On how to change the world

by Andrés Alsina

There is a Latin expression that describes it: suaviter in modo, fortitier in re, gentle in manner, firm in essence. He studied Latin and ancient Greek, the roots of Western languages, but he would have preferred English and French, to manage better in the world of international organizations and grasp the subtleties of documents and negotiations, as he focusses on his objective. Which is no mean task: to change the world’s prevailing economic policy.

Jens Martens is German, 38 years old, has a nine-year-old daughter who he insists – poor girl – study languages, and plans to move from Bonn to Berlin, because the capital has moved and with it the headquarters and offices of government agencies and multilateral organizations where he does much of his work. In his non-governmental organization, Weed, he is concerned with the United Nations and Europe’s North-South policies. The organization’s name is amusing: in English, it is a noun, but also a verb; it is also slang for marihuana, perhaps in honor of the rebellious youth that is always at the origin of change. Weed undoubtedly also alludes to the word “grass roots,” the heart of a movement. For official purposes, it is the acronym for World Economy, Ecology Development association. Weed’s purpose is to exert pressure in key decision making forums, but with a fundamental commitment never to lose touch with the grass roots of civil society. Perhaps its name is a combination of all those meanings.

The NGO was founded in Germany in 1990 as one of the consequences of the previous decade’s campaign against the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 1988, the IMF and the Bank met in Berlin, and this group and others organized a huge alternative conference that showed a civil society with ideas, intellectual creativeness, and drive.

Until then, there was no NGO in Germany focussing on world economic issues, and Weed filled that void. The NGOs which were working on issues of environment, development, etc. in Germany at the time did so from the perspective of supporting NGOs in the South, and Weed made a fundamental change by concentrating on the financial institutions of the North. It is not the North that should help the South in a paternalistic way, but rather that the two support one another – “and in a very balanced way,” he specifies, “toward a common purpose. We saw that it was really necessary to focus efforts more on the North, and primarily on the prevailing economic policies and organizations like the IMF, WB and UN, and to consider the possibility of models which were alternative to government policies. Moreover, we understood we should not go it alone, but instead be involved in a process of dialogue with NGOs having a similar viewpoint, not only in the South, but especially in South America, in the US, and in Europe.”

One thing is to say something, another to do it. Presenting an alternative policy requires very hard work, and influencing the processes by which policies are approved in multilateral organizations requires the everyday work of preparation, as well as lobbying multilateral and government organizations, discussions and decision making at forums with other NGOs, and making many public statements against globalization.

“It is a combination of tools to work for a single objective. Social Watch is a good example of a combination of different levels of work,” he said at the network’s first assembly in Rome last November (see box). There he spoke infrequently, but precisely, underlining the need to have our positions clear before the dates set for the multilateral meetings, to keep people informed about changes of dates for meetings, and to transmit the finer points of where there is vacillation and where it is possible to exert pressure.

Listening to him, it is clear that Jens Martens has spent his life preparing for this work. He sees his start in the pacifist movement that showed the strength of its wave of demonstrators against the positioning of Pershing 2 missiles in Germany between 1981 and 1983, but it is evident that he reached that moment in history armed with strong ethical values. In any case, he recounts that at that time, he was 19 years old and had to do military service, and as a conscientious objector he did his service with the Protestant Church, working in the area of development aid. “There I became convinced that if you want to change the world you have to commit to working against unjust structures, and to having an influence on economic policies.”

That conclusion came hand in hand with his decision to study economics. He graduated from the University of Berlin with a Master’s Degree in Macroeconomics and another one in Political Science. When he began studying, his interest was already focussed on the international economic situation and multilateral organizations, the role of civil society and, within it, NGOs. He studies reinforced his initial interest. This was in the mid 1980s, and when he finished his studies in 1990, he began working on the preparatory stages of the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment to be held in Rio.

Since then, he has not stopped working to change the world, even if the caution with which he uses language, usual with those who deal in subtleties, keeps him from being categorical. “It is difficult to say if what I do is worth it. I see the problems we face and the worsening social situation, and that makes it necessary to make a commitment to act against it.”

It is true, “we make changes in public awareness, but these are instrumental and slow, very slow; they seem to move at a snail’s pace.” In 1998, he had a sudden burst of hope, with the alliance in the German government of social democrats and environmentalists. Two years later, “it’s not that we’re frustrated, but that we learned that political changes are very slow and always long term. What’s more, I’m not sure that I will see them in my lifetime,” he exaggerates, “but I will continue, insofar as my skills and my strength allow me,” he promises.

It is necessary, yet almost cruel, to insist on the issue. “Sometimes I get tired, yes. Especially after the big UN conferences, from which we expected to see progress. We prepared for two or more years with the expectation of that change, and then we see that almost nothing has changed. Then you think it’s really not worthwhile. But after being back home for two weeks, you see the problems are still there, the same old problems, and that you have to get back to work. Other people are working in the same direction, and it’s the only route, with its ups and downs, even if sometimes it feels like it only has downs. Moreover, it’s clear that the general direction of the road is a positive one.”

The value of being horizontal (box)

The absence of hierarchies in an organization, which for centuries was a concept contrary to the very idea of an organization, today is showing ways of bringing the diverse together. For Jens Martens, Social Watch’s enormous potential is precisely that it is not a hierarchical network, “like traditional NGOs that have a vertical decision making process.”

This does not mean making a case for anarchy, he clarifies, but instead a decision making process from the bottom up, based on commitments of varying intensities: some for a few days, others for an entire year; some with ten person organizations, others with entire networks.

“It has to be stressed that Social Watch is not directed by organizations in the North. It is good that a worldwide network reflects the world’s real situation, which is that over two-thirds of the world lives in the South.” At the Social Watch assembly in Rome, where he made these remarks, there were many more people from the South than from the North, he found to his satisfaction. “This is not the situation at the World Bank, for example.”

Power also has a qualitative expression, and in this respect, Martens points out that “NGOs should not reflect the power of governments. That is the North’s perspective. At Weed we cannot speak for people we do not represent. That’s why it’s good that there is a global structure that does express their views, thereby shrinking the gap, in a balanced way, in terms of ideas and in the decision making process. It’s not that the NGOs from the North have nothing to say, but that what they say will represent 20% of the whole, because the remaining 80% belongs to the organizations from the South.”