Religion, NGOs and the United Nations: Visible and Invisible Actors in Power 9781350020368, 9781350020375, 9781350020382

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

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Also available from Bloomsbury Education and NGOs, edited by Lorraine Pe Symaco Mission and Development, edited by Matthew Clarke Religion and Politics in International Relations, Timothy Fitzgerald

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations Visible and Invisible Actors in Power Edited by Jeremy Carrette and Hugh Miall

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Jeremy Carrette, Hugh Miall and the Contributors 2017 Jeremy Carrette and Hugh Miall have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN :

HB : ePDF : ePub:

978-1-3500-2036-8 978-1-3500-2037-5 978-1-3500-2038-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. Cover Image: Johannes Simon / Staff © Getty Images Cover Design: Catherine Wood Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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Contents Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Religion, the United Nations and Institutional Process

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Realism and Idealism: NGO s and the United Nations System

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The Problem of Categories: Exploring Religion and NGO s through Survey Research

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Representation, Accountability and Influence at the UN : Results from the Survey of Religious NGO s

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Religious NGO s, UN Participation and Fieldwork Methodology

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On and Behind the Scene: Religious NGO Processes at the OHCHR of the UN in Geneva

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Blessing or Bother? Religion and Religious NGO s at the UN in New York

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Islam, the OIC and the Defamation of Religions Controversy

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Catholicism at the United Nations in New York

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Hindu and Buddhist NGO s and the United Nations

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Conclusion: Diplomacy, State Power and Irrational Religion

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Notes Bibliography Index

235 271 291

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Detailed Contents Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Religion, the United Nations and Institutional Process Jeremy Carrette

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Part 1 Methods: Context, Categories and Conditions 1

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3

4

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Realism and Idealism: NGO s and the United Nations System Hugh Miall The role of the UN in world affairs: theories of engagement The UN as an arena The UN as an actor The UN as a tool Conclusion: NGO s and values The Problem of Categories: Exploring Religion and NGO s through Survey Research Evelyn Bush Locating ‘religion’ in NGO s The survey The category ‘non-governmental’ Representation, Accountability and Influence at the UN : Results from the Survey of Religious NGO s Evelyn Bush Religion and representation at the UN Accountability: agenda setting and financial support Conclusion Religious NGO s, UN Participation and Fieldwork Methodology Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud UN bodies, services and agencies concerned with religious NGO activities What can be regarded as an ‘NGO’ at the UN ? The criterion of the ‘consultative status’

21 22 26 34 35 37

39 41 45 49

53 54 61

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Detailed Contents

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Who is granting or suspending the ‘consultative status’ of NGO s? For what kind of ‘safe conduct’ is the ‘consultative status’ standing for? Observing the ‘processes of action’: the epistemological framework of our study of the RNGO s effective presence and concrete activities at the UN

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Part 2 5

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Processes: Religious NGOs in Geneva and New York

On and Behind the Scene: Religious NGO Processes at the OHCHR of the UN in Geneva Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud The diversity of the Religious NGO activities at the UN : mapping the processes Focus on the RNGO s processes of activities at OHCHR Measuring the level of RNGO s activity through legally-based processes Case of legally-based process (1) the RNGO s written statements at the Human Rights Council Case of legally-based process (2) the RNGO s parallel or sideevents at the HRC Observing the RNGO s operations by adaptive processes Case of adaptive process (1) Networking processes Case of adaptive process (2) Informal diplomacy and communication Case of adaptive process (3) Ad hoc ‘breaking wall’ processes Case of adaptive process (4) Educational processes Case of adaptive process (5) Religious processes Conclusion: how efficient are these processes? Blessing or Bother? Religion and Religious NGO s at the UN in New York Verena Beittinger-Lee What religion? Or religion – the forgotten category? The contested role of religion at the UN RNGO s at the UN headquarters in New York RNGO processes and the UN in New York Conclusion: the value of partnerships

Part 3

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89 89 91 92 93 95 99 101 104 107 109 112 115

119 120 122 129 137 148

Case Studies: The Centre and the Periphery of UN Civil Society

Islam, the OIC and the Defamation of Religions Controversy Verena Beittinger-Lee and Hugh Miall

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Detailed Contents

Islam at the UN The Organisation of Islamic States The Defamation of Religions controversy: a case study Conclusion 8

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Catholicism at the United Nations in New York Verena Beittinger-Lee The Vatican and the Holy See: historical background Problematic ties: criticism and opponents of the Catholic Church Catholic civil society presence at the UN Conclusion: diversity and presence Hindu and Buddhist NGO s and the United Nations Jeremy Carrette NGO dynamics and the UN : push–pull factors Constraining dynamics Facilitating dynamics Internal mechanisms and global culture Conclusion: UN reform, plurality and ‘religious’ NGO s

Conclusion: Diplomacy, State Power and Irrational Religion Hugh Miall and Jeremy Carrette Notes Bibliography Index

156 158 160

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177 178 182 186 193

195 198 200 207 210 214

217 235 271 291

List of Contributors Verena Beittinger-Lee Independent Scholar and Policy Analyst, Heidelberg, Germany Verena Beittinger-Lee researches and teaches on modern Indonesian politics, human rights theory, democratization, civil society, international organizations, and the United Nations. She has held a number of positions in these areas, working for the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA ) in Hamburg on a project on the Human Rights policies of Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines and as Research Fellow and Lecturer for Indonesian Studies at the faculty of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin where she acquired her PhD. She was Post-doc Field Researcher in New York for the AHRC /ESRC Religion & Society Project ‘Religious NGO s and the United Nations in New York and Geneva’ from 2009 to 2011 and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Kent from 2012 to 2014. She is the author of (Un)Civil Society and Political Change in Indonesia: A Contested Arena (Routledge, 2009). Evelyn Bush, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Fordham University, USA Evelyn Bush is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Fordham University, USA . She received her PhD in Sociology from Cornell University in 2005. Her research has focused largely on organized religious participation and influence in international and foreign policy institutions that focus on human rights. She was specialist consultant for the survey analysis and co-investigator for the AHRC /ESRC Religion & Society Project ‘Religious NGO s and the United Nations in New York and Geneva’ from 2009 to 2013. Her publications have included ‘Measuring Religion in Global Civil Society’ (Social Forces), ‘Explaining Religious Market Failure’, (Sociological Theory), and several chapters in edited volumes in the field of international relations.

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List of Contributors

Jeremy Carrette, Professor of Philosophy, Religion and Culture University of Kent, UK Jeremy Carrette is Professor of Philosophy, Religion and Culture at the University of Kent, UK . He was the Principal Investigator of the AHRC /ESRC Religion & Society Project ‘Religious NGO s and the United Nations in New York and Geneva’ between 2009 and 2013. He works in the interdisciplinary study of religion across the fields of philosophy, psychology, politics and the history of ideas. He has written on a wide array of themes in the study of religion and previously published contributions on Quaker NGO s and globalization. His published works include studies on Michel Foucault, William James, the politics of spirituality and the philosophy of religion. His most recent monograph publications are Religion and Critical Psychology: Religious Experience in the Knowledge Economy (Routledge, 2007) and William James’s Hidden Religious Imagination: A Universe of Relations (Routledge 2013). Hugh Miall, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, and Chair of the Conflict Research Society University of Kent, UK Hugh Miall is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Kent and Chair of the Conflict Research Society. He was previously Director of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre at the University of Kent, Director of the Richardson Institute for Peace and Conflict Research at Lancaster University and a Research Fellow in the European Programme at Chatham House. He was co-investigator for the AHRC /ESRC Religion & Society Project ‘Religious NGO s and the United Nations in New York and Geneva’ from 2009 to 2013. His recent publications include Contemporary Conflict Resolution (4th edition, Polity, 2016), A Reader in Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Polity, 2015), and Emergent Conflict and Peaceful Change (Palgrave, 2007). Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud, director of studies and adjunct lecturer Catholic Institute of Paris Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud is director of studies and adjunct lecturer at the Catholic Institute of Paris. She teaches anthropology, sociology and religious studies and has a doctoral degree from the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is author of Devenir mormon: La fabrication communautaire de l’individu (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013); the published version of her

List of Contributors

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PhD thesis on the Mormons. She participated in a research project on pilgrimage for the Association for the Sociology of Religion. She was the field researcher in Geneva for the AHRC /ESRC Religion & Society Project ‘Religious NGO s and the United Nations in New York and Geneva’ from 2009 to 2011 and honorary researcher at the University of Kent from 2012–2014.

Acknowledgements This work was part of the Religion & Society Programme in the UK , directed by Professor Linda Woodhead and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC ) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC ), with the aim to develop collaboration across the Humanities and Social Sciences in the study of religion and society (see www.religionandsociety.org.uk). The work in this volume reflects the final academic findings of the ‘Religious NGO s and the United Nations’ project (2009 to 2013) and subsequent follow up discussions, articles and academic conference papers between 2013 and 2015. The main public findings were published at the end of the project in a dissemination booklet ‘Religious NGO s and the United Nations in Geneva and New York’ (Canterbury: University of Kent, 2013), which received international attention for its finding that the United Nations showed an under-representation of nonChristian NGO s, especially Hindu and Buddhist NGO s. The subsequent media coverage of this finding and its implications for United Nations reform gained attention across a diversity of third sectors groups and media outlets. This present volume represents the more detailed academic discussions and fieldwork findings from the multidisciplinary project team (see contributors list), with its focus on processes and visibility/invisibility. We wish to thank the AHRC /ESRC for its financial support for the project and Professor Linda Woodhead for continued guidance and support. Along the way administrative support from Peta Ainsworth and Rebecca Catto was very helpful. We thank the Department of Religious Studies and the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, UK , for their support during the fieldwork. Thanks also to Lalle Pursglove and Bloomsbury for supporting us in the publication of the work. A number of people helped with the project and offered support in various ways over the years. We particularly thank Professor Jeff Haynes for his academic consultation during the research and Rachel Brett (QUNO, Geneva) and Julia Berger (Bahai International Community, New York) for fieldwork support and QUNO, Geneva, and the Bahai International Community, New York, for allowing us to host various discussions and dissemination events at their UN offices. We thank Rachel Brett, Julia Berger and Richard King for consultative xii

Acknowledgements

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support for the initial project workshop on the category of religion and the UN and the Bristol Online Survey team for support with the questionnaire. We also thank all the members of the team for their efforts to keep working across differences in approaches, methods and continents. Thanks also due to the many diplomats, NGO workers and scholars who attended our dissemination workshops in Brussels, Canterbury, Geneva, London, New York and Paris and those who raised questions and gave advice in response to papers, especially Emmanuel Decaux, Bérangère Massignon, Jean-Paul Willaime, Tugba Basaran, Harmonie Toros, Bethany Squire, Nicolas Leroux, Katherine Marshall, and Karsten Lehmann. Finally, we offer a special thanks to all the United Nations diplomats, NGO representatives and all the organizations, scholars and lawyers that offered interviews and gave so generously of their time. Most of them decided to remain anonymous but we hope that all will find in this work the tribute to their contribution.

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Introduction: Religion, the United Nations and Institutional Process Jeremy Carrette

Procedure and process, like tactics and strategy of which they often form part, are instrumental: they are a means to an end. That end is usually substantive. Manual for UN Delegates: Conference Process, Procedure and Negotiation (2011) p. 4. Given the importance of considering process when one is trying to understand international organizations, it is unfortunate that so much scholarship on these actors has focused on the outputs of global policy-making rather than investigating its underlying dynamics of how and why certain decisions emerge from these efforts. Courtney Smith Politics and Process at the United Nations: The Global Dance (2006) p. 9. The increased political and media fascination with religion over the last 20 years has resulted in many different academic disciplines finding a renewed currency and deeper critical understanding for the category of religion in the social and political world. Such a situation has also increased attempts to understand the ways religion operates in a new global context. One fascinating part of these debates, since the expansion of global civil society in the 1990s, has been the increasing attention given to so-called religious NGO s (non-governmental organizations) working at the United Nations (UN ) in Geneva and New York.1 These actors in the UN have been of interest for the way they potentially inform political processes and policy decisions, but also for the way they reveal how religious traditions engage in complex international organizations, how they commit to processes of social justice and, significantly, how they are embedded in the social fabric of national and global governance.2 Scholars have so far been 1

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

fascinated with their number and type at the UN (Religion Counts, Berger, Boehle and Petersen), their influence in global politics (Haynes), their place inside the religion–secular debate (Carrette and Trigeaud, Lehmann) and the specific way they shape UN concerns and values, in such areas as development and human rights (Boehle, Marshall).3 What is not so fully appreciated is the way religious NGO s operate in the living processes of the UN , how religion operates in the corridors of UN diplomacy and how and why different religious traditions find a voice, or not, in the most significant institution for world peace. It is these questions this study seeks to address, with an on-the-ground analysis of UN processes and case studies of religious NGO s operating at the UN .

Approaching religion, NGO s and the UN This book responds to the increasing concern to understand religious NGO s at the UN , especially since the 1990s. In particular, it responds to Kerstin Martens ‘pilot study’ and her research problem of NGO legitimacy (accountability, representation and internal organization), but in the context of religious NGO s (not specified in Martens work).4 The underlying objective is to understand the rationale for religious involvement in the UN structures and the religious agency criteria for establishing the effectiveness in delivering services deemed to be part of their mission. There are two sets of questions at the heart of this project: those questions related to the nature and type of religious NGO s at the UN and those related to the legitimacy and influence of religious NGO s, including the inclusion and exclusion of religious traditions. The first set of questions in the study were oriented towards providing a comprehensive description of the population of UN -affiliated religious NGO s, with an eye towards the conceptual, theoretical and classificatory problems that arise in identifying a religious NGO (see Chapter  2). The aim here was to understand the variation of religious groups, including stated missions, programmatic objectives, levels of funding, number of workers and relationships with UN member states. This also opens questions of the magnitude of religious NGO involvement. The second set of questions were more analytical, and focused on how the NGO characteristics described above are associated with legitimacy and influence vis-à-vis the UN and its member states. This part of the project sought to explore the basis for religious NGO legitimacy and the way they were perceived and valued by UN diplomats, the variation in visibility and activity, and the question of the marginalization of some religious groups.

