UN Secretary-General opening the 2018 session
While the active participation of Non-Governmental Organisations, (NGOs) is fully guaranteed in the global space, that of NGOs from the global South has remained problematic. Against that background, the active presence of a number of NGOs from the global South at the on-going session of the 2018 General Assembly of the United Nations has registered. Two of most immediately known among them are Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, (CISLAC) from Nigeria and ACCORD, the conflict management think tank from South Africa.
It is perhaps the fresh signal of the activism of NGOs from the global South with the capacity to frame the issues in a way that would find global purchase at fora such as the UN in contrast to the present situation where much of Africa’s participation is routine and quantitative rather than qualitative. As such, they most often go there to consume ideas that have been filtered elsewhere and reflect the cultural imagination of those who did the filtering, no matter how cosmopolitan they might wish to be.
In the case of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), picture below shows, (L-R) Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, its Executive Director & Head of Transparency International-Nigeria, Mr. Muyiwa Onifade, representative of Professor Tijjani Muhammed Bande who is the Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations and Senator Olanrewaju Adeyemi Tajuosho, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Health. It was at CISLAC’s side event during the UNGA in New York which discussed Multi-Stakeholder Approach in Promoting Accountability and Investments in the Social Development Goals, (SDGs). The SDGs remains a key issue in CISLAC’s work across the world.
According to a video from ACCORD, Mrs Graça Machel addressed the United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations in New Your, USA, on the occasion of the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit on 24 September 2018. Mrs Machel asked global leaders to put aside their interests and take real action towards the creation of peace, highlighting the experience of ACCORD working in Africa over the past twenty-five years. The lessons gained from ACCORD have been used to establish ACCORD’s new initiative, Global Peace, she said.
