Presidential Statements

Excellencies,
Esteemed UN officials
Distinguished guests and NGO colleagues
Ladies and gentlemen:

What a great day and year, 2023! It is even more significant because you honored us with your presence and accompaniment. Today, we commemorate the 75th anniversary of CoNGO—the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations. 

Along the way—all through the years from 1948 to 2023—many like you have trod with CoNGO on a path equally rough and smooth but decidedly doing so to trailblaze the way for non-governmental organizations to have a place and voice in multilateral arenas. 

The United Nations was only three years old when CoNGO was born. I surmise that the UN and CoNGO grew up together in the same neighborhoods where wars of colonialism and imperial conquest tested anyone’s resolve, fledgling as they were, to imagine a world of peace and security so that the “scourge of war”—indeed the ignominious legacies of slavery, colonialism, genocide and racism—visit us no more—not our imagination, not our neighborhoods.

UN and CoNGO grew up together in the same neighborhoods that tested our imagination of what it means to recognize and protect innate human worth and dignity with a regime of universal, indivisible and interdependent human rights. 

By building up a pantheon of rights, our collective resolve was to bequeath to every person in the neighborhood the protections necessary for people to be bearers of human rights and enjoy and flourish with these rights and for nation-states, as duty bearers, to build the architecture of protection needed for the flourishing of human life in dignity. 

And that even in the worst times of warring territories and quarrelsome neighborhoods, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will not be derogated or diminished.

The UN and CoNGO grew up together in the same neighborhoods that tested our imagination of progress—characterized by development that no longer plundered the earth and compromised the enjoyment of our collective life as humanity.  

Never again should human dignity be otherwise than what it means to be people of innate worth. Protecting human dignity with human rights is the way to mobilize collective action and craft the collective voice and resolve to build the international regime for human rights and human dignity, security and peace for sustainable development.  

I speak of neighborhoods because these places of familiarity, indeed of memory, make it impossible to live together without the genuine pursuit of friendly, just, peaceable and democratic relations—be it among people, nation-states or the institutions they have built. 

Neighborhoods bring us back to a more general understanding of our global challenges. Simultaneously at the local and international arenas, we deal with the legacies of the past and the challenges of the present not as all too distant territories and atomized communities but as close neighbors and friends evolving common public goods—such as food and freedom, jobs and justice, land and liberty—and securing these for everyone—with no one left behind in their pursuit. 

The multilateral enterprise must not be allowed to proceed as if it were about inanimate objects like nation-states rather than thinking, feeling, and acting as humans—citizens or otherwise. And indeed, as if it were not about a living, breathing, earth and fragile ecology. Because the SDGs are about people and the planet, our concern must be for both and not just one or the other.

The multilateral enterprise must bring us back to people and our true home, Earth. Here, I recall the provenance of what we recite today as people-centered development, using the words of Federico Mayor as inscribed in his book Memory of the Future. 

Federico Mayor says that “we owe Mr. Mahbub Ul-Haq, then the former Minister of Industry of Pakistan, who came up with the concept and published in a report submitted to the United Nations Development Program in 1992. Federico This term originally referred to “development which ensures both economic growth and equitable distribution of their growth, which sets out to satisfy the basic needs of individuals and the whole range of human aspirations, which aims at creating economic opportunities wherever there is scope for individual talents, which attaches as much importance to the agonizing choices of the North are as to the misfortunes of the South; and which takes into account a whole set of parameters enabling well-being to be measured more accurately in terms of education, democracy, justice and solidarity.” 

It may be worth reflecting on the above and seeing where we have been, where we are going, what needs to be done, and by whom, as I urge us to revisit the Brundtland Commission’s “Our Common Future” and Antonio Guterres’ “Our Common Agenda.” Might it be that we have compromised the future of people and the planet more than we admit and that we have delayed the future’s flourishing, that is, the flourishing of people and the planet, in the way that Guterres’s Agenda brings us back to the drawing board and calls are to reboot multilateralism—that is, revisit, reinscribe and redraw our aspirations again to achieve a responsive, accountable and relevant multilateralism where “we the peoples” and the planet truly matter in a globally interconnected world?

CoNGO’s 75th-anniversary theme is “Defining the Present, Shaping the Future, Making the Change Now.” In its 75 years, CoNGO has contributed to identifying the issues that matter to people and the planet, contributing the definition of the present challenges in our world today, and then imaging with the people and their governments and civic institutions how the future might be if we acted in a way that is more just, more peaceable, more democratic, more sustainable than our inherited past. This theme forges us into the crucible of the present and into the urgency of acting now and committing ourselves to be the agents of change and transformation. 

