Regional NGOs strive for a new unity


With the annual Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in Niue next month, a formula many a Pacific development worker has noted will go through its usual motions: if you want to see funding happen for your great ideas, sell them to the highest political leader you can find. Get their commitment on paper. And, having raised that outcomes declaration or commitment with donor partners and funding/technical agencies, get connected to NGOs to make those promises happen.

The irony of needing governments to endorse an idea into policy before it can get the buy in of donors to support enactment by those at the other end of the leadership spectrum is not new to Pacific NGOs. But lately they have been taking a closer look at their newly-acquired and potentially powerful ticket to engage more closely with governments. The ticket is more commonly called the Pacific Plan.

The 2005 Pacific Plan blueprint for regional development is propped up with political endorsement from our Forum Leaders and bursting at the seams with commitments to one global or regional platform or another.

There is something in the Pacific Plan for everyone, and with a new refocused commitment to the ability of NGOs to make change happen, the spotlight has swung onto the effectiveness and regionalism of those leading Pacific development from the traditional fringes.

That customary spot for NGOs has also taken on a front-row look in recent years, thanks to the acknowledgement from Pacific leadership that NGOs are valuable partners in development.

PIFS Officer Nainasa Whippy, presenting on the Pacific Plan and regional consultative process with NGOs at an inaugural regional AIDS Alliance meeting in Suva recently describes the now three-year old Pacific Plan as a ‘ticket’ from Forum Leaders to civil society acknowledging their knowledge, expertise and grassroot connections serving regional development.

As such, she says, it’s “good to know where this (ticket) can seat you. Is it business class or economy class, and at which forums can this ticket be used?”

Biggest benefit: Posing that question raises questions at both ends of the relationship. For Whippy, as officer in post linking civil society to the Forum Leaders, it has been about the pros and cons of the Pacific CSO Forum. Biggest benefit: it is a prelude event to the annual Pacific Leaders Forum which looks at the agenda items and delivers a statement to the leaders based around that agenda.

Biggest minus: NGOs would like to shape agenda items, not just respond to them.

To its credit, and given its policy mandate, PIFS has edged towards other processes of engagement with civil society which would help agenda-shaping, whilst repeating its call that any CSO should feel welcome to the direct ear, by appointment, of the PIFS Secretary-General.

With the mixed success of the annual CSO forum, it is fine-tuning two key platforms for consultation with Pacific NGOs. One platform, known as PRNGO, offers Suva-based Pacific regional NGOs direct consultation with the PIFS leader, twice a year.

The other platform is the PIFS Policy on Consultative Status and Accreditation which would allow NGOs into the Forum milieu and more direct lobbying and engagement with leaders.

Both platforms have their share of challenges. Non-Suva based regional organisations feel excluded from the PRNGO process and can’t drop in for an informal chat with the Suva-based PIFS number one, or their PIFS connection, Whippy. And the list of requirements for application for consultative status and accreditation to the forum is so bureaucratic that even PRNGO organisations are applying as a group—which again levels another layer of exclusion over non-Suva based organisations.

At the other end of the question comes the crux at the centre of the relationship debate: that of getting the house of NGO regionalism in order. The event at which Whippy presented on NGO regionalism was coming to grips with the very same challenges identified by a PRNGO workshop just a few weeks before.

Delegates talked about how a regional alliance on HIV and AIDS should move on from its first albeit troubled phase, and assist their own issues of organisation, credibility, unity, capacity building, funding and resources. Throughout the discussions, key issues kept repeating—the need to share knowledge and information networking and to develop mutual trust and respect with government stakeholders working in the same field.

This loops back to the question of a more fruitful engagement between NGOs and government leaders for a better Pacific future. Recent approaches by the Commonwealth Foundation to partner with PRNGO and other regional bodies such as PIAF may bode well for process issues.

Vice-chair and board member Drew Havea of Tonga confirmed there has been talk of approaching Forum leaders to set up a Forum Foundation, which would work side by side with the Forum Secretariat in the same way the Commonwealth Foundation exists to resource and integrate the work of civil society towards achieving priorities of the Commonwealth.

With the Pacific Plan in place, a Pacific Foundation which does the same would probably go a long way towards meeting the challenges which Whippy in her lone post at PIFS has helped to document. A Pacific Foundation for NGOs?

But at this stage the vision of a Pacific Foundation to help achieve the vision of the Pacific Plan is nothing more—and nothing less—than a great idea.