WCSF Workshop on Local and Global Governance
(20 July 2002)

A Civil Society Voice in Global Governance

presented by Jeffrey J Segall

on behalf of UNGA-Link UK (UK Network for Civil Society Link with UN General Assembly)

The UN’s Millennium Declaration of Heads of State and Government reaffirmed "the central position of the General Assembly (GA) as the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations" – and consequently of global governance. This status of the GA explains the calls from the birth of the UN onwards for it to have a companion non-governmental assembly, either as an elected parliamentary assembly or as a representative civil society assembly (the latter such as the UN Second Assembly for which INFUSA and CAMDUN actively campaigned from 1984 to 1995). But this did not happen in 50 years, so the Commission on Global Governance in 1995 proposed as a first step that an annual Forum of Civil Society should be held at UN headquarters, and should consist of representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) accredited to the GA.

In the following year this proposal was included on the agenda of the GA’s Working Group on the Strengthening of the United Nations System. This step was welcomed as "bold and imaginative" by then UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who advocated the creation of "representing associations" of NGOs whose representatives would work with the UN; and also by GA President Ismail Razali, who in his inaugural address said that the "greater involvement of members of civil society will not erode the intergovernmental process, on the contrary it will strengthen it….and may mitigate power politics".

However, in July 1997 it was revealed that the GA subgroup on NGOs had failed to reach a consensus on its mandate. In the same month, Ambassador Razali came to London to give the first Erskine Childers Memorial Lecture, and he made it known that a small number of member-states had, in effect, filibustered the proposal.

So the hopes of a short cut to a GA link were shattered. Fortunately, also in July 1997, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his UN Renewal/Reform report recommended that the Millennium General Assembly should be "accompanied by a companion Peoples’ Assembly". This was watered down some months later to a Millennium Forum to be held well before the Millennium Assembly.

Meanwhile, an opinion survey of 845 CSOs in Britain was carried out on the proposal for a UN Civil Society Forum. Distinguished endorsers of the survey included Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali. There was a 12% response to the questionnaire: 87% of the responders were in favour of the Forum and 79% in favour of the Boutros Boutros-Ghali "representing associations".

With this encouragement UNGA-Link UK (www.ungalink.org.uk) was launched in April 1998, and is now a network of 40 CSOs, 28 national, 7 local and 5 international. There are also about the same number of individual members. It campaigns for a global civil society link with the GA and also acts as a "representing association" for the members at international civil society and UN-NGO events.

This progress at national level reflects the global scene. The Millennium saw the New York non-governmental Millennium Forum, which supported a proposal for a periodic GA-linked Civil Society Forum, and the Geneva2000 Forum which accompanied the GA’s Special Session on Social Development that was held in the Palais des Nations. These two non-governmental events led the way to this World Civil Society Forum.

Where do we go from here? UNGA-Link proposes that international forums, networks, UN-NGO bodies, people’s assemblies and peaceful social movements that are concerned with global governance should establish a World Civil Society Liaison Body with an impartial secretariat. Acting as international "representing associations", they could each seek an observer presence of representatives at the GA, initially to monitor progress on implementation of the provisions of the UN Millennium Declaration. This presence could lead to a broadening of their involvement in the work of the GA and possibly to the representatives collectively becoming constituted as a subsidiary organ of the GA under Charter Article 22. Civil Society would thus have a formal link with the GA, while the "representing associations" would retain their independence, thus keeping the governmental and non-governmental sectors distinct.