My NGO colleagues would have heard me repeatedly say that there should be no proxying the work in work for peace and security, human dignity and human rights, progress and sustainable development—the pillars of the UN and the multilateral agenda. We must embrace this work—together, not the least, the collectivity that is CoNGO, the mass of civil society. 

In other words, also, both the UN and civil society formations must make available the platforms in which the voice and agency of the people—and the integrity of the living planet—are presenced in multilateral discussions and negotiations—not via their proxies but via themselves who can articulate their present, dream their future and participate as primary players in achieving such dreams. 

Today, CoNGO is a solid and visible presence at the United Nations, thanks to the power of doing and acting as Co-NGOs in the multilateral arena. Like governments, nothing can be done better to address the global challenges the people and the planet face except doing it collectively and together.

CoNGO is uniquely placed in the family of NGOs in that it puts primacy to access to the UN and representation at multilateral discussions. For me, this means access to the premises and the promises of the multilateral ideal. This means that the physical premises of the multilateral institutions must ensure that “we the peoples”—in our collective mass as civil society representatives organized as NGOs—find a secure place in the premises of the UN to our aspirations, contribute our expertise, and join in policy making that genuinely honors a broader expanse of democratic practice. Such will not happen if we allow the further shrinking of the public space, the subversion of the democratic discourse, and the arrest of civic activists and human rights defenders.

CoNGO is about premises but also promises. Premises and NGO access to them are central to the advocacy work of CoNGO. But access to the premises leads to something if we, as NGOs, also have access to the promises of the UN. By access to the promises, I mean access to the substantive agenda of the UN, and this means valuing NGOs’ expertise in the multilateral agenda and negotiating tables. 

Access to the premises and promises of the UN must be a component of Multilateralism 2.0. This would mean not just a reboot from the same multilateral architecture but a reboot and a rewire so that the NGO wire is internal rather than external to the architecture.

It is then my honor and pleasure to express the deep gratitude of CoNGO, its leadership and its membership worldwide to the people in the multilateral institutions, especially those here in Vienna, who have given the varied instances and occasions for our members—and civil society writ large—to present their voice and agency in the premises and the promises that are represented here at UNOV.

Thank you to all the speakers at this event, already named in our program and projected on the screen.

Thank you Mirella Dumar Frahi. Thank you, Maria Naderhirn. Thank you, Omar Zevallos-Orillo. My thanks go to far more people here. I would like you to please look at the screen. {Mary Albon | Billy Batware | Ena Bektasevic | Sebastian Maurice Denton | Mirella Dummar-Frahi | Irene Hoeglinger-Neiva | Ahmed Tareq Ibrahim Maaty | Maria Naderhirn | Martin Nesirky | Sergey Peresada | Eija Rinnetmaeki | UNODC-Advocacy Section | Omar Zevallos Orrillo | Viktoriia Zharkova}

My thanks and gratitude also go to my colleagues at CoNGO, especially those stationed here in Vienna, for their labor of love—indeed passion for civil society work—expressed in their careful and dedicated preparation of this and related 75th-anniversary events here in Vienna. Under the leadership of Martina Gredler and her team of NGO representatives,  it is possible to bring you this excellent program this afternoon. I invite you to look at the screen for the names of the preparatory team: {Renate Amesbauer | Wolfgang Beiglbock | Jamie Bridge | Hava-Eva Bugajer | John Clark | Georg Dimitz | Evelyn Dürmayer | Elizabeth Francis  | Ingeborg Geyer | Martina Gredler | Ceja Gregor | Angelika Hofmann | Deb Kamil | Herta Kaschitz | Paul Loser | Hannes Ludwig | Belinda Mikosz  | Eleonore Hauer Rona | Maria Riehl | Jacqueline Stark | Shantu Watt}.

Without you at the UN abiding with us, and without you, our dedicated officers here represented by our CoNGO Global Officers—with Cyril Ritchie, First Vice President and Martina Gredler, Second Vice President, and myself—and the six hundred plus NGO members of CoNGO, it would have been impossible to do the task we intentionally burdened ourselves with, not the least access to the premises and the promises of the UN so that we can contribute to defining the present, shaping the future and making the change—ourselves, with others, and not sooner or later, but now.

