Challenges to face

One challenge refers to starting off the direct process of disseminating the Charter in the Philippines. Filipino NGOs are in general wary of anything that is foreign. We are always scrutinizing who is behind an initiative, why, what are their vested interests? This is specially because of our country’s dependent relationship with the US, which used to be a colonizer of the Philippines. We are wary that we are again being fed something that will entrench foreign post-colonization.

So there had to be a confidence-building stage in the promotion of the Charter. I have had good working relationships with the partners I worked with in relation to the Charter. But still, a process of democratic discussions needs to be undertaken on the Charter, to introduce the Charter to these people in both direct and indirect ways. There is a need to translate in action what we have been asserting: that the Charter is both a document in-the-making that can function as a Third Pillar as well as an instrument to promote responsible behavior.

Second challenge is forming the Charter committee in the Philippines. The Charter worked with a number of partner organizations during the first year, but each partner organization working on the Charter and/or the notion of responsibility separately. And inasmuch as there are already members of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World in the Philippines who have participated in international activities of the Alliance, it is only proper to locate these members and involve them in the Charter committee. The challenge is how to convene these groups of individual members of the Alliance, sit down with them and if possible, make collective plans. It would be best to gather in one table both the Alliance members and the partner organizations which participated in the Charter activities since January 2004. Now, after a year of working with a number of organizations, is the right time to get people together, and form a Philippine committee.