Multilateral organizations are struggling to figure out how to operate without holding in-person gatherings.
As a first response to the Covid-19 pandemic, international organization (IOs) cancelled and delayed most physical meetings. The harder part has been arranging virtual replacements.
While adaptation has been a fairly easy exercise for a few IOs, many others were unprepared to conduct business virtually. They are scrambling not only to find the technological means, but also to rewrite their rules of procedures.
The United Nation’s Security Council and General Assembly are operating with clumsy stop-gap voting procedures. The UN’s technology for virtual meetings needs updating, officials say. One important component, simultaneous translation at virtual UN meetings, isn’t available yet.
Eyeonglobaltransparency.net contacted 10 IOs to sample their responses to the new environment. EYE found that half have begun holding virtual committee meetings. The other half, including the World Trade Organization and the International Maritime Organization, are still grappling with the challenge.
Perhaps best-prepared was the UN body that conducts climate change negotiations, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCC last year developed its own virtually meeting software, VOICE (Virtual Online and In-person Conferencing Experience).
Whether the increased use of virtual meetings will be a blip or a lasting change remains to be seen. In the meantime, it has been a jolt for international organizations.
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Multiple Issues Raised
As officials have grappled with the uninvited loss of in-person meetings, many common issues have arisen.
These include:
- How can voting occur, especially when standing rules mandate in-person voting?
- Internet connectivity. How can those in places with weak internet bandwidth be guaranteed a spot on the meetings screen?
- Online Security. Clearly an issue for sensitive talks.
- Simultaneous translation. A staple of many in-person international meetings.
- Can virtual meetings handle the largest decision-making conferences with hundreds of participants?
- Timing. A seemingly small, but still significant constraint. There are limited optimal time slots to hold worldwide meetings that work for the US and European headquarters of many IOs while also accommodating those in Asia. (The usual option revolves around a few hours mid-day in Europe.)
Most of the organizations examined by EYE are trying to deal with some or all of these issues, with varying outcomes.
Longer Term Consequences?
Will the shift to virtual meetings may be enduring?
Besides necessity, there are reasons to encourage such a trend. Potential benefits include lower travel budgets and reduced emission of greenhouse gases.
“Let’s not aim to meet despite the distance: let’s re-imagine all that we can accomplish if we are liberated from the expectation of having to be physically under the same roof,” urged A Manifesto for ‘Virtually Amazing’ meetings, published by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, a nongovernmental organization.
On the other hand, in-person contact is widely valued. Losing direct dialogue, formal and informal, might reduce the potential for understanding, cooperation and compromise.
Tom Burke, co-founder of the environmental group E3G, was quoted as saying, “Replacing them with virtual meetings would not be enough since most of the negotiations take place in the corridors, outside of official meetings.”
Even one typically cynical UN observer, an NGO veteran, commented, “Given that much of the UN processes … is done in informal discussions at the Vienna cafe in NYC HQ, or the hallways or mission rooms, with relationships being built and issues actually discussed, it will have a severe impact on both missions and CSOs (civil society organizations) to be able to engage and influence.”
Whether experience with the ongoing forced experiment will alter these perceptions remains to be seen. Possibly meeting software, and familiarity with it, will evolve. Clearly there is learning going on.
“I chaired the first virtual @OECD DAC meeting today w/ @zoom_us,” tweeted Susanna Moorehead, the chair of a committee at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on March 26. “Many thanks to delegates for your efforts to stay in touch & to the @OECDdev IT team for making this possible. How are your virtual meetings going? Any tips? #WorkFromHome
The need to hold key meeting in-person will prevail, according to many IO and NGO officials interviewed, but some predicted that the frequency of such gatherings will get scaled back.
More Transparency?
Whether virtual meetings will mean more transparency remains to seen.
Closed doors are the norm for key decision-making groups at international organizations, such as the World Bank executive directors. In theory, screens with multiple faces can be kept just as confidential, so the likelihood of greater transparency seems remote.
Though arguably, as recent Zoom security problems testify, breaches may occur.
The fact that video meetings can be easily recorded might build demand for their simultaneous airing or subsequent release.
