DPI/NGO Fifty-fourth Annual Conference

PM Meeting

DPI/NGO CONFERENCE PANEL DISCUSSES VOLUNTEERISM FROM FOUR NATIONAL PERSPECIVES

Also Considers Volunteerism In Relation to HIV/AIDS

      Volunteerism -- from the Arab, Swedish, Russian and Ugandan perspectives --was considered this afternoon by the fifty-fourth annual DPI/NGO Conference as it took up the question of diversity in volunteerism during a plenary panel on the first afternoon of its three-day session.  The DPI/NGO Conference, composed of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in consultation with the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI), also considered the question of volunteerism as it related to HIV/AIDS.

In introductory comments, panel Moderator Ahmad Kamal, President of the Ambassador's Club at the United Nations, said the United Nations was set up as an intergovernmental organization in 1945.  Many people, however, felt that governments did not respond sufficiently to their aspirations, which explained the phenomenal growth of civil society organizations and volunteerism that often better represented the “We the Peoples” of the United Nations Charter.

Panelist Fadwa El Guindi, Professor of Anthropology, University of Southern California, addressed the issue of volunteerism from the perspective of its roots in Arabic society.  She said volunteerism was built into the Islamic imagination.   Examples included Muslim consultative councils and their secular counterparts for combating poverty and underdevelopment.  She called for a shift in focus, in those struggles, away from formal structures and organizations and onto an investigation of local practices, cultural ideas and people's activities.  Much NGO activity in the Middle East also concerned refugees, the liberation of people from colonial occupation and issues of human rights violations.

In Sweden, the welfare State was built on foundations laid by popular movements, said Sonja Fransson, Member of the Swedish Parliament.  Though volunteer organizations remained strongly supported by the Government, few wanted volunteer activities to replace the responsibilities of the public sector.  Charity was not an alternative to public service in Sweden.  The common view was that volunteer activities should complement public services, to increase the level of service for some persons and to identify new problems and solutions.

In the former Soviet Union, according to Roustem Khairov, Director of the Foundation for Survival and Development of Humanity in Moscow, public organizations had been part of the State structure in a very different way.  In the Russian Federation, voluntary public organizations, NGOs and foundations had cropped up.  The country's 250,000 NGOs could be theoretically divided into the

categories of professional volunteer movements, charity volunteer movements, "protesting" and "creative" volunteer movements.  The region's volunteer groups needed United Nations help to promote the free society that could support volunteerism.

Experience in Uganda showed that families, communities, and civil society were not acting decisively against HIV/AIDS, said Rubaramira Ruranga, Coordinator for the National Guidance and Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.  The Government's poor management of resources, non-inclusive policy-making, corruption and repression did not allow civil society volunteerism to be effective.  The situation could change if civil society united to ensure a holistic and equitable AIDS policy which included much greater participation of people living with AIDS.  He invited the NGO section of the DPI to create a body devoted to such enhanced participation.

In a question-and-answer interchange, the anelists answered questions on a range of issues related to their field of expertise.  Those concerned issues of volunteerism in the Middle East, the role of civil society in government and the role of governments, in approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa.

The Conference is expected to meet again tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. to continue considering the question of diversity in volunteerism.

Background

The fifty-fourth Annual Conference of the Department of Public Information and Non-Governmental Organizations resumed its session this afternoon with a panel discussion entitled “The Diversity of Volunteerism:  Perspectives from Around the World.”

The three-day event is expected to include opening and closing sessions, five plenary panels and 30 NGO Midday Workshops.  The theme of this year’s conference is “NGOs Today:  Diversity of the Volunteer Experience,” to coincide with celebration of this year as the International Year of Volunteers.

Statements

AHMAD KAMAL, moderator of the panel and President of the Ambassador’s Club at the United Nations, said the United Nations was set up as an intergovernmental organization in 1945, but many people felt that governments did not respond totally to their aspirations.  That factor explained the phenomenal growth of civil society organizations and the corresponding volunteerism.   He outlined some of the roles of the United Nations volunteers.  The Conference showed, however, that volunteerism extended far beyond the United Nations, and the purpose of the Conference was to coordinate efforts to achieve common goals.  He saluted the participants assembled, who were representatives of the “We the Peoples” of the United Nations Charter.

Statements by Panellists

OMAR CHOWDHURY (Bangladesh), Executive Director of the Centre for Development Services, was unable to attend the Conference and sent a statement made available to participants.

