On March 11 and 12, 2013 in Sao Paulo, Brazil FIM-Forum for Democratic Global Governance (FIM) convened The Future We Need: Civil Society Democratizing the United Nations an international forum to take stock of Civil Society (CS)-United Nations (UN) relations. Through practitioner case studies, brief presentations, facilitated dialogue and group work, 36 forum participants shared their knowledge and experience in civil society-UN relations and set forth ideas on how civil society can deepen engagement with the UN. These activities highlighted a number of issues and themes, including  the role of the corporate sphere in influencing global governance, the local – global disconnect, civil society legitimacy and credibility, the tension between representative and participatory democracy, standards and tools, and, skills, task and leadership in global governance. Forum participants demonstrated the will to move forward with their engagement with UN bodies.
Read the forum report

FIM’s Building Bridges (BB) programme, established in 2006, is increasing its outreach and capacity building in Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) regions, devolving coordination of some BB activities from FIM’s secretariat in Montréal, to South Asia Partnership-Pakistan (SAP-PK) and CONGAD in Senegal. Building Bridges’ SAP-PK base has convened two events so far this year, in Dhaka, Bangladesh January 3^rd and a South Asia regional meeting in Lahore April 4-5th.

Building on the BB project’s first Bangladesh event in 2007, the January in-country meeting was designed to familiarize the 20 Bangladesh-based participants with the OIC’s current policy priorities, identify strategic Civil Society entry points to the OIC, reflect on ways to strengthen CS-OIC engagement, develop a plan to expand Building Bridges at the national level, and identify research and knowledge mobilization priorities for the project.

A South Asian Consultation of Building Bridges: Civil Society in OIC Countries Engaging with the Multilateral Sphere was convened by SAP-PK April 4-5, 2013. This regional meeting included 23 participants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Participants were briefed on the Building Bridges project’s history and current status engaging with the OIC and received presentations on Building Bridges activities in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Participants identified the need: to learn more about the OIC and for technical monitoring of its funded activities at the national level, to promote the status of women and mainstream gender throughout all OIC bodies, for the multilateral to transition from a charity- to a rights-based approach, and to build stronger relations with in-country OIC officials. Participants also identified the following entry points for CSOs for engagement with the OIC and other multilaterals: disseminating basic information on Building Bridges and the OIC in local languages, engaging political parties and parliamentarians and the media in information sharing, continuing to orient CSOs on the OIC and its priorities, and expand Building Bridges to the Middle East and North Africa.