There was a story of a group of people who missed the centennial of their organization. They apologized to their president, who admonished them and said, “Thanks for the apology. Make sure you will not be late again in the next centennial.” I will not see you at CoNGO’s centennial in 2048. Still, I would like to think that there will be those at that centennial who will look back and say—well done, CoNGO and UN—the premises of the UN remain open to civil society. Its promises have been fulfilled, thanks to your continued engagement and collaboration for a greater UN, justice, peace, equity and equality, and representative democracy.

Vienna, Austria

April 28, 2023

Presentation by Liberato C. Bautista, President of CoNGO

at the 2023 ECOSOC Partnership Forum Side Event: WSIS Cooperation for Accelerating Progress on the SDGs

Organized by United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS)  and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

31 January 2023

• Partnerships must be at the core of what multilateral and multistakeholder mean. CoNGO’s long-term partnership with the WSIS Process and Forums is a model in this direction.
• Stakeholders have varying access to power and resources, which they deploy in various partnerships. But there are as many perils as there are possibilities in these partnerships.
• The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is critical in addressing the unequal relations among stakeholders. 
• Partnerships at the UN flourish under conditions that make it possible for all stakeholders to access both physical space (premises) and substantive agenda (promises), not the least on all matters related to the successful implementation of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

___________________________________

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen:

1. Thank you to friends at WSIS and ITU for having me again at another WSIS event during the ECOSOC Partnership Forum 2023. Thank you for allowing me to respond to two questions you posed.  The first question deals with how the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO) views partnerships and why it is imperative for ECOSOC and the WSIS Process, as much as civil society, to collaborate in implementing and achieving the vision of Agenda 2030 and the SDGs.
2. My response to both is an organizational one—a celebration of the partnership between CoNGO and the WSIS Process through ITU, which I believe is a model of consultation, collaboration, and cooperation among varied actors who have been given access to physical premises as well as access to the substantive promises of the WSIS agenda. I will come back later to a nuancing of what I call the dynamic of premises and promises. The participation of CoNGO in the WSIS Forum last year (i.e., as a high-level track facilitator, as a speaker at a side event, opening ceremony and closing session, and in CoNGO’s event) and at the WSIS Forum 2023 this coming March (as high-level track facilitator again) are examples of this partnership.
3. Both the multilateral and the multistakeholder approaches to doing work can be successful and meaningful if conducted under conditions of just and democratic governance. But also, one must consider the uneven development of economies and differentiated responsibilities on the common challenges we face in local, regional, and global spaces. Doing so is an exercise in knowing what can be realistically expected from a partner.
4. Sustainable development is fundamentally about development justice. And development justice must also be about digital justice, which is the equitable deployment and access to the implements of digitalization, including ICTs. For CoNGO, these understandings underscore the reality that stakeholders have varying degrees of reach and access to the levers of power and resources and ICT implements, hence the concern, for example, for digital justice.
5. There is broad agreement that the full and successful implementation of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development relies heavily on the partnerships among governments, multilateral institutions, the private sector, the business sector, and the widest breadth of civil society groupings, including non-governmental organizations.
6. For NGOs to contribute meaningfully to the recovery of people and the planet from the pillage of pandemics and the devastations due to climate change,  NGO voice and agency must be afforded access to both multilateral premises and participation in visioning and shaping the substantive promises of the UN. Key to NGO partnership is having their voice heard, and their expertise tapped. This is what access to the promises of the UN means—access to realizing the promises of peace and prosperity, for people and the planet, as a shared vision and task.
7. Let me now address the second question explicitly dealing with the close collaboration between CoNGO and WSIS, but also why I consider the ethical dimensions of knowledge and information society crucial.  The platforms the WSIS process has afforded NGOs are a model for such partnerships. They point to the direction of achieving digital justice, which is co-constitutive with environmental and development justice. WSIS and CoNGO’s long history of collaboration is substantive in both access to the premises of each other’s meetings and their substantive agendas. In 2003 in Geneva and 2005 in Tunis—at the twin conferences that launched the World Summit on the Information Society, CoNGO played a central role in promoting and facilitating cooperation among the many civil society groups that converged in these two conferences. We have supported WSIS and the WSIS Forums ever since, with the CoNGO President or First Vice President being a regular plenary speaker or facilitator.  The “ITU-CoNGO Agreement” signed in 2005 with then SG Utsumi set the ground for increasingly fruitful cooperation. The “Agreed Concept Note for Enhanced Involvement of CoNGO in the WSIS Process” was elaborated and strengthened in 2010 under SG Touré and DSG Zhao. 
8. NGOs in Geneva and Tunis spoke of the various dimensions of ICT,  but even more so on the ethical dimensions(WSIS Action Line 10) concerning the common good, social justice, human dignity and human rights, sustainability and development, and so much more identifiable values. In the context of Agenda 2030, such ethical dimensions come in even greater focus because ICTs, to be a tool for the common good, must first redound to the enhancement of the dignity and protection of people’s human rights and the securing of sustainability for the planet.
9. The digitization of knowledge and the digitalization of information—in all its applications, but especially in industry and commerce—are fraught with moral and ethical considerations. These moral and ethical considerations point to the digital divide and vex our efforts to safeguard human rights, including their intersections with more significant economic, political, social, and cultural realities. For its part, CoNGO will compose this year a CoNGO Board Advisory Working Group on Information Communications Technology, intended to supplement the CoNGO compendium of principles for NGO good practice (2021), this time focusing on best practices in the use of ICTs as experienced by NGOs and civil society groups.
10. CoNGO’s collaboration with the World Academy of Art and Science, which partnered with the UN Trust Fund for Human Security to launch the Human Security for All campaign, is essential to mention here. This year, the campaign got loud-speaker access in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The titans of ICT industries agreed to have human security as its theme for the show. It is a step in the right direction for commerce and drives to be involved in implementing the SDGs.
11. Last week, the ninth edition of the annual symposium on the role of religion and faith-based organizations in international affairs, which I chaired, also focused on human security. It was a symposium in collaboration with UNDP acting on behalf of the UN inter-agency task force on religion and development, including 27 UN entities collaborating. I said at the symposium that digital security must be a part of our understanding of human security. And that human security must be shared security for all. It must be shared security for all because it is about the flourishing of life, human well-being, and the planet’s sustainable development. 
12. Peace and prosperity are undoubtedly critical components of our understanding of partnerships, and I submit that we have muted the justice components all too often. Yesterday’s session on Partnership Innovations raised the matter of common but differentiated responsibilities again. It is an assertion that a framework of inequality and uneven development still characterizes our partnerships. That’s the justice issue—recognizing who the duty bearers and the rights holders are so that, in the end, the SDGs are about the partnerships for people and the planet and not partnerships among inanimate institutions and organizations. CoNGO celebrates its partnership with ITU and WSIS for the great potential to continue advancing this perspective together. I trust the WSIS process, and forum will continue this orientation.

