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UNA-Canada Research Papers> Agendas for Change Papers
by Russell Lawrence Barsh The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not necessary of the United Nations Association in Canada. "We the Peoples of the United Nations... ." The UN Charter opens with these stirring words, but, like the League of Nations, the United Nations was organized by governments, and was confidently expected to remain a private club of States. Citizens, scholars, and non-governmental organizations had helped produce the momentum for establishing the United Nations, however, and the Charter recognised their potential future contributions in article 71:
Popular participation in international decision-making dates back to the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919, which agreed to create the International Labour Organisation (ILO). In its Constitution, the ILO included "associations of employers and workers" in its system of governance. Each national delegation is tripartite, made up of three voting representatives (government, employers, workers), and each ILO committee is divided into three voting sections. This approach was not followed by the United Nations or its other specialized agencies, 25 years later. Instead of sharing voting power with non-governmental constituencies, they decided to "consult" with a limited number of approved organizations. In time, however, NGOs have demonstrated their importance, and gained a far larger voice in United Nations policy.
How it all began The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted its policies for consultation with NGOs at its second session in June 1946. The purpose of consultation, the Council concluded, was to obtain expert advice, and to enable organizations which represented important elements of public opinion to express their views directly. To be eligible for consultation, an NGO should be involved in the same issues as the Council, its aims and purposes should be consistent with the Charter, it should represent a substantial proportion of the organized people in its area of interest, and it should have authority to speak for its members. National-level NGOs, the Council concluded, should ordinarily speak through governments, or through international NGOs, unless they possessed special experience. The Council originally divided NGOs into: (a) organizations with a basic interest in most or all of the Council’s activities, and which were closely linked with economic and social life; (b) organizations with interests or expertise in only a few of the Council’s activities; and (c) organizations mainly engaged in public information activities. A committee was struck to review applications for status, and the first members were the five permanent members of the Security Council. Three important principles were established during its first year of meetings. First, that all the NGOs in a particular category should enjoy equal rights. This issue was raised after the World Federation of Trade Unions persuaded the General Assembly to give it the right to place items on the Council’s agenda, and the United States argued that all category (a) NGOs should have this right. Second, that an NGO cannot be accredited if it is controlled by a government, a precedent set when the Committee disqualified NGOs headquartered in Fascist Spain. Third, the Committee decided that it would normally accredit only one NGO working in the same field. It had received applications from two NGOs involved in fighting slavery, and asked them to work together and send only one representative to UN meetings. This way of managing the total number of NGOs eventually broke down, but not before a great many applicants were told that their concerns were already being dealt with by other NGOs. By the end of 1947, 42 NGOs had been accredited. Among the seven NGOs placed in category (a) were three trade-union federations and two employers’ associations, a carry-over from the ILO. All together, the initial club of consultative NGOs was dominated by labour and business (19 percent), women’s organizations (26 percent), organizations based upon religious affiliation (12 percent), and professional associations (12 percent). There were also a handful of youth groups, humanitarian organizations (including the ICRC), human-rights advocates, and social or charitable groups (the Lions and Rotaries). All were headquartered in Europe or North America.