Introduction

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It is this latter question which determined the final selection of case studies. The aim was to draw out the tensions of integration and marginalization in the UN –NGO process, which we highlight in terms of showing the historical legacy and limits of the NGO system for representing religious groups. We have done this through a series of focused case studies. The case study of Catholicism illustrates the embedded nature of some actors across Special Status and developed NGO networks (see Chapter 8) and the case study of Islam shows the importance of the state-system and influence of OIC countries in the complex issues around religion (Chapter 7). The final case study of Hindu and Buddhist groups seeks to explain the gaps within religious NGO representation and the issues at stake for understanding the history of the UN . These selections – limited for manageability – were developed in the attempt to show the contrast between religious groups at the centre of civil society and those at the margins. The focus of previous studies has largely been on Christian groups (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) and this study sought to highlight tensions and contrasts. It takes one embedded Christian NGO – one integrated across state and NGO sectors – and the complex politics of non-Christian groups, exploring the processes and challenges for three traditions Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist.5 There is inevitably selective analysis, but these selections illustrate the issues of NGO representation and marginalization in the UN system. As has been noted, the increasing profile of religion within globalization and global governance underlines the importance of understanding religious NGO s. NGO s are a central part of the United Nations since Article  71 of the UN Charter required ‘consultation’ with non-governmental organizations. Since the 1990s NGO s have been increasingly seen as vital international actors and the Cardoso Report (UN Document A/58/817, 2004) supported greater involvement with NGO s. While scholars have highlighted these issues, there is still much to be known about religious NGO s. In this sense, the research responds to David Lewis and Nuno da Silva Themudo’s research programmes and David Lewis’ call for ‘interdisciplinary’ work on NGO s.6 The interdisciplinary focus of this study provided a mixed methodological design,7 which included historical, conceptual, quantitative and qualitative methods to answer these questions. Historical and conceptual questions from Religious Studies mapped the theoretical outcomes and provided textual and normative analysis; Sociological and Political Science methods informed the data collection and analysis, which was both quantitative and qualitative, with on-site field researchers for a period of two years. Quantitative indicators through questionnaires included measures of religious NGO size, staffing, funding, and

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

lobbying activity (operationalized as number of consultative committees, mediation initiatives and public policy campaigns in which NGO s participate). Qualitative research added operational richness to the research, and consisted of interviews with NGO leaders and members and UN diplomats, and case studies of religious groups. The interviews and surveys provided a broad view of religious NGO missions and activities across the UN , while the case studies allowed greater depth of questions about the implications of religious NGO involvement in particular issues, such as human rights.8 The complex structure of the UN was managed by focusing on its two principal headquarter sites in New York and Geneva. While the UN is obviously wider than these centres and there is a legitimate concern that in-country work is discounted, this parameter allowed us to explore the tensions of representation and analyze those religious groups who are able to be present at the UN headquarters and those which are excluded, which formed a key question of the project. Managing the nature of NGO s and the classification of NGO s was one of the greatest challenges and in order to appreciate these concerns the questionnaire was address to all registered Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC ) NGO s (allowing the NGO s to classify themselves as ‘secular’, ‘religious’, ‘faith-based’ etc.) and case study selections made according to ‘self-identification’ across a spectrum of positions related to religion (see Chapter  2). However, no study of religious NGO s can overcome the enigma of the category of religion, or the disciplinary politics of how to study religion at the UN , without appreciation of both social science and the humanities, because it demands appreciation of the conjunction of ancient traditions and political organizations, rather than a disciplinary priority of the latter alone. It requires a deeper appreciation of the binary modes of analysis that separate the religious and the political.9 Moreover, while the recent political and social scientific studies of religious NGO s have made important and invaluable contributions, their focus and concerns mean they have neglected a longer historical trajectory of studies in relation to a specific analysis of religion at the UN (as opposed to what we might see as the more recent post-9/11 studies of religion and politics at the UN ). It highlights the need for integrated studies across different methods and disciplines for a fuller and more fine-grained analysis. Incorporating interdisciplinary thinking about religious NGO s and the UN also requires us to reconfigure the focus of studies towards process, ethics and tradition as much as policy content and political outcomes.10 It is through the patchwork of disciplines – however loosely held together – that we see the richness and complexity of religious groups operating in complex institutions like the UN .

Introduction

5

Early studies of religion at the UN Before the expansion of civil society at the UN in the post-Cold War era captured new academic attention, religion and the UN were explored through discourses of religious belief and universal ethics and related fields of peace and conflict resolution studies.11 There were also specific responses in these studies to the Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 (inclusive of a wider variety of traditions), but these dimensions remain a neglected focus of religion and the UN as the social scientific analysis moved from a concern with ethics and the religious traditions as such to the impact in the social and political arena, religion as political actor rather than religion as living practices and beliefs. But even before universal ethics and NGO s became interesting subjects of study, religion and the UN still formed part of a longer history of religion and UN studies that has equally been neglected in more recent literature in politics and international relations, including studies of the ‘spiritual’ discourse within the UN .12 It was, for example, the emerging notion of the ‘spiritual’ UN and Dag Hammarskjöld’s involvement that unfolded a very specific religious imagination around a global institution. These spiritual and moral discourses at the UN were captured in part by Kent Killie in his edited collection of papers on the ethical and religious values of the various UN Secretary Generals (Lie, Hammarskjöld, U Thant, Waldheim, de Cuellar, Boutros-Ghali, Annan).13 However, the idea of a ‘spiritual’ UN is one that has a distinct history from Hammarskjöld and U Thant and raises questions about where studies of this dimension of the UN were focused and how they evolved (see Chapter 9). In addition to the studies of universal ethics and the spiritual UN , we might also add that there was a longer history of studies of specific religious groups involved in peace and reconciliation, such as the Quakers or the Holy See.14 The new, post-9/11, fascination of social and political science missed these more long-standing studies of tradition and belief and, in turn, distorted wider interdisciplinary academic concerns with religion and politics to a concern for religious NGO s as a political subset and unit of measurement, which itself requires critical study.15 What the earlier studies offered – and which the more recent studies missed – was a deeper sense of specific traditions and their ethical values for social and political engagement. The first step in correcting this bias is to understand disciplinary selectivity and to see the value of multidisciplinary approaches to the subject, one that embraces religious studies and theology alongside sociology, political science and international relations.

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

While it might be possible to suggest that recent studies of religious NGO s reflect something of the way they operationalized their professional NGO status within the ECOSOC of the UN ,16 it only increased the sense that it was ‘NGO s’ not religious traditions that were the distinct point of interest. This focus galvanizes a certain kind of fascination that sought to separate religion within the NGO sector from the rest of the UN , which ultimately created a false distinction, because the very processes of the UN and the relations across sectors of the UN system were equally important to so-called religious groups. Ironically, the new focus lost sight of wider processes and institutional systems of religious engagements and it is this feature of religion at the UN that this study seeks to understand in order to see something more specific about the motivation and involvement of religious groups operating as NGO s in such an international political establishment. If a new interdisciplinary focus widens the concern and focus of religious traditions within the UN to processes, it becomes even more intriguing when we analyse the conceptual nature of religion as a category within those processes. While empirical studies have tended to ignore critical concerns around the concept of religion – in order to stabilize it – it becomes even more insightful to see how the idea of religion operates in all its complex forms. This study seeks to observe the camouflage of religious NGO s, their emergence and disappearance in the UN system, a problem related to disciplinary politics as much as a world politics.17

Continuation not resurgence: disciplinary politics and religion at the UN Much of the thinking about religion in the post-1990s climate of NGO s has been broadly defined – and constrained – by the re-emergence of religion in a post-secular world.18 For example, the field of politics and international relations has found space for faith and religious NGO s following the so-called ‘resurgence’ of religion in its field;19 sociology has likewise found new energy for its longer concern with third-space activity of religion and the discipline of religious studies – which by definition never required resurgence or rediscovery – has continued to explore the trans-disciplinary lines of religious and theological thinking in the public realm from the longer cultural entwining of social orders, rather than through the post-Westphalian drama separating church and state, and its continuing historical and confessional ambiguities.20 Linked to these

Introduction

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disciplinary frames are more complex sets of over-lapping issues around – what we can call – the key relational thematics of religion and politics, or religion and society, manifesting in the religion–secular debate, secularization and desecularization theories, religion in the public square and, more recently, the place and transformation of religion in globalization or a global age.21 The juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory – or distinct – fields requires its own theoretical ordering and justification. In response, recent studies of religion and the political configure themselves within some combination of these disciplines and the related commitments to the ordering thematic of either religion and politics, religion and development, religion and peacemaking, religion and security, religion and social movements amongst other engagements,22 but what emerges from these debates is the problem of methodological selection, and an uncritical analysis of the category of religion. More importantly, as Courtney Smith observed, there is also a pre-occupation on outcomes and policy decisions, with the result of neglecting the lived component of interdisciplinary and institutional life.23 What the majority of previous studies have done is avoid the tensions within the category of religion that Timothy Fitzgerald so carefully identified in his study of religion and international politics, which exposed the problems of assuming religion is a natural thing in the world rather than an invented classificatory term reflecting a political ordering of the world.24 They have sought to preserve the category of religion as a fixed natural object of analysis, rather than hold onto the ambiguity of the term and the critical interpretation. As I will outline in detail below, this study seeks to show how religion emerges and operates within the UN system as part of a process rather than an object to be observed. Most studies seek to isolate religion as a distinct thing, group, actor or object when in reality the individuals and groups associated with this label – or captured by religion through the researcher’s lens – are dispersed within wider processes and – even more surprising – the very actors classified by researchers as religious reject the label religion itself.25 More significantly, the central finding of this book is that we understand religious actors at the UN through the processes of the institution and that religious groups inside these processes reveal how these actors are both ‘invisible’ and ‘visible’ at different strategic points.26 It establishes how religion becomes part of what I will call ‘chameleon politics’, the emergence and disappearance in procedures and processes, tactics and strategies, of the UN system. It suggests that religion is an emblem of engagement in the world that can manifest and disappear within its environment according to the political and diplomatic

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

discourse and will-to-power of a set of actors. In short, religion can be useful or problematic according to the community of interest, association or issue being invoked. The once neat political and social scientific categories face a disruption, because inside living processes there is no essentialism of terms. Once we move from religion-as-thing (something to be found out-there) to religion-asdiscursive process (something deployed as a classificatory term for groups and identities) the study of religious NGO s does not remain the same.27

The United Nations, religion and process The project behind this book sought to build an interdisciplinary study of religious NGO s by working across social science and the humanities. It is the first study of its kind to bring together both humanities and social science frameworks to religion at the UN into a single project, in so far as it seeks an understanding of religious NGO s in the context of the empirical, textual, philosophical and normative concerns of its research team. The work is, therefore, built out of a complex conversation across different disciplinary ways of working and a determination to protect individual methods, data and approaches while finding a common thread in the processes. The result is a study that creates an interdisciplinary concern with the processes of classification and the processes of the UN and the way one informs the other. We see how classificatory issues inform Bush’s survey analysis of NGO s and the processes of accountability (Chapters 2 and 3), how Trigeaud explores the legal and informal processes in her exploration of NGO engagements in Geneva (Chapters 4 and 5) and how, what Beittinger-Lee calls, ‘immersed’, ‘integrated’, ‘initiating’ processes shape NGO involvement in New York (Chapter  6). These processes are illuminated further through a series of case studies (Chapters 7 to 9) that show how the UN system operates across state and civil society processes, how NGO networks and Special Status inform UN engagement and how historical processes include and exclude certain religious traditions. Finally, this study grounds the engagements in the complex dynamic of diplomatic processes (Conclusion). These varied processes reflect – to follow Alexander Wendt’s analysis of international relations – both ‘causal’ and ‘constitutive’ processes.28 The former the influence of states and the historical facts shaping the UN (including its colonial legacy and state attitudes and ideas towards religious actors) and the latter the way religious NGO s are formed and develop through the web of interactions between states, societies and international relations. Furthermore, the ‘constitutive’ processes

