Civil society: Serving diverse needs, not narrow interests.

This week marked 60 years since 250,000 people marched on Washington, D.C. During the march Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech, where he called for peaceful protest and mobilization behind the civil rights movement, with “the fierce urgency of now … to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

Reflecting on my own career, I haven’t been a very loud activist, but rather an advocate for civic space. I did march against the Iraq war in 2003 together with 1.5 million people when I lived in London, and have joined numerous demonstrations in professional and private capacity since. My main focus, though, working in large government bureaucracies and international organizations, as well as for NGOs, has been to carve out space for civil society, and work towards respectful partnerships. I have tried hard (but admittedly failed) in all of my governance and other roles to ensure that decision-making does not happen solely among and is not only driven by those with money and narrow interests.

My experience to date is that civil society is vast and hugely heterogeneous. It reflects the diversity and needs of people across all levels: regions, nations, sub-national and local levels. Governments and international organizations for this reason struggle to engage with civil society in its breadth and diversity. To date, it has been easier to handpick a few friendly, well-funded individuals in INGOs (international non-governmental organizations) to engage with, calling this “CSO engagement”. Or more concerning, to engage with organizations or networks that are funded to pursue vested interests aligned with those of international organization, government or private sector, in the name of “independent civil society” (so-called astroturfing). In my career, I have tried to support civil society to self-organize (this often requires funding support for process), self-select representation, and speak out.

Having sat on different sides of the table (as civil society, government, and funder), I have seen best practices of respectful and worst cases of tokenistic and disrespectful engagement. I have in my international work learned what shrinking civic space means in practice, when entire organizations are labelled terrorist, staff are threatened physically, or not allowed to operate in countries. I have sadly heard large funders threaten and arm-twist “stupid, ignorant” civil society organizations to correct their (critical) reports. I have seen the results of time-consuming and costly consultations literally been binned and ignored. In my experience, Nordic countries and the German government have some of the most respectful, transparent working relationships with civil society (albeit a long way to go in influencing decision-making, when compared to private sector lobbyists and funders, at least in Germany). Those who found or fund entire organizations to “demand” and then “applause” are definitely the worst, as they undermine the entire concept of independent civic space.

As someone who was educated and grew up in a privileged “elite system”, I sometimes wonder where my desire to protect civic space and engage with civil society comes from. Maybe it stems from my Finnish upbringing and the value I place on egalitarian inclusion and transparency. No one is “better” than others, and everyone’s “voice” and vote should count. Perhaps it’s from my education in an international environment, where I grew up taking diversity and its value for granted.

Looking back, and circling back to the march on Washington, and King’s “I have a dream” speech, I think I’ve been most influenced by my education and the concept of justice. During my first degree, John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” (1971) and his concept of the veil of ignorance blew my mind. In its essence, it is so simple, stating that a person who must decide on society’s rules and economic structures should do so without knowing what position he or she will occupy in that society in order to make just decisions. Managing billions of dollars, sitting in downtown Washington, D.C., who are you to determine what a person in rural Cambodia really needs, and how? During my second master’s, I read (and subsequently started a PhD on) Amartya Sen’s book “The Idea of Justice” (2009), which defines justice more broadly than as distribution and fairness to include also freedoms and functioning institutions. Who am I, a (now former) bureaucrat working in the German government, to define the conditions and rules whereby someone in South Africa can obtain a Covid-19 vaccine?

This is what civil society and civic space mean to me. Civil society is not something you direct or select. It requires civic space, to organize and mobilize. It requires respectful relationships to have difficult, honest discussions to reflect and serve diverse demands, based on the diversity of needs. It requires meaningful engagement. It is the exact opposite of narrow interests that serve only the few.

Real diversity and inclusion in global health

A few years ago, I was having dinner during the UN General Assembly with an inspiring global health colleague who is not afraid to speak his mind, and has a lot of experience and great lessons to share. I was feeling quite constrained in my job intellectually, and realized I was craving for some new thinking and thought leadership in global health. I asked my colleague to share suggestions of who is thinking outside of the box in our sector, who is not afraid to speak out, and who is truly interested in moving the needle on impact.

I have been following the work of these people and many more since, and the freedom of thought, research, and discussion I saw has been one of my inspirations to start writing (and thinking) again. I started asking myself what I really think and know about the issues I am working on, what my principles are, and where I personally think I can add value on – and have the space and support to do so.

I have throughout my career focused on diversity and inclusion in global health. Most of my positions have aimed to include the voices of unheard but affected populations into the global health discussion: children, adolescents, women, stigmatized people, and people who are discriminated against or ignored because they lack the financial means, citizenship or job to have their voices heard.

But I have also felt uncomfortable at times in how organizations or organizers of events (willingly or subconsciously) select representatives from these populations, or in the worst case dictate what they should say or how they should behave. In practice, this means that many such representatives have not been able to speak on behalf of the group they are there to represent, and their participation has been more tokenistic than real.

I have also at times represented such populations. I have been invited to speak because I am a woman, a working mother, or when I worked in civil society. I was supposed to represent people who are discriminated against and left out. I have tried to do so, by using a platform to highlight their challenges and issues. But have I been the right representative to speak on their behalf – with all of my own privileges, such as education, citizenship, geographic location, financial means, and my race? Or have I just been the token woman, CSO representative, etc? I admit I have often felt uncomfortable because of these questions I have asked myself.

I have seen these same challenges in my work throughout the years, for example in how many organizations deal with CSOs. It’s tick-the-box tokenism, and in the worst case instrumentalization. Both sides (the organization and representatives) bear some responsibility on how these relationships are used and abused, and it’s important also to call out that many representatives of underrepresented groups (women, CSOs, etc) greatly benefit from the access, visibility and perks they are given through their representation. The relationship easily becomes unhealthily symbiotic.

Because of these discomforts, I together with Ngozi Erondu and Madhu Pai (two great thought leaders in global health who are unafraid to speak their minds also on difficult issues) co-wrote an article in Think Global Health, Silenced Voices in Global Health.

We pose questions and discuss issues such as: What does real diversity mean and look like, and what will it take to get to real inclusion in global health? How can transparency help? And why do we need more critical self-reflection?

I am aware this is a difficult discussion to have. Many people really are underrepresented and discriminated again, stigmatization and discrimination are very, very real – as we can see even more poignantly again these days thanks to Covid19, and what is happening in the United States.

But we also need to make sure we are truly supporting those people who are discriminated against, not just pushing ourselves into the limelight because we share some attribute with other people. And we need to be transparent about who we really are, and what we can – or cannot – represent.