As open meetings go virtual, more participation may result.
Predicting more openness is Nick Ashton-Hart, the Geneva representative of the Digital Trade Network, an NGO, and a long-time delegate to the International Telecommunications Union. In his commentary about the more to more virtual meetings he wrote:
There is another upside: openness. Remote participation in hybrid meetings and fully online meetings inevitably means more people participating in decision-making, which increases openness.
International Organizations Grapple with Disruption
The impact of health-conscious policies obviously has been widespread.
The G-7 and G-20 leaders cancelled planned meetings and met virtually. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank adopted a “virtual format” for their Spring meetings concluded April 19, an event that usually brings thousands to Washington.
Most international organizations (IOs) have locked down their headquarters, told employees to work from home and plunged into rethinking their operations.
The sections below explore how ten IOs are adapting to the challenges, particularly with regard to their key decision-making functions.
UN Still Working on New Rules
Many entries in the UN daily Journal, now state: “To be held remotely without physical presence.”
And despite some quick fixes, the UN is still trying to work out new operating procedures for the Security Council and the General Assembly (GA).
A band-aid has been applied for GA operations, which hasn’t convened since the New York headquarters was closed. Some uncontroversial decisions are now reached under the so-called “silence procedure.” Items are sent out to the 193 member nations. They are deemed approved as long as no nation objects within 72 hours.
However, if complicated matters arise and should physical meetings remain inadvisable, paralysis is possible without additional reforms.
So the UN is working through legal, and technical, issues to make possible virtual voting possible, according to a knowledgeable official, commenting, “It is a sine qua non in order for the GA to remain relevant, while protecting legitimacy and legality, and maintain its central role in the system.”
Going virtual proved problematical for the 15-member Security Council, which held its first virtual meeting, a closed one, on March 26.
The Security Council conducts both open and closed meetings. Portions of open meetings have been put online before. See webcast of the briefings given at a meeting about Colombia held April 14, not including the subsequent statements by SC members.
Open meetings, including both briefings and member statement began being live-streamed April 21.
“It is time for the Security Council to show its face to world,” said the SC president for April, José Singer Weisinger, from the Dominican Republic, in an interview April 20 on the podcast Unscripted.
A secret cyber-meeting simulation was conducted on March 9 and glitches were reported, according to Le Monde and PassBlue. Several mid-March meetings were cancelled as Russia raised objections.
It took several weeks to reach a low-tech solution on SC voting procedures. After draft resolutions are circulated, the 15 members are allotted 24 hours to vote, with three more hours to submit written statements. The results are announced via video conference. For more details see an article in What’s in Blue and an update by the authors of a book on SC procedures.
Compounding the move to virtual meetings are infirmities in the UN’s “video-teleconferencing network” (VTC). UN officials were reluctant to provide details, but the existence of a problem has been mentioned frequently.
In a March 27 UN press release, then Security Council President Zhang (China) said the VTC “still requires technical improvements.” One of Russia’s concerns, What’s in Blue reported, was “difficulty of having simultaneous interpretation in all six languages in a virtual set-up.”
A UN spokesperson confirmed this, saying, “We are working on getting simultaneous interpretation up and running as fast as we can.” Sequential interpretation (basically, French to English and English to French) has been used.
The chairman of the GA committee with responsibility for administrative and budgetary matters, Cyprus’s ambassador, Andreas Mavroyiannis, said, “It is critical for the UN to digitally adapt and come up to speed with new technology in order to cope, create efficiencies and achieve cost effectiveness.” He spoke at a March 12 session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly devoted to the topic “Thematic debate on working methods.” (The session is available on the UN Web TV Channel.)
WTO Holding Meetings on Meeting
“There is no rule book and every organization is different so we, like pretty much everyone else, is going through this process with a degree of trial and error,” summarized World Trade Organization Spokesman Keith Rockwell.
All physical WTO meetings have been cancelled through April and discussions are underway about alternatives.
