Powerful NGOs Gather to Put Left-Wing Pressure on UN General Assembly

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) The 55th annual meeting of the UN General Assembly next fall will go by the name of the Millennium Assembly. The resolution calling for this special meeting of the Member States said, "The year 2000 constitutes a unique and symbolically compelling moment to articulate and affirm an animating vision for the United Nations in the new era." The Member States also look upon the new meeting as an opportunity to "strengthen the role of the United Nations."

     At the same time as the GA's Millennium Assembly, Secretary General Kofi Annan will host a shorter "Millennium Summit" that will deal with a broad range of themes including "the role and function of the UN," "towards a global society," "new challenges to multi-lateralism in the era of globalization," "international cooperation," and "promoting peace and sustainable development of mankind." The Millennium Summit will also deal with human rights. Radical notions of reproductive "rights" and population control generally enter the UN debate through the concepts of human rights and "sustainable development."

     Leading into the Millennium Assembly and the Millennium Summit have been an assortment of NGO meetings in The Hague, Seoul, Chicago, Montreal and others. By far the largest and the most important NGO meeting comes at UN headquarters in New York this May. At least one thousand representatives from left-leaning NGOs convene on May 22 for five days during which a document will be written that organizers will present to the Millennium Assembly in September.

     Given that conservative NGOs have only recently begun to be accredited by the UN, most UN-convened NGO forums are gatherings of only the most politically extreme groups. The influence of NGOs is rapidly growing in all international forums. The most recent example were the NGO-led riots at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last December. It is from NGO ranks that many of the radical UN ideas first percolate.

     The theme of the NGO Millennium Forum is "The United Nations for the Twenty-First Century." The NGO Forum intends to cover "peace, security, and disarmament," "eradication of poverty," "human rights," "sustainable development and the environment," "the challenges of globalization and achieving equity, justice and diversity," and "strengthening and democratizing the UN and other international organizations." "Democratizing the UN," is a notion meant to give NGOs a government-like negotiating voice and a vote in UN proceedings, something strongly resisted by most governments.

     These gatherings are understood to be the nearly private preserve of leftwing NGOs, mostly radical feminists, environmental extremists and population controllers. Conservative NGOs have come late to UN activity and are rarely invited to participate in the planning of such events. Moreover, conservative NGOs are actively kept out of forum participation by UN bureaucrats and by NGOs with planning authority. By rough count, less than a dozen conservative, pro-family NGOs have been given official UN accreditation.

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