EU adapts UN's "NGO Strategy". (Insider Report).(problems for non-government organizations)(Brief Article)

In recent years, many conservative and pro-family groups in the U.S. and elsewhere have created UN-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in order to participate in UN conferences and summits. Such activists reason that there is value in having a seat at the table to network with like-minded people from other nations to restrain the more outrageous elements of the UN's agenda, particularly with respect to social issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

The problem with this approach is that it actually enhances the UN's power, prestige, and credibility, and forces traditionalists who choose the NGO route to support the "purposes and principles" of the UN as a condition for accreditation. And in any case, the UN always arranges to control what it calls "international civil society" by funding an ever-expanding chorus of radical NGOs, thereby ensuring that genuinely independent voices are shouted down.

In a critique of the European Union's constitutional convention published in the June 8th issue of The Spectator of London, Daniel Hannan, a Conservative Member of the European Parliament (MEP), describes how this charade functions in the EU. To the Eurocrats, writes Hannan, "the goal of a united Europe is a self-evident good, and anyone who opposes it is either foolish or wicked. If ordinary voters are insufficiently enthusiastic, they must be better educated. If they persist in voting the wrong way, they must be made to change their minds." Delegates to the ...