Many of you know that after 8 years of battling with the probably most politicised and difficult UN body, UN NGO Committee in New York, CSW finally received our UN accreditation in April.

CSW decided to apply for the official UN accreditation in order to strengthen the work we do at the UN and to get an independent access to the United Nations as it is quite difficult to promote freedom of religion or belief within the UN without this status.

Soon after we submitted our application in 2009, it became clear that actually many of the 19 countries who sit in the UN Committee on NGOs in New York would rather not have the right to  freedom of religion or belief promoted within the UN system. The Committee’s members include many countries where human rights and freedom of religion or belief is very restricted such as China, India, Pakistan, Sudan, Cuba, Iran and Russia. Yet rather than denying and rejecting our application – which would have been quite a huge political scandal because this committee is created to support NGO access to the UN so it difficult for them to deny and reject an application of a legitimate NGO, they postponed arbitrarily our application by asking all sorts of dubious questions. 

CSW got more than the staggering 80 questions from this committee. Some of the questions related directly to our partners in certain countries – this is obviously very confidential information and it is a standard practice amongst human rights organisations not to do this. We were also asked about our finances, our supporters, our projects. We were also asked quite political questions, for example what is our position on Taiwan. Clearly a question from China. We also got a lot of questions about our activities in Sudan. We also were asked very bizarre questions such as how do we differentiate between religious practices and criminal activities. 

And it was clear that some of the key countries opposing our work were China, Cuba, Sudan and India to a certain extent.

So for years – more or less 7 years – we kept on answering the questions and more importantly we alerted our partners and our supporters to pray. 

this is really what changed the game for CSW. 

In 2015, I was meeting the FCO in London and I told them about the situation. They were very concerned. ~A few weeks later I was attending a reception at Parliament where a member of staff at the human rights department at the FCO promised to help.

As an organisation, we kept on praying and we simply kept on doing my general UN advocacy, meeting different embassies in Geneva and briefing them on many other issues, but I always mentioned our problems with the NGO Committee as well asking for support. Staff in our Brussels office also briefed the EU on our problem.

With help from a number of colleagues, we managed to get interest and support from a number of embassies in New York. The key countries lending support were UK (leading our advocacy), Greece and Uruguay where our CEO Mervyn had good high-level connections.  An EU delegation also gave us lot of support. 

As part of our advocacy in New York earlier this year, I also met with all the NGO Committee members in New York, including government of Sudan, China, Pakistan, India and Iran. I attended more than 50 meetings in 7 days! Mervyn also attended some of these meetings too. These provided an opportunity for very interesting discussions because usually we don’t regularly meet with these countries. Whilst we were told the permanent missions were not opposed to us, it was evident China had advocated against CSW and asked them to vote against us.

Others said that freedom of religion or belief (FORB) was too sensitive issue and it should not be publicly discussed.

One mission said that freedom of religion or belief is not a universal human right – it is a Western concept and thus, should not be used to promote Western propaganda outside.

I was also told by certain countries that they might support us if we remove some articles/reports from our website.

And during all these meetings, we continued to pray and I know hundreds of CSW partners and supporters continued to pray with us. I remember walking from one embassy to another, always praying in front of each one of them for God’s wisdom and guidance in the meetings. 

The NGO Committee discussed our application in February and decided to reject CSW’s application for official UN accreditation. This was actually part of our strategy because we wanted to stop this continuous deferral of our application and actually have a clear decision on our case – which we could then appeal to the higher UN body called ECOSOC. So in February, we lost the UN vote 11 to 4, 3 others abstained were Russia (who were actually initially very warm towards CSW), Azerbaijan and Mauritania. During this meeting, the UK ambassador announced that they would be appealing CSW’s case to the ECOSOC Committee to make the final decision.

Finally in April, the ECOSOC Committee which has 54 members met. The UK Embassy, together with more than 20 other countries submitted a UN resolution which proposed granting CSW the access to the UN. 28 ECOSOC member countries voted in favour of granting Consultative Status to CSW, with 9 voting against and 12 abstaining. We finally got our status. This was live streamed through the UN TV and the whole office gathered together in our offices in New Malden to follow it on TV. It was a very special moment for us as an organisation. I felt very humbled when I heard statements from a number of ambassadors – UK ambassador Matthew Rycroft, Estonian Ambassador, US Ambassador Nikki Hailey, Australian Ambassador, Uruguayan ambassador, Norwegian – who urged the ECOSOC in their statements to grant us the status. It was a very powerful moment personally and professionally. It really showed that God led us through this process, how when we ask for His faithfulness and grace, wisdom and guidance, He can do so much more than we would even have expected.  

The whole situation between CSW and the countries opposing our work reminded me of David and Goliath, a teenage shepherd boy (CSW) against the warrior-giants (Russia and China) and how our battles are not actually ours but God’s when we dedicate them to Him. 

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this to our UN advocacy. 

CSW is now an NGO with an official status with the United Nations. We can speak in all relevant UN platforms including the Human Rights Council in Geneva and the General Assembly in New York. We can submit written reports which become official UN documents. We can bring our partners from different parts of the world to give their testimonies of Human Rights and Freedom of religion and belief abuses.

With the ECOSOC status, we can deliver statements at the United Nations and can organise events as part of the official UN programme. 

It is also of course a very important win for wider civil society as it showed that NGOs –even those who promote more sensitive human rights such as freedom of religion or belief, still have access to the UN and can have their voice heard in some of the most important human rights platforms in the world.