Reflection 2

This week, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) convened in New York to debate the world's most pressing issues. Aside from dialogue surrounding the crisis in the Sahel region in Burkina Faso, the debate focused on various situations in the Middle East. Discussion ranged from familiar topics such as the crisis in Syria (with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon aiming a not-so-subtle disapproving statement at Russia's and China's continuous blocks on UNSC resolutions for UN intervention in the embattled country) to those less orthodox, such as the reaction to the Innocence of Muslims film in the Muslim World. President Obama addressed the UNGA about this issue.


In the beginning of his address to the Genreal Assembly, the President provided a context for the slaying of US ambassador Chris Stevens: "As America’s representative, he [Stevens] helped the Libyan people as they coped with violent conflict, cared for the wounded, and crafted a vision for the future in which the rights of all Libyans would be respected. And after the revolution, he supported the birth of a new democracy, as Libyans held elections, and built new institutions, and began to move forward after decades of dictatorship."  Here, Obama was referring to Chris Stevens' (and, as an extension, the United States') continuous efforts around the world to aid fledgling democracies in creating and sustaining  healthy civil societies. 

In our reading this week, Spruk stated there was no real definition for civil society (and then proceeded to list numerous examples) because scholars and political scientists disagree on whether civil society can exist completely outside of the state or whether civil society needs to work within the state structure in order to have legitimacy.  What Spruk did not touch on, however, was whether civil society can be grown organically while still being mostly aided from outside.  I think that as long as outside institutions (such as the US Dept of State or USAID) are sensitive to local practices regarding citizen participation and other traditions, growth of civil society can still be considered organic.  We saw the creation of civil society occur at the behest of Zionist institutions in Great Britain and United States at the onset of the settlement of Israel. However, Israeli civil society is no less legitimate today because of its history.  What do you think? Is civil society something that can only be grown from the inside?