Chapter 11-Insider Guide To The UN

CHAPTER 11
ECOSOC and the Trusteeship Council
The Economic and Social Council shall consist of fifty-four Members of

the United Nations elected by the General Assembly.
—UN Charter, Chapter X, Article 61
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is a principal organ

of the United Nations, charged with promoting better social and
economic conditions worldwide. Many important bodies in the UN
system report to ECOSOC, including the nine functional commis-
sions, the five regional commissions, and the specialized agencies.
ECOSOC is the UN’s primary forum for discussing and offering pol-
Copyright © 2021. Yale University Press. All rights reserved.
icy recommendations regarding international economic and social

issues. It also has responsibility for overseeing relations between the
UN system and the thousands of civil-society organizations, com-
monly referred to as NGOs, which are active in key areas of concern,
such as health, education, political rights, and humanitarian work.
UN member states covet a seat on ECOSOC’s board, whose fifty-
four members are elected by the General Assembly to three-year
terms. The members, in turn, elect one of their number to serve as
president.
173
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174 E C O S O C and T rusteeship C ouncil
High-Level Meetings and Conferences

As a coordinating body, ECOSOC holds many meetings through-
out the year, with a variety of experts and organizations inside and
outside the UN. Once a year, it meets in July for a four-week “sub-
stantive” session that addresses broad themes, including humani-
tarian, developmental, and organizational affairs, among others.
ECOSOC’s mandate to address global social and economic develop-
ment makes it the prime venue for discussing and monitoring the
UN’s most ambitious development effort. “It has a unique role in
addressing the 2030 Agenda [ for Sustainable Change] and rallying
intergovernmental bodies and the UN system around it,” according
to Inga Rhonda King, of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, who was
the president of ECOSOC in 2018–19. ECOSOC hosts a special gath-
ering known as the High-Level Political Forum for the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development, under the oversight of the deputy
secretary-general.
Commissions
The UN’s nine functional and five regional commissions, focus-
ing on specific aspects or regions of social and economic develop-
ment, were created over a span of many decades, as needs arose,
either by the General Assembly or by ECOSOC itself. The first to
be established was the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, created by
ECOSOC in 1946 as the UN’s prime group for making drug-related
policy and monitoring international drug-control conventions. In
the same year, 1946, ECOSOC established a body that later became
the Commission on Population and Development. A year after that

saw the advent of the United Nations Statistical Commission. The
remaining functional commissions appeared in the 1990s and later.
The Commission on the Status of Women makes policy for the ad-
vancement of women. The Commission on Sustainable Develop-
ment is responsible for following up on the Earth Summit, while
the Commission for Social Development follows up the Copenha-
gen Declaration and Program of Action. The Commission on Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice, established in 1991, is the succes-
E C O S O C and T rusteeship C ouncil 175
sor to a crime-prevention committee formed in 1971. The Commis-

sion on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) offers pol-
icy suggestions and advice to UN bodies. Newest of the functional
commissions is the United Nations Forum on Forests, created by
ECOSOC in 2000. ECOSOC’s five regional commissions address
economic development in specific parts of the world—Africa, Asia
and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and West-
ern Asia (ESCWA).
Working with the NGOs

One of ECOSOC’s most important tasks was barely on the radar
screen back in 1945, when the organization was created. ECOSOC
is the intermediary between the General Assembly and most of the
nongovernmental organizations that seek to have a relationship
with the UN. NGOs are independent, civil-society groups. The UN’s
Department of Global Communications (previously the Department
of Public Information) defines an NGO as “a not-for-profit, volun-
tary citizens’ group that is organized on a local, national or inter
national level to address issues in support of the public good. Task-
oriented and made up of people with a common interest, NGOs
perform a variety of services and humanitarian functions, bring
citizens’ concerns to Governments, monitor policy and program im-
A Public-Private Partnership
“NGOs play a more and more important role not only in the policy de-
bates but equally important, maybe even more important, are critical in
implementing many of these policies. A lot of the aid and emergency hu-
manitarian assistance, like food distribution by the World Food Program,
is done through the NGOs. There really is a public-private partnership, or
an NGO partnership, that is very important. NGOs are effective, and part
of the reason is they are private and they are accountable, they watch their
pennies. People have a choice as to whom to give their money.”
—John Negroponte, US ambassador to the UN under President George W.
Bush
plementation, and encourage participation of civil society stakehold-

ers at the community level.”
There were few NGOs decades ago when the UN was founded,
but their number worldwide has multiplied many times over since
then. They represent a major addition to the international scene in
many key sectors, such as human rights, the natural environment,
health, labor rights, children’s rights, and the fight against political
corruption, to name only a few. Many of these organizations strongly
advocate for a specific right, policy, or method of implementation,
and they are not shy in seeking a place at the UN table. For its part,
as the UN has come to value civil society for contributing to open
and democratic societies, it has offered NGOs a greater role in mak-
ing policy and in practical applications. Former secretary-general
Kofi Annan stressed creating partnerships between the UN and civil
society to achieve “a new synthesis between private initiative and the
public good, which encourages entrepreneurship and market ap-
proaches together with social and environmental responsibility.”
Civil Society Matters

