In February 2003, Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed a panel that would provide a set of practical recommendations to improve the relations between the UN and civil society, the private sector and parliaments. After reviewing the existing access and participation of civil society organizations in the UN deliberation processes, the panel suggested methods to fully integrate civil society actors into UN processes. Included in the report were suggestions on how the Secretariat could facilitate, manage, and evaluate the relationships of the UN with civil society.

On June 7, 2004, the 13 member panel presented their findings and recommendations to the Secretary General. The Secretary General presented this report before the General Assembly on June 11, 2004, expressing his intention to bring this topic back to the floor in the fall after further research by the Secretariat.
In a letter addressed to the Secretary General, the Chair of the Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations-Civil Society Relations Fernando Henrique Cardoso remarked on the importance of the project.

 "The rise of civil society is indeed one of the landmark events of our times. Global governance is no longer the sole domain of Governments. The growing participation and influence of non-State actors is enhancing democracy and reshaping multilateralism.. This engagement is essential to enable the [United Nations] to better identify global priorities and to mobilize all resources to deal with the task at hand. We also see this opening up of the United Nations to a plurality of constituencies and actors not as a threat to Governments, but as a powerful way to reinvigorate the intergovernmental process itself."

The proposals for U.N. reform are reflections of the four priorities that the panel had previously identified.

The first priority is that the United Nations needs to become an outward-looking organization, meaning that the UN needs to focus more on convening and facilitating rather than putting the institution and its actions at the center.

Second, the UN must embrace a plurality of constituents. In other words, in recent years, NGOs have played key roles in resolving or searching for answers to important international issues such as climate change, AIDS, debt, and landmines. As this is just a short list of issues that countries would have difficulty addressing by themselves, the United Nations must bring all relevant actors to the discussion table, even if those actors are not government representatives.

Third, the UN must connect the global with the local. Global engagement must start at the country level and then be tied to the global initiative. For example, while it may not be difficult for the UN to stress education in solving the global AIDS crisis, what is difficult, but absolutely essential, is that the word education be put into specific cultural contexts. While in some countries it is acceptable to teach safe sex, in other countries, this is culturally unacceptable. Therefore, a solution must be found for each country to individually address this problem before there can be a global impact.

Finally, the UN must help re-shape democracy for the 21st century. The UN must take a more active role in strengthening global governance. It must emphasize participatory democracy and there must be more accountability of institutions to the public.

In moving towards this aim, the UN must take their issues to national parliaments more systematically, it needs to make sure that representatives have more strategic roles at UN events, it needs to link parliaments to the international deliberative process, and it should provide an institutional home in the United Nations itself for engaging representatives.

Last Updated February 07, 2005

UN Website of Civil Society Panel
Contains report text, press information and background on the Panel's work.