January 24, 2023 | ECOSOC Chamber | 10:00 – 13:00

Madam ECOSOC President, Ms. Lachezara Stoeva, thank you for convening this important and timely session.

Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen

At the core of these atrocity crimes that this session has addressed, namely genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, is the ignominious assault on intrinsic human dignity and fundamental human rights.

These crimes decimate every semblance of civility and humanity and, when left unpunished, may happen again with impunity.

To prevent these crimes, ECOSOC must underscore the holistic implementation of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights regimen, underscoring and reinforcing already available international laws and agreements for just and equitable sustainable development.

Prevention requires turning national security into shared security where there is just and equitable provision of food and freedom, jobs and justice, and land and liberty, for all peoples and communities everywhere.

Denying people these public goods that make for a peaceable, secure, and sustainable future provides fertile ground for atrocity crimes to thrive.

In the end, stopping death-dealing crimes is as urgent as the flourishing of life itself—that of people and the planet.

I take this opportunity to announce the creation within the Conference of NGOs of two more NGO committees whose agenda will include the concerns of this special meeting:

1) an NGO Committee on Racism, Colonialism, and All Forms of Discrimination and Intolerance, and

2) an NGO Committee of Youth and Future Generations. A substantive investment in our youth today should be a wise investment in preventing all atrocity crimes.

Thank you, Madam President.

___________

The Rev. Dr. Liberato Bautista is President of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (2007-2011, 2017-2025), an NGO in general consultative status with ECOSOC. He is also the Assistant General Secretary for United Nations and International Affairs of the United Methodist Church-General Board of Church and Society, also in consultative status with ECOSOC. He serves as its main representative to the UN.

