Identification of NGO speakers at the HRC High Level Segment

The Conference of NGOs (CONGO) has just circulated the outcome of the NGO consultation process initiated on 7 June at the request of HRC President Designate Ambassador de Alba, to facilitate the participation of NGOs to the High-Level Segment of the Human Rights Council's first session.

This process began with a meeting in which more than 60 NGO representatives participated and was followed by 2 meetings of an open ended working group on 8 June and 12 June. General guidelines have been elaborated and two letters have been addressed to the President Designate to keep him up-dated about the developments of this process. In the meantime, the NGOs involved in the process have been regularly informed and up-dated information was posted on line.

Based on the proposals that have been made so far by various NGOs and groups of NGOs during the various steps of the process of identifying NGO speakers, CONGO checked if those proposed speakers would be available for the date of 22 June 2006.

The group of NGOs involved in this process has been committed to find speakers with a well known human rights record and who would reflect some kind of balanced representation of gender, regional and thematic backgrounds, as suggested by the President Designate. This group believes that the suggested speakers will represent a broad spectrum of voices from civil society in which many NGOs will be able to recognise themselves.

List of identified NGO speakers

The names of the available speakers that have been identified and that will be suggested to the Chair Designate are:

- Shirin Ebadi (Iran)
- Arnold Tsunga (Zimbabwe)
- Natasa Kandic (Serbia)
- Marta Vazquez (Argentina)
- Sunila Abeysekera (Sri Lanka)

Since the participation of Shirin Ebadi (Iran) could not yet be fully confirmed at the time when the decision must be submitted to the Chair (Friday 16 June), and with the view not to have only 3 NGO speakers in case she could not address the Council for any practical reason, many of the NGOs involved in this process supported the view that Sunila Abeysekera, whose availability has been confirmed, should be included in this list. A few NGO representatives however expressed an opposite view and it must be noted that it was not possible, due to time constraints, to organise another physical meeting to strengthen further consensus on this point.

The above names will be submitted to the President-designate on 16 June 2006.

As previously mentioned, the 5 identified speakers will speak in their personal capacities and not as representatives of the sponsoring NGOs. The speakers' statements will represent their vision of the Council, but we expect that their views will echo those of many NGOs. To that end, a compilation of the thematic bullet points received by CONGO from various NGOs or groups of NGOs regarding themes and issues they would like to see addressed by the speakers will be sent to them, so that they can benefit from these inputs.

For information, another name whose availability was confirmed but who is not proposed by the group of NGOs for this year is:

- Fatmire Feka (Kosovo)

Other suggested names of potential speakers proposed during the process but whose availability could not been confirmed at this time are:

- Vandana Shiva (India)
- Lida Yusupova (Chechnya)
- François Hutard (Belgium)
- Elie Wiesel (USA)
- Alirio Uribe Muñoz (Colombia)
- Juan Mendez (Argentina)
- Vivian Labrie (Canada)

The Conference of NGOs (CONGO) is an international, membership association that facilitates the participation of NGOs in United Nations debates and decisions. Founded in 1948, CONGO's major objective is to ensure the presence of NGOs in exchanges among the world's governments and United Nations agencies on issues of global concern. For more information see our website at www.ngocongo.org http://www.ngocongo.org