Introduction

9

become significant when we see the complexity the UN system. As Samuel Barkin notes in his study of international organizations, it is ‘misleading’ to speak of the ‘the UN ’, because it is rather a series of interlocking institutions, member countries and subsidiary agencies.29 In such an institution understanding process becomes even more vital. The significance of ‘process’ for the UN can be seen, for example, in the Manual for UN Delegates: Conference Process, Procedure and Negotiation by Ronald Walker, an initiative supported by the Australian government and published by the UN Institute for Training and Research.30 While aimed principally at UN conferences, the Manual highlights wider aspects of work in the UN system and is addressed to UN delegates and officials, including NGO s. The Manual, like many other UN and NGO documents supporting those in the UN system, provides basic information for participation.31 Knowing the process is part of the success of an NGO or delegate and those NGO s who have longer experience tend to be more effective. The Manual for UN Delegates refers to ‘procedure’ as ‘the manner in which a conference is conducted’ and ‘process’ is defined as the ‘manner in which an idea or proposal is handled and decisions are made’. There is, however, recognition of an overlap and ‘process’ is further refined to refer to a ‘sequence of actions’ performed by the conference or delegate. It is the international decision-making, discussions and multiple objectives of the UN that make the ‘order, manner, time, or context’ significant as a ‘process’ to all UN actors. Achieving any objective in the UN requires complex levels of formal and informal arrangements, as the fieldwork chapters in the volume show (see Chapters 5 and 6), and seeing religion as part of a UN process is a key methodological reconfiguration. Recognition of ‘process’ is, of course, wider than internal UN manuals or documents and has played a central part in Courtney Smith’s study of the UN . Inspired by Keith Petersen’s 1968 recognition of the dynamics of diplomacy, Smith outlines the neglect of the processes that were central to the UN ’s organization.32 ‘Process’ has also been central to ‘new institutionalism’ studies, which were inspired by the work of James March and Johan Olsen in the 1980s.33 It sought, as Hudson and Lowe indicate, to take account of ‘agency and structure’.34 A key aspect of the work was to understand how change occurs through the everyday processes of institutions. As March and Olsen explain: ‘A challenge for students of institutions is to explain how such [routine] processes are stabilized or destabilized, and which factors sustain or interrupt ongoing processes’.35 Process, therefore, becomes central in understanding international organizations and, as Margaret Karns’ and Karen Mingst’s

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

study of International Organizations shows, it underlines the importance of understanding relations, networks and interactions within such organizations.36 This model of understanding institutions and decision-making and change takes on greater intensity in the context of a global governance organization like the UN , as Hugh Miall’s chapter on the UN system explains (see Chapter 1). It is this complexity of the UN that leads Weiss, Forsythe, Coate and Pease to frame development work as ‘process’; in what they see as the ‘bewildering alphabet soup of semi-autonomous programs, funds, committees, commissions, and agencies’.37 Process is also significant in terms of understanding the system of Human Rights advocacy work in the UN system.38 However, understanding ‘process’ should not simply become a framework for understanding the operation of organizations and institutions (important and neglected as this is), but an interpretative space. We need to extend ‘process’ from a ‘sequence of actions’ to a wider appreciation of – what I will call – the ‘fluidity of interactions’ in terms of the strategic and the discursive nature of decision-making. This is important if we are to capture the nature of religion within the organizational and institutional space of the UN . According to Mary Douglas in her anthropological study How Institutions Think, it is the ‘interventions’ that create the institutional ‘thinking’ or what we might call ‘process’.39 She understood that institutions – according to a minimum definition – reflect ‘conventions’, which need a stabilizing principle to naturalize the classifications and practices. Such ideas enabled Douglas to question the philosophical abstraction of locating religion outside the ‘whole social complex’ and we might therefore question the attempt to separate religion as a distinct object or thing that belongs to NGO s. If the institution is created through the ‘interventions’ in a particular social structure then it is the processes that shape religion as discourse and practice. Religion is embedded in the totality of the intervening processes and not limited to one structure or process or an abstract thing a researcher seeks at the UN . In this way, we can see religion no longer simply as something found in parts of the UN system, but part of the fabric of interventions that make up the ‘chameleon politics’ of diplomacy at the UN . Significantly, for Douglas institutions are effective when their processes are not fully seen. ‘The high triumph of institutional thinking is to make the institutions completely invisible’.40 This idea of ‘invisibility’ is part of institutional power and process, through which the ‘individual psyche is constituted by the socially constructed classification’.41 Organizations are complex entities with multi-layered and symbolic relations of which religion – however defined – plays a part. What is important for our purposes is to see how taking ‘process’ as

Introduction

11

a central framework of the study can bridge not only different disciplines, but see religion within the organizational process and not as a fixed entity – religion becomes part of the dynamic process within diplomatic and networked relations.42 What this study seeks to show is how the notion of religion, through its organizational location in the UN , becomes a moving process rather than a fixed object. It understands religious NGO s at the UN as an arbitrary classification (often of scholars) and, as Evelyn Bush and Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud show, it is related to an ‘ambiguous’ space (see Chapters  2 and 5). The very ambiguity of religion allows mobility. This understanding enables us to show religion as part of a process of global governance that strategically and tactically moves. It shows how religion becomes visible and invisible in the UN system as a part of strategy and process, that is the tactical emergence and disappearance of a term, an idea, a set of values, a group and an identity. It relates to the very intractability of the term religion in the political and social sphere and how the term supports or hinders the decision-making processes, how it helps build effective relations or prevents them, because actions, identities and decisions are not fully dependent on deployment of this term. The ECOSOC , for example, does not classify NGO s as religious or not (see Chapter 2). This is significant in a ‘textual’ institution like the UN , because language matters politically.43 This study as a whole demonstrates how religious NGO s are part of a wider institutional process and how the language of religion operates at different levels within the UN system, taking on different meaning and significance. The multiple processes of the UN allow very diverse sets of meaning and, in turn, generate different levels of visibility for religion. We can present this diversity of meanings and visibility – albeit not exhausted in possibilities or options – in the UN process in Table I.1. The table is only a starting point to map some of the diverse applications of religion across UN processes, but it shows something of the complexity and diversity at stake in understanding religion and UN , which the chapters in the book will unfold. Significantly, at any one time the category of religion can be operationalized across the different forms of discourse in the UN system (see Table I.1), but equally the category will also be removed or concealed depending the individuals and groups intervening. There are times, as we will see in the discussion of diplomatic engagements (see Conclusion) when invisibility helps religious organizations achieve their social action, but equally times when utilizing the language of religion helps build bridges between NGO s (see Chapters 4 to 6). Religion will only be brought into effect if there is a rationale and logic within the UN system and its strategic relationships, because as the chapters in this

12

Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

Table I.1 Visibility and invisibility of religion in the UN system. Types of discourse about religion in the UN system

Order of power in the UN system

Level of concealment in the UN system

Example

Religion as institutional organization Religion as collective identity

Legal– Constitutional

Visible

Holy See/Vatican State

State– Constitutional

Visible and Controversial

Religion as belief/ practice

State– Visible/Invisible Constitutional and Human Rights; NGO -UN participation. NGO group Visible/Invisible engagements

Individual state religion; OIC ; Defamation of Religion Debate State identity and commitment; UN Charter; Legal Treaty

Religion as civil action

Religion as private ethical motivation

Individual actor

Invisible

Actions of a specific NGO e.g. Friends World Consultative Committee or Bahai International Committee Individuals from Secretary General to NGO and UN workers

book show the process determines the place of religion – its visibility and invisibility as actors in power.

Outline of the book The book is divided into three sections. In the first section the method and context are mapped out, in the second section the locations of the UN at Geneva and New York are examined in terms of their processes, and in the third section the case studies and related critical issues are explored. The Conclusion turns the perspective away from the religious NGO s to the diplomats and reports their diplomatic processes and responses to religion. In Chapter 1 Hugh Miall sets the scene. The chapter explores how the United Nations provides the context in which NGO s work and sets the framework for

Introduction

13

how religious groups engage within this context as NGO s. Understanding the shape of NGO s at the UN enables us to appreciate how the ideals of religion become determined by the realism of the UN system. NGO s seek to influence the international system through their engagement at the UN , but at the same time, the UN system structures the bodies that engage with it and the kinds of interaction they can have. There is a mutual engagement. This chapter aims to explore in what ways, and to what extent, the UN structures its encounter with religions and NGO s. The argument here is that the UN ’s construction as a secular, intergovernmental body with universalist aims profoundly affects its engagement with peoples, societies and religions. At the same time the UN ’s character as a complex bureaucracy, and as an intergovernmental forum, incorporating the divisions of international society, influences what NGO s can do. NGO s, by definition, are non-actors in an intergovernmental forum. Their role is structurally marginalized. They can influence, advocate and inform; they can lobby and persuade. But, the chapter argues, states determine the scope for non-governmental actors and decide the outcomes of UN business. Chapter  2 by Evelyn Bush presents findings from the project’s survey of NGO s at the UN , in the process describing some conceptual challenges researchers confront in attempting to define religious NGO s for the purpose of survey research. As the chapter describes, our survey relied upon NGO’s selfreports of their religious or ‘secular’ identities. As the findings illustrate, their responses to this inquiry only further confirmed that religion is a contested category, especially when applied to the NGO universe. One advantage of this approach was that it yielded a sample that contained both religious and secular NGO s, thereby allowing for comparisons between the two groups along a variety of dimensions. The second half of this chapter provides some empirical results of these comparisons. In Chapter  3 Evelyn Bush continues analysis of the project survey and explores three sets of questions aimed at providing an initial overview of where religion ‘fits in’ at the UN . It addresses questions aimed at understanding ‘who’ religious groups represent and the kinds of influences that inform their operations. First, it examines how the inclusion of RNGO s (religious NGO s) either enhances or detracts from the UN ’s representativeness as a global institution. Second, it explores factors related to the issue of accountability, specifically financing and the kinds of influences that bear upon NGO agendas. Third, it opens up the question of religion–state linkages, and the religious version of the ‘GONGO’ (Government-Organized NGO ), which in its secular manifestation has long been of concern to scholars of – and practitioners

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

in – global civil society. The chapter provides a general framework for the more detailed investigations in later chapters of the types of influence that flow through RNGO s. Following discussion of categorization and accountability of NGO s in Chapters 2 and 3, Chapter 4 by Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud explains aspects of the fieldwork and selections. It continues to explore the processes that allow religious NGO s to be present at the UN through a detailed examination of documents, including the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service and the Practical Guide for NGO Participants from the OHCHR at Geneva. It considers the specific understanding of the UN ’s definition of an ‘NGO’ from international legal documents in the Geneva context and maps the organizational structures reponsible for validating NGO s. This is necessary because the rules establishing the status of NGO s stand as an Ariadne’s thread to examine which kind of activities the RNGO s can expect to carry out at the UN . The chapter concludes by explaining why the research focuses on ‘processes’, rather than events and issues, to approach religious NGO s. The second section of the book provides the results of detailed fieldwork in Geneva and New York. Chapter 5 by Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud examines religious NGO s and their activities at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR ) of the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG ) by examining the processes of involvement. The chapter, first, carries out a detailed study of all the processes, and second, observes how religious NGO s concretely use them, concluding with an analysis of their typical values and efficiency. The chapter is based on detailed fieldwork at the UN in Geneva over two and half years, documenting processes of religious NGO activity. The chapter establishes a general typology of processes: (1) the legally-based processes, which include all the range of activities directly derived from the UN arrangements for NGO s participation; (2) the adaptive processes, which derive from the NGO s ability to adapt the legally-based process. The adaptive processes themselves enclose ways of creating networks and connections to enhance the force of action (networking processes); informal communication (informal diplomacy and communication processes); adaptation to the special limits of the field (ad hoc breaking walls processes); conferences, formations or training programmes (educational and raising awareness processes); and religious values and methods based processes which, while being very discreet, are measured to show the real influence of religion over civil society representation at the UN . The chapter concludes by looking at the high level of participation in OHCHR work for human rights and the way religious NGO s have made a distinct contribution to international law.

Introduction

15

The chapter constitutes one of the most detailed maps of religious NGO engagement in human rights work at the UN . Chapter 6 by Verena Beittinger-Lee explores the rise of religious NGOs and the role of religion at the UN headquarters in New York City. The work resulted from fieldwork at the UN in New York, which followed the principles of qualitative research and combined several ‘soft’ methods of data collection, such as open-ended and semi-structured interviews, participatory observation, literature analysis, Internet research, analysis of historic causes, and personal experiences. From the findings, it argues that religious NGOs are very active at the UN, but shows how this is often happening behind the scenes and how their actions fly under the radar because the religious label can be a stumbling block. Giving detailed examples, the central contention of this chapter is that religious NGOs operate in New York according to three sets of processes: (1) immersed involvement, (2) integrated involvement, and (3) initiating involvement. These forms of involvement establish different kinds of partnerships between religious groups and the UN. It shows that religion remains a contested category and needs to be seen in the broader arena of UN agencies and activities that establish dialogue with religious groups. This is important because it contextualizes NGO work in a wider set of engagements with religion at the UN and reveals how the specific processes allows specific kinds of engagement for religious NGOs. The final section develops a series of case studies to show the complex ways ‘religions’ operate in the UN and how they cross issues of state and civil society, issues of marginalization and the significance of history. Chapter 7 by Verena Beittinger-Lee and Hugh Miall shows how Islam is represented at the UN , how the Muslim and Western states work together at the UN , and what contribution NGO s, and specifically religious NGO s, make to the relations and perceptions between the two groups of states and the societies they represent. It focuses especially on the Defamation of Religions controversy played out in the United Nations between 1998 and 2012. This controversy led to sharp divisions at the UN and even more in public opinion in Western and Muslim countries. It traces the process of NGO engagement with states and the UN system in the context of the wider debates in the international system over religion and human rights. While the UN was ultimately able to reach a resolution of the controversy, the outcome reflected the domination of the UN by Western views and norms. This has meant that the UN ’s contribution to a durable resolution of the underlying issues between Islam and the West has remained limited. Nevertheless, there are hopeful signs in recent initiatives supported by UN officials and nongovernmental organizations to bridge the gulf between the Muslim and Western