Keynote Speech delivered on June 30 at the Global People’s Summit on Co-Building an Eco-Social World held online from June 29 to July 2, 2022

by Liberato C. Bautista, CoNGO President

Introductory Remarks

1. Thank you, Priska Fleischlin, for that introduction. Thanks to you and your organization—the International Federation of Social Workers, which is a member of CoNGO—the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations was invited as a partner of this critical global undertaking—a people’s global summit “to share…solutions to our joint challenges so that all people can live with confidence, security, and peace in a sustainable world.”
2. The draft People’s Charter that will emerge from this global summit characterizes a world that is imperiled by many challenges. The charter partly says, and I quote, “We recognise that the pledges made by governments after the second world war – on peace, development and human rights – have not yet been realized and rights have been eroded in instances. Inequalities and fractures have grown. Poverty sits alongside extreme wealth. Nature has been degraded, leading to climate warming and environmental destruction. Millions of people have been displaced. As a result, they are adding to the millions more displaced by conflict and violence. The governments that made these commitments have prioritized competition over collaboration and sovereignty over solidarity. They have not yet served the people they represent.”
3. “They have not served the people they represent.” That’s a bold statement to say. It is a statement that also burdens this Summit, which must identify as close and inclusive a global picture as possible of the issues that keep people worried all day and awake all night. The draft Charter identified “interconnected, diverse values as a basis for forming a holistic, inclusive framework for our everyday relationships and actions.” The Charter enumerated the values as “reference points for the development of our shared futures.” I like this formulation—that values, while named and identified, cannot be exhausted in an effort as global as a people’s summit can undertake, and yet whatever we can already name—collaboratively and together—they are already available reference points for co-building an eco-social world which we will live in in a shared future.”
4. The organizational mantra that serves as value orientation for the work of CoNGO says, “Defining the present, shaping the future.” And as we launch into our 75th anniversary next year, we have added the call “Making the change, now.” This addition impresses upon us the urgency of now. Defining the present and shaping the future is all very well, but making the change now matters to people and the planet.
5. I would like to share some thoughts on the general topic, which is the theme of this People’s Global Summit: “Co-building an eco-social world so that no one is left behind. Allow me to approach my contribution to elaborating on this theme around four subheadings: First, the surplus of fear and a deficit of hope in today’s world. Second, the need to revisit multilateralism as an arrangement of global collaboration and delivery mechanism for achieving global public goods and goals. Third is the need for a robust, protected, transnational civil society co-constitutive with solid multilateralism. Fourth, what makes an eco-social world worth building together so that no one is left behind?

The Surplus of Fear and the Deficit of Hope

6. On with the first—that there is in our world today a surplus, surfeit if you will, of fear and a deficit of hope which is imperiling the achievement of sustainable development goals for people and the planet. Co-building an eco-social world depends mainly on empowering the voice and agency of people as they identify their concerns and craft their futures. This is why decreasing fear and replacing it with increased hope augurs well into assuring people of their dignity and human rights and the planet’s sustainability.
7. Today, this surfeit of fear and deficit of hope among the world’s peoples is putting humanity’s survival at stake in an ever more imperiled and unsustainable natural ecology. The health of people and the planet is endangered by intersecting crises, not the least brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, global violence, forced migration, economic crisis, climate crisis, racial injustice, and more. Time is of the essence, and we must decrease fear and increase hope in that eco-social world we are building together.
8. To decrease fear, we must reaffirm that human dignity and rights are non-negotiables. That human dignity is inherent in every person—persons being rights holders—and human rights are buffeted and increased because they are the indivisible and interdependent protections we give to human dignity. To decrease fear among peoples, the pantheon of human rights we struggle to build upon daily must be demonstrable as effective instruments to check government impunity, indeed of state agents, who otherwise may conduct themselves with impunity as to violate and sully people’s dignity without fear of being accountable and punished.
9. To increase hope, we must build a shared future for all the inhabitants of the earth and their natural ecology by promoting and safeguarding the common public goods and services indispensable to life. We must increase hope through arrangements that genuinely put people and the planet at the center of the local and global public imagination of policy and legislation. And we certainly need today a cadre of leaders from grassroots, local, national, regional, and international arenas to provide leadership for the much-needed catalytic strategies and action for transformative change in social and ecological relations.

