12 - Civil Society Participation in APEC

Summary

Introduction

This chapter is designed to examine APEC's experience and current practices with civil society participation in various fora, to assess the situation in APEC compared with some other multilateral organizations and to offer some suggestions for strengthening such participation in the work of APEC.

Background

The term “civil society” is not well known or accepted in APEC circles. Other terminologies are more commonly used, such as “non-member participation”, “involvement of outside groups”, “interaction with the community”, and “the private sector”. For the purposes of this chapter, civil society includes those organizations and individuals not employed directly by governments and who do not work in the business/commercial private sector. Inter alia, this would include academic and research organizations, advocacy groups such as women's and environmental associations, labour unions and other workers’ bodies, religious and community groups, and international agencies not directly connected to any government, and so forth.

Two sectors — the academic and business sectors — are already well represented within APEC, through two main bodies, namely, the APEC Study Centres Consortium and the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). ABAC, in particular, has a privileged place in APEC's structure as an Official Observer, by being able to meet annually with Leaders and to make reports and interact frequently with other senior levels of the organization, such as Ministerial Meetings and Senior Officials’ Meetings (SOM). While the Study Centres do not enjoy a similar level of access, this collective of academics in each member economy holds an annual meeting within the framework of APEC's schedule of meetings and has credibility among member economies.

However, the set of organizations generally referred to as “civil society” has not enjoyed either the formal access to ABAC, nor anything like the overall credibility of the APEC Study Centres (ASC). Their participation in APEC activities has been governed by a document called the “Consolidated Guidelines on Non-Member Participation in APEC Working Group Activities.” These guidelines are restrictive, timeconsuming, and cumbersome to administer, and the overall message they convey has been that APEC is reluctant to allow outside organizations to get involved.