16

Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

worlds. The chapter concludes by reflecting the imbalance of religious groups at the UN and underlines how aspirations and shortfalls are part of UN history. Chapter  8 by Verena Beittinger-Lee explores the complex structure behind the Catholic engagement with the UN and shows how civil society actors add to a more complex picture of Catholic engagement. While previous studies of the Holy See, by writers such as Edward Gratsch (1997) and Robert Araujo and John Lucal (2010) focus on the Papal aspects of diplomacy at the UN , this chapter extends the examination to NGO s and wider UN networks to reveal the diversity of engagements and positions. It also unfolds the different strategic positions in the UN processes. It first maps the historical background of the Catholic engagement with the UN and highlights some of the perceived concerns around the status of the Holy See. It then maps out the diversity of Catholic groups working at the UN in order to reveal the plurality of Catholic organizations and the complexity of positions (official Holy See groups, Religious Orders, critical Catholic groups). What this chapter shows is that this diversity is visible through the civil society sector, but also that the different Catholic groups engage in different ways and with different forms of sanction and legitimation from the Catholic hierarchy. Importantly, it reveals to us something of the nature and form of the largest religious grouping at the UN . Moving from the dominant focus on the Abrahamic traditions, Chapter  9 by Jeremy Carrette explores the neglected area of the relationship between Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions and representation of religious NGO s at the UN by exploring the ‘constraining’ and ‘facilitating’ dynamics. It seeks to understand the ‘disconnect’ and show how some ‘connections’ to the UN have been made by Hindu and Buddhist traditions. It argues that the problem relates to three ‘constraining’ factors’: first, the colonial legacy of the UN ; second, economic and in-country politics and, third, the historical shape of Hindu and Buddhist global civil society. The chapter then explores two ‘facilitating’ mechanisms: the work of UN Secretary Generals Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant and the politic of ‘visibility’ in the work of interfaith NGO s, such as Temple of Understanding (Special Consultative Status 1995) and the United Religions Initiative (Special Consultative Status 2007). While arguing that the symbolic interfaith events, such as World Interfaith Harmony Week, provide points of access they are seen to cover up the lack of civil society representation. Through a series of brief case studies of two Hindu and two Buddhist NGO s with Special Consultative Status, there is evidence of a bridging of Hindu and Buddhist religious visions and the UN . While these NGO s carry many of the ideals of ritual visibility at the UN , they also build new global values for social

Introduction

17

welfare and attract support for their in-country missions. The chapter concludes by exploring the ‘disconnect’ of Hindu and Buddhist NGO s and the UN in terms of the need for UN reform. The conclusion by Hugh Miall and Jeremy Corrette moves away from the religious NGO s themselves to assess the influence and visibility of religious NGO s from the diplomat’s point of view. In assessing the place of religious NGO s it seeks to explore the reception and attitudes surrounding religion by the state powers themselves. It examines how diplomats are influenced, if at all, by religious considerations. In order to address these questions, the chapter explores findings from interviews with diplomats in Geneva and New York, supplemented by the insights from survey material of NGO s in consultative status and a review of the secondary literature on religion in international affairs on the influence of religion in particular states. It begins from the history of state power, diplomacy and religion in the modern state system and shows how this helped to shape the creation of the UN . It then explores the role of religion in the national life and foreign policies of states, singling out as examples the United States, Russia, India, Pakistan, Poland and Mexico. Finally, it draws on interviews to explore how the diplomats think about NGO s in general and religious NGO s in particular. The chapter argues that, while religious NGO s do not play a very visible role from the perspective of the diplomats, the influence of religion at the UN remains very visible.

18

Part One

Methods: Context, Categories and Conditions

19

20

1

Realism and Idealism: NGOs and the United Nations System Hugh Miall

This chapter explores how the United Nations (UN ) provides the context in which NGO s work and sets the framework for how religious groups engage within this context as NGO s. Understanding the shape of NGO s at the UN enables us to appreciate how the ideals of religion become determined by the realism of the UN system. NGO s seek to influence the international system through their engagement at the UN , but at the same time, the UN system structures the bodies that engage with it and the kinds of interaction they can have. There is a mutual engagement, like snow falling on a corrugated roof. The roof shapes how the snow lies and the snow alters the appearance of the roof. This chapter aims to explore in what ways, and to what extent, the UN structures its encounter with religions and NGO s. The argument here is that the UN ’s construction as a secular, intergovernmental body with universalist aims profoundly affects its engagement with peoples, societies and religions. At the same time the UN ’s character as a complex bureaucracy, and as an intergovernmental forum, incorporating the divisions of international society, influences what NGO s can do. NGO s, by definition, are non-actors in an intergovernmental forum. Their role is structurally marginalized. They can influence, advocate and inform; they can lobby and persuade. But states determine the scope for non-governmental actors and decide the outcomes of UN business. Of course, neither the states nor the NGO s are a homogenous group. States are divided; some find NGO s useful in their dealings with other states. NGO s, too, are divided in their purposes and constituencies. Some are one-person operations; some have budgets comparable with small states. Some come from only one country or part of a country; others are international. Some defend a particular community; others seek to speak for humanity as a whole. These characteristics influence which 21

22

Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

NGO s appear at the UN and how effectively they engage. In the encounter between states and NGO s at the UN , the states have the dominant influence and set the rules for NGO engagement. However, it would be wrong to conclude that NGO s have little or no influence at the UN . On the contrary, some NGO s have a significant influence in specific issue-areas. In human rights, development and peace-building, NGO s have become significant partners to states. The influence of NGO s based on faith or religious conviction, which constitute only a small minority of NGO s at the UN , might seem to be limited. Yet, as other chapters show, some of these NGO s have an influence at the UN that is sometimes out of proportion to the size of their following. Religions have an influence on the UN in three ways. First, religious actors at the UN , such as the Holy See, the Organisation of Islamic States, and religious NGO s are active in UN sessions. Second, religious identities have an important domestic and transnational influence on governments, which may influence their positions at the UN . Third, and most significantly, there is a constitutive effect, embedded into the structure of the international order, resulting from the encounter between state and religion in Western Europe. This makes for a complicated relationship between the United Nations and religion. Three paradoxes stand out. First, the modern international system of sovereign states, which was set up in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, excludes religion from the international public sphere. Yet this division between the religious and the secular, and the subordination of religion to the private sphere, was an outcome of the European wars of religion. The Judaeo-Christian heritage has shaped both the system of sovereign states and the system of individual human rights (see Chapter 9 for some of the consequences of this heritage for other traditions). Second, diplomats tend to avoid talking about religion and prefer not to bring up religious issues in the UN . Yet they are well aware of the political significance of religious identities, and religious divisions, in their own countries and internationally. Third, the United Nations is in principle a meeting place for all. In practice, however, the UN ’s modus operandi tends to favour certain kinds of NGO more than others. In short, NGO s influence the UN , but the UN structures how they do so.

The role of the UN in world affairs: theories of engagement In order to contextualize the role that NGO s play, it is helpful first to consider the roles that the UN plays in the international system. It is a difficult institution

Realism and Idealism

23

to pin down, since it involves a mass of agencies and sprawls across so many issues (see Figure 1.1). The UN Charter sets out the Organization’s ambitious scope in Article  1. Beside its primary purpose of maintaining international peace and security, it aims ‘to develop friendly relations between nations based on the principles of equal rights and self-determination’, ‘to achieve international cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms’ and ‘to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations towards these ends’. Since 1945, states have continued to add to this already enormous agenda. The UN plays a central role in the world of states, as the principal international organization with universal membership. Yet, in terms of its budget and staff, it is dwarfed not only by the larger states, but even by their city administrations. It is an arena where states meet, but by no means the only one.1 In some respects, it seems to operate as an independent actor; in others, it seems little more than a tool in the hands of the powerful. States value their seats at the UN and there is strong competition for membership of the Security Council. At the same time, the leading states clearly consider the UN as only one among a number of venues where they do their business, and sometimes regard it as more flawed than other institutions. NGO s go to the UN because that is where the states are. They also go to pursue the issues they are concerned about. Whether they can have more than a marginal influence on decisions, and whether the UN itself is significant as a centre of international decision-making, depends on the issue and the NGO. It also depends on one’s view of international relations. For American realists like Morgenthau2 and Mearsheimer,3 the international state system consists of power relations between states. States are the only significant actors. Rivalry between them is inevitable, since they have different interests to defend. International organizations, then, are at best arenas. Even when states cooperate, they compete over relative gains. In this competition, non-governmental organizations are significant only as pawns in the hands of state actors. Intergovernmental organizations, similarly, are tools of the powerful. The victors of the Second World War set up the UN as a tool to buttress a postwar international order and international peace on the terms of the pre-eminent powers, especially the United States.4 English Realists such as Wight,5 Bull6 and their successors in what became known as the English School also saw states and anarchy as central features of international relations, but argued that states form an international society and

24

Source: UN Department of Public Information, October 2015.

Figure 1.1 The UN system.

Realism and Idealism

25

placed more emphasis on social factors, such as mutual recognition and the constitution of the state system through diplomatic recognition and the institution of sovereignty. Authors such as Roberts and Kingsbury7 saw international society as a society of states, but recognized that non-state actors can influence international society in important ways, particularly by making significant contributions to international norms in human rights and environmental protection. Pluralists conceive international relations as a much wider domain, including not only the relations between states but also the interactions of international and sub-national organizations. Instead of a society of states, they see a world society in which actors at international, national and sub-national levels all play their parts. Economic, political, social and cultural structures at all these levels constitute part of the picture.As Groom writes,‘the development of international organization, including its intergovernmental aspects, owes a great deal to the growth of national, transnational and international non-governmental organizations’.8 Hence, pluralists see not only states but also international organizations, transnational corporations, non-governmental organizations, social and religious movements, diasporas, and epistemic communities as active agents in international affairs. In this perspective, non-governmental organizations are an important transmission belt between the world of states and the wider world society. In contrast, Marxists, Gramscians and critical theorists see international relations in terms of the structural power which lies behind the observable institutions.9 For them, international organizations are a reflection of the hegemonic powers of leading social forces. The effort to establish global governance thus serves the interests of the dominant social strata. Similarly, Foucauldians and critical theorists regard discourses about global governance as reflections of the underlying structures of power.10 Since NGO s participate in discourses that legitimize global governance, they are implicated in the power relations of the status quo as much as the states themselves.11 Each of these schools perceives international organizations in a different way and these perceptions are not readily reconcilable. Nevertheless, each of them seems to capture a part of the truth. The United Nations is an important but flawed institution, dominated by states but nevertheless offering opportunities for non-state actors. It is a repository of principles of world order, as set out in the UN Charter. It is the main instrument for conferring international legitimacy. It is the principal collective instrument in the hands of the great powers for maintaining international peace and security and has a unique position in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace-building. It sets an agenda with which

26

Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

states and NGO s engage; and getting items onto this agenda is a particular way in which NGO s can make their mark. Finally, it is an arena for testing opinions on international matters and for forming an international consensus.

The UN as an arena The most minimal understanding of the UN is as an arena, where representatives of states come together for debates and discussions. This notion is perhaps closest to the view of the English School in International Relations, since the UN is one of the visible manifestations of the society of states at work. The UN can also be seen as an arena not only for states but also for ‘world society’ – a parliament of humankind, to borrow Paul Kennedy’s phrase.12 At the instigation of non-governmental organizations at San Francisco, it was set up in the name of ‘We, the Peoples’. Indeed, non-governmental organizations were deeply involved in the promotion of international organization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and religious organizations, along with others, pressed for non-governmental organizations to be recognized and involved in an improved international system. Two hundred representatives of non-governmental organizations attended the founding conference at San Francisco in 1945 as observers, including representatives of Jewish and Protestant churches. They pressed for the inclusion of human rights language in the Charter and for recognition of non-governmental organizations in UN affairs.13 With US support, Article 71 of the Charter was agreed: The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations, and, where appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of the United Nations concerned.

The purpose of Article 71 was to allow the UN to consult with experts outside governments, but also to enable the expression of views by significant elements of society. In this way, the UN offered itself as an arena for peoples, social actors, religious communities, indigenous peoples and groups of all kinds. For the UN , then, the NGO concept provided a means to include and reach out to a huge range of communities. For the communities, it was necessary to adopt the institutional form of an NGO in order to approach the UN . If religious communities wanted a say at the UN , they too had to become NGO s.

Realism and Idealism

27

In this sense, NGO s are constitutionally structured by the state system. The states have always been the primary agents in setting the rules for access to the UN ’s various arenas. After some delay, ECOSOC duly set up the system which creates three tiers of consultative status. Category A NGO s are those with the fullest access. They are allowed to propose items to the Secretariat for the ECOSOC agenda, as well as to observe ECOSOC sessions and to participate in UN conferences. This status is formally reserved for NGO s which have a broad international representation and deal with a broad range of issues on the ECOSOC agenda. Category B NGO s are those with a special expertise in a more limited set of issues on the ECOSOC agenda. Category C NGO s were those with technical expertise in only one issue and were put on the Roster, the lowest level for consultation. Category B and C NGO s had the rights to observe but not to propose items for the agenda. An ECOSOC subcommittee, the Committee on NGO s, composed of 19 member states, regulates this system and approves or rejects applications for consultative status.14 It can also terminate consultative status for NGO s which fail to meet their quadrennial reporting requirements or sufficiently displease the member states.15 This committee processes about a hundred new applications for consultative status a year, but since the late 1990s applications have risen to 400 a year, so a considerable backlog has built up.16 Figure 1.2 shows the number of NGO s with consultative status in the different categories between 1948 and 2007, and the striking increase in Category B (special expertise) NGO s.

Figure 1.2 The rise in NGO s with consultative status.

