A/HRC/35/28 6. Cultivating alliances 77. In our increasingly interconnected world, no single association or sector can work in isolation. Values such as solidarity and cooperative relationships (in addition to countervailing ones) characterize civil society’s interactions with other actors within and outside of a sector, with like-minded groups and even with those that have disparate ideas. These interactions help to create unlikely allies, to encourage the kinds of debate and discourse that define civil society as a public space for engaging with ideas and to develop a reservoir of strategies to use in accomplishing goals. 78. Civil society constantly uses alliances and collaboration to address complex problems that benefit from the involvement of multiple stakeholders; it also typically has experience of bringing marginalized and excluded voices and interests to the table. Despite the fact that civil society, governments and the private sector may have conflicting objectives, collaboration is increasingly necessary because of the nature of the interconnected world in which we live and the fact that we might find solutions to society’s problems by harnessing each sector’s advantages. 79. A number of coalitions and alliances have brought together groups within civil society to achieve a common goal, despite their different or competing interests. For example, the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize laureates — the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet — embody the role that civil society can play in strengthening a flagging democratization process in a fragmented society. The Quartet’s success hinged on its willingness to work with a broad array of actors towards compromise and negotiation. They achieved success despite internal differences, even rivalries, among the groups representing trade unionists, employers, lawyers and human rights activists, as well as political and ideological differences characterizing the transition to democracy. 72 80. Similarly, collegiality and trust rather than competition characterized the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ collaboration with more than 100 media partners to analyse and then simultaneously publish the “Panama Papers” — a large leak of financial and legal records that exposed a system of secret offshore companies that enable crime, corruption and wrong-doing, largely hidden from the public eye. 73 Alliances across different disciplines within civil society, such as collaboration between human rights activists and the arts sector, encourage the making of films, theatre and images to convey, in compelling ways, human rights messages to the public.74 81. Partnerships between civil society and government have led to positive development outcomes in many countries, particularly at the local level. For example, civil society in the State of Palestine predates political structures such as the Palestinian National Authority, but is increasingly partnering with local authorities to address persistent socioeconomic problems, including by pioneering ideas such as cooperative housing. 75 A strategic partnership between the popular participation committee of the Minas Gerais state parliament in Brazil and a movement of waste pickers, the State Waste and Citizenship Forum, resulted in a solid waste policy that recognizes and explicitly includes the role of informal waste pickers in the state’s waste management efforts.76 82. A successful collaboration between SEWA Bank, a microfinance institution operated by the Self Employed Women’s Association, and the Gujarat Mahila Housing Trust, a women-run sister organization that addresses issues relating to the living conditions of poor self-employed women, is credited with broadening the impact of the bank’s credit assistance programme beyond simply providing housing to individuals. The Trust supports the bank’s housing work by bringing members’ voices into urban planning processes, supporting local mobilization and providing technical assistance, and works with 72 73 74 75 76 18 See www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2015/press.html. See https://panamapapers.icij.org/blog/20160425-data-tech-team-ICIJ.html. See contribution of Irish Council for Civil Liberties. Contribution from We Effect (State of Palestine). Contribution from Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing.