Social Watch

"Frustrating the hopes of peoples and nations all around the globe will certainly not help make the world a more secure place for our children," concludes the Social Watch Report 2004, summarizing the findings of citizen coalitions in 50 countries, poor and rich, about what they see as main obstacles to human security."

Social Watch is an international network informed by national citizens' groups aiming at following up the fulfillment of internationally agreed commitments on poverty eradication and equality. These national groups report, through the national Social Watch report, on the progress - or regression - towards these commitments and goals.

The Social Watch groups, organized on an ad hoc basis, have a focal point in each country that is responsible for promoting the initiative; submitting a national report for the yearly publication; undertaking lobbying initiatives before the national authorities to hold them accountable for the policies in place regarding the agreed commitments; promoting a dialogue about the national social development priorities and developing an active inclusive strategy to bring other groups into the national group.
The international secretariat of Social Watch is hosted by the Third World Institute in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The organization of NGOs participation took a new shape in the Social Summit process. The new electronic communication technology could ensure that any NGO in even the remotest area of the world could have access to any information of what was happening in New York or anywhere else. Moreover, the appointment by Novib on request of El Taller of an ITeM representative as an information broker in New York for the Social Summit ensured that a truly interactive process could begin between the UN and NGOs. Consequentially NGOs were no longer predominantly consumers of information from the Summit, but they could also send information back. They became active players in the process and hence could influence the outcome.
The foundation of Social Watch is thus a reflection of a new way in which NGOs relate to multilateral organizations in general and to the United Nations in particular. Its creation is a clear reflection of a period in which electronic communications began to be used as new technological tools for advocacy and mobilization by NGOs, particularly in the South. The creation of Social Watch stems from an 'obvious' lacuna in which there were hardly any mechanisms to commit governments to implementing social development policies. Social Watch originates from the need to monitor national obligations to economic and social rights within the context of an international enabling environment for social development.

The success of Social Watch has to be measured in terms of its ability to allow national NGOs and national coalitions to engage in a debate with their government on social policy, without exclusion and in an open and transparent manner. The success of Social Watch has to be measured in terms of its ability to engage local organizations with experience in social development in the national debate. These would be measured in the context of the obligations of the international community to create an enabling environment for social development. If Social Watch has made representations on this basis of engagement with the UN follow up mechanisms of the Social Summit, it certainly has achieved the ambitious objectives set out by NGOs in the beginning of the preparations to the Social Summit in the summer of 1993. Social Watch was established as an enabling process that would work towards substantive goals. It is first and foremost the quality of this process that must be assessed in any examination of its success.