Happy Near Year.
I want to speak briefly about the role that civil society plays in building and strengthening democracy.
In a democracy, civil society groups have respect for the law, the rights of individuals and the rights of other groups to express their interests and opinions. Part of what the word 'civil' implies is tolerance and the accommodation of pluralism and diversity.
What can the independent, voluntary, law-abiding, tolerant and pluralistic organisations of civil society do to build and maintain democracy?
The first and most basic role of civil society is to limit and control the power of the state. Of course, any democracy needs a well-functioning state. But when a country is emerging from decades of dictatorship, it also needs to find ways to check, monitor, and restrain the power of political leaders and state officials.
Civil society actors should watch how state officials use their powers. They should raise public concern about any abuse of power.
They should lobby for access to information and rules and institutions to control corruption. This constitutes a second important function of civil society: to expose the corrupt conduct of public officials and lobby for good governance reforms. Even where anti-corruption laws and bodies exist, they cannot function effectively without the active support and participation of civil society.
A third function of civil society is to promote public participation. Civil society can do this by educating people about their rights and obligations as democratic citizens and help develop citizens’ skills to work with one another to solve common problems, to debate public issues, and express their views.
Fourth, civil society organisations can help to develop the other values of democratic life: tolerance, moderation, compromise, and respect for opposing points of view. Without this deeper culture of accommodation, democracy cannot be stable. These values cannot simply be taught; they must also be experienced through practice.
Fifth, civil society can help to develop programmes for democratic civic education in the schools and colleges. Constitution of Kenya 2010 and its democratic tenets need to inform and help revise the curricula, rewrite the textbooks, and retrain teachers in order to educate young people about the crimes of the past and teach them the principles and values of democracy. This is too important a task to leave only to officials in the education ministry. Civil society must be involved as a constructive partner and advocate for democracy and human rights training.
Sixth, civil society is an arena for the expression of diverse interests and one role for civil society is to lobby for the needs and concerns of their members, as women, students, farmers, environmentalists, trade unionists, lawyers, doctors and so on.
Civil society and interest groups can present their views to parliament and county assemblies, by contacting individual members and testifying before committees. They can also establish dialogue with relevant government ministries and agencies. And it is not only the resourceful and well organised who can have their voices heard. Over time, groups that have historically been oppressed and confined to the margins of society can organize to assert their rights and defend their interests as well.
A seventh way civil society can strengthen democracy is to provide new forms of interest and solidarity. Democracy cannot be stable if people only associate with others of the same religion or identity. When people of different identities come together on the basis of their common interests as women, artists, doctors, students, workers, farmers, lawyers, human rights activists, environmentalists, and so on, civic life becomes richer, more complex, and more tolerant.
Eighth, civil society can provide a training ground for future political leaders. Civil society groups can help to identify and train new types of leaders who have dealt with important public issues and can be recruited to run for political office at all levels and to serve in different levels. Experience from other countries shows that civil society is a particularly important arena from which to recruit and train future women leaders.
Ninth, civil society can help to inform the public about important public issues. This is not only the role of the mass media, but of civil society which can provide forums for debating public policies and disseminating information about issues that affect the interests of different groups, or of society at large.
Tenth, civil society organisations can play an important role in mediating and helping to resolve conflict. Civil society has developed formal programmes and training of trainers to relieve political and ethnic conflict and teach groups to solve their disputes through bargaining and accommodation.
Finally, I stress that civil society is not simply in tension with the state. Because civil society is independent of the state doesn’t mean that it must always criticise and oppose the state. In fact, by making the state at all levels more accountable, responsive, inclusive, effective - and hence more legitimate - a vigorous civil society strengthens citizens’ respect for the state and promotes their positive engagement with it.
A democratic state cannot be stable unless it is effective and legitimate, with the respect and support of its citizens. Civil society is a check, a monitor, but also a vital partner in the quest for this kind of positive relationship between the democratic state and its citizens.
The writer is the executive director, International Center for Policy and Conflict