Acting Together for a Just World

Author(s): Camilo Villa
Publication date: Wednesday 05 July 2006

Few days ago took place in Glasgow (UK) the 6th Civicus World Assembly. It was a rich and diverse encounter of social actors from all over the world. ?Acting Together for a Just World? continued to be the core theme of the encounter. Positive outcomes where shared in programmatic, financial and organisational aspects. The words of Kumi Naidoo, CIVICUS Secretary General are illuminating about the key role that Civicus is playing in the development and strength of civil society.
 

"The overall theme of the World Assembly remains unchanged since we last met in Botswana: Acting Together for A Just World. Global, national and local developments over the last couple of years all suggest that this theme remains timely today and will be for many years to come. The main ideas in the overall theme for the Assembly are ?acting together? and ?justice.? At the heart of these ideas is the valuing of human life and working together. The gross violations of human rights that stunned the world community on 11 September 2001, the tragic war in Iraq, and the continuing conflicts in many countries around the world that unnecessarily claim human life, must force us to think about the value we place on human life and how much that shapes what we do, how we think and how we relate to each other. The world is consumed by by ?terror? and the so-called ?war against terrorism? which itself has become terrifying; violence against women has assumed gigantic proportions, millions of people are displaced by war, and then there is the quiet violence of poverty and hunger. Today for many people around the world the real weapon of mass destruction is dehumanizing poverty.
The second piece of this is acting together. Nelson Mandela has said: ?If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.? The South African experience teaches us well, that working together and acting together requires courage and the ability to rise above our own pettiness. Even within civil society we have much to do to ensure we work effectively together. We need to do much more to ensure that, for example, trade unions and NGOs find common cause, we have much to do to ensure that secular and religious civil society unite around those things we agree on and agree to disagree in so far as those issues we have fundamental differences around. While civil society organizations are justified in criticizing governments for often failing to achieve coherence across line departments the NGO community ironically reflects often the same parochialism and territorialism that make it difficult for us to achieve maximum impact in our quest for a just world."  Get the full presentation

Related links:

http://www.ipsterraviva.net/tv/civicus/viewstory.asp?idnews=653