The Copenhagen Summit: Processes


     The Copenhagen Summit was concerned with three core issues, namely poverty, unemployment and social exclusion. It was initiated within the United Nations itself rather than in response to specific proposals from civil society. The first of four preparatory meetings began in New York early in 1994 and the Summit itself was held in March 1995. It was attended by heads of state or government of more than 110 countries and almost every other country was also represented.

CSO involvement

     Several thousand CSOs were involved in some way or another in the preparations for the Summit or during the Summit itself. A reasonable estimate might be that about one hundred organisations had a close and sustained involvement. Many organisations which attended the preparatory meetings in New York did not seek, or were unable to achieve, any significant engagement with the intergovernmental discussions. Most organisations which attended in Copenhagen during the Summit itself had not attended or played a substantial role at any of the preparatory meetings. By the time of their arrival in Copenhagen, any likelihood of significant CSO influence on the content of the agreements was effectively exhausted. Instead, most CSOs attended a wide assortment of forums, workshops and entertainments at a separate venue from the Summit and one group circulated an Alternative Declaration for endorsement.

     Of those organisations which were most closely involved, the majority were in the related fields of social welfare and development. The women’s movement was also substantially involved, although its principal focus at the time was on the Cairo population conference and then preparations for the Beijing women’s conference. The labour movement was more active behind the scenes than in general CSO activities, while other sectors such as the environmental, consumer and human rights movements continued to focus principally on other international processes.

     During the preparatory stages, three groupings of CSOs emerged as perhaps the most active and closely engaged with the intergovernmental negotiations. One was a long-established global organisation, the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW), which represents tens of thousands of organisations in about 80 countries around the world. The other two groupings – calling themselves respectively the Women’s Caucus and the Development Caucus – existed at and for the purpose of the Summit process and some other UN meetings rather than as ongoing organisations. Their meetings, like those of ICSW, attracted participants from a wide range of countries but in each grouping the key work was probably undertaken by a core of 10-20 people.

     An initial attempt was made by the Conference of NGOs accredited to the UN’s Economic and Social Council (CONGO) to establish an overall coordinating committee for CSOs involved in Summit preparations. It foundered for a number of reasons, including a perceived lack of prior consultation, and the three principal CSO groupings which emerged came to believe that no such overarching process was necessary or perhaps even desirable. A degree of consultation and cooperation developed between them, and with other active CSOs, which facilitated interaction with sympathetic leaders in the intergovernmental process.

Access

     It was relatively straightforward for CSOs to become accredited to the Summit process, requiring little more than provision of some basic information about their organisation and an expression of interest in being accredited. In itself, however, accreditation merely gave a right to enter the United Nations building and the plenary intergovernmental sessions. CSOs were not usually allowed to attend the informal sessions, often involving only 10-20 governments, at which most of the detailed and crucial negotiations occurred. Most CSOs could not get timely access to key draft documents or have a discussion with the major negotiators. Many CSOs were permitted to address the plenary sessions but this usually occurred when the key governmental representatives were engaged in closed negotiations elsewhere or after the relevant issues had been considered by the governments.

     After considerable pressure, a few special segments for selective CSO input to plenary intergovernmental sessions were provided at times when their views were more likely to be heard by a reasonably large audience. The UN secretariat initially insisted that all speakers in these segments must represent a grouping entitled “caucus” which, apparently, was thought in itself to guarantee breadth and representativity. Yet some individual organisations which were very actively involved in the process had memberships that were very much larger and more geographically extensive than was the participation in most of the caucuses. Indeed, some caucuses, including the self-styled and short-lived “caucus of caucuses”, had no convincing claim to represent more than a few individuals.
Without any formal process for selection, the CSOs which eventually were allowed to speak usually included the three principal groupings and a few others who had special personal influence with leaders in the bureau or the secretariat or were especially assertive and persistent in their requests. Some confusion and unfairness occurred but it is not clear that a better allocation would have been achieved by a more structured process.
The three principal CSO groupings, together with a few individuals, had somewhat better access to documentation and negotiations due largely to the personal support of the Chair of the Preparatory Committee (Ambassador Juan Somavía of Chile). Even they, however, had limited opportunities for detailed discussion on key issues with the leading government representatives and it is not clear whether, despite some assertions, their written submissions attracted detailed consideration by many governments. In general, there seemed to be greater CSO access to governments of industrial countries, partly because the size and cumbersome processes of the negotiating group of developing countries (G77 and China) gave its leaders very little time for any other discussion. Even where access did occur, however, it was often unpredictable and fleeting.

     Some of the best opportunities for input were through the few CSO representatives who were members of their government’s delegation, especially where the delegation in question was active in a key negotiating group. These representatives were useful sources of information as well as occasionally being able to influence their delegation’s position. One such CSO representative was eventually recruited to help re-write much of the proposed draft agreement after the governments had repeatedly refused to commence negotiating it.

Meetings and publications

     Poor meeting room facilities in or near the UN building in New York were a major impediment to cohesive and effective work by CSOs. The acute shortage of appropriate rooms, and of means by which meetings could be publicised, was aggravated by a seriously inadequate booking system which often gave preference to meetings convened by organisations that had little or no involvement in the preparatory process. Nevertheless, a number of informative seminars were held, often by UN bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme rather than by CSOs. Most of the seminars appeared, however, to have little influence on the course of intergovernmental negotiations.

     The International Council on Social Welfare organised several global and regional forums on Summit issues, both in New York and elsewhere, as did some UN bodies. These forums outside the formal preparatory processes often provided better opportunities for hearing key governmental representatives and expressing views to them. Many CSOs organised preparatory meetings in their own countries for their members or compatriots but large international gatherings seem to have been rarer than for some other UN conferences.

     A wide range of information and policy papers were distributed by CSOs at the preparatory meetings and the Summit itself. The arrangements in the UN building in New York, however, were not conducive to effective distribution, especially to government representatives. Moreover, many of the papers were on issues of only peripheral relevance to the negotiations. Nevertheless, the three principal groupings and some other CSOs prepared detailed and substantial contributions. A quarterly newsletter was prepared on behalf of a consortium of CSOs but it was relatively brief and general, rather than being a focal point for CSO preparations.

     The preparatory meetings attracted very little interest from mainstream media. In Copenhagen, the media focused more on the activities of CSOs in the separate conference than of those CSOs lobbying around the governmental negotiations. In general, there appears to have been substantially less coordination, focus and impact in the media work of CSOs before and during the Summit than in some other major UN conference processes of the last decade.