Tribune. From countries of the North to countries of the South, civil society organizations (CSOs) increasingly assume public service missions. But they assume them in a permanent uncertainty, which weakens access to social rights for the populations concerned and, thereby, accentuates inequalities.
At a time when the health crisis is already producing its social effects, when climate justice becomes an immediate imperative, it is more than ever necessary to rethink the role of CSOs in public action and to enshrine this reform in law.
We live in fact on the idea, coming from three centuries of history, that the responsibility of the State is to protect the rights of the individual. The institutional architecture of democratic societies delimits the respective spaces of the State and of civil society, enshrines them in law and organizes their interactions. It thus expresses some of the essential terms of the social contract, in particular the fact that the State is in charge of meeting primary social needs – food, education or health – and ensuring the functioning of basic social services.
But those terms have changed. Since the conservative revolution of the Reagan-Thatcher years and the hegemony conquered by neoliberal thought, the state has played this social role less and less, or plays it more difficult. He plays it less and less in the North and nothing says that the The state’s current “return” to the health crisis will be more durable than it was after the 2008 crisis.
It plays it with great difficulty in the South, in particular because of the structural weaknesses resulting from the colonial past.
Access to healthcare, food aid
North and South describe two distinct worlds, but in North and South we see CSOs go where the State no longer goes and take charge of a part of the protective missions which previously fell under public authority.
They increasingly assume these missions in terms of access to health care, food aid, assistance with schooling or protection of the most vulnerable populations; but without considering the conditions that would allow them to guarantee the quality and continuity of the services they provide; without also rethinking their status and their place alongside the public authorities. Most often, they work in permanent uncertainty which weakens their action and, at the same time, weakens access to rights for the populations concerned.
You have 68.17% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.