The UN System and the Non-Governmental Organisations

2019

The paper presents conclusions of a research on consequences of the role acquired by NGOs directly engaged in the UN on the form of the international system. Is the role which NGOs gain in the UN big enough for us to be able to talk about emergence of a qualitatively new form of the international system? Drawing upon ideas by neo-liberal institutionalists and social constructivists, the presented research focuses on revealing possible contribution of NGO engagement in the UN to fulfilling traits characteristic for different alternative international system designs, such as global governance, multi-layered governance and world government. The research is based on preliminary determination of structural elements of these alternative international system designs which are then confronted with contribution towards their realization by NGOs engaged in the UN. This contribution is assessed independently for each of the structural element of the alternative international system designs wit...

The existence of NGOs or Non-State actors dates back hundreds of years but at that time they were few enthusiastic groups that volunteered to pursue the course for which they represented without substantial recognition by the international community. At that time, they were seen as anti-development and obstructers of governmental projects by the states governments. However, since 19 th Century, there has been a sharp rise in the number of NGOs and also international recognition of the same especially among intergovernmental organizations like United Nations. The first time NGOs participated in the UN deliberations or system was in 1946, just less than a year after the creation of United Nations On 24 th October, 1945 through ECOSOC Council that was formed under Article 71, chapter 10 of the United Nations Charter. The provisions of Articles 71 of the UN Charter, opened a legal door for the participation of NGOs in the UN system thereby creating a suitable arrangements for the consultations with NGOs. ECOSOC was formed to be the master focal point and the final gateway to the attainment of consultative status by the NGOs. This gateway is being protected or guarded by the UN Committee on NGO and therefore it becomes the most important to NGOs that are trying to influence the global politics through the United Nations system. It is this committee that scrutinizes the applications and evaluates the eligibility of the intending NGOs and then its sends its recommendations to the ECOSOC council for final decision. Therefore the relationship between ECOSOC and the NGOs is regulated and governed by ECOSOC Resolution of 1996/31 which encourages NGOs with consultative status with ECOSOC to submit statements to the council in form of either written submissions or oral presentations. Despite the presence UN Committee for NGOs guarding the gateway to the attainment of consultative status, and the rigorous procedures and scrutiny that is attached to it, the number of NGOs applying for the consultative status have exponentially increased that this proves that having the tag of consultative status is important and beneficial to the NGO's participation in the UN deliberations. 1 1 Post-Doctoral fellow, School of law, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Hosur Main Road, Bangalore-029, email ID [email protected],

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have come to be recognised as key ‘third sector’ actors on the landscapes of development, human rights, humanitarian action, environment and many other areas of public action, from the post-disaster reconstruction efforts after the Indian tsunami or the West African ebola outbreak, to campaigns for aid and trade reform and developing country debt cancellation. As these examples illustrate, NGOs are best-known for two different, but often interrelated, types of activity - the delivery of services to people in need, and the organisation of policy advocacy and public campaigns in pursuit of social transformation. NGOs are also active in a wide range of other specialised roles such as democracy building, conflict resolution, human rights work, cultural preservation, environmental activism, policy analysis, research and information provision. This paper mainly confines itself to a discussion of NGOs in the international development context, but much of its argument also applies to NGOs more widely.

Nnamdi Azikiwe University Journal of International Law and Jurisprudence, 2012

Traditionally, both in the domestic and international affairs, nation states are considered the major players in policy formulation for the purposes of international relations and regulation. Thus, it is not out of place to conclude that they are also the movers and shakers of social change. In the absence of fuller integration and representation within the sphere of law making in both domestic and international arrangement, the increasing influence, contribution and work of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) for the purpose of social change, policy formulation and eventual rule making are undeniable. This paper sets down the theoretical frameworks for greater participation of NGO’s in international law making and argues subsequently for their fuller integration for the purposes of policy formulation in International Law. Key words : Non-Governmental Organisations, United Nations, social change,

Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, 2020

What is the role of NGOs at the United Nations, and, by extension, in global governance? With limited possibilities to measure it directly, this article adopts discursive analysis as an innovative approach to the issue. Analysis of three texts by Global Policy Forum represents an important insight into the question and a tool for further research. It shows that despite the relative increase of their participatory rights at the UN, NGOs seem to realise approaching a point of saturation in what they may demand from the UN in terms of their access and moderate the tone of writing accordingly. Drawing on Global Policy Forum’s example, the article argues that NGOs at the UN appear to have transformed from entities begging for more access to its more equal partners. Most importantly, the article represents a blueprint for further research of role of actors in the international system.

