Free market principles have failed the one sixth of the world’s population that continue to live in abject poverty. The idea that economic growth will somehow magically lift those individuals out from their poverty has proven a failure.
Every day, an average of 27000 children die from lack of food and access to basic medical care estimates the United Nations Children Fund. The ensuing global financial crisis will only increase those numbers.
It is time for the global civil society to take a greater and more pro-active role in the shape of the world order. This means that current government organisations and meetings need to be more open and receptive to ideas, values, institutions, organisations, networks, and individuals located between the family, the state, and the market and operating beyond the confines of national societies, polities, and economies.
In the meantime, these civil societies should also engage in some existential questioning. A good place to start is the suggestions found in the 2009 Global Civil Society Handbook:
* Is global civil society in practice dominated by the ideas and values of rich countries purveyed by international NGOs and other institutions organised and funded in the global north?
* Are the prevailing conceptions of poverty shaped by those who have never experienced it?
* Worse still, is global civil society a mechanism for legitimating extremes of wealth and poverty, for “naturalising” the continued existence of poverty?
* Is it an expression of the hegemony of rich states? Does it represent a form of “governmentality”, which manages inequality on behalf the rich?
* Alternatively, does it offer a potential platform for the voices of the poor?
