[governance] individuals

[Meryem Marzouki]

Le 25 avr. 06 à 12:17, Vittorio Bertola a écrit :

> Sure, but then, in which sense a NGO that involves 10 or 1000  
> people is
> more "representative" of those millions people than individual
> activists?

They are not "representative", but the number of people they  
represent (i.e. their members, since they cannot claim to represent  
anyone beyond their membership) may be "significant", which is quite  
different from being "representative" (i.e. of CS).

> By definition, civil society groups don't represent people -
> that is what governments do, at least those who get elected after  
> huge,
> costly and well defined democratic processes.

Agree.

> Civil society groups
> advocate ideas that many people have, which is a very different thing.
> You can't weigh civil society, you can only listen to it because it  
> says
> smart things and also puts them in practice.

No, that's not enough to make the difference (leaving aside the fact  
that these things may not be that smart, depending on the NGO/CS  
group:)). Individuals may also say smart things and put them into  
practice. The difference is elsewhere: NGOs/groups have - normally -  
a history of positions, actions, acts, etc. Their future positions,  
actions, acts, etc. are (normally) forseeable, according to their  
history, their principles, their objectives. And they are (normally)  
accountable.
This is not the case with individuals, as Danny already explained.

> That's my aim as well. That's why I am overly sensitive to this  
> matter:
> I don't want to be told again "sorry, you can't participate because
> you're not a member of an NGO", as for part of the Summit.

That's not the point in this discussion. No one wants to exclude  
anyone here, and we're not discussing whether this caucus should have  
only NGOs as membership.

> I'm not doing
> this as a job, I'm doing this for passion in my spare time.

Believe it or not, this is also my case for all my NGO activities,  
like many other people. We can discuss "professionalized NGOs", which  
would be a nice (and rather bloody:)) topic for this caucus, but  
that's not the point here.
And there are other ways of being "paid" than earning a salary.  
Pleasure/passion might be another one, but there are many others ways  
of gratifications: an additional section on a CV, becoming part of CS  
jetset (as someone said in the early WSIS time), having a drink with  
Kofi Annan at a UN cocktail, who knows...: people have different  
perversions:)). That's simply to say that even doing it as a job or  
not doesn't necessarily make the difference.

> So I think that this caucus must be very clear on whether it wants  
> to be
> the participation venue for NGOs, or the venue both for NGOs and  
> for us
> weird people from the "Internet community".

What is this "Internet community"? Why would its supposed members be  
the only individuals allowed in this caucus? Why wouldn't any  
interested, or concerned if you prefer, individual (a.k.a. citizen)  
participate?
In summary, is this distinction of "Internet community members" among  
all individuals introducing a kind of legitimacy, or even, if I might  
dare, a kind of representativeness?
[rhetorically ironic or ironically rhetoric questions, I should  
better make this clear:))]

Cheers,
Meryem
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