Do developing countries have a real voice in the developed Civil Society Community?

As a former Executive Director of the World Bank (2002-2004) and who since my term ended have been in very close contact with many ONGs or Civil Society Organizations, and have even acted as part of the Civil Society, I must say I am not so sure of how to answer the question made in the title... of course making the caveat that neither am I so sure about what Civil Society really means.

As a citizen I have seen many extremely good NGOs that I have nothing to complain about and much to thank for, but, then again I have also seen some multinational ONG corporations that arrogantly want to impose their agendas and their world views on us… and that we should not let them! No ONG, much less an international, should ever be able to completely substitute for the voice of an individual citizen.

For instance on a somewhat personal note, I am an oil-cursed citizen, I have seen some ONGs taking the side of governments defending their right to manage the oil-revenues on behalf of the (incapable) citizens, and even recommending that this be done through a tripartite arrangement between governments, oil-companies and civil society, presumably their civil society. This is totally unacceptable for a citizen that has seen immense non renewable oil richness being wasted forever and good governance made impossible by the extreme powers vested into any government which receives the oil income.

In other cases I have seen small local NGOs while trying to find real life solutions to their urgent day to day problems, like for instance those derived from bad public services resulting from badly executed privatizations, seeing their agendas completely and unduly taken over for the internationally seemingly more “interesting” quest of “getting back at those bastard multinational corporations”.

I had the opportunity of participating in many debates on the voice and governance issues at the World Bank, and I do think the bank is well served of reaching out very often to the civil society in search of the-other-side-of-the-story but, in doing so, it should first always make clear that in the final count it works for governments, so as not to create false expectations, and secondly to always be really sure of what civil society is represented by which civil society and that each civil society is duly connected to a real life citizen.

Give the global migrant workers community an undiluted voice

Those migrants that when they leave there homeland are so easily forgotten, except when they forget to send a check home; and that upon their arrival are not sufficiently recognized by their new host conform a particular group of human beings with a particular set of interest and needs. Nowadays the economic significance of this migrant working community can be estimated to be somewhere between that of China and India but yet, just because they have no land, they have not been given a formal voice in the global and multilateral institutions.

This needs to be corrected and as a minimum the global working migrant community should have a chair at the World Bank and the United Nations.

A letter to the European Executive Directors of the World Bank Group

Dear Friends

As a former Executive Director at the World Bank; as a Venezuelan citizen of European descent; as a holder of a passport of a European country; and foremost as someone who harbors a deep respect for the international workers and profound concerns about the future of the world at large, I respectfully ask you to consider the following:

No matter how the Chairs at the World Bank's Board of Executive Directors are realigned between countries that are all anchored to their local interests the fact is that the world itself, our planet earth, will never be sufficiently represented.

Given the ever more intensive cross border relations, in so many vital affairs, there is an urgent need to introduce at least some representation of truly global interests and perspectives at the Board; such as those represented by the migrant working communities and which if all added currently represent an economy the size somewhere between India and China.

Unfortunately there is no way something of this nature could be handled expeditiously through a process that requires political negotiations over the whole world; and so in this respect I ask of the European Executive Directors at the World Bank, to take turns lending out, just one year at the time, their respective shares and voting powers in order to accommodate the continuous presence at the Board of the World Bank of a Chair that represents the views and the interests of the migrant working communities.

The previous, which of course does not imply a permanent commitment or a final reallocation of shares, would allow Europe to speedily enact a pilot on global governance that could prove to be extremely valuable for the whole world.

Europe is of course free to use whatever procedure it feels appropriate for naming the Director for the migrant worker's community; and although we would all understand if this at first would perhaps favor the migrant working communities in Europe, or Europe's own migrant worker communities, we sincerely hope that, in time, other parts of the world are also provided an opportunity.

Yours Sincerely

Per Kurowski