On April 17, a virtual Heads of Delegation meeting on the topic was called by Director-General Roberto Azevêdo. It was attended by over 250 participants. Representatives from 54 delegations spoke. He sought views on whether they would be comfortable conducting informal meetings and information exchange through virtual platforms. He also asked if they would be open to formal decision-making through virtual meetings or written procedures until traditional in-person gatherings can resume, according to a WTO press release.
At the end of the meeting, the Director-General said he had heard overwhelming support for the use of virtual meetings for information exchange, according to the WTO press release.
However, without being specific, the press release said “members did not have a common view, so more consultation would be needed, possibly with a case-by-case approach for individual decisions.”
Before the meeting, Rockwell said some members “have expressed concerns about their technical capacity to participate, about the security of various forms of technology and whether confidentiality would be respected, about the need for physical presence in meetings and about the availability of interpretation into the three official WTO languages.”
Azevêdo urged the chairs of WTO bodies to consult with members on how to proceed with regular committee meetings.
Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, chairman of the negotiating group on fisheries subsidies, consulted bilaterally with group members April 16-17 on how best to continue their work after technical problems at a virtual meeting forced Wills to cancel the session.
Underscoring the need for a solution, The chair of the General Council, Ambassador David Walker (New Zealand), was quoted as saying, “As WTO members it is important to give the signal that we are capable of working together to provide the kind of global answer which will be desperately needed as governments start planning for the aftermath of the crisis.”
UNFCC Has ‘Voice’
The UN body that oversees international climate negotiations, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is better prepared than most IOs, having recently developed its own virtual meeting software.
A major climate crisis meeting, known as COP26, with 30,000 delegates expected Glasgow in November, was indefinitely postponed.
However, the work of UNFCCC committees has continued online.
Thought not without some pining for in person contact. In a discussion of the future, one person at committee meeting cautioned, “Virtual events would not be very helpful in our work.”
The meeting was hosted by Voice, a Virtual Online and In-person Conferencing Experience, according to a press release about the meeting. Voice was developed in 2019 by UNFCCC with the financial support of the German government “to support remote participation in official multi-lateral meetings so to increase participation and reduce emissions from meetings.” Voice offers the standard functions of commercial vendors (See FAQ). Broadcasts can be followed live by general public and are available on-demand afterwards. One such three-hour session from April 3 can be seen here.
Voice “was designed for the all UN agencies in Bonn and can be used by other agencies and organizations as well,” said UNFCCC official Rogier van der Haagen.
So far no takers.
IMO Exploring Online Meetings
At the International Maritime Commission, the governing Council recently asked the Secretariat “to look into all options” for holding virtual meetings, according to an IMO spokesperson, and the topic remains under review.
The IMO postponed a March meeting of its Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), a move that environmental groups supported, with regrets. Have felt “encouraging” momentum toward cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships, the groups encouraged the IMO to go virtual, saying, “We cannot afford to let it diminish.”
The IMO should “launch as soon as possible a digital working group of IMO member states, and entities with IMO consultative status, dedicated to advancing short-term GHG measure negotiations” according to an April 6 letter the groups sent. They urged holding the MEPC meeting digitally in October. The IMO has not rescheduled the MEPC meeting.
Raising some of broader issues about virtual meetings, the groups also suggested that the IMO:
- Choose working arrangements with full sensitivity to the needs of developing countries, SIDS (Small Island Developing States) and LDCs (less-developed countries) in access to communications technology, and provide urgent technical support where necessary.
- Establish a standing technical group to develop virtual convening more deeply. We believe a transparent, well managed, virtual process allowing for presentations and discussion could be useful in allowing IMO’s important work to move forward, until such time as it is appropriate to meet in person again.
Meeting cancellations have continued. In an April 2 announcement the London-based body postponed almost a dozen meetings into June.
However, the first IMO meeting “not held live” in the history of the organization was held April 15. It wasn’t exactly virtual.
The 31st “extraordinary session” of the IMO Council, the top decision-making body apart from meetings every few years of all members, was held “by correspondence, due to the extraordinary circumstances as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to minutes of the April 15 meeting.
The “correspondence” process was cumbersome.
