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LATIN AMERICA: Measuring Civil Society By Its Own Yardstick

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 22 2007 (IPS) - Legal reforms, manuals of good practice, codes of ethics and schools for activists are some of the tools that organised civil society in Latin America wants in order to improve its transparency and legitimacy.

Experts from nine of the region’s countries and from Spain are studying the degree of transparency and accountability exhibited by this sector, “as a response to external demands and internal responsibilities,” Anabel Cruz, director of the Uruguayan non-governmental Communication and Development Institute (ICD) which is coordinating the research, told IPS.

“It’s no longer enough to proclaim altruistic goals; it’s necessary to demonstrate legitimacy and improve accountability,” she said.

>From Montevideo, Cruz is coordinating the project on “Accountability and transparency of civil society organisations in Latin America” which is being carried out in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay and Spain, with support from the U.S. Kellogg Foundation.

The so-called “third sector” (philanthropy, civil society and not-for-profit organisations) in these countries has been under scrutiny since August 2006, to establish how well non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operate in terms of transparency and accountability and to determine the instruments they use and their limitations and needs.

Large numbers of people and groups have been consulted in the course of the research, including social organisations, donors, aid agencies, public employees and beneficiaries, by means of surveys and both short and in-depth interviews. A total of over 500 opinions were gathered.

Organised civil society covers a vast range of interests, from the environment, feminism and women’s issues, human rights, social work, and children’s welfare to communication, fomenting development, and so on. NGOs also vary widely in size and in terms of the resources at their disposal.

Preliminary results of the studies will be presented at a workshop on May 24, moderated by Cruz, in Glasgow, Scotland, during the Seventh World Assembly of Civicus – the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, to be held May 23-27.

“Civil society organisations are of growing importance in the region, and this has led to their being subject to greater scrutiny,” said Cruz. “Aspects of their work are often criticised, and there are those who cast doubts on the extent to which they are representative (of the people they claim to be working for), sometimes to discredit them, and sometimes with positive intentions.”

“Then there are ethical considerations. If we are organisations working for the public good and financed (partly) by public funds, we have a moral obligation to be accountable for our work. We needn’t be defensive about it, it’s just a matter of taking the lead in an issue that concerns us,” she said.

One result of the research, which is still ongoing in several countries, was the finding that “people of all backgrounds are clamouring for transparency,” and the conviction that being accountable means not only justifying the way money has been spent, but also measuring and demonstrating the impact social activism has had in terms of fulfilling the mission of each organisation.

For example, “a more appropriate legal framework is seen to be necessary in many countries,” she said.

In Argentina, the study carried out by the Asociación de Graduados en Organizaciones y Dirección Institucional (AGODI) found instances where lack of resources hampered the accountability demanded by all those involved, one of its authors, Pablo Marsal, told IPS.

“The third sector’s relationship with the state is rather like a pendulum in motion; it is never smooth and seamless, and that affects transparency,” he said.

In the 1990s, the Argentine state delegated social functions to private and non-governmental agents, but it is now playing a stronger role, although the overall effort lacks coordination, he said.

To improve accountability, the study proposes a new legal framework that provides for NGO activity, manuals of good practice, codes of ethics, tools for self-evaluation and resources for training activists and social facilitators.

According to a preview of the report on Brazil, presented in Montevideo in April, there was “deep dissatisfaction” among activists over formal and bureaucratic accountability requirements, which place a heavy burden on small organisations.

In Bolivia, accountability usually takes the form of an assembly, a mechanism characteristic of direct democracy. However, the researchers found “many cases of corruption” in financial management, and “scant” disciplinary action when money is misappropriated.

The Fundación Soles reported a lack of studies on financial transparency of NGOs in Chile, partly because the law does not oblige them to publish their accounts, which must only be made available to the Justice Ministry, Adolfo Castillo told IPS.

This legal vacuum is found “throughout society and the state in Chile, and NGOs reflect this pattern of a longstanding lack of transparency,” said Castillo, a member of the Foundation.

Recently, however, a “gradual change” has occurred, with NGOs “beginning to provide the public with information about their income and expenditure,” he said.

In Uruguay accountability takes many forms, the most common one being self-evaluation. But interviewees expressed the need for new formats concentrating on the beneficiaries of third sector efforts, and emphasising evaluation of the results of the work done.

According to Cruz, it is impossible to put a precise figure on the number of organisations active in the region. “In Uruguay alone, we estimated a long while ago that there were some 3,000, in Argentina 100,000, and 7,000 in Honduras,” she said. But new studies in Honduras indicate that this number of organisations “could easily be multiplied by 10.”

The lack of precision is not due so much to faulty or chaotic registration, as to the breadth of the concept of not-for-profit organisations. “The situation changes very quickly, and civil society organisations include grassroots organisations, trade unions, NGOs and social movements,” she said.

For the same reason, it is difficult to quantify the funds handled by the third sector in Latin America. “There is information available by country, but it isn’t always up-to-date,” she said. Again, there are hardly any cases in which the value of volunteer work, which contributes “an immense amount” to social development, is quantified in any way.

Researchers at the Fundación Acceso in Costa Rica found an awareness of the need to improve transparency in order to bolster “legitimacy, credibility, sustainability, and social impact.”

However, the lack of technical and financial resources make transparency mechanisms “feeble or ineffective,” they said. Accountability methods are as varied as the groups involved in the NGOs, and the most usual format is reports.

The study puts forward an idea found to be widespread in Costa Rica and other countries: the need to improve transparency without sacrificing time and resources dedicated to the essential goals of NGOs. It also proposes creating a training school to build capacity among civil society leaders.

The study included Bolivia’s Fundación Jubileo, the Rede de Informações para o Terceiro Setor in Brazil, the Centro Hondureño de Promoción para el Desarrollo Comunitario, Sumando in Paraguay, the Dominican Republic’s Alianza ONG, and Spain’s Observatorio del Tercer Sector.