-  Check against delivery -

Chair,

The Candidate Countries North Macedonia*, Montenegro* and Albania*, the EFTA country Liechtenstein, member of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, and Georgia, align themselves with this statement.

The European Union congratulates the new Chair upon her election, and wishes the NGO Committee a successful session.

We would like to start our statement by congratulating the new NGO Committee members for their election. In a situation where Russia’s fully unprovoked and unjustified aggression against Ukraine continues, we hope that, following last month’s election, we make progress towards a fairer composition of the Committee, with more Member States open to civil society participation and less hostile to NGOs that could monitor and denounce possible gross human rights violations.

As the first session in 2022 begins, the European Union remains extremely concerned about the major backlog this Committee is facing in implementing the screening of applications and the adoption of reports. This backlog is preventing hundreds of NGOs from receiving consultative status in due time.

One of the main reason this Committee is facing major delays is the number of deferrals by means of repetitive questioning, in some cases without any credible justification. These delays disproportionately affect NGOs working for specific issues, including human rights. We continue to call on all members of the Committee to be guided by the sole consideration of the general interest when reviewing applications and to abstain from using Resolution 1996/31 for dilatory purposes.  This behaviour tarnishes the reputation of the NGO Committee and the credibility of the UN.

 ECOSOC must take action by systematically reviewing the Committee’s status determination of NGOs, and when misjudgements are identified, it is ECOSOC’s responsibility to make sure they are reversed. 

Chair,

This happens in a context where NGOs with ECOSOC consultative status are currently only granted two grounds passes, after two full years of complete closure of UN premises to NGOs. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, ECOSOC accredited NGOs were granted 7 annual passes and 9 temporary passes. The continued restriction in passes is even less understandable now that the visitors’ programme has restarted, and is not acceptable given that no justification for the continued reduction has been provided.  The United Nations should not be contributing to the shrinking of civil society space, and the EU calls on DESA’s NGO branch to return to the pre-Covid 19 policy regarding NGOs’ access and to facilitate their actual participation in the meetings.

Furthermore, we reiterate our call for the NGO Committee to organise a round of consultations with NGOs on the functioning of the Committee. We call on the UN to provide additional resources to the Committee’ secretariat, including upgrading its technological tools.

The EU reiterates its call for the daily Q&A session to allow the possibility for the NGOs to intervene online if they wish to do so. This would allow the direct participation of more NGOs from all regions.

The European Union also notes with grave concern that a significant number of government-affiliated NGOs continue to ask for consultative status, opening the way to biased discussion in UN events. This is simply not acceptable.

Chair,

For the current session, where the Committee will consider 320 deferred applications and 266 new applications, the European Union sees no justification to delay further a number of applications of EU-based NGOs that have been pending for a very long time, including the International Dalit Solidarity Network, deferred for now 15 years, the Inimõiguste Instituut, Non c’è pace senza giustizia, Associazione Luca Coscioni and Diakonia.

I thank you.

* North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.