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Issue
No 8
July
2006 |
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Special Edition International
CSI Workshop in 19-21 June 2006 INSIDE THIS ISSUE Contributions about the
International CSI Workshop: What does the CSI hold in
store for the international development community? Reactions to the
ICSI Workshop A Scottish reflection
on the ICSI (Scotland) Looking at diamonds
in Scotland (Slovenia) ICSI Workshop: Local
issues via a global prism (Ukraine) Country
reports and other publications announcements |
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EDITORIAL |
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Welcome to a somewhat different
CSI e-Newsletter! Below you will find brief articles
on the International CSI (ICSI) Workshop, which was held 19-21 June in As we have indicated in earlier
e-Newsletters, the ICSI was the culmination point of the current
implementation phase, in which project partners, donors and external stakeholders
came together to discuss the findings and implications of the CSI, and
provided first evaluative feedback on the project. Reflecting the principles of the
entire CSI project, the roughly 100 ICSI Workshop participants engaged in an
open, reflective and critical debate on the CSI. Despite the tremendous
diversity of participants, the conversations on a variety of operational,
cultural and geographical background topics seemed to work rather well, as
the Scottish participant, Ruchir Shah, attests to in his piece. As Hannelore Wallner notes in her
article below, it was interesting to see the keen interest of external
stakeholders and donors in the CSI as a tool to generate useful knowledge,
while at the same time empowering local civil society. National CSI partners
were particularly engaged in the evaluation sessions, for example when they
were asked to advocate for three key recommendations for the future of the
CSI, through a cascading group exercise. However, donors, CIVICUS CSI team
members, as well as external experts also participated fervently in this
session, which, to me, shows the fun aspect of the session’s methodology, as
well as the immense commitment and buy-in of various stakeholders into the project. The CIVICUS CSI team is committed
to building on and expanding this existing commitment by engaging ICSI
participants and other interested stakeholders in the future development of
the project. The next e-Newsletter will provide more information on the
outcomes of the project evaluation, which will be critical in this regard. Best wishes, Finn Heinrich |
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CONTRIBUTIONS
ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CSI WORKSHOP |
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What
does the CSI hold in store for international development community? (By Hannelore
Wallner, CIVICUS CSI Team) A panel discussion involving
representatives of different development agencies such as UNDP, CIDA
(Canadian International Development Agency), SIDA (Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency) and the Aga Khan Foundation, as well as a
representative of INTRAC, highlighted the
usefulness of the CSI for the development community. The major
positive aspects of implementing the CSI focused on the timely provision of
an extensive amount of information that provides development agencies with
baseline data on civil society globally, as well as the culture of
partnership and participation that has been practiced throughout the
implementation. This fairly new approach of conducting research while
strengthening civil society from within is seen as a most valuable
contribution. The CSI can serve the development community well by gathering
information about what happens on the ground – which is rarely accomplished
by donor driven research projects. The CSI provides a holistic view of civil
society issues in a given country and thereby raises major issues in terms of
rethinking civil society and development. Some of the challenges for the
future of the CSI from the perspective of development agencies and
practitioners include: a) the marketing and the accessibility of the toolkit,
e.g. by making it a publicly available tool, b) the reduction of the
implementation timeframe to about 12 months and c) the marketing of the
methodology in general to increase understanding and raise awareness for the
need at embassies and UN country offices. While the CSI is an entry point it
also increases transparency on the much debated subject of civil society,
within countries and globally. The widening debate and the sensibilisation vis-à-vis the topic, through the CSI, are
seen as positive outcomes. Nevertheless, funding of the CSI research-action
project at the national level will need some creative approaches in the
future, to ensure sufficient funding for the implementing CSOs
without disturbing the balance between local ownership and foreign influence.
To achieve this, the need for harmonization of funds was discussed and,
overall, panel participants were positive about funding the CSI in the
future.
