Uncaccoalition.org

The Doha Chronicles. Day 3. Monitor 3, produced on Wednesday 11.Nov, is out. The main article titled "Still time for a happy end?" -after another day went by where both camps here in the UNCAC negotiations were "stuck in the mud". The main article offers specific language to hopefully facilitate some consensus.You might wonder why we chose to have such a specific text for the cover...(some might find it boring and/or incomprehensible)

The evening before we got information that today there would be hard negotiations going on to try to combine two different and opposing versions (of the final resolution establishing the review mechanism) into one. We felt we had a window of opportunity to put forward some language that delegations could use -and soon a drafting committee was working and a text was ready by mid morning.The text was distributed in yellow paper -to match the colour of our badges as observers within the UN System.

Meanwhile,  our Civil Society Forum was taking place -coordinated by Tinatin. We had a whole day of panels and presenations, with an impresive lineup of speakers and the almost impossible task of filling up a room of royal proportions in a day of crucial bargaining -where delegates had a hard time leaving the negotiating table to attend a civil society event. Nevertheless, the experience was excellent for speakers and members of the Coalition to meet and know more about their organisations and activities.

In the meantime, volunteers were almost wallpapering the halls, corridors and tables with our yellow paper with concrete proposals. We also felt that there was a window of opportunity to release a press statement -as some pressure from press right now then.

And the press team did a great job in putting something together in a very short time.International press will be hard to get, so national press is the best chance to get this story out. We have sent you the statement in English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

You will find these also in the Library section under "Get Involved" at the UNCAC Coalition website. At the same time, everyone who could talk to any delegate was discussing the specifics of the Coalition´s proposals and some governments indicated they would take these topics to the table. Later discussions with friendly sources indicated that indeed this was the case.   And as if they had not had enough, we decided Monitor3 should also focus on our proposals -seasoned with an contribution on the relevance of disclosure, publication and information by one of today´s panellists, and a world class legal expert on these matters, Toby Mendel from Article 19.

The monitor copies were still hot from the copier when we found a creative way to distribute it to the delegates who were resuming a meeting of the G77 in the Plenary room.

The negotiations on the review mechanism were due to resume at a night session, but the chair sent everybody home to think about it -as both camps were at it all day with no result. The positions can be described as the good, the bad, and the ugly" -the first being those who share and promote openness, inclusiveness, transparency and publication of information, and the latter being those who in greater or lesser measure argue against inclusion of civil society and publication of reports. The session scheduled for today Thursday morning was also cancelled -an indication that negotiations are still ongoing without reaching to a position where they can share it with a bigger group.

On the Coalition side,  we will cheer up these long and otherwise dull corridors with some singing of Harry Belafonte´s "Banana Boat Song" set to words related to UNCAC and the call for a review mechanism. Stay tuned for the next chronicle...and possible to watch the You Tube video.   If your organization is doing some press work with the news we are sending from Doha, please let us know. Write info@uncaccoalition.org to share your news and press stories -we have a special place in the Coalition´s website for it.

Stay tuned for the next Chronicle.