The United Nations is the only truly worldwide association of countries and that makes it a wonderful thing. It allows for multilateral discussions and conflict resolution, generally ensuring peace and stability between at least the major powers. It has also been successful in bringing the issue of global poverty and the need for development assistance on the international agenda. Nevertheless, it also has its major downsides. The Security Council has an atavistic composition that doesn't resemble 21st century realities, to name one of the more saillant issues. IFLRY has been experiencing another: strongly diverging opinions on the understanding and value of freedom and democracy among the UN's member states.

In 2006 IFLRY started the application process for NGO consultative status at the UN Economic and Social Council. This status would allow us to have a stronger say on issues regarding the work field of the UN ECOSOC, which is fairly wide. Particularly, it would give us access to the meetings of the UN Human Rights Council. Unfortunately, our application process has been stalled repeatedly and it doesn't seem to be ending soon. This January we were for the first time personally present at the committee hearing at the UN headquarters in UN to engage in discussions with the assembled delegates in person, but to no avail.

What's the problem? The status is granted by a committee that consists of diplomatic representatives of ECOSOC members and the selection does not take place on the basis of any democratic principles but rather on whether or not the NGO in question is to any extent a political danger to the powers-that-be. After all, authoritarian-ruled countries like China, Cuba and Egypt are not particularly known for their vibrant non-governmental civil societies, or at least not by their government's willingness to support such a development. Still, they rule on NGO applications and have the implicit right to defer decisions infinitely through a sort of 'filibustering' as the committee members can ask every applying NGO any question or request any document they deem relevant until they drop dead or lose interest in getting the status. Annually, the committee meets twice for 8-9 days a year, so the window for answering the committee's questions is very tight indeed.

I have uploaded all the questions and answers to the IFLRY documents center and you'll see that many of the questions are fairly irrelevant, particularly considering the fact that about 4000 NGOs have already received the status without much of a fuss. Moreover, very similar organizations like ours have received the consultative status over the past years, for example Liberal International, International Union of Socialist Youth, the Socialist International, the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the Centrist Democratic International.

It is tricky to speculate here about the exact intentions behind Cuba's and China's problems with 'us', but at the same time it also shows that we are drawing serious attention with our insistence on the respect for human rights and democracy. The UN might often have to compromise on those issues, but we are certainly not.

- Bart