The NGO movement gains momentum There has been a significant increase in the size, diversity, and influence of ECOSOC’s NGO community since 1947. In addition, the UN’s 1992 "Earth Summit" ushered in a large new family of NGOs, including a much larger proportion of community-based and Southern organizations. Arrangements for consultation were substantially revised in 1968, with the adoption of ECOSOC Resolution 1296(XLIV). The basic criteria for eligibility remained essentially the same, although the categories of accreditation were changed to I (international general-purpose), II (international special or limited purposes) and Roster (regional NGOs, national NGOs, or NGOs accredited with specialized agencies). More importantly, the rights of NGOs were clarified. NGOs could attend, speak and distribute official documents at all sessions of the Council, its functional commissions and subsidiary bodies. Category I NGOs could also propose agenda items. Distinctions between categories of NGOs with respect to length of documents, and whether they must ask special permission to attend certain meetings, disappeared in practice by the 1980s. NGO collaboration with UN operational projects in the field goes back to the post-war reconstruction of Europe, where humanitarian NGOs worked directly with UN refugee offices. Field level co-operation in emergencies and disaster relief also dates to this early period. This involved NGOs with substantial funds and personnel, of course, largely operating from the wealthier countries. By the 1960s, Northern-based NGOs were also helping UN agencies implement development projects, and a growing number of Southern NGOs were consulting with UN agencies at the national and community levels. UN officials welcomed this kind of practical NGO assistance, which was quite different from consulting on policy in New York or Geneva. The UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service was created as an inter-agency unit to facilitate NGO participation in UN development activities. The importance of NGOs in UN operational activities was enhanced, ironically, by the UN’s deepening financial crisis in the 1980s. With fewer staff members and smaller budgets, UN aid officials were forced increasingly to rely on international NGOs for funding and expertise, and to grassroots NGOs for personnel. This decentralization of United Nations operations helped make NGOs both more aware, and more critical of UN policy in the fields of social and economic development. It was inevitable that NGOs would eventually demand a greater role in making policy decisions. NGO participation in UN policy-making grew fastest in the field of human rights. In the 1980s, NGO attendance at annual meetings of the Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission, an advisory body of individual experts, grew steadily from a dozen to more than a hundred. Along with this increase in numbers, NGOs took a greater share of the speaking time, lobbied delegations, and began to influence the agenda. A significant breakthrough was achieved during the negotiation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1979-1989). Child-advocacy NGOs, which had banded together as a group, were allowed to make their own drafting proposals, defend them in the public debate, and in a few instances participate in informal, private working meetings of Member States. The working group of the Commission on Human Rights which was drafting a declaration on minorities also adopted this approach, while the Sub-Commission’s working group on indigenous peoples took an even bolder step: allowing all representative organizations of the peoples concerned participate in its meetings, regardless of their status with ECOSOC. From 1989 to 1992, moreover, indigenous NGOs went directly to the General Assembly to lobby for an International Year — despite many warnings from the Secretariat that they had no right to do so! Meanwhile, grassroots development NGOs were playing an increasing role in UN field operations — especially in Africa, where the UN faced a crisis of massive proportions — famines, deteriorating infrastructure and shrinking economies. A meeting of African governments and NGOs at Arusha, Tanzania in 1990 agreed that "nations cannot be built without the popular support and full participation of the people," and that:
For the first time, NGO participation was justified as a means of directly strengthening development and democracy, rather than offering technical assistance to governments. These developments helped set the stage for the revolution in NGO participation surrounding the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), or "Earth Summit," at Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
The day before Rio In 1992, on the eve of the Earth Summit, there were 635 NGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC. An additional 293 NGOs were included on the Roster because of their relationships with specialized agencies such as UNESCO, WHO, FAO, and ILO. Of the NGOs accredited with ECOSOC, one-fourth were professional and technical associations, including research centres. Organizations devoted to human-rights advocacy had grown considerably (11 percent), followed by NGOs working in the fields of environment, development and population (9 percent), humanitarian aid (5 percent), educational development (4 percent), and health promotion (2 percent). In terms of "major groups" or social constituencies, the NGO club of 1992 included groups speaking for business and labour (14 percent), churches and religious movements (7 percent), women (5 percent), youth (3 percent), indigenous peoples and minorities (2 percent), as well as people with disabilities, retired/elderly persons, consumers’ unions, co-operatives, parliamentarians, local governments, prison inmates and war veterans (5 percent). Some members of this growing NGO community were "household names" like the Red Cross and Amnesty International. Most would have sounded unfamiliar to most people, or somewhat strange: Housewives in Dialogue (UK), International Association Against Noise (Switzerland), Institute of International Container Lessors (USA), International Association of the Soap and Detergent Industry (Belgium), International Federation of Pedestrians (USA), and International Organization of Experts (France), for example! Despite this great thematic and social diversity, only 12 percent of these NGOs had their headquarters in the South. Most were based in London, Paris, Geneva, New York, and Washington, although many of them had regional or national offices as well.
