A UN Committee Election Could Worsen Civil Society Access to the World Body

Opinion by Maithili Pai and Francisco Pérez
• March 18, 2026

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Opinion by Maithili Pai and Francisco Pérez

March 18, 2026

An obscure but influential UN committee that decides which civil society groups are granted access to the world body is holding an election soon to determine the panel’s new membership for the next four years. The essayists write that it is not too late for countries who support civil society participation at the UN to make the election more competitive. UNSPLASH

Far from headlines, the United Nations Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations has the power of picking which civil society voices get heard at the organization. The election of the committee’s newest 19 members is slated to occur on April 8.

As a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the committee decides which nongovernmental groups are given the coveted consultative status that enables their participation in several UN entities and processes. The committee receives hundreds of applications a year to be considered at two annual sessions, usually in January and May.

The NGO Committee consists of 19 countries distributed across the UN’s five regional blocs, elected to four-year terms. Its membership directly affects the ability of organizations to access the UN system.

As of this writing, only 20 publicly declared candidates for 19 available seats across the five regional slates have been announced for the upcoming election. Of these, only the Eastern European bloc’s slate is competitive, with Belarus, Estonia and Ukraine vying for two seats.

All other slates are closed: the Latin American and Caribbean, Asia-Pacific and Western European and Others blocs have sent four candidates each for their respective regional groups. Five African countries will run for the region’s five slots. The countries running for closed and noncompetitive elections are Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, China, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Türkiye, Britain, the United States, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Sudan and Tunisia.

Of these, these countries are running for re-election: Cuba, Nicaragua, China, India, Israel, Türkiye, Britain, US and Cameroon.

The proposed composition of countries from the Western European and Other bloc remains unchanged from the current term (2023-2026). We understand that countries have until April 1 to join the race and make any of the four closed slates competitive.

Given the immense impact that members of this small committee have on civil society’s access to the UN, we hope governments committed to enabling NGO participation throw their hat in the ring quickly.

Civil society has long sought to reform this dysfunctional, gridlocked and politicized body. The committee has a history of capriciously deferring nongovernmental organization applications. At its last session, in late January, the committee considered 618 applications, of which 381 were deferred from previous sessions, a backlog that has accumulated as countries have added more hoops for applicant NGOs to jump through.

These hoops have included endless questioning on minor details by the committee to kick the can into the next sessions; short-notice requests for complex documentation; and squeezing applicants and exploiting the UN liquidity crisis to nearly eliminate already-limited opportunities for NGOs to participate at the UN. Committee members also stubbornly refuse to enable remote participation for NGOs, even as in-person attendance to sessions held at the UN’s headquarters in New York City continues to represent a major hurdle for applicants, particularly those working with limited resources or based far away from Manhattan.

At the most recent session in January, a series of concerning developments highlighted the importance of the overall composition of the committee as well as the importance of fair processes. Algeria led a bid to fully revoke or at least partly suspend ECOSOC consultative status for two organizations, raising accusations like selling of UN grounds passes and charges of making “politically motivated” statements or speaking on issues allegedly to be beyond the groups’ stated expertise at the time of their application.

The two NGOs were an Italian organization, Il Cenacolo, and the Geneva-based Comité International pour le Respect et l’Application de la Charte Africaine des Droits de l’Homme et des Peuples (CIRAC). Despite opposition from some committee members, such as Israel, Costa Rica and Britain, as well as an observer state, Switzerland (which has no voting rights), Algeria called a vote, with most members electing to permanently withdraw Il Cenacolo’s consultative status and suspend CIRAC’s rights for a year. Algeria also raised questions and requested documents to be examined at the next session for four more accredited groups.

Such a rushed process can lead an organization to permanently lose its ECOSOC status, representing serious concerns over the continuously shrinking space for civil society at the UN. While some organizations labor for an absurdly long number of years to merely keep their deferred applications alive and many giving up after being drained by the process, the two groups that lost their ECOSOC status (one withdrawal and one suspension) took only four days.

With the additional pressure of high-speed reforms being pushed through amid the UN’s current financial crisis, there is a dangerous risk of the little space left for independent, grassroots and authentic voices being closed. Countries who care about reversing these trends must take action by running for a seat on the committee immediately. They must also encourage others to push for all regional slates to be competitive to ensure constructive members join a body that desperately needs them.

Competitive votes have yielded positive results in the past: In 2022, Russia, which sat in the NGO Committee since its establishment in 1946, was voted out in a three-way race for two seats.

This can happen again, but only if countries are willing to invest the minimal political capital and diplomatic leverage it takes to staff a UN body that may be obscure and under-resourced but has outsize power, especially as every bit of resistance to the global trend toward authoritarianism matters.

This is an opinion essay.

We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the NGO committee?