In 1994, civil society leaders and organisations from around the world joined together to form a global network dedicated to strengthening citizen empowerment and civil society. Strengthening civil society requires the conscious, deliberate, central involvement of individuals and their organisations. CIVICUS works to emphasise the role of citizens in the public sphere while working to strengthen partnerships among the sectors of society: civil society, the state and the market.

CIVICUS holds its World Assembly on a biannual basis, where members, founders, and other interested parties gather to discuss current and relevant topics of civil society worldwide. CIVICUS currently has over 600 member organisations on 5 continents. Previous World Assemblies of CIVICUS were held in: Mexico City, Mexico (1995), Budapest, Hungary (1997), Manila, The Philippines (1999), Vancouver, Canada (2001).

Origin of the CIVICUS Name

From the inception of the work of the Organizing Committee, the word alliance was the general term used to describe what was being discussed. Although the Organizing Committee had determined that they wanted a name sufficiently descriptive such as World Alliance for Citizen Participation, they felt that there needed to be a simpler name and one that was likely to contain significance to people around the World. Moreover, the committee wanted a universal term that would reflect active citizenship.

The Committee therefore poured over the various possibilities and came up with two words that seemed to accomplish what they unanimously wanted to convey. These words were civicus and civitas. The latter, however, was already being used by a service organization active in several countries. This lead the group to focus on the Latin term for civic, civicus, which essentially means "of a city...of citizens...or citizenship."

In order to confirm that the word would in fact mean what they had intended it to mean and that it was appropriate for their purposes, the Organizing Committee turned to a Latin scholar at Georgetown University. The assignment was then turned over to a firm who ran a check on the name to be certain that it did not contain negative connotations in any language. This report came back with full clearance.

The Organizing Committee thought that the matter was settled when one person raised the question, not in the form of a challenge, whether there were any gender connotations associated with the fact that the word ended in us. The Organizing Committee brought the name back to the Latin scholar who assured them that, although in some words the ending us does connote masculine gender, in this case, as in many, it does not. The Committee then discussed whether or not the possible misunderstanding of the word was a sufficient enough reason to start all over again.

The group concluded that, because such an interpretation would not be accurate and that it could be pointed out to any concerned person that the term is not gender specific, they should proceed with the name. Henceforth, the organization was referred to as CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.