Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 12:11:11 +0000
Subject: Re: UN Panel
Dear Marco & others,
This is really outrageous. Maybe I'm too naive, but I really hadn't thought they would revert to such blunt censorship. It's negating the very principle of an NGO forum: that voices can be heard without the condition of prior consent from any state. I think it would be extremely important to force them to put this answer and the condition of member state sponsorship on paper. That would make it easier for us to make a public row about it towards the press and to national delegations. My first suggestion would be rally support among delegations, not in the first place to find one who would sponsor our panel, but to challenge this absurd condition as being undemocratic and in contradiction with the very principles of NGO participation. Secondly, we'd have to find a common position amongst ourselves about the next step: if we don't get this condition off the table, will we organise it on principle outside of the UN building, denouncing the limitations and censorship inside, or will we indeed find a country to '
endorse' our panel. That wouldn't be impossible:
both Luxembourg and the Netherlands f.e. have in principle agreed to include NGO representatives in their official delegations, the step to sponsor a critical NGO forum (not on the basis of agreement with what will be said, but on the basis of supporting the principle of independent NGO participation) is not that far away.
But let's first make a serious effort to denounce this attempted
censorship and explore options of a venue for ourselves outside. The definitive choice for the next step can then be made later. Apart from the written statement - maybe directly from UNDCP-, it would be good to have the formal position on this matter from the NGO Committees as well in writing.
One final thing to share: last week we had a meeting here at TNI with Harry Bego, Joep Oomen and myself, exploring any further
possibilities of cooperation between the 'two coalitions' - apart from the already agreed joint NY event. Besides several more obvious points like keeping one another fully updated about any progress, exchanging names and addresses of contacts in any country to facilitate cooperation on a national level, we mainly discussed ways to strengthen a joint publicity & press strategy. A very concrete agreement we reached was around the idea to work towards a joint 'press kit', which could support the NY event and which would enable to distribute the key documents and background information of both coalitions to press contacts of any of the organisations involved.
Harry is going to make a first outline of what would be included in the kit, apart from the two declarations. On the basis of that index, we'll divide up tasks who will be responsible for providing the texts on the different issues (roughly along the lines of the set of themes of the joint event). The deadline for these short background papers would be the 15th of May, to ensure that the full kit will be available to journalists well before the days in June. If Harry or Joep has anything to add on the outcome of our meeting, please do so.
But at least the information on this very concrete point is now shared amongst the main persons involved in the joint planning. Or is anyone missing from my 'cc' list? Please note that I've included Ken Bluestone's new email address (ken@ciir.org) instead of his old one, which is no longer functioning (ciirlon@etc....).
Take care and let's keep up this circle of communication,
Martin
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Martin Jelsma / Transnational Institute (TNI)
Paulus Potterstraat 20 / 1071 DA Amsterdam
tel: -3120 6626608 / fax -3120 6757176
http://www.worldcom.nl/tni/drugs
