Message Ethiopian Civil Society Participation was posted by Melaku Geleta , on 7/23/2009 4:25:52 AM.

By the way, from which corner the NGO’s and Government members coming from? I hope they are not coming from different or isolated planet, they are from the society. Let me start with the NGO’s (the civil society) structurally these group are functioning between the Government and the society. Mostly the so called “new issues” get their origin in the community, but the communities (Particularly the Ethiopian community at various levels) have no power or voice because of various reasons (these can be cultural, social economic and political) to air out or reflect in those new issues democratic ways for solutions. You have said that the “ordinary” people, in Ethiopian context the ordinary people are hampered many of their rights, protect them to not bring “new issues” to the public attention. In such understanding the existence of the NGO’s community is very vital to play key advocacy role (mostly focusing on, policies, rules and regulations) working for economic, political, cultural and social issues. The NGO’s role has to be understood from these perspectives, I am not expected to say a lot about the government, the government is an institution working on its predetermined plan and policies, and these may or may not reflect the “ISSUES” of the “ordinary” people. In Ethiopian case, the way these institutions created and formed have got different story, in general, “New issue “ to the community mostly is not the priority issue to the government, because we have a lots of examples can be sited from undemocratic actions taken by the Ethiopian Government in the past 17 years. These actions are contradicting with the needs of the “Ordinary” people. In such conditions, the role of the Civil Society (NGO’s) is paramount important to fill gaps and to reflect on all new issues originally conceived in the society, but unable to go out. It is not up to the ordinary people or citizens to bring out all new issues, rather it is up to the civil society to conduct researches, assess situations and come up with organized issues affecting the community. Next to NGO’s actually governments are responsible if and only if they are democratic governments. These are the dynamics of new “issue means” to the community or the ordinary people.

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