GENEVA: Rights advocates warned this week that upcoming elections at a UN committee that controls NGO access is in the grips of repressive states, urging countries friendlier to civil society to step forward.
Currently China, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States figure among the candidates in the April 8 election to a body considered the United Nations´s gatekeeper for civil society.
Dozens of independent UN experts cautioned in a statement on Wednesday that countries sitting on a seemingly obscure committee that controls NGO´s UN accreditation were abusing their positions to block access, particularly for groups working on the defence of human rights.
“We are increasingly concerned by attempts of a number of states to shut civil society out of UN spaces,” 40 experts, including the special rapporteurs on human rights defenders and on rights situations in countries like Iran, Russia and Afghanistan said in a statement on Wednesday.
The experts warned that Tuesday´s elections for the UN Committee of Non-Governmental Organizations looked set to be largely uncompetitive and involved mostly countries whose governments are hostile to civil society.