FADWA EL GUINDI, Professor of Anthropology, University of Southern California, addressed the issue of volunteerism from the perspective of its roots in Arabo-Islamic society as seen from the bottom-up perspective.  She said humans had engaged in volunteerism for over 40,000 years as a way to form interdependent networks of reciprocal obligations and exchanges based on trust.  Anthropology had shown that a society suffered if it did not reinforce social values such as interdependence, trust and innovative reinventing of its tradition to guide the people.  When group sentiments and the moral glue that held them collapsed, human society died.  Volunteerism was a universal, multifaceted way of holding society together.

Volunteerism was built into the Islamic imagination, she continued.   Examples of community-based groups for social betterment included Muslim consultative councils and their secular counterparts for combating poverty and underdevelopment.  Those examples called for a shift in focus away from formal structures and organizations and onto an investigation of local practices, cultural ideas and people's activities.  She presented a number of case study models of bottom-up situations in which people bettered their societies through local group action, saying an increasingly important activity by organized NGO groups in the Middle East concerned refugees, the liberation of people from colonial occupation and issues of human rights violations.  The diversity and volunteerism that were the focus of the present conference called for the inclusion of the traditional, non-formal volunteer activities inherent to the range of human societies.

SONJA FRANSSON, Member of the Swedish Parliament, said that in Sweden there was a tradition of forming associations to solve common problems.  Last year, around 60 per cent of all people in that country between 16 and 74 years of age said they engaged in volunteer activities independently or with local groups, many of which belonged to larger networks.  The wide variety of such activities ranged from training youths in sports clubs to assisting an individual’s elderly parents or other close relatives.  The reasons for engaging in those activities varied widely as well, from a personal wish to help others to a strong involvement in the goals of a particular organization.

She said that Sweden, as a welfare State, was to a large extent built on foundations laid by popular movements which had developed, for example, its national health and unemployment insurance systems.  Links between civil organizations and the Parliament remained strong, and state and municipal government generously supported the voluntary activities of those organizations.  More public money, in fact, was spent on support to such organizations than on higher education.  Few however, would like volunteer activities to replace responsibilities of the public sector.  Charity was not an alternative to public service in Sweden.  The common view was that volunteer activities should complement public services, to increase the level of service for some persons as well as to identify new needs and new solutions.  

Recent decades had seen the growth of a broad spectrum of immigrant and other “identity” organizations, as well as single-issue organizations and village citizen committees for the support of local facilities which were not commercially viable.  In the years to come, new forms of interaction between the public sector and civil organization volunteerism would have to develop.  Projects towards that goal had recently been initiated by the National Board of Health and Welfare.   Voluntary activities made the link between people stronger and made life more meaningful.

ROUSTEM KHAIROV, Executive Director of the International Public Foundation for Survival and Development of Humanity in Moscow, addressed the issue of volunteer movements in the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).  He gave a brief description of the present situation, an analysis of problems and a view of prospects in the context of a brief social and economic description of the region, since the character of volunteer movements in the region could not be understood without that, he said.  The brief description of volunteer movements and the building of a civil society in Russia were interwoven.  A framework formula for United Nations and volunteer movements in the region should encompass that fact.

Overall, he said, Russia was the largest country in the world and it had tremendous natural resources.  It had undergone vast social changes in the latter part of the twentieth century.  Until the 1980s, public organizations had been part of the State structure.  Since then, voluntary public organizations, NGOs and foundations had cropped up.  The country's 250,000 NGOs could be theoretically divided into the categories of professional volunteer movements, charity volunteer movements, "protesting" and "creative" volunteer movements.

Yet the central figure of a civil society was a free and independent individual, he said.  A "volunteer movement" was the basis of that civil society.  The region's volunteer groups needed the help of the United Nations, not so much for financial support but to promote the United Nations moral authority for creating the free society supporting volunteerism.  Further, the groups needed information assistance to reinforce the moral authority of the NGOs already set up by an NGO task force.

RUBARAMIRA RURANGA, Coordinator of the National Guidance and Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda, said that the answer to the problem of HIV/AIDS, which was ravaging Africa, must come from the people through civil society, which implied volunteerism at all levels.  NGOs, however, were not necessarily supportive to civil society, being many times involved in the repressive acts of some governments through support of propaganda campaigns.  In addition, volunteers were often not well educated about rights and liberties, and NGOs remained subservient to governments because of funding needs. 