Multilateralism: Revisiting, Revising, Transforming

10. Second, the need to revisit, revise and transform multilateralism as an arrangement of global collaboration among an assortment of varied players focused on addressing the production and development of shared public goods collaboratively, not the least the development of visible, viable, and durable peace and prosperity which underpin an eco-social world responsive to the needs of peoples and ensures the viability of the planet.
11. As we know today, multilateralism will no longer suffice for that catalytic and transformative change. It must be revisited, rebooted, rewired, or even repopulated beyond its all too nation-state-centeredness. Not only must there be multilateralism where institutions for norms and standards-setting work robustly, accountably, and transparently, but more importantly, a multilateralism where the common, just, and equal flourishing of peoples and the planet are at the heart of its work, and not the self-preservation of the state in ways hitherto buttressed by national security formulations.
12. The challenge to multilateralism today is not only that the world’s problems have exponentially multiplied compared to the imagination of those who forged the Peace of Westphalia in mid 17th century. That provenance of modern multilateralism endowed us with the notion and reality of sovereign nation-states who contracted treaties and entered into obligations between and among them foremost to protect territories and resources. All in the interest of national security—meaning the protection of the inanimate nation-state!
13. The urgent challenge to multilateralism today, it would seem, lies in the urgency for these sovereign nation-states to recognize how each of their people and their natural ecology are tied to the survivability and sustainability of all others and that acting together globally is simultaneously in their local and national interest. Today’s international interest must be equally a national interest because the international interest is the interest of nationals acting upon global threats and challenges that no single country can address better except collectively—under the aegis of entities like those that make the United Nations System.
14. Multilateralism works, but only if the intention to involve civil society moves from rhetoric to reality. By civil society here, I mean its broadest meaning—all the world’s peoples in their varied settings and configurations, including as citizens, people on the move, and stateless persons. Their political and national affinities matter to the nation-state. But being simply human means they are at the mercy of the perils of intersecting social injustices and harsh ecological realities. The reality here means allotting time for them to speak and be heard in every venue. As NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and CSOs (civil society organizations), we claim that citizens and non-citizens alike are indispensable parts of the national, regional, and international governance architecture that cannot be ignored in the pursuit of common and global agendas—to evoke language that the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has used in his latest recommendations now in the hands of the member states and for the upcoming General Assembly to consider.

The Need for a Robust and Protected Transborder and Transnational Civil Society

15. Third, the recognition that the need for a robust and protected civil society is co-constitutive of strong multilateralism at the global and national levels. NGOs, CSOs, and grassroots organizations are placed on a momentous occasion to advance social consciousness and organize to advance human rights principles everywhere in the public square. But in many places in the world today, the voices of civil society are increasingly muzzled in a public square that is shrinking and a public discourse that is curtailed.
16. The latest report of CIVICUS—the eleventh edition of its State of Civil Society issued a few days ago is alarming. This CIVICUS report “shines a light on a time of immense upheaval and contestation: war, conflict, rising fuel and food prices, climate change…” even as it also reported on where it found hope—”in the many mobilisations for change around the world: the mass protests, campaigns, and people’s movements for justice, and the many grassroots initiatives defending rights and helping those most in need.”
17. The CIVICUS report identified five key current trends of global significance: A) Rising fuel and food costs are spurring public anger and protests at economic mismanagement. B) Democracy is under assault, but positive changes are still being won. C) Advances are being made in fighting social inequality despite attacks. D) Civil society is keeping up the pressure for climate action. E) Current crises are exposing the inadequacies of the international governance system.
18. CoNGO, in its public statements, echoes CIVICUS’s refrain on these issues. “CoNGO is concerned about the shrinking space for civil society. Freedom of assembly, opinion, and expression are inherent rights of every human being. Still, an increasing number of countries restrict these rights, treating civil society as a threat rather than as a partner working to achieve common goals. Some governments imprison civil society activists or use force to quell peaceful assemblies and demonstrations. They formally accept the recommendations of the United Nations while ignoring them in practice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and relevant international conventions and covenants must be universally applied. The United Nations must ensure that NGOs have full access to United Nations bodies to allow the fullest contributions of their competencies, expertise, energy, and experience.”
19. It is about time the UN and its member states are seized of the political will (of its people and citizens) to achieve the future we want and the world we need. Formulations of these are already being expressed multifariously by the world’s peoples in various social forums, peoples assemblies, and certainly peoples’ summits such as this. This global people’s summit and the charter that will come out of it should loudly and clearly state the high expectations of NGOs and civil society for the Heads of State and Government assembled during the High-Level Political Forum (July) and at the General Assembly (September)—to demonstrate political courage by making real their declaration at the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the UN, among them: A) “We will leave no one behind…The peoples have to be at the center of all our efforts.” B) “We will place women and girls at the center.” C) “We will upgrade the United Nations. The world of today is very different from what it was when the UN was created 75 years ago…Our working methods need to keep pace and adapt.”
20. Beyond the multilateralism we engage in today, we need arrangements that enable civil society to claim spaces and position themselves at political platforms where their presence is visible. Their views are heard to impact decision-making. At the level of NGOs that advocate before the United Nations under consultative arrangements, Article 71 of the UN Charter and ECOSOC Resolution 1996/31 already provide modalities and platforms that must be reinforced and not rolled back to the peril of democratic exchange and participatory decision making.
21. What matters to me as an NGO leader—as CoNGO President in particular—is that NGO representatives can speak their voice, even in their language, and claim their agency in the settings that present the realities of their localities—be the grassroots, local, national, regional or global arenas. This includes the essential role of CSOs, critical social movements (CSMs), and other civic organizations vying for public attention and rallying for support for action on pressing social, economic, and political issues. The dynamic of co-building an eco-social world such as that propounded loudly by this people’s global summit points to the need to coalesce and forge alliances and networks to multiply our collective power and potential to influence public opinion, affect policy formulation, and effect transformative change.
22. CoNGO’s working modalities, especially its more than 30 substantive NGO committees organized in New York, Geneva, Vienna, and in four other political regions, exemplify the importance of harnessing collective energy and influence for impact, if not relevance. This organizational mode that gathers NGOs to work on substantive issues and act upon them to make the transformative change today demonstrates what I have called the power of co—the power of consultation, collaboration, and cooperation. The burden of this global people’s summit is not only to address the substantive issues that make an eco-social world. It matters equally and significantly that we employ methods of work that reflect the diversity of the transnational and transborder composition of who the world’s peoples are and how they struggle, organize and mobilize themselves for action.

