BRUSSELS, Belgium, May 4 (IPS) – In January, the Algerian government succeeded in excluding two civil society groups from access to the United Nations (UN). This raised questions in the United Nations Committee on Non-Governmental OrganizationsWhat is known as the NGO Committee is about two recognized civil society groups. It alleged that the Italian organization Il Cenacolo was making politically motivated statements at the UN Human Rights Council and that the Geneva-based International Committee for the Respect and Implementation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (CIRAC) was selling UN ground passes. Four days later, it called a vote to revoke his status. Other states urged delay, but the motion to take no action failed, and 11 out of 19 members of the body It voted to recommend that the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) revoke Il Cenacolo’s recognition and suspend CIRAC for one year.
As the primary gatekeeper for civil society participation in the United Nations, the NGO Committee controls ECOSOC consultative status, which allows organizations to participate in UN meetings, submit written statements, make oral interventions, organize side events and access UN premises. Its mandate is set out ECOSOC resolution 1996/31Simple: to facilitate civil society access to the UN system.
Such access is particularly valuable for organizations working in repressive contexts, where domestic advocacy is suppressed. This can mean the difference between a community’s concerns being silenced or becoming a matter of international record. However, in practice, the committee has worked so consistently to hinder rather than enable access that it has become widely known as the ‘anti-NGO committee’.
On April 8, A.N. About By a completely non-competitive vote, ECOSOC members elected 19 states to serve on the NGO Committee for a four-year term. Only 20 candidates were in the fray for 19 seats. The UN states are organized into five regional blocs, and four of them presented closed slates, putting forward only as many candidates as there were available seats.
As a result, the Asia-Pacific group selected China, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which are consistent. track records To silence the civil society. Latin America and the Caribbean are represented by countries like Cuba and Nicaragua, which suppress dissent and routinely detain critics. Four out of five elected African states have repressed or closed down civic space. Israel and Turkey, two states selected from the Western European and Other States group, have also recently intensified their repression of civil space.
An exception was the Eastern European Group, where Estonia and Ukraine were seats won In a three-way contest, staying out totalitarian belarusWhich got only 23 votes compared to 44 votes from Estonia and 38 votes from Ukraine. In 2022, when Russia lost An even race, results showed that competitive elections open up scrutiny and produce better results. The problem is that this happens very rarely.
Overall, 13 of the 19 newly elected states have been considered closed or suppressed civil space states Civicus MonitorOur research initiative that tracks the conditions of civil society around the world. Only one, Estonia, has open civic space. Fourteen of the 20 candidates were nominated for retribution against people associated with the United Nations.
Before the elections, International Service for Human Rights published scorecard To evaluate all 20 candidates based on eight criteria; 12 out of 20 did not find any. More than 80 civil society organizations called ECOSOC member states are asked to vote for candidates committed to holding competitive elections and reaching out to civil society. Forty independent UN human rights experts, including human rights defenders and Special Rapporteurs on countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Russia, issued a statement Warned that Committee members were abusing the accreditation process to block access to human rights organizations. All these warnings were ignored.
The withdrawal of recognition from Il Cenacolo and CIRAC, which is awaiting ECOSOC confirmation, was unprecedented, but it falls within a longer pattern of obstruction. At the committee’s latest regular session in January, 618 applications were under consideration, of which 381 were adjourned from previous sessions.
The backlog is no accident. States ask repeated questions about small details and make short-notice requests for complex documentation, repeatedly delaying applications until future sessions. States that repress civil society at home also do the same in the international arena, targeting organizations that work on issues they consider controversial or contrary to their interests. three Kingdoms – China, India and Pakistan– When asked, come across as the worst abuser of this system about half Out of 647 questions asked to the applicants during the January session. Repeated adjournments increase costs for civil society organizations, wasting financial resources and time.
The current financial crisis of the United Nations is exacerbating the problem. The consequences of the funding cuts were visible in the latest session, when the question-and-answer session was canceled after an initial adjournment. The loss of the only opportunity for organizations seeking accreditation to engage directly with the Committee had the greatest impact on the smaller organizations that traveled to New York to participate.
The UN’s current cost-cutting drive could at least be used as an opportunity to pursue online participation and other efficiency improvements to reduce the bureaucratic burden of repeated requests for information. Furthermore, there is a need to re-emphasise that the function of the committee should be supportive rather than obstructive.
The NGO Committee determines whether the voices of communities facing oppression and violence can be heard in the UN system, and it has been hijacked by states interested in ensuring that they cannot. The situation cannot be left clear for states that repress civil society in order to act as gatekeepers. States that claim to support civil society must be prepared to put themselves forward.
Samuel King is a researcher of the Horizon Europe-funded research project ENSURE: Shaping collaboration for a changing world In Civicus: The World Alliance for Civic Participation.
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