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Letter of CONGO President to Louise Frechette, Deputy UN Secretary-General -Global Policy Forum- NGOs Letter of CONGO President
to Louise Frechette, Deputy UN Secretary-GeneralBy Renate Bloem
CONGO
September 15, 2002
Ms Louise Frechette
Deputy Secretary-General
United Nations Headquarters
New York, N.Y15 September 2002
Dear Ms Frechette,
On behalf of the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CONGO) I am writing in response to your challenging address given earlier this week at the Opening of the 55th Annual DPI/NGO Conference. I would like to refer in particular to what you said will be of special interest to the NGO community. Even though you did not mention this expressis verbis, I am given to understand that it will concern the setting up of a panel of experts to deal with the complex challenges deriving from the ever-increasing number of NGO and civil society representatives wishing to participate in the work of the United Nations.
As one of CONGO’s primary missions is to represent the interests of its over 500 member organizations wishing and able to participate constructively in the work of the United Nations, we very strongly feel that CONGO should be part of any group expected to draw up new guidelines for future NGO participation, including in World Conferences or Special Sessions. We also suggest that hearings should be held to give as many NGOs as feasible the opportunity to provide their own individual input. At a minimum such an approach might generate some useful ideas, but equally or even more important it should result in a heightened sense of ownership of whatever the final rules of the game turn out to be. I am sure you will agree with me that this would be a most desirable goal.
We do not ask you to take our request at face value. Permit me therefore to reiterate some of CONGO’s past achievements and briefly explain our raison d’ętre.
CONGO was founded as a membership association with the mandate to safeguard the Charter based rights of NGOs in consultative status to be heard whenever substantive issues are being discussed at the UN. Over the more than 50 years of its existence, CONGO, guided by ECOSOC resolutions 1968/12 and 1996/31, nurtured UN/NGO relations, organized NGO Forums to World Conferences, set up Committees, Task Forces and Caucuses for more organized collective NGO discussion and input into UN deliberations and has therefore considerable experience with the NGO participation issue. As mentioned, we have presently more than 500 international, regional and national members worldwide and the number is growing, in particular from developing countries.
Permit me to conclude this letter by congratulating you for all what has been done already in support of the Secretary-General’s desire to streamline the organization and make it more relevant to today’s needs and priorities set out in the Millennium Declaration.
As CONGO we stand ready to support you in your effort to make the voices of “We the Peoples” heard in the most effective way!
I look forward to hearing from you. With my best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Renate Bloem
President
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