Making Human Security and Planetary Sustainability Matter, Together

23. Fourth and last of my subheadings is about an eco-social world we must co-build so that no one is left behind. That eco-social world is where food is secured as much as freedom is advanced, jobs are secured as much as justice is advanced, and land is secured as much as liberation is advanced. At its barest minimum, an eco-social world must be secure for people: a) Food and freedom, b) Jobs and justice, and c) Land and liberation.
24. This formulation adheres to the indivisibility of social, economic, cultural, civil, and political rights. Easier said than done. Mainly because these are both human rights and human needs receiving the least resources that national budgets provide. But nothing to complicate what the world’s peoples want and need. People need food, shelter, clothing, education, health, and so much more in ways already enumerated by the goals and targets under each of the 17 SDGs. And suppose these needs are not made available, and their human rights are not protected. In that case, people must have venues to air their grievances to act on their marginalization, oppression, and exploitation and, ultimately, feel their liberation.
25. In the age of the Anthropocene, we need to assert the integrity of the ecological system—and, as responsible human beings, fight for the right of nature to be integrally sustainable. And do this as robustly as we fight for human rights. The anthropocentrism of how our human rights principles have developed must come to terms with the planetary requirements of human survivability. In the age of the Anthropocene, we have tinkered so much with nature that nature’s ability to regenerate has been breached, and its integrity is imperiled unless human intervention is curved and put in check. And those who have contributed the most to its peril have the greater responsibility—morally and resource-wise—to address such matters, not the least that of climate change.

What Needs to be Done?

26. In its previous statement, CoNGO has called upon the United Nations and Member States “to enter into a dialogue with civil society to create innovative partnerships that respond to changing world challenges. The spirit of Agenda 2030 requires the robust participation of the world’s people so that the benefits of multilateralism are felt in their daily lives. Everyone must work in concert so that the United Nations we need for the world we want prospers in a rules-based international order. We call upon Member States to recognize the vast potential of civil society as an essential element of the international system, defining the present and shaping the future. We must dismantle the hurdles to physical and political access to United Nations processes to achieve internationally agreed development goals and social justice agendas….Humanity cannot wait.”
27. “The ‘Peoples’ who gave voice to the United Nations Charter and see the Member States as their representatives are demanding that the world body rise to its commitments and bring about transformative change. Peace, justice, and development depend on holistic, human-rights-based, people-centered, and gender-sensitive approaches to the systems underpinning our economy, society, and environment.”
28. “We must increase momentum to transform the world and ensure that no one is left behind.” This means addressing those issues or concerns that worry “We the peoples.” These are concerns invariably identified or alluded to in the draft and, hopefully, final People’s Charter coming out of this Summit, issues such as: A) Climate Change: issues around global warming, its effects on the relations of people and planet, sustainability and viability of civilizational life itself. B) Global Migration and massive displacement and movement of peoples: realizing that migration today is globalized but xenophobically nationalistic, securitized and militarized, ethnicized and othered, gendered and sexualized, commodified and commoditized, homogenized and hegemonized. C) Global Violence: recognizing that the world’s peoples are not only wary and weary but frustrated and dying in this warring world, arming to the teeth, militarizing not only our borders but our social relations, putting people and planet encircled and occupied, endangered, and in many different manners in death’s way. The aggression by Russia against Ukraine is but one of many wars of aggression and occupation that colonizers and imperial powers have fomented and subjected other peoples and lands over centuries. Ending the scourge of war still is a blight in the multilateral undertaking.
29. We are a human species in deep need today of the things that flourish life and undergird abundant living. Even more urgently, we need something that extinguishes the power of death and death-dealing forces and instruments that peddle violence. Ending the scourge of war and the proliferation of implements of war is urgent and necessary, even as it is also the greatest failure of the multilateral undertaking.