28

Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

Besides NGO s in consultative status, the Department of Public Information holds its own list of 1,300 NGO s, for the purpose of spreading information about the UN system.17 In practice, each organ of the UN has negotiated its own particular arrangements for NGO access. Some parts of the system are considerably more open than others. Nevertheless, this initial barrier is sufficient to deter many NGO s from accessing the United Nations. Determined and capable NGO s with a broad international reach and sufficient resources, can cope with the complexities of this system. NGO s such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Caritas proved capable of gaining access and making their mark. However, many more NGO s operate outside the UN system without consultative status (see Chapters 3, 4 and 5). The physical settings of the UN sites (see Figures  1.3 and 1.4) structure NGO access in significant ways. Geneva is the site of the Human Rights Council, the Conference on Disarmament and many of the UN ’s specialized agencies which report to ECOSOC , including the FAO, the ILO, and the WHO (see the UN system diagram, Figure  1.1). The UN buildings at the Palais des Nations are in magnificent parkland, overlooking Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc. NGO representatives mingle with the diplomats in the Serpentine Café, sharing the spectacular view (see Chapter 5). They are even able to approach state delegates while the Human Rights Council is in formal session. NGO s have an accepted place in the deliberations of the Human Rights Council and contribute to standard setting and the monitoring of human rights. They may make brief oral presentations in the plenary sessions as well as tabling written representations, and they can lobby diplomats informally and organize sideevents. The Geneva site offers a sense of the importance and centrality of the United Nations and of the significant role NGO s play, in a cosmopolitan European setting. In New York, the main political organs of the United Nations are located in the ageing buildings on the site on the East River purchased for the UN by the Rockefeller family. The UN building is a distinctive feature of the New York skyline, but hundreds of other skyscrapers tower above it, and in the frenzy of commercial and cultural activity that is New York, the UN can seem a sideshow. Here the Security Council, the General Assembly, ECOSOC and the defunct Trusteeship Council have their chambers. NGO access is tightly regulated and less open than in Geneva. The café is small and windowless, and the constrained layout of the building physically restricts informal opportunities to mingle with the diplomats.

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29

The Security Council, dominated by the veto-bearing Permanent Five, carries the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It is an extraordinarily powerful body when it acts in unison, capable of taking whatever means it considers necessary to preserve and restore international security. It acts on behalf of all the member states, which have agreed to confer ‘primary responsibility’ to the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security,18 and it is under no obligation to consult them. NGO s rarely have access to the Security Council, although since the 1990s members of the Security Council have met with selected NGO s outside formal sessions under the ‘Arria formula’.19 An NGO Working Group facilitates these contacts, and the Security Council has consulted with NGO s in particular over peacekeeping, small arms, the humanitarian situation in particular countries and conflict prevention. NGO s have provided states with significant services in these areas. Access to the General Assembly is also limited. The General Assembly meets yearly, and is primarily a forum for the member states, each with its own seat and each with an equal vote in the proceedings. The General Assembly deliberates widely on general issues and passes many resolutions, but has limited executive capacity. Much of its detailed work is conducted in the six subcommittees (on Disarmament and Security, Economic and Financial, Social Humanitarian and Cultural, Special Political and Decolonization Issues, Administrative and Budgetary, and Legal matters). It sets the UN budget, and elects the nonpermanent members of the Security Council and the members of other UN bodies. Its subsidiary bodies include the Human Rights Council, the Disarmament Commission, the Peacebuilding Commission (which is also a subsidiary body of the Security Council) and the International Law Commission. It can create new UN departments, but has no binding powers over member states. NGO s are permitted to observe sessions and informally lobby delegates but not to speak in the regular sessions. The General Assembly does allow written statements and speeches by NGO s at special sessions. NGO s are also allowed to participate in the work of some of the General Assembly’s Committees. ECOSOC is a council of 54 states, elected every three years by the General Assembly, and responsible for economic and social and human rights issues. It meets formally for four weeks in the year and delegates its work to a vast range of subsidiary commissions and specialized agencies. Each of these tends to develop its own working relations with NGO s.20 ECOSOC is responsible for governing the arrangements for access by NGO s to the UN system and its Committee on NGO s regulates the consultative status system. Despite its wide-

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

ranging brief, ECOSOC is widely seen as a body with limited influence and importance.21 Besides the permanent organs, the General Assembly convenes occasional Special Sessions on particular topics. It organizes conferences on a range of topical issues of global importance – such as Human Settlements, the Human Environment, Climate Change, Women, and Children. Many of these turn into repeat events, such as the annual Conferences of the Parties (COP ) on climate change. To take some examples of conferences at the turn of the century, the UN organized the Millennium Summit, the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, the Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the International Conference on Financing for Development, the Second World Assembly on Ageing and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.22 These conferences offered a great deal of scope for NGO involvement. The UN authorized permits to NGO s even if they did not have consultative status with ECOSOC . NGO s also organized their own conferences to parallel the official conferences. These have become major opportunities for NGO s to lay down markers on future norms, advocate policies, and engage with states, the media and each other. In addition to the permanent sites in New York and Geneva and its sites in Vienna and Nairobi, the UN also has a widely dispersed presence across the world, with local offices and peacekeeping missions in many countries. These offer their own opportunities for interaction with NGO s and local religious organizations. As discussed in the introduction, the focus on the central agencies in New York and Geneva only gives a partial picture of how religious groups engage with the UN system, but one that nonetheless reveals an important dimension of religious activity. The passage of particular issues through the whole UN system can take many routes. It is common for more than one UN agency to be involved in significant issues. NGO s seeking to influence decision-making over a particular issue therefore face a complex structure. Indeed, it is common for decisions to shuttle between national governments, the UN and other international organizations. Each NGO will find its own particular points of engagement, depending on the issue, but NGO s following major issues have to be able to monitor their progress in both national and international fora. It is necessary to develop good relationships with diplomats in both New York and Geneva, and to have a close understanding of the procedures and stages involved in particular decisions.

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UN Resolutions proceed through a series of steps. At the outset a draft text is prepared, which must be sponsored by a government. If there is disagreement, other member states will propose different drafts. The Secretariat then produces successive drafts, in which areas of disagreement are bracketed out. The delegates meet to negotiate over the text, sometimes in formal session and sometimes informally in caucuses. They attempt to narrow the differences and remove the brackets. Eventually a vote is taken or the text is adopted by consensus.23 At every stage, a complex document system keeps track of the process. The code number of the document identifies the UN organ concerned, the nature of the authoring committee, the status of the paper and the document version.24 NGO s can seek to influence this process at various stages. At the outset, they might persuade a sponsoring state to adopt a resolution they have proposed, or suggest the insertion of some particular lines of text into an existing resolution. They are less likely to be involved at the stage of detailed consultations between states over texts. Selected NGO s are occasionally permitted to play a role in the informal negotiations, when their expertise is considered valuable. But they are generally not involved in the key negotiations in which states thrash out their decisions. The account of the Defamation of Religions controversy in Chapter 7 gives an example of the scope and limits of their role. In order to participate, NGO s have to learn the rules of the game that the states have set, and play the game the way the states are doing it. They have to adapt to and make use of some of the practices and processes of international diplomacy. This means adopting some of the practices that national delegates generally follow in their mutual relations: avoidance of strong language, respect for the Chair, a pragmatic approach to pursuing matters that have a reasonable basis for achieving sufficient international support to be accepted. NGO s can be critical and provide useful opposition, but diplomats frown on excessive stridency and the Chair sometimes silences outright attacks on member states. Effective NGO s tend to look for like-minded delegations whose views are similar to theirs and work closely with such delegations, sometimes drafting language that can then be put forward under a state’s name. An effective NGO will be on top of the UN agenda, familiar with the UN processes in its area, capable of developing good relationships with diplomats and other NGO s, capable of drafting documents in language that states accept, and familiar with the UN Secretariat (see Chapter 5). Ideally it should be capable of maintaining a permanent presence in both Geneva and New York, as well as in relevant national capitals. Its staff will need to include issue experts who will follow the up-to-date developments in the particular areas of business that the NGO seeks to influence.

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In short, it is clear that in order to be fully effective, NGO s have to ‘UN -ize’ themselves.25 It is noticeable, therefore, that while many NGO s have consultative status, a more limited number of them are regularly present at sessions of the relevant bodies, and fewer still regularly present written submissions and organize side-events. As Chapter 5 examining religious NGO s at the OHCHR in Geneva shows, this pattern also applies to religious NGO s. A large number of religious NGO s have consultative status, but the demands of engaging with the UN tend to filter out a core group that are the most actively engaged. Religious NGO s have the advantage that their constituency or church may enable them to maintain a permanent presence at the UN . They may be able to recruit highly motivated people of very high quality. What influences the effectiveness of an NGO is not the size and importance of the religious community it represents, but its capacity to engage with the UN system. If anything, there seems to be an inverse correlation between effectiveness at the UN and the size of the religious constituency that supports an NGO. State delegates are well aware of the sensitivity of religious issues. Their own state’s orientation to religion will influence them, and they are aware of the political significance of religious differences within their own countries and others. On some issues, they may be well aware of the importance of religious issues in influencing their instructions, but they will still tread carefully in this area and avoid unnecessarily provoking religious sensitivities. This creates something of a taboo in talking about religious matters at the UN . As one diplomat put it, to be effective at the UN , you do not talk in terms of religion.26 Consequently, if NGO s representing religious communities wish to be effective, they too avoid talk in religious terms. Instead, they address issues such as human rights, development and environmental issues in the same terms as other NGO s. Individuals representing religious NGO s, secular NGO s and states may have private religious motivations, but it is not expected that these should feature prominently in public interventions. A further filter is the practice of NGO s working in coalitions to make joint submissions and pursue issues together. Since time is limited, and the number of spoken submissions that can be heard at UN sessions is guillotined, it is to the advantage of NGO s to work together, for joint submissions and statements are likely to carry more weight. As a result religious NGO s often join platforms with secular groups. This is another factor discouraging expression in religious terms.

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These considerations, together with the location and cost of living in New York and Geneva, strongly select for the types of NGO s that participate at the UN and for the types of NGO s that are effective. If an NGO is well supported by a permanent religious community, has a faith-based motivation to participate in international affairs, and is comfortable with the UN ’s universalist and bureaucratic culture, it may well be able to participate and make its mark. On the other hand, if an NGO represents communities which are located outside the United States and Europe, cannot easily afford the costs of permanent representation, and speaks on behalf of one particular religious community rather than on general issues, effective participation will be more difficult. This helps to explain the skewed representation of NGO s representing religious communities at the UN . The overwhelming majority of religious NGO s with consultative status represent the Christian and Jewish communities and are based in Europe or the USA . Moslems are represented to a lesser degree, while Hindu and Buddhist groups have very thin representation (see Chapter 9).27 This also helps to explain why a significant number of NGO s are difficult to classify as ‘religious’ or otherwise. A number of formerly religious NGO s, which were founded at least partly for religious motives, have evolved towards a secular form in order to be effective. In sum, NGO s contribute to the diversity and richness of the UN arena. They connect the discussions of the states to opinion in civil society and offer, to some degree, a critical voice. NGO s can bring their own resources to bear, including expertise, specialist knowledge and skills. Some provide continuity and a grasp of issues that the diplomats value. As for the NGO s, the UN provides them with an opportunity to meet, to hear and to lobby the representatives of states. The presence of NGO s enlarges the scope of the arena and gives the impression that not only the states but also at least some representatives of ‘we, the peoples’ are present. In this respect, the participation of religious NGO s connects the UN with religious communities. This is symbolized by the place of worship in Church House, New York, where the symbols of world religions are placed on the wall together (although, perhaps significantly, the Cross, which stands next to the symbols of other religions, is the only one permanently fixed to the wall). In practice, however, to be effective, NGO s have to play by the rules of the states. For this reason, faith-based NGO s avoid overt religious expression, working together in coalitions with other, predominantly non-faith-based NGO s. They tend to be more successful, the more they conform to the universalist and individualist predisposition of the UN system.

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

The UN as an actor The UN is perhaps most important as an arena, but in some specific areas the UN and its specialist agencies also constitutes an actor in their own right. An institution, even if it is a collective actor, develops its own personality and character. It also develops its own corpus of procedures and practices which shape its actions.28 When the Security Council is united, the UN can be a very powerful international actor, capable in principle of enforcing resolutions against the opposition of particular states. It is more common for differences among Permanent Members to divide the Council and for Resolutions not to be enforced. The UN also has ‘actor’ qualities through its Secretariat, its special Rapporteurs and Special Representatives of the Secretary-General, and through specialized agencies such as UNDP, UNHCR , and the UNHCHR . All these work on mandates agreed by the states, but they have their own budgets, take important decisions, and are capable of playing, to some extent, an independent role. The UN Secretariat has operational control of its own peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions and is heavily involved in development and humanitarian emergencies. NGO s are increasingly commissioned to provide services on behalf of the UN and its specialized agencies and the UN benefits from consultations with them. In this respect NGO s complement the UN ’s ‘actor-ness’ and contribute to global governance. As the Cardoso report put it, ‘the rise of civil society is indeed one of the landmark events of our time. Global governance is no longer the sole domain of Governments. The growing participation and influence of non-state actors is enhancing democracy and reshaping multilateralism.’29 Critics have questioned whether this is really so. Expert NGO s are not necessarily more representative and accountable than the member states and the Cardoso report’s broad definition of ‘civil society’ may include some quite ‘uncivil’ actors.30 The UN has identified religious civil society organizations as an important group. For example, it set up the ‘Interagency Task Force to Engage Faith Based Organizations in the UN ’ (see Chapter 6 on the UN system in New York). Both the UN and civil society actors may complement one another’s capacity as actors in fields such as development, peacebuilding and human rights. For example, Religions for Peace has mobilized church support for UN agencies working in the areas of HIV /Aids, Violent Conflict and climate change.31 These developments are particularly welcome to the UN Secretariat. According to the former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN , Bangladeshi

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diplomat Ambassador Chowdbury, it is when states, NGO s and the Secretariat work together that the UN can be truly effective.32 There have been recent examples of UN agencies seeking out relationships with faith-based communities, particularly as part of a perceived UN response to the danger of a ‘clash of civilizations’. For example, UNESCO, DESA and the World Bank, together with 11 states and the Committee of Religious NGO s, set up a Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace. One of its documents urged: The effective engagement of leaders of faith-based organizations provides an opportunity for greater understanding of religions, civilizations and cultures. Such a better understanding can inform and facilitate the work of governments, civil society and religious leaders, to foster harmonious inter-cultural relationships and to reduce the potential for animosities and even violence. More deliberate and strategic efforts can foster and advance understanding of the relationships and interdependencies between diverse cultures and religions.33

In short, there is some mutual benefit from cooperation between the UN , civil society (including religious communities) and some states. As a result we observe a pattern of initiatives at the UN for inter-religious cooperation, combined with a general wariness of religious engagement.

