Un–Civil Society Relations

A Gradual Transformation

A handful of mainly U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were informally involved in the negotiations leading to the foundation of the United Nations in 1945. As a result, Article 71 of the UN Charter states that “the Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence.” In 1950, the Economic and Social Council adopted a resolution regulating the accreditation of NGOs. This resolution was somewhat updated in 1968 and in 1996, but the basic rules have not changed. Accreditation is decided on by the UN member-state Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations. Organizations have three different levels of recognition: organizations with general consultative status, organizations with special consultative status on their topics of expertise, and organizations “on the roster,” who are occasionally invited to make contributions. Behind this regulatory stability lurks a sea change in UN–civil society relations that began in the 1970s and exploded in scale and visibility in the 1990s.

The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the first intergovernmental summit on environmental issues, was also the first to attract large numbers of NGOs and to see an NGO forum and an NGO newspaper. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), founded at the conference, has continued to pioneer relations with civil society. In 1988, UNEP, in association with the World Meteorological Organisation, founded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel of independent scientists whose findings go through a process of state endorsement. In 1992, UNEP was the first agency to actively seek participation of NGOs to a conference, through the novel means of an email invitation. A record 1,400 NGOs were accredited to the UN Conference on Environment and Development [Page 1693]in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and are widely held to have contributed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biodiversity.

In the field of human rights, collaboration with civil society enabled the construction of an impressive implementation and monitoring system on top of a tiny, chronically understaffed and underfunded secretariat. Its political arm, the Commission on Human Rights, began from 1977 to appoint special rapporteurs on thematic human rights issues as well as particular countries: The appointees were typically law professors who took up these unpaid posts in their spare time. With very little administrative or research support, their research relied largely on the reports of human rights NGOs and individual activists. The legal arm, in charge of human rights treaty supervision, is organized through expert committees, which are also largely run by law professors. They too have relied, first discreetly and then increasingly overtly, on information supplied by local and international NGOs.

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