutions is supported by almost 40 per cent of the
respondents with 39 per cent remaining neutral and 20 per cent disagreeing with the
strategy. That the majority of respondents (almost 50 per cent) support the cooperative
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Available online at <
http://www.unglobalcompact.org/Portal/Default.asp
>
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This pattern of results may also be due to the format and wording of questions used in 2003 survey.
Convention