2011

The present work analyses the engagement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the United Nations Human Rights Council on the basis of two analytical categories: The analysis of the access of NGOs to the Council shows that the UN system for NGO accreditation (ECOSOC consultative status) is biased and politicized. However, NGOs have found creative ways to circumvent this obstacle. The second category explores the opportunities of engagement that are open to NGOs in the framework of the intergovernmental mechanisms of the Council. It identifies both formal and informal opportunities and looks at how they are seized by NGOs. The institutional structure, as well as personal contacts between NGO representatives and diplomats, proved to be important determining factors for the engagement of NGOs.

2007

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in June 2007 completed its first year of activities having defined its principal institutional characteristics and its operating mechanisms. In this article, I propose to trace a brief history of this first year of the Council’s activities and suggest some forms of action that can be taken by non-governmental organizations.

SOAS MA Assessed Paper 2017. (Edited January 2019) Antonio Guterres (UN Secretary General) faces a huge humanitarian challenge in relation to delivering sustainable development goals and irradiating poverty and bringing peace to conflict areas like Iraq and Syria. The agenda and commitments are clear in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals which were agreed in 2015. The United Nations (UN) is not a bureaucracy nor is it benign in relation to Third World countries and the challenges that it faces in enabling sustainable development; in human terms and in dealing with the environmental challenges which blight development. This statement is both a dismissive and pessimistic response to Third World countries and the UN, and it is only a partial story about the Organisation. It is concerned with human rights and protecting the most vulnerable, which includes women and children who are exposed to most violence in the world and are often its victims. It provides administrative assistance to problems and delivers through its many agencies, and partnerships with associated charities, corporations, governments, and non-governmental organisations (NGO’s). It is concerned with education, in several areas like disarmament, sexual violence, and the eradication of illnesses. It is committed to UN Development Projects and promoting ‘sustainable development’ through education. Sustainable development concerns the need to balance the sustainable use of resources and economic growth and requires us to think holistically and to have people centred view of the world (Jeffrey Sachs 2015). There is, as Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij and Thomas G Weiss suggest, a ‘Third UN’ (2009), a UN closely associated with NGO, experts, and consultants. It is this concept of a ‘Third UN’ in which ‘sustainable development’ has in the last two decades become more real to nation states outside of the Big Five powerful permanent member states of the Security Council and its people, who often live in remote and agricultural areas of the world. How much influence the UN bureaucracy has on the agenda, is for the most part irrelevant to people, unless the mechanisms for development become over burdensome. There are mechanisms for control in the system to prevent abuse of power. It is member countries and its people who accept, agree, and embrace their own sustainable development goals. It is through the implementation of sustainable development policies, programmes, and projects, that we begin to understand the issues and problems more widely. With this I also hope to address the pessimism of the statement - that the UN is somehow not as significant or as vital as NGO’s in the sustainable development equation; in achieving economic success and human happiness. It is an equation that also involves global economic growth and global environmental equity. This unifying concept of the UN displays aspects of diplomacy and this approach has embraced corporate diplomacy through its network of supporters, who work with African countries and larger nations in Latin America, China, and India (Giles Scott-Smith 2016). The feature of both the NGO’s and UN sector are that they display a form of ‘sustainable’ diplomacy, which is distinct from cultural diplomacy. Sustainable diplomacy is all that which involves the administration, communications, exchange, finance, and activity that supports sustainable development in developing countries in the ASEAN Region. This is evident in the bilateral aid provided to countries such as Cambodia by the UK Government to improve STEM (Maths, Science, and Engineering) education and communication (2016). The UN has a permanent role in Global Diplomacy, within international organisation (IO). It is part of a complex world order framed within multilateralism, which reflect our complex interconnectedness as people and our interdependencies through IO within a global context. Critically it acts within a wider realist international relations framework framed by the English School of International Relations (Joseph Nye 1989, 2004), (Simon Rofe and Alison Holm 2016).

European Journal of International Law, 2009