PRESS RELEASE : Facilitating civil society access to enrich the work of the UN [December 2022]

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 7 December 2022.

Statement by Rebecca Russo, UK Senior Policy Advisor, at the ECOSOC meeting on non-governmental organizations.

Thank you Madam President,

The UK welcomes the decision tabled by the United States to provide accreditation to these nine additional NGOs. These are legitimate NGOs that have faced repeated arbitrary deferrals for politicised reasoning for years, one as long as 14 years! This is despite adequately answering every, often repetitive question. Such endless deferrals demonstrate that some Committee members continue to abuse its working methods – yet another example of reprisals against NGOs seeking to work with the UN. We are therefore grateful that these NGOs have been brought forward for decision.

We were disappointed by the extensive misinformation that was spread ahead of today’s accreditation vote. ECOSOC is the parent body of the NGO Committee and therefore governs the Committee’s working methods. According to the rules and procedures, the Committee makes recommendations to ECOSOC for their consideration. Any suggestion that this decision bypasses or supersedes the NGO Committee is false. Tabling a decision in this way is a legitimate course of action with established precedent. The UK was therefore happy to cosponsor.

We would have preferred that such action not be required, that we could have worked fairly through the Committee. But the actions of a minority of member states have made it impossible for the Committee to work effectively, time and again.

Civil society voices are essential for the work we do at the UN and we will not tolerate attempts to shut them out.

We therefore encourage member states to vote in support of this decision.