The UN as a tool As discussed earlier, realists see the UN as a device of the great powers, while critical voices from the Gramscian, Marxist and poststructuralist schools see it as an instrument of hegemonic social forces. According to both these perspectives, the UN is a tool. The historian Ikenberry34 argues that the ‘United States led the way in establishing the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the US –Japan security treaty and other alliances in Asia’ in order to institutionalize its power. The political and normative order enshrined in these institutions set the foundations for the liberal, open, trading system in which US interests could prosper. As a leading member of the Security Council, and the largest single funder of the UN , it was difficult to ignore the views of the United States and impossible to override it in matters of central importance. Of course, the Soviet Union and other Security Council members also held vetoes, so the Security Council

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was often paralysed during the Cold War. Moreover, as decolonisation proceeded, more and more developing countries became UN members. Eventually Southern states had more votes than the North in the General Assembly, and the US and its allies were frequently outvoted. If world politics is seen only as a play between great powers, the UN is little more than their tool, but if a wider perspective is taken, it plays a larger part. It certainly fulfils valuable functions for small and medium size powers, who can amplify their influence through the international body. But it is true that the UN cannot get very far against US opposition. According to the Gramscians and poststructuralists, NGO s are a tool of the powerful in a more insidious sense. They tend to be co-opted into the system of global governance and, unwittingly or not, they tend to legitimize it. Their activities are therefore seen to reinforce systems of oppression in global politics.35 It is clear that NGO s play a role in international organizations that serves the interests of some states more than others. As has been noted earlier, they are predominantly drawn from Western societies, and the civil society they represent reflect the evolution of state and society in the West. Human rights NGO s, for example, are seen to reflect the agendas of the Western states, and work closely with them, as they did in the case of the Defamation of Religions Controversy (Chapter 6). NGO s provide a means for the broad interests of Western societies in free speech, individual human rights, universal values and democratic societies to be advanced, for example at the expense of autocratic regimes. ‘Effective’ religious NGO s tend to associate themselves with these causes and may also have opportunities to defend religious minorities and to promote new standards and norms. As noted above, the process of engagement with the UN tends to socialize NGO s in UN norms, which tend to be the norms of the UN ’s leading states. However, it is too simple to write NGO s off merely as tools of the state. Such a simplification fails to capture the complex relations within and between NGO s and a great variety of states. There is scope for NGO s to criticize Western as well as non-Western states. There are opportunities for them to establish new standards in important areas and to create momentum for international campaigns, such as on land mines, conflict diamonds or extreme poverty. Since NGO s are drawn from societies rather than states, they can enlarge the UN ’s discussions. In so far as religious communities seek to carry forward values and inspirations and to provide a moral compass in the public sphere, they too have a significant contribution to make.

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Conclusion: NGO s and values NGO s have many motives, but they seek to champion idealistic values in a world of states. They bring few resources of power to the table, but by in so far as they can shape the discourse on international issues, they may have influence on international agendas. As this chapter shows, the UN structures the engagement of NGO s with the UN system in a number of ways. It selects which NGO s are granted consultative status. It sets the terms of discourse at the UN . The discourse of diplomats influences how NGO s speak. To be effective, NGO s need to be well-informed, well-resourced, and professional, and to engage with the UN on its own terms. There are advantages for NGO s in presenting joint submissions and working together rather than alone. All these pressures select for the type of NGO that can be effective at the UN , and encourage groups to make their case in secular terms. The legal norms of individual human rights, sovereign states and a secular public sphere influence how NGO s approach the UN , and tend to keep explicit religion out of the UN . But NGO s, including religious NGO s, can influence on the way these norms develop, and the norms themselves are profoundly influenced by the Judaeo-Christian heritage from which the international system has evolved. NGO s make a distinctive contribution to the UN . They add to the diversity of the UN as an arena, contribute to the UN ’s role as an actor by supporting UN agencies and initiatives, and sometimes act as a tool for the UN and for particular states. The weakness of the current system is the highly unrepresentative selection of NGO s that are present at the UN , which places limits on the UN ’s claims to be an inclusionary polity. A more democratic UN would need to find a way to connect itself more systematically to the full diversity of world society. In the interim, however, the presence of religious NGO s provides a voice of conscience and a means for some religious communities in some societies to seek to hold states to account.

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2

The Problem of Categories: Exploring Religion and NGOs through Survey Research Evelyn Bush

This chapter will explore some conceptual challenges to defining the parameters of our object of study – religious nongovernmental organizations (RNGO s). At first glance, identifying RNGO s might seem a relatively straightforward task. After all, considered separately, both religion and NGO s have long been subjects of academic inquiry across fields as diverse as theology, religious studies anthropology and political science. But, when religion and NGO s are combined in the form of ‘religious NGO s’, it is essentially because religion is operating beyond what is conventionally recognized as ‘the religious sphere’. In the process, the boundary between religious and non-religious becomes less clear. Indeed, as Julia Berger points out, even members of NGO s themselves often have difficulty locating their organizations along a secular–religious continuum.1 And, as the next two chapters will illustrate, where researchers draw the line between the religious and the secular either can illuminate or obscure different relations of power and forms of influence that are mobilized through religious actors operating in the field of international relations. But before moving on to a more detailed discussion of criteria for defining the religious–secular boundary, there are some more general forms of variation, which have implications for how we interpret religious organizational data, of which we need to be aware. The first is variation in institutional form. Indeed, it is not only the ‘religion’ part, but also the ‘NGO’ part of ‘religious NGO s’ (RNGO ) that can be problematic if our goal is to understand the kinds of influence that are exercised through religion at the UN . While we began our research intending to focus on ‘religious NGO s’, it quickly became clear that our focus was too narrow, as the NGO is not the only or even necessarily the most influential organizational form through which religion engages UN actors (see Introduction and Conclusion). Religion also appears in the form of religious 39

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institutions proper, ecumenical associations, and as state and quasi-state actors, such as the Holy See and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC ). Each of these, in turn, can be linked with or draw resources from other institutions, such as secular philanthropies or governments. The implications of these different forms of organizational and institutional linkages will be addressed later in this and other chapters in this volume. Second, as we saw in the Introduction, we need to distinguish between the multiple levels of analysis at which religion functions, ranging from the individual, through the organizational, to the societal.2 We cannot assume that information we accrue at one level of analysis, in our case the organizational level, can be generalized to the others. Beginning with the societal level, societies vary in terms of the extent to which both individual and organized expressions of religiosity are accepted, whether by governments or publics. For instance, the US government incentivizes the expression of organized religious identity by setting aside grant money specifically for faith-based social service agencies. In addition, one branch of UN headquarters is based in the US . Given these contextual factors, it should come as no surprise that a large proportion (20 per cent) of the religious NGO s that operate at the UN are based in the US . However, greater visibility of organized religion at the UN cannot be assumed to mean that the US is a ‘more religious’ society than one with a lesser-organized religious presence. A country like China, for example, which places formal restrictions on religious congregation and mobilization, creates disincentives for the organized expression of religious identities that are not approved by the state. Indeed, none of the religious NGO s that responded to our survey had headquarters in China. But it would be inaccurate to conclude from this finding that a society like China, teeming with religious and spiritual mobilization ranging widely from Falun Gong to Christian house churches to an international movement on behalf of Tibetan Buddhism, is irreligious. And not only governments, but also civil societies, vary widely in terms of their tolerances for religious diversity and expression. Thus, observations of formally organized religion might tell us less about the depth or pervasiveness of religiosity within a given society and more about political and social contexts, and the kinds of religious expression that are encouraged or discouraged across highly variable public spaces. At the other end of the individual–society spectrum, we need to distinguish between religiosity that openly manifests in formal organizations and religiosity as it exists in the hearts, minds, and dispositions of individuals. For example, secular NGO s can have within their membership individuals who are motivated by religious conviction, which they individually express through their work with

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secular development, humanitarian or human rights organizations. Conversely, many overtly religious NGO s welcome contributions (of time, money, labour) from individuals whose participation might be inspired by more secular ideas associated with human rights, civil liberties or development. In other words, we cannot assume that individuals who work or volunteer for NGO s necessarily share the convictions and identities expressed in the latter’s public performances. This brings us to the third form or variation to be considered – that which exists among organizations themselves in terms of the ways that religion is expressed (or not) within their organizational structures. This is the form of variation that we were able to capture with our survey of UN -affiliated NGO s, and that will be the main focus of this chapter. This chapter will, first, describe some of the different dimensions along which religion manifest in organizations. Second, it will provide an overview of our survey, including how it accounts for different ways of defining religiosity. And third, it will present some findings from the survey on how NGO s themselves conceive of religion at the UN . The chapter will conclude with a brief discussion of the need to carefully distinguish between the non-state and state actors among religious organizations operating at the UN , based on how the respondents from our survey understand this distinction.

Locating ‘religion’ in NGO s ‘Religion’ can manifest in multiple components of formal organizations, such as their names, missions, activities, goals, modes of expression, membership or employment criteria, institutional origins, or the identities of the populations that they serve. Importantly, an organization may be religious along some of these dimensions but not others, and this hybrid quality can be a source of ambiguity as to an organization’s status as ‘religious’ or ‘secular’. Indeed, to take into account only one dimension of an organization can be misleading. Consider for example, the identity marker that is likely to introduce an organization to the public: its name. Here, the old adage ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ certainly applies as not all religious organizations have overtly religious names, and some organizations that have religious sounding names are in fact largely or entirely secular in their operations. For example, a person who does not know much about Quakers would not immediately assume that the American Friends Service Committee has any religious association. At the same

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time, while the ‘Red Cross’ is an example of overtly religious imagery, the organization that bears the name is secular in terms of its goals, activities, methods and so forth. Thus, organizations’ names can be misleading. Another criterion could be formal affiliation with a religious institution (e.g. church, mosque, temple, denomination). On the surface, this may seem like a straightforward, reliable indicator, since it refers to the religious sphere proper to ascribe religiosity. A classification problem could emerge, however, if an NGO describes itself as inspired by, or representing, a particular religious tradition in the absence of any official body of that tradition ‘ordaining’ or recognizing it. If we want to paint a comprehensive picture of the types of actors operating within the RNGO universe, we need to include self-identified religious organizations that are not credentialed by ‘official’ sources. If a project’s analytical framework revolves around a distinction between the religious and the secular, then defining as ‘religious’ organizations that are not formally affiliated with religious institutions would likely arouse little controversy. However, the decision as to how to classify such NGO s gets somewhat thornier if our goal is to identify or categorize NGO s according to religious tradition. Take, for example, Catholicism. Do we count as ‘Catholic’ organizations that describe themselves as Catholic, but are neither recognized nor credentialed by the official hierarchy of the Church? An example would be Catholics for Choice (CFC ). CFC ’s members identify as Catholic, yet advocate for the pro-choice position on abortion, a position for which individuals and organizations can be excommunicated by the official hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Researchers are here confronted with a decision: Does CFC count as a Catholic NGO even though it is not recognized as such by the Holy See? If so, do we take at face value any organization’s claim to represent any religion, or do we establish limiting criteria? Or, if we decide instead to adhere to ‘authoritative’ designations, how do we determine who is authoritative and should be recognized as legitimate spokespersons for religious communities? At risk in making such determinations is our neutrality as researchers. Conflicts over who gets to speak for religious traditions are often rooted in exclusions based on social status or positions on controversial issues that divide congregations. In terms of the former, a common source of exclusion is gender bias, as women are routinely and systematically denied equal access to leadership and speaking positions in most of the world’s mainstream religions. An example of the latter would be schisms in several Christian denominations over gay marriage. Such conflicts are not only about the social issues themselves (e.g. reproductive rights, marriage equality), but also about who has the right to

