by Cyril Ritchie, Vice President, UIA Expansion. 22 years ago the Council of Europe wrote in one of its official documents: "We note a growing apathy towards politics among citizens in all countries. Some of the reasons are: the difficulty of dialoguing with public authorities; the shortcomings of the media as a channel of information about citizens’ concerns and NGOs’ initiatives; the inadequacy of the facilities available to elected representatives for meeting their consultation and documentation needs.” This remains entirely true today, and one might add such considerations as the huge growth in numbers of NGOs and Civil Society Organizations; the uncontrollable - or at least often unmanageable - expansion of informal and unstructured civil society movements such as the Indignados or Occupy Wall Street. So it is ever more urgent to improve the relations between public institutions and structured Civil Society Organizations, in the interest of harmonious community living, finding solutions to problems through dialogue, bringing institutional and civic competences to the table to work out answers to citizens’ needs and demands. We should be looking for ways to strengthen both categories, each in its own way representing, reflecting and translating the concerns of citizens: citizens who are also voters, clients, consumers, workers, parents, grandparents, educators, community organizers, sports fans, music lovers, active pensioners, airline and bus passengers, producers of goods/services/culture/profits... No society can long afford to have large numbers of citizens alienated from the political process. Responsible Civil Society Organizations constitute an important element of the democratic process: they provide citizens with a supplementary way, alongside political parties and lobbies, of channelling different views and securing a variety of interests in the decision-making process. The highest political organ of the Council of Europe, its Committee of Ministers, has explicitly recognized "the essential contribution made by NGOs to the development and realisation of democracyand human rights, in particular through the promotion of public awareness, participation in public life and securing the transparency and accountability of public authorities". Civil Society Organizations is a very broad term covering traditional and start-up NGOs, voluntary associations, non-profit organizations, foundations, charities, issue-based community and advocacy groups, and also trade unions and federations. The majority of these have core activities focused on, or deriving from, values and causes: social justice, human rights, transparency, democracy, the rule of law. Their overall pupose is to improve the lives of people through the participation of individuals, sometimes in very large numbers. Their purpose is surely also the reason why we have parliaments, governments, and public institutions at national, regional and/or local level. Such complementarity and identity of common purpose is the strongest argument for the 'two categories' to work together, to respect each other’s capacities and competencies, and to establish principles and practices of cooperation. What could be more natural, since the common goal is improving the lives of people and enhancing their opportunities for self fulfillment. The Council of Europe has blazed a trail for such cooperation, as its Conference of INGOs has adopted a "Code of Good Practice for civil participation in the decisionmaking process", with three basic principles: participation (views of members channelled through their NGO provide crucial value), trust (implying transparency, respect and mutual reliability) and independence. To achieve the aims of drafting and implementing the law and of influencing public policies and practices, trustful, respectful and responsible cooperation between public institutions and Civil Society Organizations is a prerequisite, fostering democratic participation, accountability and good governance. The full text may be seen at www.uia.org | ||||||