|
||||||||||||
GPF List-Serve
August 2 - 6, 1999
Happy August from GPF!
We are pleased that GPF's report on NGOs and the UN has attracted such a wide readership and so many positive responses worldwide. News of the report has gone out to dozens of NGO networks and we continue to receive many requests every day for print and electronic copies. Thousands of readers have also accessed the report on our web site. A number of government delegations have been in touch to tell us they welcome the report and have studied it carefully. Several have visited our office or set up meetings with us. From these conversations, it is clear that the report has begun to define the policy framework and set new standards for what UN-NGO relations should be.
There have already been a number of positive policy results. At its June meeting, the intergovernmental Committee on NGOs decided to recommend that the UN strengthen the main Secretariat office that works with NGOs. If this office can obtain a larger budget and better staff, perhaps it can overcome its reputation as a frustrating, bureaucratic barrier to NGO work. In another positive development, Assistant Secretary General Gillian Sorensen has held meetings with NGO leaders to discuss grievances. Security Chief Michael McCann has promised to be more cooperative and to ease some of the worst security procedures. Apparently, the UN is also installing new earpieces in the galleries of UN meeting halls so that NGOs can at long last follow the translation of speeches in all languages. These are small, tentative and largely symbolic gestures, but they are nonetheless very welcome.
GPF Director Jim Paul participated in some of the recent round of meetings. On Tuesday, he met with Chief McCann to discuss new security procedures that will ensure NGO access to open meetings of the Security Council. Jim also attended a meeting on Friday with Secretary General Kofi Annan in the SG's personal conference room on the 38th Floor of the Secretariat Building. Six NGO representatives were present, along with ASG Sorensen and Sorensen senior staffer Mitch Werner. The NGO group went to the meeting with high hopes that a new era in UN-NGO relations might begin. Instead, they found a Secretary General who was cordial but cool and clearly wary of making substantial commitments for the solution of NGO grievances. The Secretary General did, however, agree to at least two important policy changes. First, he made a commitment to open up the Optical Disk System document database and make it free to NGOs (the UN had been "penny wise and pound foolish" in imposing a charge for access, he said). Second, he said that his staff was studying ways to ease security restrictions on NGO representatives at the UN with regular yearly passes (as opposed to temporary visitors).
Meanwhile, controversy continues on how the UN should enforce standards of behavior on NGOs. The debate centers on the case of Christian Solidarity International (CSI), an NGO that faces the possible loss of its accreditation because of its breach of rules at the Commission on Human Rights. But thought most human rights NGOs are not enthusiastic about CSI's policies and behavior, they have nonetheless demanded that CSI be granted full due-process and that it not be punished for purely political reasons by irate governments. The case has generated a great deal of activity, statements and maneuvers, so we have set up a special page on the GPF web site especially for materials about it. In September there will probably be further action on the case, so stay tuned. Right-wing Christian groups in the United States are likely to make the case a cause celebre.
Fourteen months after President Clinton submitted the nomination of Richard Holbrooke as US Permanent Representative to the UN, the Senate finally voted for confirmation 81-16. Holbrooke, who has been serving simultaneously as Vice-Chairman of the Credit Suisse First Boston investment bank and as an unofficial foreign policy advisor to the White House, will doubtless very quickly take up his post in the US Mission. The popular Ambassador Peter Burleigh, US charge d'affaires, will be packing his bags for another assignment. The UN community awaits Holbrooke, who has a reputation as a brilliant but very strong-willed personality, with anticipation and certain amount of trepitude. Bill Richardson and Peter Burleigh gave the UN a two-year plesant interlude after Madeleine Albright's ferocious reign as the medusa of Turtle Bay. What will Holbrooke be like and how will he relate to NGOs? Our questions will soon be answered.
On Friday, July 31, Jim Paul was guest on a nation-wide US conservative radio talk show -- "The Washington Connection" with host Cliff Kincade. The hour-long program, aired live at 7:00 PM, discussed the volatile issue of Global Taxes. The issue is currently a hot topic in Washington because of a short paragraph in the recently-issued UN Human Development Report proposing a global tax on email traffic. HDR authors saw the proposal as a way to help fund internet connectivity for poor people and poor countries. Naturally, US conservatives went ballistic. Kincade found GPF's huge web site section on global taxes and evidently decided that WE were a convenient enemy to target. Jim enjoyed the experience, though, and felt he had an unusually good opportunity to explain the need for global taxes to a huge, grassroots listenership. Since Kincaid mentioned the GPF home page address several times on the show, tens of thousands of additional people visited the site during the week.
Also during the week, the NGO Working Group on the Security Council continued its regular meetings. On Tuesday, August 3rd, we met with Mr. Bacre W. Ndiaye, Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He spoke at length about the integration of human rights into the UN's peace and development efforts, particularly those of direct concern to the Security Council.
GPF web weavers continued to add a number of new graphs, tables and charts to the GPF site. Our summer team, led by Ben Holt, added eleven new graphs on a wide range of subjects -- one on mortality in armed conflicts, one on world trade, two on inequality of income distribution, two on carbon and gas emissions, one on urbanization, one on the spread of technologies, and three other graphs on important issues of social andeconomic policy. This initiative allows a new perspective on trends and issues that we regularly follow. Ben has also created a new button on the home page that leads to a "Tables and Charts" page, where visitors can access all this data in one convenient place.
We intensified our work to prepare for the "Millennium Mobilization" -- an international initiative in support of better financing for the UN and the United Nations System. As part of the Mobilization, GPF will again organize a day of events on October 23rd, the eve of UN Day. For the past three years, we have organized vigils on this day, but for 1999 we encourage our worldwide partners to organize local events of all kinds -- teach-ins, public meetings, lobbying, flamboyant public relations gestures, leafleting campaigns, meetings with public officials, and more. Any reader who wants to organize an event in their community should contact Olivia Tecosky in the GPF office right away. Send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call (212) 557-3161. We hope to hear from you!
This Friday we bid farewell to Christian Kaufholz, a talented and hard-working summer intern from Columbia University who has had special responsibility for our Security Council program. Among his many other contributions to GPF this summer, he helped us perfect the art of scanning and posting photo images to our site. Visitors will notice his handiwork in the many clear and beautiful photos that have now begun to appear on the site.
For the next two weeks, GPF's pace will ease, as summer interns depart and vacations beckon. The UN will be in low gear also. We hear that the Secretary General will be hiking in a rural setting, far from the tempests of Turtle Bay. UN dining rooms and cafeterias are already exceptionally quiet (the main cafeteria is being remodeled). But we will continue to keep you posted, as we prepare for the intense action that begins here every September.
