Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
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"NGOs and the United Nations" by the World Federalists of Canada NGOs and the UN:
an evolving partnershipA Briefing Paper by the World Federalists of Canada
Issues Action Paper No. 35
November 1996
IntroductionA recent Christian Science Monitor article made this observation about last year's UN Women's Summit: "Through working with governments to prepare the Platform for Action, NGOs (citizen-based Non-Governmental Organizations) have an enhanced place in civil society. NGO-government partnerships exist where they didn't before. And NGOs have banded together in new coalitions to hold governments accountable."
The 'international community' has become more, much more than the sum of the world's nation- states, and the inter-governmental forums and organizations they create. In recent years, there have been particularly dramatic increases in the number and size of NGOs, their areas of concern, their recognition as experts and actors in international policy-making.
The proliferation of NGOs across the world and the diverse roles they play suggests that they will be a continuing force in global policy making. A major challenge in the years ahead is to develop the public- private partnerships which can fully enable and encourage non-state actors to offer their contributions to effective global governance.
At the UN the rules and arrangements by which NGOs contribute to the work of the organization are inconsistent and out of date.
Through Article 71 of the Charter, many NGOs currently have consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). However, there are no existing arrangements by which NGOs might work with the key decision-making bodies at the UN such as the General Assembly and the Security Council. Committees of the General Assembly each set different ground rules for NGOs.
UN conferences have been key entry points for NGOs. While NGO discussions at these conferences are still kept a protective distance of kilometers away from the intergovernmental meetings, they have won increasing acknowledgment and influence. The 1985 Nairobi World Conference culminating the UN's International Decade for Women, and the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (the "Earth Summit") were decisive advances. A climate of greater openness toward NGOs has been replicated at other UN conferences: the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, March 1995) the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, September, 1995), and the World Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II, Istanbul, 1996).
Following the Earth Summit many more NGOs wanted access not only to UN conferences, but also to the UN itself in order to monitor implementation of the declarations, final reports, and platforms for action signed by governments at these global gatherings. But the UN has not yet been able to integrate these NGO networks into its daily work in an effective manner.
The ECOSOC Review
ECOSOC has just concluded an examination of its relationship with NGOs. The result was an agreement to revise the rules governing consultative status, the first such revision since 1968. The revisions include broadening the definition of NGO beyond international organizations, to include regional or national organizations. Developing countries and countries with economies in transition are encouraged to have their NGOs actively participate. Member States are responsible for accreditation in order that NGOs be admitted to participate in a UN conference.
While the ECOSOC review took three years to conclude, there was much left undecided.
There are still no formal arrangements for NGOs to participate or communicate with other important decision-making bodies of the UN, such as the General Assembly and its Main Committees, the Security Council, and other bodies. NGOs contribute and are concerned with many issues outside of the Economic and Social Council, such as disarmament, peace and security, finance, trade, and international law. NGO participation or attendance often ends up being subject to the whims of UN officials presiding at a particular meeting or the security staff.
At this summer's conclusion of the ECOSOC review of relations with NGOs it was recognized that there was still much more to be resolved in formalizing a comprehensive UN-NGO partnership for the future. The ECOSOC review therefore included the following recommendation:
"The Economic and Social Council, reaffirming the importance of the contributions of non- governmental organizations to the work of the United Nations, and taking into account the contributions made by non-governmental organizations to recent international conferences, "Decides to recommend that the General Assembly examine, at its fifty-first (i.e. 1996) session, the question of the participation of non-governmental organizations in all areas of the work of the United Nations, in the light of the experience gained through the arrangements for consultation between non-governmental organizations and the Economic and Social Council." This has thrown the ball in the General Assembly's court. However, it is not yet clear exactly how the GA will deal with the issue. The manner in which the ECOSOC recommendation is dealt with, procedurally, will reveal how determined governments are to find consensus on new ways to more fully include NGOs in the work of the UN. Options include:(1) Setting up a General Assembly Working Group similar to the ECOSOC Working Group (which took three years to make the relatively minor revisions to ECOSOC-NGO arrangements);
(2) Submit the issue to the already-created Working Group on the Strengthening of the UN System (WGUNS);
(3) Linking the issue to the preparations for "Earth Summit II" a special session of the UN General Assembly, scheduled for next June, to review progress (or lack of!) in implementing Agenda 21, the plan of action from the 1992 Earth Summit. The NGO issue would be resolved in the course of discussion of NGO participation at the June Special Session;
(4) A single resolution extending the NGO arrangements agreed to in ECOSOC to the the General Assembly. This would require a concerted campaign by NGOs, supportive governments and other UN officials.
(5) Do nothing; ignore the ECOSOC recommendation.Of the options outlined above the third and fourth would be the most expeditious way to deal with the issue. Although it is not yet clear how governments will deal with the ECOSOC recommendation, the important thing is to urge that they do something.
World Federalist Analysis
The growing number and competence of NGOs is one more example of what is becoming increasingly seen as a self-evident phenomenon of our times: the world is becoming a smaller, more interdependent, global community. Indeed, many of the technologies driving the globalization process generally (high speed electronic communications, the global reach of information media) are also consequential in the day-to-day activity of NGOs and enable NGOs to contribute directly to the international political processes.
NGOs provide practical assistance in the work of the UN, often as partners of UN bodies implementing programs, especially in the economic and humanitarian fields. They provide independent monitoring and information-gathering. They help set public policy agendas, identifying and defining critical issues.
World Federalists support efforts to enhance the role of NGOs, at the UN and in other international organizations. This gives greater weight to the voices of organized citizen movements and adds an important element of accountability to the inter-state system.
For example, World Federalists supported the call for a Forum of Civil Society at the UN (see Issues Action Briefing Paper #27, November, 1995). The idea of a representative assembly of NGOs was initiated last year by the prestigious Commission on Global Governance in their 1995 report Our Global Neighborhood. They proposed a Forum of Civil Society, a consultative body of citizen's groups at the United Nations that would meet annually at the General Assembly hall, offering international civil society direct access to the UN system and provide an entry point for its views.
Enhancing the role of NGOs should not be seen as a step toward democratizing the UN. Although the UN would become more accountable to citizen-based organizations, there is really no way in which any future assembly or forum of NGOs at the UN could evolve into a democratic body representing the world's people.
Democratizing the UN is important, indeed central to the World Federalist long range vision of the way in which the world body can and should evolve. The most likely route to a democratic UN is through the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA). A UNPA would be a representative body made up initially of parliamentarians selected by national legislatures who would meet at the UN as global parliamentarians. (They might also convene sessions alongside other important international organizations, like the Bretton Woods institutions.)
As a matter of strategy, the World Federalist Movement has found that there is greater support for the UNPA proposal to be found among national parliamentarians (the idea is also supported by some in the European Parliament) than among UN representatives. Political momentum for a UNPA is best built by working with parliamentarians before pushing the idea at the UN
This paper was prepared by Fergus Watt at the WFC national office with files from the international World Federalist Movement (New York) and the Partners Program of the U.S. World Federalist Association (Washington).
