2024 UN Civil Society Conference
The first-ever UN civil society conference held in Nairobi, Kenya just wrapped up this past week. The conference welcomed over 2,158 civil society representatives, 314 parliamentarians, 67 media reporters, as well as delegates from 37 UN entities. The scope of the conference was to bring “together senior UN System officials, prominent international civil society organizations, youth changemakers, academia, public opinion makers, and international media to discuss issues of global concern.”
In anticipation for the UN Summit of the Future taking place this upcoming September, member states and the UN establishment are working towards building three declarations that would “better reflect” the UN’s role in addressing tomorrow’s challenges. These three declarations are the Pact for the Future, The Global Digital Compact, and the Declaration of Future Generations.
The current iteration of the Pact of the Future urges for a UN system that “Establish[es] continuous and open channels of communication between UN intergovernmental bodies and civil society, allowing for ongoing dialogue, exchange of information, and collaboration beyond formal meetings, including through briefings, consultations, and interactive dialogues.”
Regrettably, in practice, this commitment falls short of its intended purpose. As is often the case with UN-led events, this very conference dedicated to civil society bore little resemblance to a marketplace of ideas and instead operated as an echochamber where moderators, panelists, and participants during interactive discussions delivered similar talking points stemming from an even more similar worldview.
Unheard voices of youth members addressing the media, @The Mount Kenya Times
A group of conservative youth attending the conference, disappointed with the bias held against them due to their political stances, had to figure out an alternative way to make their voices heard. They held a separate press conference and drafted a declaration, the “Nairobi Declaration on the Unheard Youth Voices.” Among the provisions of the Declaration was “profound affirmation of human dignity and the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.”
Interestingly enough, during his closing remarks, UN Secretary General António Guterres said that his worldview and support for interconnectivity between governments and larger society was greatly influenced by the German Philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
Photo of Jürgen Habermas.
For the purpose of this writing, I will show how the UN is actually inconsistent with Habermas’ theories that António Guterres seems to want to emulate.
Habermas is a proponent for a deliberative democracy and social sphere where citizens meet to have rational discussions on ideas and policies that affect them. Habermas’ vision was that these discussions would create enough buzz to reach those in positions of authority, leading to the formulation of policies that align with their interest. Yet the buzz cannot truly reflect the interest of the people unless those dicussing are representative of the larger civil society.
While the Secretary-General's expressed support for an increase in civil society participation in the multilateral fora could very much stem from Habermas’ ideas, the UN, by discriminating against conservatives, is in fact failing to implement Habermas’ philosophy.
A major pillar of Habermas’ theory is that no one should be disallowed from participating in these conversations as long as they are ready to discuss the topics at hand. But that is not the case at the UN. The UN does not favor those who make the best case but rather those whose cases most closely approximate what the UN agencies and secretariat have already established as true.
While conservative voices are largely absent from the UN, partly due to their perception of the organization as inconsequential, I argue that a more compelling reason is their anticipation of not being taken seriously, as was the case with the conservative youth group at the Nairobi Summit. Since Mr. Guterres so admires Habermas, I wonder how he manages to reconcile this reality with Habermas’ view that “you can’t engage in a genuine dialogue with others if you are too afraid to speak your mind, or if certain voices are privileged over others.”
Instances of discrimination against conservatives are evident in the frequent platforming of hostile attacks on conservatism during UN events. For example, during the closing session of the conference, Mithika Mwenda from Pan African Climate Justice Alliance said,
“The rise of the right-wing movement which often challenges democratic norms..this is often targeting immigrants and other marginalized groups and has been seen in several countries. The erosion of democracy…The rise of right-wing movements, especially in civilization especially through all these rethorics and ethnic with devastating consequences.”
