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Article Excerpt
The relations between the UN system and what is referred to as civil society are dynamically growing and changing. In this article I focus on five aspects: (1) evolving procedures for UN--nongovernmental organization (NGO) relations presided over by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); (2) broadening of NGO involvement at UN headquarters; (3) the present scope of NGO involvement in the UN system; (4) growing NGO involvement in the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO); and (5) NGO conferences. (1) I conclude with an overview and a few thoughts about implications for global governance. But necessary insight on the importance of these topics requires that we first place them in their broader context.
The foundations for systems of governance are often created by constitutions and treaties, but these documents, as in the case of the UN Charter, emerge out of documents and practice that have gone before. Constitutions and treaties continue to grow and evolve in the light of practice that builds upon them. This is certainly true of systems for global governance that are emerging out of the UN Charter. There is no more dynamic area of growth and change through practice in the UN system than that involving NGOs and other aspects of "civil society." Before focusing on more recent aspects of this dynamic sector of emerging global governance, it is essential to recognize that NGOs were deeply involved before and during the creation of the UN.
There were representatives of 1,200 voluntary organizations present at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. They played a significant role in writing the first seven words of the charter: "We the peoples of the United Nations ..." and also in the inclusion of Article 71, providing that "the Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations." They also fought for the inclusion of individual human rights (mentioned seven times in the charter) and for educational cooperation in the pursuit of friendly relations among nations (Article 55). But the roots of present NGO activities go much deeper into history. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking at a commemoration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recently reminded his audience:
Before the founding of the United Nations, NGOs led the charge in the adoption of some of the Declaration's forerunners. The Geneva conventions of 1864; multilateral labour conventions adopted in 1906, and the International Slavery Convention of 1926; all stemmed from the work of NGOs who infused the international community with a spirit of reform. (2)
A succinct overview of recent rapid change in the nature of NGO involvement in the UN asserts that, from the earliest days, many NGOs monitoring activities at UN headquarter cities in the system were large membership and service organizations, such as the Rotary, the International Conference of Free Trade Unions, and the International Chamber of Commerce. Some had full-time paid staff, often retired members or officers of the organization. But, beginning with the Women's Conference in Mexico City in 1975 and culminating with the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, many new kinds of NGO representatives began to show an interest in the deliberative process of ECOSOC and large UN-sponsored conferences. Many of the new NGO actors are national instead of international in character, and they are increasingly activist and issue based. Although more NGO representatives come from Europe and North America, there has been a significant growth in those coming fr om Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Newly involved organizations also reflect a generational change, because new constituencies often have younger representatives. (3)
Building on Article 71, focusing on NGO relations with ECOSOC, NGOs are emerging throughout the UN system. In 1990, there were more than ninety UN offices handling NGO relations. In 1995, 4,000 NGOs participated in the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro created a Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) and outlined nine major groups that should be partners with governments and international organizations in the search for sustainable development: NGOs, local authorities, farmers, scientists and the technical community, business-labor, indigenous peoples, women, children, and youth. NGOs have recently addressed ad hoc meetings of the Security Council. A committee of ECOSOC has held discussions, and a committee of NGO representatives has made proposals for arrangements for NGO relations with the General Assembly. (4)
The creative vitality in this aspect of world politics is also revealed by the emergence of plans, and visions, for the future. A People's Millennium Forum was hosted in New York in May 2000 in conjunction with the UN General Assembly's Millennium Summit held later that year. Some see it as a potential prototype for an ongoing UN People's Assembly.
Evolving Procedures for UN-NGO Relations
The growing involvement of NGOs in the UN system has led to demands for change in formal procedures for UN-NGO relations. In fulfillment of Article 71 of the UN Charter, ECOSOC established a roster of NGOs with consultative status. The number on this roster has grown from 41 in 1948. to 377 in 1968, to 1,350 in 1998. NGOs on the roster are now divided into three categories: (1) general consultative status, large international organizations whose area of work covers most of the issues on the ECOSOC agenda; (2) special consultative status, organizations that have special competence in a few fields of the council's activity; and (3) roster consultative status, organizations whose competence enables them to make occasional and useful contributions. Of course, access to headquarters facilities has at the same time facilitated informal access of a growing number of NGOs to the Secretariat, the General Assembly, the Security Council, and all meetings held at several UN headquarters. But it is events held away from U N headquarters that have recently spurred the involvement of NGOs in UN affairs and led to challenges to procedures developed under Article 71.
UN world conferences, beginning with the UN Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, 1972), seem to have been central to the escalating involvement of NGOs in the UN system in recent decades. Then, "the floodgates were opened" at UNCED in 1992, where over 1,400 NGOs were accredited; there they played a significant role in developing the agenda and "contributed to building the political consensus that made adoption of the Rio Declaration possible." (5) Following the conference, the General Assembly and ECOSOC adopted resolutions providing for participation of NGOs in the work of the new Commission on Sustainable Development and gave 550 NGOs that had participated in UNCED consultative status with ECOSOC. The consultative status machinery was bypassed, and this created an important precedent. Momentum for change in provisions for NGO participation has continued to build as a result of subsequent world conferences on other global issues: the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), the Internation al Conference on Population and Development (ICPD, Cairo, 1994), the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), and the World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995). Many members of NGOs who have participated in these world conferences feel that rules governing ECOSOC consultative status were poorly designed to facilitate their participation in conference follow-ups at the headquarters of permanent UN organizations. (6)
Nevertheless, there has been very slow progress in adapting consultative procedures in response to changes in the number of NGOs orbiting around UN headquarters and meetings, the range of issues on their agendas, and the growth in the diversity of their activities. As poetically described by Donini, there is a "rapidly evolving 'NGO galaxy' and [a] not-so-rapidly evolving 'UN solar system'." (7) NGO activities at UN headquarters were until recently governed by the thirty-year-old ECOSOC Resolution 1296 of 1968. On 30 July 1993, ECOSOC decided to open intergovernmental negotiations aimed at expanding NGO rights (ECOSOC Res E/1998/80). But dissatisfaction with the issues on which many NGOs were focused has contributed to resistance of some member states to significant changes. Some states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America find NGO prodding and exposure of human rights violations annoying. And some powerful European, North American, and East Asian states resent NGO pressure for economic justice, disarmament, an d global democracy. There are also some established NGOs that worry about opening the gateways to a flood of new NGOs. (8)
On 25 July 1996, one ECOSOC resolution updated Resolution 1296 of 1968, and another ECOSOC resolution (E/1996/297) called on the General Assembly to establish arrangements for the participation of NGOs in "all areas of the work of the UN." NGOs hoped that this would lead to consultative rights with the General Assembly. But James Paul reports that "with few exceptions, member states were cool towards further progress." (9) Then, General Assembly consideration of the issue became stalled over debate on what procedures would be used for taking up the question. Eventually, in late 1996, the Malaysian president of the General Assembly, Razali Ismail, created a subgroup of the General Assembly Working Group on the Reform of the UN System,...
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