And what can we do to make the change now?

30. What can we do, what must we do, to make visible the change we want and need now? Can we redo civics education so that it is relevant today? How about glocal civics education that engenders glocal citizenship? What would it entail to ratchet up the co-building of an eco-social world where no one is left behind? Let me suggest three areas that reimagine and transform civics: A) Cultivate CIVIC VALUES, where obligations generated by the multiplicity of relations between and among peoples and nations go beyond traditional notions of national security and sovereignty into ones that foster people’s security, human rights, and global peace. Here we have to start fortifying our calls and acts for food security, water security, climate security, and the like. B) (En)gender CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, where citizenry goes beyond national allegiances and sovereign assertions. In a global world and cosmological existence, we need global citizenry and human solidarity where human welfare and cosmological well-being are primordial over activities that sever our human relations and deal with death rather than life—activities such as wars and extractive mining that generate other death-dealing activities and natural catastrophes and human-induced vulnerabilities, including climate change, and contemporary manifestations of the historical evils of slavery, colonialism, and racism. C) Foster CIVIC ACTION, which is oriented towards social justice, so that every activity—from grassroots, local, national, regional, to international—by peoples, governments, and multilateral institutions—redound to the improvement of the relations of peoples and nations, thus providing the possibility of (re)constituting ourselves—our relationships, associations, and communities—and readying all for catalytic leadership and transformative change.
31. Let me come back to my initial statement that in our world today, there is a surplus of fear and a deficit of hope. And the urgency to reverse this is acute and necessary. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech of August 23, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington, DC National Mall, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., exclaimed: “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there “is” such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
32. That fierce urgency spoken of by Dr. King is a moment for us to seize—because the future is upon us now. The future is today. And vigorous and positive action is expected of us. That us is everyone; we have a stake in that future now. Time is of the essence. At such a time and space as ours, we must act—with a determined voice and empowered agency. In an auspicious time and in a space where we can affect vigorously and positively, we must work collaboratively for the sufficiency and sustainability of the planet and peace and prosperity for all peoples.
33. On this day, the fierce urgency of now admonishes us to recognize the things that make for peace and bring justice so that we recover better for a sustainable and equitable world and recover justly and peaceably. And safely for people and the planet. The human rights of people and the planet’s ecological health are at stake. And there is no time for delay.
34. Because the future is now, we must make the change now. Just peace, now. Climate justice, now. Health justice, now. Vaccine justice, now. Racial justice, now. Economic justice, now. Gender justice, now.
    Migration justice, now.
35. The future of humanity is intertwined with the planet’s future. Now is the time to demand that we look at the pillage that social pandemics have visited upon us and address the lingering social, economic, political, and cultural inequalities that trouble our peoples and lands. Now is the time to be kind to one another—in or out of pandemics. Kindness is hard currency when fear is in surfeit, and hope is in deficit. Let us make kindness available in all the ways we can as much as we can. Kindness is co-constitutive with solidarity, and kindness demonstrates our interdependencies in life and living as one humanity on one planet.
36. Collaboration at all levels is needed to triumph over crises across locales worldwide. Greater humility is required knowing that collaborative thinking and working far outweigh individual proclivities and comforts we have individually valued. In the time of the CoVID-19 pandemic, and the like, we must wash our hands frequently and vigorously for our health and that of others.
37. However, that is not the same with social pandemics and injustices. We must not wash our hands to diminish our complicity and entanglement with the injustices and unpeace that have sullied our human relations and endangered our planetary existence. Hope may be what holds life from death and peace from destruction. Let us recommit ourselves to an eco-social world that is just. Justice and just reparations for our relations with each other and the planet are doable now in mercy and compassion. Kindness is indeed next to godliness. Let us be kind even as we limp our way to recovering better, justly and peaceably, towards a sustainable and equitable eco-social world.

Lisbon, Portugal
30 June 2023