Rio: the turning point When Member States began planning the Earth Summit in 1989, NGOs lobbied for access. Strictly speaking, the Summit was an extension of the General Assembly, thus at a higher level than ECOSOC. Governments were persuaded, however, that the results of the conference would have much greater visibility, more popular appeal, and a greater likelihood of implementation if there was broad NGO involvement at every stage. At the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the Summit, NGOs and developing countries argued that there needed to be stronger representation from the South. They found sympathetic ears in Maurice Strong, the Canadian Secretary-General of the conference, and in Tommy Koh of Singapore, chair of the Preparatory Committee. In a daring and controversial experiment, they convinced States to let the secretariat accept requests from all NGOs with "relevant" experience regardless of ECOSOC status, including national and grassroots organizations. By the time the Preparatory Committee completed its work in April 1992, 350 organizations were participating. Of these, 58 percent had not been accredited previously with ECOSOC, and 18 percent were based in developing countries. An even larger number of NGOs, and more NGOs from the South, attended the conference itself in June. Besides promoting broader, more representative NGO participation, the Earth Summit set major precedents for giving NGOs better access to actual decision-making. Most governments expected NGOs to be satisfied with making a limited number of brief speeches at the public "plenary" sessions of the Preparatory Committee. But NGOs demanded the right to attend the closed committee meetings and working groups where the real negotiations were taking place. This was cautiously agreed. NGOs also circulated their own proposals, which, although lacking official status, were taken seriously and used as working documents by governments. NGOs maximized their influence by organizing themselves into large caucuses: women, environmental groups, indigenous peoples, grassroots groups from the South, and so on. In this way, hundreds of NGOs were able to coordinate their efforts from day to day — better, at times, than the governments! The experience of working more closely with NGOs in preparing the Earth Summit helped ease governments’ fears of sharing power. Indeed, developing countries, which had previously seemed the most opposed to giving NGOs a larger role in the UN, felt they had benefited most from NGOs’ advocacy of social justice, and took a much more positive stance on the future of NGO participation. This new climate of collaboration has now been reaffirmed by the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), and the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995). NGOs play an active role in the Commission on Sustainable Development, and the negotiation of new treaties on desertification, small island states, and high-seas fisheries, to an extent unthinkable even five years ago outside of the field of human rights. One important post-Rio project was the Intergovernmental Working Group on Forests, co-sponsored by Canada and Malaysia. Its report to the third session of the Commission on Sustainable Development encourages greater popular participation in UN environmental decision-making. The 40 Member States who worked on the report also agreed that NGOs play a political as well a technical role in international affairs:
An understanding has been reached with the General Assembly that all of the NGOs that participated in the Earth Summit at Rio, or which can satisfy the "relevance" test, may be accredited to the Commission on Sustainable Development and other post-Rio conferences. The result has been to create two classes of NGOs: (1) NGOs accredited by ECOSOC, which enjoy general access to ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies; and (2) NGOs accredited specially to Rio, and to related meetings in the field of environment and development — a more diverse collection of NGOs that are smaller, more local, and more Southern, on average, than the ECOSOC NGO community. Furthermore, many UN specialized agencies have evolved their own programs for consulting with NGOs. Today, there are several overlapping groups of NGOs, each working in a different part of the UN system under different eligibility rules and different standards for participation.
The challenges ahead Last year, ECOSOC began a review of its consultative arrangements with NGOs. A special working group of governments was struck with the aim of meeting with NGOs, and possibly drafting a new charter for NGO participation to replace ECOSOC resolution 1296. Canada and Canadian NGOs have so far played a leading role in this review. The review was triggered by three concerns. The "new generation" of NGOs that emerged from Rio want to increase their participation in post-Rio UN environmental negotiations, and gain access to other parts of the UN system, including the General Assembly itself. Governments, while generally pleased with the contribution of the "new" NGOs to Rio and post-Rio activities, are growing concerned about being overwhelmed by NGOs, and sharing more real power with NGOs. Finally, the class of ECOSOC NGOs have expressed fears that their influence at the UN might be eroded by a flood of new organizations, subjected to less stringent standards of eligibility. A number of Canadian NGOs made a joint presentation to the ECOSOC working group in November 1994, and made five main recommendations:
These five main issues — equality, openness, NGO self-regulation, decentralization of consultations, and facilitation of NGO access — may become an important part of a new "charter" for popular participation in international policy-making. Several other issues could usefully be addressed by the Council in its review:
There is also an important strategic question for NGOs to resolve for themselves. How can NGOs be most effective in representing people and communities, and counterbalancing governments? Should NGOs change their approach, now that a greater share of international policy-making is taking place in limited-membership organizations, such as the GATT (or World Trade Organization) and IMF, which do not have consultative arrangements with NGOs like the UN, and which tend to be controlled by the world’s richest industrialized countries? A new UN "charter" for enriching popular participation in the UN system itself would be a fitting golden-anniversary gift from the club of nation-states, to "the peoples of the United Nations". At the same time, ECOSOC might be encouraged to consider one of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Working Group on Forests:
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