(By Janine
Schall-Emden, CIVICUS CSI Team) During the third and last day of
the ICSI Workshop, participants, donors and other invitees were asked to
reflect on signs of impact sparked by the CSI project implementation process
(or project results). Participants were broken into smaller groups, where
they identified and discussed impacts, grouping them by organizational,
inter-organizational (sectoral), governmental,
media and donor/funder institutions. As expected, due to the recent
project completion, most signs of impact were registered on the
organizational level. Examples of this type of impact include, building
capacity, as a result of the project implementation process, organizations’
strategic plans and projects being developed based on the results of the CSI.
Inter-organizationally it was found that links were created where there were
none, or where they were only tenuous. Interestingly, this is true among
organizations that were previously antagonistic and between sectors. In this
respect, the fact that members from the media and government, who are part of
the CSI’s National Advisory Group, assist in this
creation of cross-sectoral linkages. Therefore,
some encouraging signs can be detected, such as governments requesting to use
the CSI project results to draft local development plans ( The CSI will conduct a more
thorough evaluation of some country cases to explore the impacts in more
depth. While these initial indications of impact may not provide an overall
picture of the impact of the CSI, the direction certainly appears to be
positive. (By Janine
Schall-Emden, CIVICUS CSI Team) In addition to the participatory
evaluations being conducted by that CSI staff with all country partners, a
thorough external evaluation of the CSI’s project
implementation is also being conducted. The consultants engaging in this
activity are a team of three evaluators from the UK-based organization
INTRAC, which specializes in providing training, consultancy and research
services to strengthening the management and organisational
effectiveness of Civil Society Organizations. During the ICSI Workshop, INTRAC
staff met with CSI partner organizations and conducted two in-depth sessions
exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the project implementation process.
The first session involved focus group discussions, and the second session
was a cascading exercise, which provided ICSI participants with the
opportunity to develop recommendations for future CSI project
implementations. The cascading exercise was intensive and stimulating for
participants who had to negotiate three key recommendations among an
increasing number of group members starting with two and ending at 16. In addition to the findings from
these sessions, INTRAC will be circulating a questionnaire to all NCOs and
focusing on 10 countries, chosen based on regional and other criteria. The
evaluation will be completed in mid-September and a recommendation-focused
evaluation report will be produced and presented to the CSI team. The summary
of the evaluation report will also be circulated among partners and posted on
the internet. Can civil society be measured? (By Finn Heinrich,
CIVICUS) The
question of whether civil society can be measured was debated during a
night-cap session at the The
contributions by panellists and inputs from the floor highlighted the
fundamental difficulties in measuring something as abstract and fuzzy as the
concept of civil society. Panellists were divided in their views. For
example, for Rajesh Tandon, the process of
assessing civil society itself and the inclusiveness and participation of
actors in a self-reflection process is more important than a focus on
statistical numbers that may not reflect the reality of civil society on the
ground. On the other hand, Wojciech Sokolowski defended the importance of producing
quantitative information on civil society in order to provide a comparative
assessment. Finn Heinrich took a ‘middle of the road position’, arguing that
civil society comparisons are possible, as long as they pay close attention
to context-specific factors. In the ensuing debate, participants from the
floor questioned the aims and rationale of making comparisons and cautioned against
a ranking approach of strong to weak civil societies. (By Jacob Mati,
CIVICUS CSI Team) Four small group sessions were
held on this topic during the ICSI workshop, to assist David Bonbright in gathering ideas for his upcoming chapter on
the subject in Volume II of the Global Report on the State of From the discussions, it emerged
that the term infrastructure, within civil society discourse, is problematic
and contested. However, there is consensus about the need to look beyond an
individual organisation to the collective civil
society sector when conceptualizing this term. Civil society infrastructure
refers to certain enablers that are necessary to help the sector function
more effectively. These enablers include: resources,
the legal and political environment, legitimacy and umbrella/networks or
support organizations. Resources encompass financial, technological and human
resources. Human resources include people working for the sector and their
analytical and intellectual capacities, as well as their ability to use and organise other resources for the purposes of meeting
their purposes. Accountability, transparency and good governance in the
sector feed into the question of the sector’s legitimacy, and the public’s
perception of CSOs. Civil society needs to
proactively address accountability and transparency in the sector and also
educate the public on their roles to counter any negative public perceptions.
