Voices from the Southern Civil Societies: interplay of national and global contexts in the performance of civil society organisations in the South

This study was carried out on behalf of the Department for International Development Cooperation in the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The report looks at: the current realities of Southern civil societieshow to promote this through development cooperation funds.Case study research was conducted in seven countries selected on the basis of the Finnish government’s current development cooperation relationships. Two of the case countries are in Africa (Kenya and Namibia); three in Asia (Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam); and two in Latin America (Mexico and Nicaragua).The study focused on the following five key questions:have the respective organisations experienced changes in their capabilities to act in their society during the last decade?how do they identify the factors (such as changes in the economic and political structures and international linkages), which have affected their capabilities to act?has the international networking of CSOs somehow influenced their activities in their own societies?what kind of future visions do the organisations have concerning their own aims, working methods, conditions and working environment?how do they see the possibilities for development cooperation in improving their capabilities to act in their societies?The general conclusions on the five questions the study set out to answer are that:the general trend has seen the strengthening of the role of CSOs during the last decade. Moreover, as CSOs traditionally have been working especially in the area of service provision, their willingness and capabilities to enter more political space has increased during the last ten yearsthere have been drastic inner political changes taking place in the respective societies during the last twelve yearsachieving a clear legal status within the societies will improve the role of CSOsThe role of CSOs has also been redefined in the context of the global trend of a declining role of the stateduring the 1990s international donor policies started to emphasise civil society as an important actor in development and accordingly increased the amount of development cooperation funds channelled through civil society organisationsduring the last decade, inner political transformations, globalisation processes and the shift in donor policies in favour of CSOs have influenced the CSOs’ capabilities to actinternational networking has given CSOs more information concerning the global issues and structures, helped them to understand different contexts, and given them new ideas, practices and ways to do things. But there are many CSOs that still lack a wider understanding about their realities, activities and achievements. International networking could help them in widening their perspectivesmany see the future as shifting from answering to immediate needs towards more long-term advocacy and policy work, including, in some cases, cooperation with political parties. Future vision includes strengthening their institutional capacities so that they could move from merely project implementers to at least semi-autonomous organisations with legitimacy both in the eyes of their constituency and the society in generalFinally, the study provides a series of recommendations for international development cooperation in relation to four topics:institutional capacity of civil society organisationsenvironment in which the civil society organisations are working; communication between civil society organisations and donors; andinstitutional capacity of donorsIt suggests that development cooperation funds should support internal processes of civil society organisations and strengthen their existence in their countries. This means, that development cooperation activities should not be institutionalised, but used as temporal support for very long and complicated processes of constructing viable democratic societies in the Southern countries. Hence, donors should be very careful not to over fund CSOs. They should avoid the danger of creating new conflicts among CSOs or between them and the state and private sector.Additionally, donors should avoid establishing new CSOs that suit their project ideals or expectations and should have no local demands whatsoever. The legitimacy of the CSOs come from the relevancy of their work, which can best be measured by analysing properly their influence in the society and the acceptance they have among the local people in the regions they work [adapted from authors]Main report is online. Country case studies are due to be made onlne 2002/2003