Statement for the World Civil Society Forum

Introduction

The participation of NGOs in the activities of the United Nations is a charter-based right: article 71 of the UN Charter stipulates that the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) may make suitable arrangements for consultation with international and national NGOs.

Several ECOSOC resolutions and decisions establish the framework for implementing Article 71. Resolution 1996/31 acknowledges the full diversity of NGOs at the national, regional and international level and their expertise and capacity to support the UN work; it also recognizes the changes taking place in the NGO sector.

Any NGO whose concerns fall within the competence of ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies may apply for consultative status. A regional balance is sought and a greater participation from NGOs from developing and transition countries is encouraged. International, regional, sub-regional and national NGOs may seek consultative status - for the latter after consultation with the Member State concerned, the UN being an inter-governmental organization.

CONGO's contribution to the aims of the Charter

This sets the framework of our work. The Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations - commonly referred to as CONGO - was founded in 1948 in Geneva in order:

1. To ensure that NGOs in consultative status enjoy the fullest opportunities for performing their consultative functions;
2. To foster cooperation and dialogue among NGOs;
3. To mobilize the public opinion in support of the aims and principles of the UN;
4. To convene meetings

Our members are NGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC and our associated members are NGOs affiliated with the Department of Public Information or accredited to UN conferences or treaty-bodies.

Today, after more than 50 years of existence, we have over 400 members all over the world and headquarters in New York, Geneva and Vienna. We are one of the main UN counterparts for NGOs and are regularly consulted by UN bodies and agencies on matters relating to civil society. Our members are very varied and reflect the full spectrum of NGOs activities and sensitivities; while our headquarters are in Europe and North America, we are strongly committed to reaching out to NGOs in developing countries.

Our policy is to work in a cyclical way, by reaching out to NGOs all over the world the issues discussed at UN meetings, then listening to the concerns of organizations on the ground and finally having these voices heard at important international UN fora. In order to do so, we participate at the major conferences and organize regional consultations around the world.
Concerning the first type of activity - participation at UN conferences - I can refer here to the work we recently did during the 58th Commission on Human Rights, which is notoriously the functional commission of ECOSOC that gives the largest space to civil society. During this year's session we organized briefings on the Commission and its mechanisms and helped catalysing the concerns of NGOs about the reduction in their speaking time and the general policization and loss of technicality of the CHR. We thus organized press conferences and wrote several letters to the President of the Commission; as a follow-up, we are now part of a working group on the reform of the CHR.

In doing so, CONGO very much relays upon its substantive committees. We have altogether 40 committees, subcommittees and taskforces in Geneva, New York and Vienna, covering the broad spectrum of UN issues - from human rights to development, the status of women, disarmament, peace, the family, ageing, etc.. These committees are coalitions of NGOs - CONGO members - that meet 2 to 3 times a year to exchange views and best practices, initiative joint advocacy activities and form a united and strong counterpart to the UN.

Beside this daily work, which takes place in the three above-mentioned headquarters, CONGO has embarked into a sustained policy of outreach towards the other regions of the world.

· Focus on Africa

For the year 2001, following the recommendations of the Millennium Declaration, CONGO decided to put the spotlight on Africa and focus its activities on African NGOs. CONGO helped to initiate a process to have African NGOs - in particular African women's voices - heard during a series of roundtables/panel discussions on topics such as sustainable development, gender, HIV/AIDS, armed conflicts and women as peace brokers, as well as on racism. The objective was to give high visibility to the work done by African NGOs at local and regional level and, in keeping the Beijing + 5 agenda alive, to collect their recommendations for input into UN deliberations, including into the ECOSOC High-level Segment on "African Sustainable Development" and the Durban Conference against Racism.

We have also become a partner to the NGO Section of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in the recent establishment of the Informal NGO Regional Network (IRENE), the African network that was launched in December 2001 in Tunis.

· Focus on Asia

Today, in 2002, two years after the adoption of the Millennium Forum Agenda for Action and of the MDGs, CONGO is working towards the carrying forward of these commitments to the broader NGO community around the world. We are now in the process of preparing the "Asian Civil Society Forum" (ACSF 2002) on the theme: UN/NGO Partnership for Democratic Governance, to be held in Bangkok on 9th - 13th December 2002. This important regional civil society event will be co-sponsored by ESCAP, receive technical input from regional UN Agencies and will be attended by local, national, regional and international NGOs, precisely to encourage them to contribute to the achievement of the whole set of commitments. Capacity building w-shops will underscore this effort. The Forum will offer also an opportunity to expand the UNDP Campaign on awareness raizing of the MDGs. Through the focus on Human Rights and Sustainable Development (with the immediate follow-up on the World Summit on Sustainable Development, 26 Aug- 04 Sept) we want to create a "snow-ball effect" by integrating past experiences to nurture present endeavours.

Another important upcoming world conference - the World Summit on Information Society (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005) - will also be given special attention on the agenda of the Asian Civil Society Forum, to make NGOs aware of their possibilities of participation and contribution.

· Focus on Latin America and Eastern Europe

Such regional consultations will go on. We plan to follow-up on previous meetings we already held in Africa (Kampala 1998 and Tunis 2002) and to organize others in Latin America and Eastern Europe next year. The CONGO Board held last month in Geneva has just given green light to go in that direction.

What are NGOs and how can they be empowered?

In the last couple of years, however, the term "Non-Governmental Organization" as defined by ECOSOC resolution 1996/31 - "Any such organization that is not established by a governmental entity or intergovernmental agreement shall be considered a non-governmental organization" - has become limitative and doesn't seem to reflect the complexity of the world of the second millennium. The term "civil society" is used more and more often, but a precise and common definition of this concept is still lacking, when it covers a very wide range of stakeholders: trade unions, political parties, parliamentarian, religious movements, academia, the private sector, etc.

Civil society - and CONGO as a membership association - will have to reflect upon this evolution and the UN will have to establish new forms of cooperation, following ECOSOC resolution 1996/31, which calls "upon the governing bodies of the relevant organizations, bodies and specialized agencies of the UN system to examine the principles and practices relating to their consultations with NGOs and to take action, as appropriate, to promote coherence".
We need to move from a negative definition of associations "Non-Governmental Organizations" to a positive and proactive one which encompasses this new reality.

For the time being, and due to the massive increase in the number of NGOs granted consultative status over the past years, CONGO has initiated a policy of capacity building for organizations that lack financial and human resources to fully endorse their consultation with the UN. Heading towards the establishment of regional CONGO training centres, we now use the opportunities of our regional consultations to brief NGOs on fundraising, project management, current UN topics (like the Millennium Development Goals), their intervention possibility with treaty-bodies etc.

Conclusion

The relationship between the United Nations and civil society - or NGOs - is a dynamic and mutually benefiting one. If we want to move from consultation to real partnership, we have to reinforce our comprehension and pave the way to a constructive future.