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represent or speak in the name of a given religion. Furthermore, and especially during periods of substantial change and conflict within religious traditions, opposing parties in disputes argue by asserting that their viewpoints are most in conformity with the ‘true’ meanings of a given religion, with both church and sect claiming to represent the authentic faith. When researchers make determinations as to which actors ‘count’ as representing a given tradition or denomination, we inadvertently take sides in these struggles. And through our research, and the categories and claims that we recognize and ignore, we coconstruct social reality in favour of the group whose standpoint we assume. But even for organizations that are unambiguously credentialed by formal religious institutions, whether or not they are ‘religious’ could still be up for debate, particularly if we use organizational goals, activities or methods as bases for classification. What exactly is a ‘religious goal’, ‘religious activity’, or ‘religious method?’ When we examine ‘religious’ organizations in the context of their own field – the so-called ‘religious sphere’ – the answer appears to be relatively clear. We might assume, according to a certain understanding, that religious organizations provide or facilitate worship, prayer/meditation, sacraments, scriptural study, community rituals, conversion, sanctuary, and so forth. But when we examine the goals and activities of ‘religious’ organizations beyond this specific socially ascribed domain, as is the cases with NGO s, establishing criteria for what counts as ‘religious’ is more open to interpretation. Some researchers might prefer relatively strict criteria, and insist upon ‘religion qua religion’ being brought into the secular domain, such as through propagation of a particular faith, or the use of prayer and worship. For others, such unambiguously religious goals and activities might be sufficient but not necessary indicators to warrant classification as ‘religious’. Take, for example, a Christian hospital. It might indeed have a clear religious institutional origin, would probably have a religious name, and might overtly display religious imagery on its properties, brochures, letterhead, and so on. In addition, it might conform to denominational beliefs in terms of the types of services it provides, perhaps excluding abortion or contraception from its services if it is a conservative denomination. But at the same time, the hospital might make no effort to encourage religious conversion, and practise exclusively secular, science-based medicine, and hire staff without regard to religious affiliation. Should it therefore be coded as ‘secular’, since it embraces scientific approaches and does not, after all, do things classified singularly as ‘religious’? On the one hand, to omit these types of organizations from analyses would be to lose potentially valuable data on a prevalent form of religious organization. But

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on the other, to uncritically include them in an undifferentiated list of ‘religious NGO s’, along with, say, pervasively sectarian organizations for whom religious propagation and/or conversion are core objectives, who hire only co-religionists and who supplement their secular approaches with prayer, sacraments or religious spiritual counseling would be to obscure a potentially important form of variation. Another source of ambiguity lies in the ways that religion intersects with other forms of identity, especially ethnic and cultural. For example, not all Jews identify with Judaism as a religion some instead relate to their tradition as a form of ethnic identity, perhaps even referring to themselves as ‘secular Jews’. Thus leaders of Jewish NGO s may be hesitant to describe their organizations as ‘religious’, since not all of their members relate to Judaism in religious terms.3 A similar ambiguity lies in the distinction between religion and culture. Consider, for example, NGO s that focus on ‘cultural rights’ for indigenous or aboriginal peoples. For many of these groups, spiritual beliefs and practices have not traditionally been contained within a distinct sphere called ‘religion’; instead, they conceive of the sacred as permeating all or most of material and/or social life. From this perspective, the very idea that religion exists in an autonomous sphere is a colonialist construction.4 Such groups may be more likely to describe themselves as ‘cultural rights’ rather than ‘religious’ NGO s. But at the same time, if their organizations are mobilizing to protect sacred spaces, rituals or practices, they are likely to be of interest to researchers who study ‘religious NGO s’. To omit them from a sample of such organizations could be to omit valuable cases and information. But at the same time, to define them as ‘religious NGO s’ just like any other would be to impose our own meanings on groups that may, in principle, be opposed to the label. These are just a few examples of the multiple criteria that can be used to classify NGO s as ‘religious’ or ‘secular’, and the difficulties the existence of multiple criteria can pose to researchers collecting aggregated data on religious NGO s. Unfortunately, published lists of NGO s are unlikely to contain ample information on a sufficient number of these variables to make determinations as to the organizations’ religious–secular status. And even if we instead rely upon NGO self-report through surveys, we cannot assume a high degree of intersubjective agreement among researchers and survey respondents as to which criteria matter. As a result, organizational identity cannot be adequately captured through dichotomous questions that simply ask ‘Is your organization a religious NGO ?’ Instead, we need to use multiple measures. The next section will describe how we approached this problem in our survey.

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The survey The recipients of our survey were organizations whose names and email addresses appeared in the directory of NGO s registered with the UN ’s Department of Public Information (DPI ).5 At the time of our survey (2011) 3,275 such NGO s were registered with the DPI . At this point, we made no attempt to distinguish between religious and secular NGO s, opting instead to rely upon NGO selfreports as to whether or not they were ‘religious’. In anticipation of the classification difficulties just described, the survey asked several questions, each designed to tap different dimensions of ‘religion’ as a category. This approach not only allowed us to avoid imposing our own meanings and labels on NGO s, but also yielded data on the multiple dimensions of organizations that can be compared in terms of their relationships with a variety of factors relevant to the NGO functioning at the UN . Our response rate was rather disappointing, as only 192 out of 3,275 NGOs responded to our survey; about 6 per cent. Diplomats informed us that response rates for UN surveys are notoriously low and reasons for the non response are likely to vary. Some organizations may have become defunct, changed their email addresses, or ended their affiliation with the UN. Other organizations may have been understaffed or simply unwilling or uninterested in responding. With the advent of the Internet, and the subsequent ease with which surveys can be sent out, ‘survey fatigue’ has become a common problem for researchers in many fields. And because of their visibility and analytical importance to international relations scholars, it is likely that NGOs working at the UN receive frequent survey requests, making survey fatigue all the more probable. Regardless of factors driving the low response rate, we need to keep it in mind, consider how it may bias our survey findings and rely on the fieldwork to supplement and clarify what the survey data reveal. One thing that stands out about our survey respondents is that they are disproportionately (63 per cent) from Europe and North America. The breakdown of organizational headquarters is shown in Table 2.1 Of the 72 European NGO s, 16 were from Switzerland; of the North American NGO s, 40 were from the US . These numbers should come as no surprise given the locations of the two major UN headquarters in those countries. The next largest numbers of NGO s were from India (n=15), followed by France (n=9) and the UK (n=8). At first glance, the large numbers of ‘northern’ NGO s might appear to indicate a bias towards organizations with more resources (e.g. staff,

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Table 2.1 Number and per cent of NGO s by location of headquarters. Region

Frequency

Per cent

Cumulative per cent

Europe North America Asia Africa Latin America Oceania no answer Total

72 49 34 23 9 3 2 192

37.5 25.5 17.7 12 4.7 1.6 1 100

37.5 63 80 92.7 97.4 99 100

Source: Survey of NGO s registered with DPI at the UN .

computers, English language skills, money). But even if that is the case, the bias lies less with our survey results and more with the UN itself. In fact, as of the time of this writing, 57 per cent of the NGO s that are registered with the DPI , and a full 77 per cent that have consultative status, are listed as either North American or European.6 Thus, our proportions are not too far off in terms of a simple north/south dichotomy. Of those who identified with a religion, our respondents were also disproportionately from Christian, and especially Catholic, NGOs. As Table  2.2 shows, 48 per cent of the RNGOs in our dataset were Roman Catholic, and an additional 31 per cent were associated with other forms of Christianity, resulting in a combined total of 79 per cent Christian. Muslim and Jewish organizations accounted for 5 per cent and 10 per cent respectively of the religious NGOs who answered our survey, with the remaining 7 per cent identifying with other religions. By way of comparison, Petersen,7 who did her own count (rather than a survey) of religious NGOs at the UN, identified 58.4 per cent as Christian, 16.3 per cent as Muslim, 6.9 per cent as Jewish, and the remaining 18.4 per cent as ‘other’ or multi-religious. Berger8 identified 57.4 per cent as Christian, 12.2 per cent as Muslim, 11 per cent as Jewish, and the remaining 19.4 per cent as other or multi-religious. If Petersen’s and Berger’s counts are more accurate,9 the difference suggests that those who answered our survey were disproportionately Christian, while Muslims are underrepresented relative to their actual numbers at the UN. But equally important is the fact that all three studies show religious disproportion relative to the world’s population. In 2015, the Pew Research Center estimated that about 31.4 per cent of the world’s population identifies as Christian, 23.2 per cent

The Problem of Categories

47

Table 2.2 Number and percent of RNGO s by religious tradition. Religion

Frequency

Per cent

Cumulative per cent

Catholic Christian Jewish Islamic Other Total

20 13 4 2 3 42

47.6 31 9.5 4.8 7.1 100

47.6 78.6 88.1 92.9 100

Source: Survey of NGO s registered with DPI at the UN .

Muslim, and 0.2 per cent to be Jewish, with the remaining 45.2 per cent being accounted for by adherents to other religions and those who are unaffiliated.10 Thus, regardless of whose estimates of UN religious participation we use, RNGOs at the UN are not represented in proportion to the world’s religious adherents. One implication of the disproportion in our data is that we do not have enough variation on the variable ‘religion’ to make meaningful statistical comparisons across religious traditions. For example, with only one Muslim organization in our dataset, we cannot use our survey to make convincing claims about how Muslim and Protestant NGO s compare in term of their organizational characteristics, opinions or experiences. We do have, however, ample data to usefully compare religious and secular NGO s. But even then, the precise numbers of each will depend upon the survey question used to determine ‘religious’ identity. We asked three such questions. The first question our survey asked to determine religious identity was: Is your organization formally affiliated with any religious organization, institution, or denomination? To this question, 32 respondents marked ‘yes’, indicating that their organization was indeed formally affiliated with a religious body. Second, we also wanted to identify NGO s who, regardless of whether or not they had a religious affiliation, identified with a religious tradition. To capture these, we also asked a second, broader question: Does your NGO identify with a religious tradition? Forty-two respondents answered ‘yes’ to this question. Thus, at first glance we might conclude from this that our data contain – by any reasonable definition – if not 42 ‘religious NGO s’, than at least 32, using the stricter definition. But then we asked a third question, which gave more detailed options, which are listed below. The question asked: Which of the following best characterizes

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your NGO? The response options and the number of affirmative responses for each were as follows: Secular Secular w/ Religious Roots Religious Faith-based Ethnic/Cultural Spiritual Other

110 16 9 34 12 14 17

As the results show, 16 of the NGO s who responded to our survey had founders who were expressly motivated by religious belief, but now operate as secular organizations. We gave three distinct options, ‘faith-based’ (n=34), ‘religious’ (n=9) and ‘spiritual’ (n=14) to capture the different ways that ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ actors might conceive of themselves and we included an ‘ethnic/ cultural’ response option (n=12) to capture some of the boundaries between ethnicity, culture and religion described earlier. Importantly, the response options for this question were not mutually exclusive; that is, respondents could choose more than one option. For example, a Jewish or aboriginal rights organization that chose ‘ethnic/cultural’ could also define themselves as ‘religious’, ‘spiritual’, or ‘faith-based’. As Table 2.3 shows, of the 5 organizations that described themselves as ‘ethnic/cultural’, 2, 3, and 3 also described themselves as religious, faith-based, and spiritual respectively. The table also shows that the categories that are most closely aligned are religious and faith-based, with 67 per cent of the respondents who chose the former also choosing the latter. Interestingly, however, it is also the case that only 18 per cent

Table 2.3 Cross-tabs. Correspondences between RNGO responses to the question: Which of following best characterizes your NGO ? Religious (n=9) Religious (9) Faith-based (34) Ethnic/Cultural (5) Spiritual (14)

6 (18%) 2 (40%) 3 (21%)

Faith-based (n=34) 6 (67%) 3 (60%) 5 (36%)

Source: Survey of NGO s registered with DPI at the UN .

Ethnic/Cultural (n=5) 2 (22%) 3 (9%) 3 (21%)

Spiritual (n=14) 3 (33%) 5 (15%) 3 (60%) -

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49

of the NGO s that chose ‘faith-based’ also chose ‘religious’. That is, ‘religious’ NGO s are likely to call themselves ‘faith-based’, but ‘faith-based’ organizations are not likely to call themselves ‘religious’. In fact, ‘faith-based’ NGO s showed the least correspondence with any of the other categories, as only 9 per cent and 15 per cent also chose the descriptors ‘ethnic/cultural’ and ‘spiritual’ respectively. The uniqueness of faith-based organizations will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter. These responses to the multi-category question are particularly interesting when we consider them in light of the other two questions intended to tap religious identity. First, when accounting for overlap between categories, a total of only 37 NGO s described themselves as either ‘religious’ or ‘faith-based’. To clarify, even though 42 organizations identified with a religious tradition (second question), only nine of those would describe their organization as a ‘religious NGO’. Even if we include the apparently preferable descriptor ‘faith-based’, we still fall short of the 42 with only 37 organizations choosing to self-designate as either ‘religious’ or ‘faith-based’. Equally worth noting is that the category ‘spiritual’ received a greater number affirmative responses that ‘religious’, suggesting that even organizations that consider themselves to be ‘spiritual’ more often than not reject the label ‘religious’.

