II. Introduction

 The World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen in 1995, was the largest meeting of heads of state to date, surpassed only recently by the Millennium Assembly.

It resulted in a set of ten strong commitments to social and economic development, however these were not matched by resources or equally strong mechanisms for implementation and overview. 

 Within the UN, the Commission for Social Development (CSD) was identified as the key political body to review government implementation of the Social Summit agreements.  The CSD Secretariat was subsequently transferred from Vienna to New York, its membership expanded and meetings convened on an annual basis instead of every two years.  This transition process however met with many challenges including the absence of a Secretariat director for more than a year after the WSSD.  Furthermore, the Commission, which traditionally focused on welfare issues had to radically change its mandate and scope of work to encompass the far more ambitious goal of eradicating poverty agreed to at the Social Summit.

 From the NGO perspective, unlike other UN conferences that were “owned” by well recognized social movements (ex. the environmental movement mobilized around the Earth Summit, the human rights movement for Vienna and the women’s movement for the Population and Women’s conferences), the Social Summit lacked a strong constituency of civil society organizations.  NGOs active in the Development Caucus process of the Social Summit discussed the need to fill this vacuum by establishing a system to monitor their governments implementation of the Social Summit commitments particularly the historic commitment to eradicate poverty as an “ethical, social, political and economic imperative of humankind.”  Social Watch was thus created with this objective.  

 Over the past five years Social Watch has linked up with existing coalitions and networks and has expanded to include NGOs present in more than 50 countries.  Through independent NGO assessments of government performance, guided by innovative statistical tools to measure progress towards the established commitments, Social Watch has not only influenced the CSD’s follow-up process but also key international development debates.  For example, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund explicitly reference the Social Summit targets in their mandates that guide their new policies.  Social Summit commitments have also become the basis for other international development organizations including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

 Five years after Copenhagen, the anti-poverty struggle is now at the center of the international development debate.  Poverty reduction targets have been set by the Millenium Assembly, the World Trade Organization maintains that the proposed

“Millenium Round” of trade negotiations is essential for improving the lot of the least developed countries, and the Bretton Woods institutions claim to have transformed their structural adjustment approach into poverty reduction strategies.  In addition, new and vibrant coalitions such as Jubilee and ATTAC have emerged proposing debt cancellation and control of financial flows as examples of policy changes that would help reduce poverty.  NGOs and people’s movements in the North are mobilizing around development and North-South issues, Southern governments are developing coalitions in a way unknown since the “New Economic Order” debate of the mid-seventies and globalization is at the heart of a heated discussion across the world.

 The national and international environments that Social Watch seeks to influence in the coming years present new challenges and opportunities from those prevailing when it was created in 1995.   Social Watch therefore embarked on its own five-year review to re-evaluate its initial raison d’être and related activities as a way of analyzing the past and preparing for its future role.

 We were delighted when approached by Social Watch to conduct this evaluation due to the unique nature and complexity of the Social Watch initiative.  Having worked personally and professionally with women’s and development NGOs at the local and international levels, we care deeply about the issues undertaken by Social Watch and how such an initiative can be strengthened.  In an increasingly global environment, where income and wealth disparities widen and multilateral organizations influence national development policies, the critical role of Social Watch cannot be underestimated.