In Uganda, he said, civil society had developed many of the effective practices for fighting HIV/AIDS.  The Government only got involved at a later stage, in order to gain political and funding advantages.  The resulting Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) had been used for such purposes.  Its statutes showed ignorance of what HIV/AIDS was, addressing only the symptoms without noting the causes.  The UAC had been successful politically, however, and Uganda was known as a leader in the fight against the epidemic.  But there was neither an AIDS policy nor a fund to help those already infected in that country.  Testing remained a privilege of the affluent; a positive diagnosis was a death sentence.  The UAC did not include people living with AIDS -- the persons with the right kind of experience -- in its activities.

Families, communities, and civil society were not acting decisively against HIV/AIDS, he said, because of poor management of available resources, government policy-making which civil society could not affect, as well as government corruption and repression.  People with AIDS, who were the real volunteers for the problem, were merely brought in to rubber-stamp what governments and their selfish cohorts had decided.  The situation must change:  civil society must unite and become movers to ensure that justice, equity, rights, gender and popular participation were put in the right perspective.  A holistic approach and treatment of all sick were fundamental to any AIDS policy.  At the current meeting, workable solutions must be developed to allow volunteers to work effectively for the benefit of marginalized humanity.  He invited the NGO section of the Department of Public Information to create a body devoted to greater involvement of people with AIDS in effecting a response against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Questions and Answers

In response to questions, Dr. GUINDI, Professor of Anthropology, said there was an irony to the issue of volunteerism.  In many countries where poor people were expected to volunteer, notions of volunteerism were based on greed, egotism and profit.  In the United States, for example, she said that young people were told to volunteer because it was good for them, which absolved others from responsibilities.

In the Middle East, she said resistance from below would express itself differently when all remnants of colonialism were gone.  Jewish, Muslim and Christian Arabs had maintained peace there until European influence had entered.  A similar problem of interference was seen with regard to information about volunteers among Arab women.  There was not a lack of information but rather, local groups sprang up and became successful.  Then more sophisticated groups came in and took over, telling the locals to do things differently -- until the group could not support the new demands and it collapsed.  Outsiders then interpreted the situation in terms of lacking resources.

In response to questions about volunteerism in Sweden, Ms. FRANSSON spoke of the role of the women’s group in the Labour Party, which had insisted on fifty-fifty representation between men and women in Parliament.  In addition, even in a State without much corruption and many social services, the continued participation of NGOs and volunteers was essential to maintain trust between all sectors and to adequately deal with such newly-identified problems as the integration of immigrants and disabled persons into the mainstream of society.

Mr. KHAIROV, in response to questions about the Russian Federation, said that President Vladimir Putin’s recent call for funding from within Russia was not threatening.  If civil society, business and the Government were working together there could be good results.  What was significant was that the President said something positive about NGOs, which opened the door of opportunity for them.  The essential question in any government role was honesty.  The most effective role the United Nations could play in Russia, for the benefit of NGOs, was to promote their most successful activities and to promote the ideals of volunteerism itself.

Responding to questions about volunteerism and the fight against HIV/AIDS, Mr. RURANGA said that volunteers from the West could best assist volunteers in Africa by liaising with groups of people living with HIV/AIDS.  The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, through its country programme advisers, was the best method of identifying such groups.  Unfortunately, there had been much misdirection of AIDS monies.  At present, the United Nations system, though not perfect in this regard, was the best hope for helping civil society monitor such funds.

Answering questions about civil society and governments, the Moderator,

Mr. KAMAL, said civil society had to convince governments to listen to the voice of their peoples.  Asked what the recent conference on race said about hidden agendas, he said there were many equally important agendas at the conference, and the lesson was that a conference agenda must be narrow.  If it was too wide, it came down to a focus on the least common denominator.  Another equally important lesson was that all must participate and none walk out.

Was there a leadership crisis among governments, and would civil society heroes arise to lead? he was asked.  Civil society brought forth government leaders, he answered.  The government leader was the one produced by civil society, the one the society deserved.  In response to another question, he said every society found its own mechanism to deliver volunteer effort, whether in Sweden or Russia.  Diversity was the wealth of the human society.

Speaking on HIV/AIDS, Mr. RURUNGA said African governments had been slow to curb the epidemic because they had considered it an individual phenonemon.  Those

who contracted it were seen as deserving it.  Government leaders had not anticipated the disease would affect the economy.  In addition, outsiders had considered Africans to lack the infrastructure to deal with distributing medicine.  Education was changing the approach to HIV/AIDS in Africa.  The epidemic was now seen as a social concern, not a personal one.  More outside pressure needed to be put on governments to support the necessary changes.

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