The final enablers are the umbrella/networks or support organisations
which provide support, such as research and training to the entire sector. Reactions to the
ICSI Workshop A Scottish
reflection on the ICSI (By Ruchir SCVO found the ICSI workshop to be
tremendously valuable. We may be a bit biased, since it brought 100
representatives from 63 countries to our small northern nation, nevertheless,
despite the slightly inhospitable In particular we saw a good
representation of participants from both Northern and Southern countries.
While there was an inclination by Northern participants, indeed participants
from various regional blocs to stick together in the informal activities, all
participants made considerable efforts to connect across these traditional
divides during the formal sessions. The presence of representatives from
donor organisations was equally impressive.
High-level participants from government agencies; SIDA, NORAD, DFID and CIDA,
and UNDP participated fully and with much enthusiasm throughout the workshop.
However, there could also be an
excellent opportunity to connect the ICSI more closely with the work of
global philanthropic foundations. Scotland hosted the Carnegie World
Philanthropy Medals event in December 2005, with guests including, Bill
Gates, George Soros, Tom Farmer, Tom Hunter and His
Royal Highness the Aga Khan. However, the only representative present at the
ICSI workshop was from the Aga Khan Foundation. Wealthy philanthropic
foundations are currently moving towards a more active and involved
engagement with civil society. In fact, Carnegie Looking at
diamonds in Scotland (By In June 2006, CIVICUS:
World Alliance for Citizens participation organised an international workshop
in There were many
discussions on known obstacles, a lot of suggestions
for how to improve the project and many lessons learned were exchanged. For
me, it was also quite important to meet new and interesting people, and gain
new acquaintances from which new potential partnerships can be born. We were delighted with the
help and kindness provided by people from ICSI
Workshop: Local issues via a global prism (By The ICSI Workshop in The CSI raised one common
delinquency within civil society, which was wittily named by the Bulgarian
CSI team as “civil society without citizens”. Participation in civil society
tends to be occasional and volatile rather than regular and systematic. Civil society’s impact was also
found to be low in many developing countries. CSOs
are limited in their access to resources and power and cooperation between
government and CSOs is vertical rather than
horizontal. Mutual trust and understanding does not exist between civil
society and government, since government tends to manipulate and falsify
civil movement by creating pocket NGOs and by corrupting trade unions and
business associations. Often state funding undermines the autonomy of civil
society. On the national level the CSI has
generated a vision and course of action for civil society development. The
CSI gives more public credibility to civil society, and participatory
research has assisted in the professional growth of its stakeholders. The next steps for the CSI will be
follow up activities to realize plans and disseminate knowledge among civil
society stakeholders. This will raise the credibility of CSI
implementers and supply knowledge to enrich existing efforts to reform and
develop democratic governance. |
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We are happy to announce that
seven new country reports have been published on the CIVICUS website during
this quarter. They include: Center for Development Studies - http://www.neareast.org/main/explore/CDS/default.asp Centre for Training and
Consultancy - www.ctc.org.ge Center for Citizens' Klon - www.klon.org.pl Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations - www.scvo.org.uk Legal-Information Centre for NGOs, Slovenia - www.pic.si
Instituto Communicacion de Desarollo-http://www.icd.org.uy These reports are available for
download on the CSI Country Reports page of the
CIVICUS website, www.civicus.org. Other Publications CIVICUS Civil Society Index: Preliminary Findings Phase
2003-2005. Downloadable
in PDF [623KB]. This paper sought to give background information on the CSI
findings for the International CSI Workshop which took place in |
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OUR CONTACTS |
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We value your comments, feedback and contributions. You may contact us at hannelore@civicus.org. CIVICUS House Tel: +27 11 833 5959 Website:
http://www.civicus.org |