The category ‘non-governmental’ This chapter’s main concern has been with problematizing the category of ‘religious’ among NGO s, and has illustrated some of the measurement concerns inherent in efforts to define ‘religion’ when organizations operate beyond the religious sphere. But ‘religious’ is not the only descriptor in question. The question of what should count as a ‘religious NGO’ also begs a prior question of ‘what is an NGO ?’ or ‘what does it mean to be ‘non-governmental?’ In our research, the practical task of identifying NGO s was simplified by taking at face-value the implicit claim that organizations who registered as NGO s with the DPI were considered, by themselves and by the DPI , to indeed be NGO s. But, when viewed with a more critical eye, the parameters of what counts a ‘nongovernmental’, like ‘religion’, are somewhat murkier than they might initially seem. Indeed, it is by now commonly acknowledged that the term ‘nongovernmental’ can be somewhat of a misnomer since, even if NGO s operate independently of direct government control, many of them receive substantial portions of their funding from governments. In advocacy and academic circles,

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depending upon the extent and nature of the organizations’ dependency, they may be (often derisively) referred to as GONGO s (i.e. government NGO s), or QUANGO s (quasi-autonomous NGO s), implying that their financial and/or institutional dependence upon governments logically precludes their acting entirely independent of them.11 Like their secular counterparts, religious NGO s occasionally rely upon government support (see Chapter  3). In addition, as is the case with secular NGO s,12 the question of RNGO independence goes beyond the issue of funding and extends to a religion’s incorporation into state structures. Indeed, a strict demarcation between religious and state institutions is not assumed at the UN . Among the prominent deviations from the secular model are the Holy See and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC ). Although the Holy See is recognized by lay observers more as a religious institution, it is also recognized at the UN as a Permanent Observer State. This status confers upon it certain privileges, such as to the right to participate in the General Assembly, denied to other religious actors (see also, Chapter 8). Because of the Holy See’s quasi-state status, it is debatable whether an officially recognised Catholic organization is best conceived of as an NGO or, because it is an extension of the Holy See, as a governmental or quasi-governmental organization. Each of these categories gives us a different picture of the interests that are served and the kinds of institutional power that are exercised through ‘RNGO’ activism, a topic that will be taken up later in Chapter 8. Islamic NGO s at the UN can present a similar classification problem, particularly when aligned with another international organization, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC ), which is discussed in Chapter 7. The OIC is itself an international institution, comprised of 57 majority-Muslim countries whose laws are, to varying degrees, explicitly informed by varying interpretations of Islamic doctrine. Like the Holy See, the OIC also has UN observer status. Because of the close institutional alignment between religion and state in certain OIC countries, researchers are again confronted with the question of how RNGO s that identify with state religions should be classified. Findings from our survey suggest that NGO relationships to the Holy See and OIC are indeed perceived to condition religious groups’ abilities to exert influence at the UN . Consider, specifically, NGO responses to the following open-ended question: Which religious groups at the UN have the most influence when it comes to agenda setting at the UN? Among those who gave brief (often one-word) responses, the breakdown was as follows:13

The Problem of Categories

Don’t know Christian (unspecified) Catholic Vatican and affiliates Islamic OIC and affiliates Jewish Other

51

35 31 17 16 21 13 10 7

The large number of respondents who identified some form of Christianity (n=64) is for the most part unremarkable, especially when considered in light of the disproportionate number of Christian (including Catholic) NGO s at the UN (see Chapter 9). However, the 34 references to Islamic actors do come as somewhat of a surprise, not only because of the small number of Islamic NGO s in our dataset, but also because of some characterizations of the UN as an instrument of northern (i.e. Christian or secularist) power. This characterization would seem to contradict the finding that Islamic actors are perceived by some NGO s as among the most influential religious groups at the UN . This perception, as well as that of the influence wielded by Catholicism, is elaborated upon in some of the more detailed responses that were given to this same question: Those that are affiliated or aligned with the interests of key member states. This is mostly evident at the Human Rights Council where there is a solid bloc of states supporting a particular perspective on the role of Islam in their human rights deliberations. OIC is a compact political group which has been influencing the UN agenda through its supported NGO s. Religious organizations are not independent NGO s. They are backed by the administrations of their religion, be it the Vatican or others. The ones that are controlled and funded by their home states: i.e. the gongos. These groups have become a significant problem in usurping the meager access afforded to NGO s. . . . the religious NGO s as a whole just act through or in coalition with the Vatican and the OIC , because they are (sic) more influence than NGO s in general. Although it has only observer status, the Vatican has strong influence, particularly when coupled with like-minded Islamic states and the US when conservatively led.

When considering these responses, we need to bear in mind that the survey was conducted at the tail end of the OIC ’s controversial anti-defamation

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

campaign (see Chapter  7), and that the OIC ’s exercise of power on behalf of Islam may have been more at the forefront of respondents’ minds, especially those whose NGO s focus on human rights, than would usually be the case. All the same, these findings suggest that institutional linkages between NGO s and states can indeed improve religious actors’ ability to exert influence (or at least that is a common perception). The important question for classification purposes, however, is what kind of influence? If we count as ‘NGO s’ organizations that are created by or closely affiliated with these particular state and quasi-state structures, are we obtaining a valid measure of civil society influence? Or, should they instead be conceived of as instruments of state power? To take for granted the category ‘NGO s’ is to obscure a diversity of ways in which power is distributed and exercised through these religious actors in global politics. In the end, we find that the category ‘religious NGO’ is ambiguous, suggesting the need to approach it not as referring to a singular type of organization, but as multiple distinct and possibly competing organizational forms that interact inside the UN system. In the next chapter, I will further explore this organziational diversity and outline some specific insights and findings from the questionnaire and highlight issues surrounding accountability.

3

Representation, Accountability and Influence at the UN: Results from the Survey of Religious NGOs Evelyn Bush

Drawing from our survey of UN -affiliated NGO s, in this chapter I will explore the issues of representation, accountability and influence at the UN from several angles. First, I will explore how the presence of RNGO s at the UN either enhances or detracts from the latter’s representativeness as a global institution. Second, I will explore various kinds of influences that bear upon NGO agendas. In the process, I will build on the previous chapter by demonstrating the inadequacy of the simple dichotomy between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ for understanding the factors that differentiate religious from secular NGO s, and how those factors are illuminated when we use finer-grained distinctions. NGO representation and accountability have been of interest to researchers, NGO professionals and governments since at least the 1980s, with debates revolving around both normative and empirical claims.1 While some writers have been concerned with establishing what the standards of NGO representation and accountability should be,2 others have focused more on their operationalization, measurement, and empirical evaluation.3 This chapter is closer to the second type. It will not directly address questions about whether or not individual NGO s are in fact representative of or accountable to their various stakeholders. It will, however, examine how RNGO s either contribute or detract from the representativeness of the UN as a global institution, as well as some of the entities that religious and secular NGO s alike find themselves accountable to, above and beyond the populations that they seek to serve. The findings reported in this chapter, taken in isolation from the remaining chapters in this book, should be interpreted tentatively, limited as they are by two features of our survey. First, as discussed in the previous chapter, is the low response rate. Although this chapter uses statistical procedures that take into 53

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

account the number of cases when establishing statistical significance, we still need to consider how the sample itself may be biased, perhaps in favour of organizations that have more of the types of resources – Internet access, secretarial staff, English language skills, time – that would make them more available to answer our survey. In addition, the organizations that answered our survey may have simply had greater interest in the topic of religion or, for whatever reason, were more invested in the UN than were non-responders. Of course, on both counts, the risk of bias is likely to be somewhat attenuated due to the fact that we are drawing from a population of NGO s that at a minimum have sufficient resources and interest in the UN to have obtained consultative status to begin with. All the same, the potential for bias needs to be kept in mind, and the generalizability of the findings cannot be assumed. Second, the NGO survey was only one part of this broader project, and was intended only to capture a bird’s eye view of how and where religion ‘fits in’ among NGO s at the UN . It did not ask the kinds of detailed questions about NGO membership or practices that, on their own, would allow us to assess whether individual NGO s have leaders and memberships that are representative of their stakeholders or whether or the not they actually behave in ways that indicate accountability towards them. What the survey does show, however, are significant patterns that serve as valuable entry points for deeper discussions about the ways in which religious NGO s are or are not ‘just like any other NGO’, and how the UN and the NGO s with which it is in consultation might variably shape one another. This chapter is arranged in two sections. The first section takes as its object the UN itself, and addresses questions about whether or not the numbers and types of organizations registered with the DPI represent the full diversity of the world that the UN charges itself with representing. Specifically, I am interested in the role that the inclusion of religion plays in contributing to or detracting from the UN ’s representativeness. The second section compares RNGO s and secular NGO s in terms of two key factors related to accountability: sources of financial support and the societal sectors that influence NGO agendas.

Religion and representation at the UN This section will, albeit in a cursory way, speak to the issue of representation by examining how religion intersects with two other categories – region and gender – to either contribute to or detract from the UN ’s stated commitments to global

Representation, Accountability and Influence at the UN

55

representativeness and non-discrimination. First, however, is the relatively straightforward question of whether or not the UN is representative in terms of religion itself. As Chapter 2 illustrated, the religious NGO s that responded to our survey were overwhelmingly Christian, especially Roman Catholic, accounting for a combined total of 79 per cent of the organizations in our dataset. Petersen and Berger likewise found large majorities of the UN -registered NGO s in their studies to be Christian (see Chapter 2).4 Importantly, all three studies showed considerable religious disproportion relative to the distribution of religious affiliations across the world’s religions within the global population. Thus, while RNGO s at the UN may be religiously diverse, they are not represented in proportion to the world’s religious adherents. Turning to region, ECOSOC Resolution 1996/31, which delineates formal principles guiding the consultative relationship between the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, articulates a commitment to ensuring, ‘to the extent possible, participation of non-governmental organizations from all regions, and particularly from developing countries, in order to help to achieve a just, balanced, effective and genuine involvement of non-governmental organizations from all regions and areas of the world’.5 In other words, the UN is committed to a principle of NGO representation that is regionally ‘balanced’. Chapter 2 (Table 2.1) illustrated that, as with religion, regional balance has yet to be achieved, as 63 per cent of the NGO s in our dataset report having headquarters in Europe and North America which, in contrast, are estimated to account for only 14.8 per cent of the global population.6 This finding in itself comes as no surprise given regional resources disparities. UN participation is easier to achieve for organizations that have access to a variety of resources, ranging from Internet access to foreign language skills to travel funds, which are not equally available to actors across economically diverse regions of the world. Other data from our survey suggest that these resources disparities do matter, not only in terms of numbers, but in terms of influence. In particular, one of our survey questions asked: On a scale of 0–5, with 5 being the highest level of influence and 0 being no influence at all, how much influence do you feel each of the following have at the UN? As Figure 3.1 shows, on average, NGO s rated wealthy states and NGOs from wealthy countries as having the greatest influence, with average scores of 4.04 and 3.11 respectively. In contrast, poor states and NGO s from poor states were given average scores of 2 and 1.88 respectively, ranking them lower than all other categories of actor. In fact, overall, the wealth/poverty dimension appears to be more important than any other, including religious vs. secular or progressive vs. conservative, and even more important than the

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

Figure 3.1 Average NGO estimation of actor influence at the United Nations. Survey Question: On a scale of 0–5, with 5 being the highest level of influence and 0 being no influence at all, how much influence do you feel each of the following have at the UN? Source: Survey of NGO s registered with DPI at the UN .

distinction between states and NGO s, with NGO s from wealthy countries being perceived as substantially more influential than poor states. That being said, it can be difficult to interpret the implications of the large portion of NGO s that have headquarters in the global north for representativeness. After all, many northern NGO s are transnational in both their structures and operations and use their regional advantages (e.g. network ties, access to northern governments, wealthier individual donors) to help populations in the south.7 All the same, there is still an imbalance to the extent that, through transnational organizations, actors from resource-poor environments are reliant on their wealthier counterparts. In addition, even wealthier NGO s are not immune to external pressures, including government pressures, since the rules for NGO participation at the UN limit how far organizations can go in criticizing their

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57

own governments. To establish a formal consultative relationship with ECOSOC requires that NGO s be recognized by their home governments who, through participation in the committee on NGO s, are granted power to deny accreditation to NGO s from their own countries. Thus, right out of the gate, NGO inclusion at the UN is limited to those NGO s that are approved by the governments of the countries where they reside. In other words, a preponderance of northern NGO s means a preponderance of NGO s that meet approval from northern governments – governments that might, after all, be implicated in the problems transnational NGO s seek to address in the global south. Of more direct relevance to our purposes here, however, is whether or not religion is related to this regional imbalance. Research on religious demography has shown for quite some time now that the centre of gravity of the world’s religions, including Christianity, has been steadily shifting to the global south in terms of adherents.8 From this pattern, one might logically conclude that a larger presence of RNGO s would translate into greater representation of groups in the global south. In other words, an indirect way to increase diversity along regional lines, and to bring in the voices of the poor, is through the inclusion of religious leaders and institutions. One way to assess this claim is to establish whether RNGO s are more likely than their secular counterparts to be located in the global south. To see if this is the case, a variable indicating region was cross-tabulated with a variable distinguishing between religious and secular NGO s. The region variable distinguished between ‘global north’ and ‘global south’. NGO s who indicated in our survey that their headquarters were located in Canada, Europe or the US were coded as ‘global north’, while NGO s from other regions were coded as ‘global south’.9 The variable religious vs. secular is a composite variable. An NGO was coded as ‘religious’ if it: (a) answered ‘yes’ the question ‘Does your NGO identify with a religious tradition?’ or (b) answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Is your NGO formally affiliated with any religious organization, institution, or denomination?’ or (c) chose either ‘religious’,‘faith-based’, or ‘spiritual’ in response to the question ‘Which of the following best characterizes your NGO ?’ As the crosstab (Table 3.1) shows, our data does not support the argument that politically engaged religion in international relations translates into greater representation of the global south, at least not in this straightforward manner. To the contrary,religious NGO s at the UN are predominantly,and disproportionately, from the north. We had data on NGO headquarters for 190 cases (2 did not respond to our question about headquarters). While 64 per cent of the NGO s that took our survey were from the north, that 64 per cent contained 76 per cent

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Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

Table 3.1 Crosstab. Religious vs. Secular by North vs. South.10 North vs. South North Religious vs. Secular 2016 secular

Count Expected Count % within Religious vs. Secular 2016 religious Count Expected Count % within Religious vs. Secular 2016

Total

South

77 55 84.1 47.9 58.3% 41.7% 44 36.9

14 21.1

75.9% 24.1%

Count 121 69 Expected Count 121.0 69.0 % within Religious 63.7% 36.3% vs. Secular 2016

Total 132 132.0 100.0% 58 58.0 100.0% 190 190.0 100.0%

Source: Survey of NGO s registered with DPI at the UN , P