“Civil society matters not because it will always validate the opinions we
hold, but because it has the capacity to test, prod, and stretch our way of
looking at the world so that we will understand more tomorrow than we
do today. That is how civilization progresses. It is how we alleviate the
immense pain we see around us. And it is how we translate the abstract
promise of democracy into a world constantly renewed by lively debate,
innovative ideas, and accountable government.”
—Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN under President Barack

Obama
ECOSOC negotiates the agreements that define relations between

the UN and NGOs, including those that hold consultative status,
which gives them the right to participate in certain UN meetings,
conferences, studies, and projects and to submit reports to ECOSOC.
NGOs have their own liaison body, the Conference on Non-Govern-
mental Organizations in Consultative Relationship (CoNGO), to
represent their interests before ECOSOC and hold meetings about

issues of common interest.
ECOSOC’s then president, King, in her parting speech as she
finished her term in 2019, urged her colleagues “to keep the door
open to civil society and the business sector. They anchor our work in
the realities of the day and hold us accountable.” Nongovernmental
organizations may serve as technical experts, advisers, and consul-
tants to governments and the Secretariat. As advocacy groups, they
may support UN plans of action, programs, and declarations. De-
spite their close relationship, however, NGOs remain independent
bodies and do not become actual parts of the UN. To the contrary,
their influence often depends on their reputation for independence
from outside authority. This independence is in part why Diego
Arria, who was Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, and president of
ECOSOC’s president Inga Rhonda King (center) speaking during

the 2019 ECOSOC Youth Forum, on the theme “Youth: Empowered,
Included and Equal,” April 8, 2019. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés,
president of the General Assembly, is at the left. United Nations
Photo / Evan Schneider.
the Security Council in 1992, regards cooperation with NGOs as

“one of the best things that ever happened to the UN.”
Challenges
ECOSOC’s broad and varied mandate, oriented heavily toward
process and coordination, has challenged the organization to define
a clear identity. Some insiders, like former Canadian ambassador
David Malone, have complained that perceived long and sometimes
open-ended discussions are hard to endure. This has spawned rec-
ommendations for reworking the body. Pakistan’s UN ambassador,
Munir Akram, for example, has argued that ECOSOC would be
more functional and relevant if it had the same kind of binding
authority on economic decisions that the Security Council has for
political and security issues. “You have to empower ECOSOC,” he
asserts. “You have to see how to make it work in a system that is
relevant to the real world.” Malone is skeptical that reforms will
transform the organization’s corporate culture and mode of think-
ing. “It’s gone through formalistic reforms,” he says, “but none of
them seem to have made the forum more dynamic.”
Ambassador Munir Akram won the opportunity to show what
ECOSOC can do late in 2020, when he was elected to be the coun-
cil’s president, succeeding Mona Juul of Norway. He had been pres-
ident in 2005. In presenting his agenda, Akram laid out a broad
program, touching many of the issues, like human rights, youth,
and climate change, that ECOSOC has long discussed, and he added
a new challenge, COVID-19. Warning that the pandemic’s global
economic impact was threatening fulfillment of the UN’s Sustain-

able Development Goals campaign, he called on ECOSOC to “help
build a coordinated approach to ensure the required capital flows to
developing countries to recover from the current recession and re-
vive the prospect of achieving the SDGs.”
The Trusteeship Council

Of the six principal organs of the UN, the Trusteeship Council is
the least well known, and for good reason. It was created to oversee
islands and land areas scattered around the world that were neither
nations nor colonies of other nations, but wards of the now-defunct
League of Nations. The UN created the Trusteeship Council to en-
sure that the guardian nations would truly look after the best inter-
ests of their charges and help them secure self-government, either
on their own or as parts of larger entities. Decolonization and the
establishment of new nations in succeeding decades brought an
end to the trust territories. Palau, an island group in the Pacific, was
the last trust territory. When it became a UN member state in 1994,
the Trusteeship Council no longer had any functions to perform. It
suspended operations on November 1, 1994.

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CHAPTER 11

ECOSOC and the Trusteeship Council

The Economic and Social Council shall consist of fifty-four Members of

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is a principal organ

icy recommendations regarding international economic and social

High-Level Meetings and Conferences

the Commission on Population and Development. A year after that

sor to a crime-prevention committee formed in 1971. The Commis-

Working with the NGOs

plementation, and encourage participation of civil society stakehold-

Civil Society Matters

—Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN under President Barack

ECOSOC negotiates the agreements that define relations between

represent their interests before ECOSOC and hold meetings about

ECOSOC’s president Inga Rhonda King (center) speaking during

the Security Council in 1992, regards cooperation with NGOs as

economic impact was threatening fulfillment of the UN’s Sustain-

The Trusteeship Council

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