The following modalities have been confirmed about civil society participation at the 64th CND.
‘IN PERSON’ PARTICIPATION
Due to social distancing regulations, this is limited to 170 people in total in the main room which will house both the Plenary and the Committee of the Whole (CoW) discussions all week. Of those 170 seats, 8 (eight) have been designated for NGOs with ECOSOC status who are able to attend in person in light of existing COVID-19 travel restrictions.
‘ON PLATFORM’ PARTICIPATION
Online access will be provided using the “Interprefy” platform to ensure access in all six official
languages – with registration via the “INDICO” system. This also has an upper limit of around 750 participants in total. Of those, 150 spaces on the main platform will be designated for NGOs with ECOSOC status.
OTHER ONLINE PARTICIPATION
For all others, the CND can be followed online through the webcasts that will be provided on the existing CND website, or through the various side events being held online as well. (This will be the same for member states and UN agency representatives as well.) All NGOs with ECOSOC status can register via the “INDICO” system to appear in the list of participants of the 64th CND and will receive the links to the live webcasts.
We are hoping that this will be enough for at least one named representative per NGO in consultative status with ECOSOC to join as a full participant online or in person (and therefore able to request to make a statement, and engage with a similar level of access as a member state delegate). The VNGOC Board would also like to once again thank the CND Secretariat for helping to secure this level of access, despite the challenges.
In order to assist the VNGOC and CND Secretariat in allocating and managing these limited spaces, we are asking all ECOSOC-registered NGOs to complete this form before 23:45 (Vienna) on Tuesday 31st March.
On the form, you can indicate whether you wish to participate ‘in person’ or ‘on platform’, and whether you would like to make an intervention. As the Plenary sessions are shorter than usual to accommodate the online platforms and translation – we have been advised that only three NGO statements can be guaranteed for each of the CND agenda items (although others can be entered into the ‘queue’ in case there is time).
Once each ECOSOC registered NGO is allocated one space, remaining spaces will be selected via random ballot. Everyone will be notified by 1st April and the deadline for registering on the INDICO platform will be 7th April.
