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1. The United Nations and Canada:
What Canada has done
and should be doing at the UN
Civil Society, Canada and the United Nations:
Partnering for the future
Julia Sànchez
In 2015, global leaders will meet under the United Nations to establish a new framework
for global development that will succeed the Millennium Development Goals — one that
will hopefully leave no‐one behind, be they in Canada or Cameroon.
On September 25, governments will meet in New York to determine how to get there.
The post‐2015 framework, as it is being called, promises to address some longstanding
issues and challenges, including extreme poverty and hunger, inequality, peace and
conflict, climate change adaptation, and global financial and economic stability. This is an
ambitious agenda, and hopefully it will also spur countries to generate the sort of open,
effective and accountable institutions that are needed both domestically and globally for
the post‐2015 world to succeed.
This past year, the UN organized an extensive series of regional, global and thematic
consultations to help shape and inform the post‐2015 agenda. This has allowed for people
most affected by poverty and exclusion to voice their views and shape global solutions to
ending poverty and reducing inequality.
It is a great start. But is consultation enough?
Core to the success of any post‐2015 framework is the establishment of a global
partnership that will manage its implementation. Governments alone are not up to this
task. Leaving only UN member states to handle implementation will undermine the
democratic vision that is essential to maintaining the kind of sustained support that the
post‐2015 agenda will need.
Civil society – all things not government or private sector – must also be there. A vibrant
and independent civil society has always been an essential prerequisite to effective,
stable and participatory democracies, and this is no less true at the global level.

2. More inclusive global processes are possible.
The 2011 Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), which led to the Global
Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC), provides a concrete
example. The process that led to Busan, the informal Working Group on Aid Effectiveness,
provided a meaningful and sustained space for multi‐stakeholder dialogue and consensus‐
based decision making on the focus of the Busan agenda, the agreed outcomes of the
meeting, and ongoing follow‐up. Throughout the process, representatives from civil
society, parliament, municipalities and the private sector were at the table, negotiating
alongside governments and international institutions. It was the dawn in a new era of
global development cooperation.
This lesson should not be lost on the post‐2015 process. Clearly, the scale and scope of the
challenges we face require a commensurate response from all development actors in
society.
Looking ahead to 2015, there are three things that member states like Canada can
advocate for at the United Nations to ensure sustained participation of civil society to
realize these objectives:
1) Promote an inclusive and sustained multi‐stakeholder process for global development
beyond 2015. This means advocating for the inclusion of civil society organizations in any
future global partnership structure – following the precedent set in Busan. It also means
advocating for space for organizations and people to voice their concerns and demands
with respect to national development plans post‐2015, to influence and shape policy, to
participate in political processes and demand accountability. Representative democracy
must yield to participatory democracy.
2) Ensure that any future global partnership removes the conditions that obstruct civic
and civil society participation in national and global democratic processes. In many
countries, the public domain is a contested, finite space over which governments feel
they should have a monopoly, limiting the benefits that could come from greater
inclusion. As agreed in Busan, Canada must promote a minimum set of rights and political
freedoms (opinion, expression, association and assembly) that provide an enabling
environment for civil society to realize its full potential; and work to ensure that national
governments respect these.
3) Finally, facilitate the conditions that enable greater partnerships and collaboration
between other development actors, including government, at the global level. This
requires opening up political space not just to the private sector, but to other actors, in
particular civil society. After all, human development and progress are best achieved not
through government‐owned policies, but democratically owned ones.
The world needs a truly transformative global agenda in 2015. And one that puts equitable

3. partnership, meaningful participation and shared responsibility at its heart can be just
that. At the UN, Canada must fully support a new framework that is as ambitious as the
challenges the world currently faces.
For further reading:
Tomlinson, Brian (June 2012) “CSOs on the Road from Accra to Busan – CSO Initiative to
Strengthen Development Effectiveness”, BetterAid, Ibon Books: Phillippines.
http://cso‐effectiveness.org/IMG/pdf/csos_on_the_road_from_accra_to_busan_final.pdf
Forum for Democratic Global Governance (Spring 2013) “The Future We Need: Civil
Society Democratizing the United Nations”, http://fimforum.org/custom‐
content/uploads/2013/05/Forum‐proceeding‐report.pdf
Task Team on CSO Development Effectiveness and Enabling Environment (August 2013),
“Enabling a Transformative Multi‐stakeholder Post‐2015 Development Agenda”,
http://www.csopartnership.org/index.php/task‐team‐on‐cso‐de‐and‐the‐ee
OECD (2012) “Partnering with Civil Society: 12 Lessons From DAC Peer Reviews”, OECD
publications: Paris.
http://www.oecd.org/dac/peer‐
reviews/12%20Lessons%20Partnering%20with%20Civil%20Society.pdf
This volume has been compiled and published as a project of the World Federalist Movement – Canada
(www.worldfederalistscanada.org). The views and opinions expressed in each of the articles are the sole
responsibility of the authors. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Unported License. To
order additional printed copies, contact World Federalist Movement – Canada (613 232‐0647, or by email:
wfcnat@web.ca).
Julia Sanchez is the President‐CEO of CCIC (Canadian Council for International Co‐
operation). She came to this position in August 2011 with more than 18 years of
experience in top‐level international development management, including 13 years
working in developing countries. Prior to joining CCIC, she served as Regional and
National Campaigns Director for the Global Campaign for Climate Action
(GCCA/Tcktcktck.org) and prior to that worked for 14 years at the Centre for
International Studies and Cooperation (CECI), one of Canada’s oldest and largest
international development agencies. She held numerous positions during her time with
CECI such as Project Team Leader, Regional Representative for Central America,
Coordinator of Humanitarian Assistance and Reconstruction, and Regional Director for
Asia. She has also worked as a consultant with Oxfam Great Britain, with USAID, and in
partnership with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and a variety of
other donor agencies such as IDB, ADB, UNHCR, etc. Julia completed a double major in
Political Science and Economics at McGill University (1985) and returned to McGill for an
MA in Economics (1996), after doing several years of development work in Bolivia. Her
specialization is in development and international economics.