SUNS 4339 Monday 7 December 1998
UNITED NATIONS: FULL RECOGNITION STILL ELUDES NGOS 50 YEARS ON
New York, Dec 4 (IPS/Ihsan Bouabid) -- Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have made their presence felt in the United Nations system over the years, but they are still knocking at the doors of the main UN bodies, participants at a ceremony commemorating half a century of UN-NGO ties noted.
Thursday's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations in Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (CONGO) came a few days after a General Assembly debate on NGO participation in all areas of the United Nations reached a deadend last week.
Some delegations, for example, asked for more details on the financial implications of opening up the main UN bodies such as the General Assembly to civil society.
Australian Ambassador Penelope Wensley commented that "some governments seem threatened" by the idea of opening UN doors wider for civil society, and have asked questions such as 'what are the limits to the participation of the NGOs?'
"Literally, UN credibility is under immense challenge and we must take the intellectual risk," she said.
In the past decade, NGOs have played a crucial role in providing independent assessments of issues and problems, including at successive UN mega-conferences. They have contributed expertise and advice, provided and disseminated information and raised awareness as well as
local accountability.
All this has contributed to a widening of international cooperation and helped spur the UN system and other inter-governmental bodies towards greater transparency and accountability. NGO participation has also made for a closer linkage between decision-making and implementation at
the national and international levels.
Their work has not gone unnoticed. For example, the Nobel Academy recognised in December 1997 the role of the non-governmental groups in the Ottawa process which led to the adoption of an international convention banning anti-personnel landmines.
NGOs, collectively, constitute the second largest source of development assistance worldwide and they are increasingly involved in the UN's operational activities for development.
More than 300 global, regional and national organisations and networks are members of CONGO, whose job, according to its president, Afaf Mahfouz, "is to ensure that NGO representatives' voices are there at the table whenever (substantive) issues are being discussed", even though the Conference of NGOs "does not take position on substantive issues".
Its members collaborate with a much larger body of civil society organisations through NGO standing committees authorised by CONGO at the UN's headquarters in New York and its offices in Geneva and Vienna.
"The Conference of NGOs marks its 50th anniversary at a time when NGOs are making their mark on global society as never before," said UN Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette.
Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, she said, NGOs have shaped the agendas and outcomes of world conferences on vital issues such as human rights, the environment, population, women and poverty to a significant extent.
But other participants in the Dec. 3 commemoration, the last in a series of events held under the theme of 'CONGO at Fifty: A Reaffirmation of Commitment', pointed out that civil society was
receiving mixed signals from the UN system.
There was "on one hand, a growing recognition of the importance of the NGOs and, on the other, what looks like an increasing opposition to their involvement in UN processes such as the evaluation of the implementation of the outcomes of conferences," commented Beatrice von Roemer of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
The consultative status they enjoy at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is at the core of the formal relationship between the United Nations and civil society. While no such arrangement has been established by the General Assembly, there is a certain degree of informal participation by civil society in the work of its main committees and many of its subsidiary bodies.
NGOs participate in the work of the Special Political and Decolonisation Committee, and they have also been involved in special sessions of the General Assembly, such as one held to review
implementation of Agenda 21 - the Rio Summit's action plan for sustainable development and protection of the environment worldwide.
But at General Assembly sessions, their representatives can sit only in the public balcony from where they have no access to centres where documents are distributed, and where accoustic and other technical problems sometimes make it hard for them to follow important debates on issues directly relevant to their work with the United Nations.
In a report to this session of the General Assembly, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the world body needed to provide its staff with the tools to deal with the NGOs' fast-growing number.
NGO sections or liaison offices within the United Nations are often understaffed and sometimes ill-equipped to service large groups of civil society organisations, said Annan, who also proposed the setting up of a trust fund to facilitate non-governmental groups from developing nations and countries in transition.
That issue also cropped up at the 50th anniversary commemoration with several speakers underlining the need to provide technical and financial support for civil society organisations from developing countries.
Out of roughly 1,550 NGOs associated with the United Nations, only 251 are based in developing countries.