civil society summit

New York City 20 October 2021 (CoNGO InfoNews) – A civil society summit on substantive issues will be held on October 25, Monday, on the occasion of United Nations Day 2021. The summit is organized by CoNGO—the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations.The summit is open to the public and registration is ongoing.

The summit brings to a virtual conference some 45 UN, NGO and civil society leaders from all geographic regions of the world, from grassroots to international arenas, and from a cross section of fields of focus and expertise, leading seven thematic panels that will address the overall theme “shaping the future: the UN we need for the world we want”.

CoNGO president, Liberato Bautista, emphasized the word “for” in the theme. “It addresses the coherence needed between the UN we need and the world we want. That coherence happens only if the multilateral infrastructure is built around the true and urgent needs of the world, not just for today, but into the future, both immediate and long term.”

There are other renditions of the same theme, Bautista said, but many use the word “and” rather than “for”. The “UN for the world” provides a necessary if urgent orientation for this multilateral institution called UN, and for civil society organizations to be decisively organized and working in the service of people, the planet and their futures, Bautista asserted.

Impetus for the summit partly came from the report of the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, Our Common Agenda. A high-level opening panel will explore the subtheme “the future in the present tense”. This civil society summit is not unlike Mr. Guterres’s concern for the future, Bautista opined, and hence the SG’s expressed desire to convene a Summit of the Future in 2023.

CoNGO’s declaration on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the UN called this global body and its Member States, “to enter into a dialogue with civil society to create innovative partnerships” and to recognize “the vast potential of civil society as an essential element of the international system, defining the present and shaping the future.”

The year 2023 will be CoNGO’s seventy-fifth anniversary. CoNGO since 2008 has had for its organizational theme, “defining the present, shaping the future”. Today’s UN undertaking has been more than a decade-old theme for CoNGO.

Moving into its seventy-fifth year, CoNGO is poised to join the UN and civil society worldwide in shaping the future. What kind of future(s) and what actions to undertake to achieve a just, peaceable, and sustainable world is an undertaking the civil society summit will try to elicit recommendations for from participants.

The summit on Monday will inform the work of CoNGO. A synthesis report will be submitted to the upcoming twenty-seventh CoNGO General Assembly scheduled for November 29 to December 1.