2006/06/08

Social Watch Coordinator at the Sherpa-Stakeholder meeting

Social Watch

Mr. Roberto Bissio, Social Watch Coordinator (Uruguay) participated at the Sherpa-Stakeholder meeting -within the process of "Civil G8 2006"- held in Moscow last May 18-19.

Mr. Roberto Bissio, Social Watch Coordinator (Uruguay).

I was very pleased that I had possibility to contact my Russian colleagues. They are well-informed, they have critical approach and the willingness to deeply understand the civil society problems.
Many of my colleagues consider it necessary to create a global confederation of non-governmental organizations. I think we have to discuss and analyze this suggestion first, because many factors depend on the particularities of a country. It is very important for NGOs to keep the diversity of opinions. How can the confederation suggest a single position, a single point of view? From this point of view the idea of an umbrella organization involving several NGOs sounds more reasonable to me.
Anyhow, we need basic standards on which such umbrella organizations can be built. But to do this we need mechanisms elaborated and corrected by NGOs themselves, not proposed by the government or who ever it can be.
The meeting of NGOs with the Sherpas was interesting; but unfortunately, we had many issues to discuss and had no possibility to analyze them deeply. One more flaw was that we had only one person representing Africa and no one NGO from Asia.
But generally, I repeat, the meeting with the Sherpas was very interesting and it was a dialogue. It’s a good sign.

See the news:
http://en.civilg8.ru/documents/1756.php