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NGOs Are Upsetting Things at the UN- NGOs - Global policy Forum NGOs Are Upsetting Things at the UN
Jean-Claude Buhrer
(translated by Aline Baillat and Jason Garred, Global Policy Forum)
Le Monde
August 17, 2000
Because an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) allowed a Chechen representative to speak in April at the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, it may be deprived of its UN consultative status. Last year, a Swiss NGO, Christian Solidarity International, was expelled after a request by Sudan, because it invited the Southern Sudanese rebel chief John Garang, to speak in the same forum.
This time, it is the Transnational Radical Party (TRP) that is facing a procedure of suspension or even exclusion, initiated by Moscow and with the active support of allies as varied as China, Cuba and Sudan. Originally, Russia accused the TRP of transgressing UN rules and principles by giving the floor to an emissary of the Chechen “separatists and terrorists”. In fact, the accused NGO simply gave up five minutes of its speaking time at the Commission on Human Rights to the President of the Chechen Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, an institution created by Moscow following the 1997 Russo-Chechen agreement. This brief testimony was apparently intolerable to the Russian authorities, who demanded the exclusion of the TRP from ECOSOC, the Economic and Social Council of the UN, on which NGOs depend. Now, the future of the TRP depends on ECOSOC, which should make a final ruling on the issue in late September. In the meantime the case of the TRP and other NGOs suspected of ‘inappropriate behavior’ or any other infringement, real or supposed, of the rules has been extensively discussed by the nineteen member states in charge of NGOs’ good conduct at the UN. As usual, complaints come from states whose repeated infringements of human rights in their own countries are often questioned at the Commission.
Cuba and China, leading the fight, have also complained about Freedom House, a US civil liberties organization. Havana reproached Freedom House for having accredited a jurist who is also a member of an organization close to anti-Castro circles and not recognized by the UN. China, in its turn, not only accused Freedom House of inviting “anti-Chinese elements” to a round table, but also complained that the UN Secretariat “amazingly, procured its translation services for the discussion.”
Following in China’s footsteps, the representative of Sudan accused the American NGO of daring to pretend in its last report that Cuba, China and Sudan were not democratic countries. The Russian delegate wondered on which criteria Freedom House based such a judgment. Countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and even India joined this hard core in condemning the Transnational Radical Party, each of these states having its own complaints. Not satisfied with accusing the TRP of allowing a “terrorist organization” to speak, Russia did not hesitate to suspect its involvement in international drug trafficking by recalling the TRP’s position in favor of soft drug liberalization.
The TRP denounced the “absurdity” of such accusations in vain; the NGO Committee recommended a three-year suspension of its consultative status in late July. But after various delegations expressed serious reservations about this decision, the TRP obtained a delay until September 16 so as to make its case further before ECOSOC would make its decision. The Russian representative maintained, however, that “ the TRP’s suspension should serve to warn all other NGOs to comply with the principles of Resolution 1996/ 31 as well as the UN Charter.”
More than a simple point of procedure, this debate raises more generally the question of the role of NGOs and the status of human rights issues at the UN. The behavior of certain NGOs is sometimes questionable and they know they have a minimum of unavoidable responsibilities, but certainly not at the expense of freedom of expression. However, NGOs upset things by their very nature. Their knowledge as fieldworkers puts them in the best position to alert public opinion to realities that the authorities would often rather ignore. That is why often undemocratic governments increasingly want to keep them under control or even to muzzle them.
Limiting the Debate
These pressures became more serious as NGOs affirmed themselves as the main voice drawing attention to internal conflicts. Direct witnesses of such conflicts have been heard at the Commission and Sub-Commission on Human Rights since the 1980s. During a special session devoted to former Yugoslavia in 1992, certain NGOs allowed persons directly involved to speak by accrediting them. The same procedure was used in 1994 for Rwanda and in 1999 for East Timor.
In the last years, numerous people of diverse perspectives and origins, dissidents or refugees, have been able to speak up in the same manner thanks to the collaboration of NGOs. During this time, implicated governments have constantly tried to make these discordant voices quiet. In 1997 Indonesia, mobilized its Asian and Muslim allies to gag the Nobel Peace Prize winner and East Timorese spokesman, José Ramos-Horta, but then recognized him as representative not to be ignored. The decision to exclude Christian Solidarity International was considered by NGOs involved in Human Rights defense to be a negative precedent. Less than one year later, new threats of sanctions are part of the same movement aimed at limiting the debate over human rights at the UN. The offensive is led by a group of countries who are themselves little concerned about the respect of fundamental liberties. Not tolerating the least criticism, this “automatic majority” is increasing its formal and informal initiatives to reach its goal.
Thus, on June 4, 1999, the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, the association Human Rights in China, founded by Chinese democrats, was refused NGO status at the UN under the pretext that since its members were Chinese, it first had to obtain the agreement of Beijing. The same scenario was repeated at the Commission on Human Rights in April, when the same coalition, including Russia, Sudan, Cuba and Pakistan, helped China to avoid the least rebuke for its infringements of fundamental liberties.
A similar tendency is currently manifesting itself at the Sub-Commission on Human Rights, in session until August 18 in Geneva. The Sub-Commission, made up of experts with NGOs as active participants, has had its time for debate reduced from four to three weeks. The other noteworthy change is that as of this year, the Sub-Commission will no longer adopt resolutions concerning situations in specific countries. Following that, Cuba proposed to reduce speaking time and to limit to seven the number of representatives from each NGO. The increasing number of NGOs in consultative status - 2012 NGOs today – was a simple pretext put forward for this decision. The UN has in fact been accepting a growing number of organizations that are NGOs only in name, and that simply defend the positions of their governments, from which they are supposed to be independent.
Noting this evolution and observing the double standard among NGOs, one expert deplores that pro-human rights countries are less active than their adversaries. Thanks to their tenacity, NGOs have become indispensable partners of the International Community; however, their free speech does not always please governments that would like them to be more docile. According to these governments, the universality of human rights stops where their sovereignty begins. In December 1998, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing the right of each person “to promote and to fight for the protection and the realization of human rights and fundamental liberties.” Today, no one seems very interested in advancing this cause.
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