A document was sent out by email and put on the website for member states to access. (IMO rules prohibit public access to Council documents in advance.) Then, an IMO staffer explained:
member states replied via document/email saying “countryxxx agrees with point 1. On point 2 we propose xxxxx” Then all comments were compiled into a summary of discussions and decisions which was also circulated via email/imodocs for comments and a final one was issued.
IMO has used video meetings internally, but not for formal meetings. The correspondence method was chosen instead of a virtual meeting because the IMO had experience with it and because “it doesn’t need people to meet at one single time – so can cut across time zones,” the spokesperson explained.
But handling it that way took time. In-person Council meetings normally take several days. Doing it by correspondence took almost a whole month, from March 18 to April 15.
UNCTAD Concerned With Inclusion
Concerns about whether virtual meetings will be universally accessible have led the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to postpone physical meetings, but not to schedule online replacements. UNCTAD has cancelled all its meeting through May.
“The principle of universality requires the secretariat to afford all member states equality of opportunity to participate meaningfully in UNCTAD intergovernmental meetings,” wrote UNTAD spokesperson Catherine Huissoud, noting that this means interpretation in all six languages. She also said, “There are limitations to existing technology given that many participants do not have access to institutional-grade internet access from their respective homes.”
“It is therefore clear that until physical meetings resume, it will not be possible to have meaningful and interactive intergovernmental meetings with the necessary participation of the broader membership,” she concluded, adding, “On the other hand, it should also be noted that UNCTAD is organizing a series of webinars for non-intergovernmental meeting.”
ILO Circulates Ballot for Some Decisions
The International Labour Organization delayed for a year the International Labour Conference, attended by hundreds of people, that had been planned for May and skipped the March meeting of the Governing Body.
As a coping strategy, the Director General circulated a ballot March 15 to members of the Governing Body for voting on matters considered to be non-controversial and requiring urgent action. Other matters were deferred the May and June meetings.
“Depending on how the situation unfolds,” a spokesperson said, “consideration could be given to conducting virtually some meetings,” meaning those that are smaller in size and can be conducted in a common language.
WIPO ‘Exploring Modalities’
The World Intellectual Property Organization is “exploring modalities” for holding meetings “in new configurations – with a particular eye on guaranteeing the widest-possible access, attendance and inclusivity,” a spokesman wrote EYE.
“Some less-formal meetings and processes of a technical nature are planned to be maintained and executed electronically,” he said.
The Geneva-based institution cancelled about 10 meetings planned for March-April-May. Almost 20 subsidiary bodies negotiate policies, such as the Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications.
WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said in a video call with reporters, “Amongst the casualties of disruption is, in a certain sense, the methods that we use to achieve multilateral agreements.”
Almost all WIPO employees are working remotely and Gurry said WIPO is “almost fully operational in our services,” most of which were already being handled virtually, including the dispute resolution system.
Still outstanding is a decision on whether to hold a May 7-8 meeting of the General Assembly where one top item is the approval of a new DG.
World Bank President Notes Green Virtue
The World Bank, with technology in place, is conducting virtual sessions of its key decision-making committees.
World Bank President David Malpass at an April 17 press conference noted, “I just concluded a very productive virtual dialogue – low-carbon virtual dialogue — with our Development Committee.”
He tweeted a photo.
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
“A number of critical and time-sensitive meetings are being organized virtually,” the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) announced March 13, a move that affected five meetings.
The CBD cancelled several less-important workshops cancelled for March and April, noting, “We are currently exploring whether or not these can be replaced by online consultations.”
First Time for OECD Tax Committee
A key committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, working on tax issues, met for the first time virtually on March 31, using Zoom.
More generally the Paris-based OECD, an intergovernmental organization with 37 member countries, said: “The OECD Secretariat team is working full steam on the project and meetings with delegates are being held remotely. The Steering Group, the Task Force on the Digital Economy and other Working Parties will continue holding virtual meetings in the coming weeks, on schedule. The working methods will be adapted to allow all countries to fully participate.”
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced April 9 that its major policy forum scheduled to be held in June in Malaysia, “will now be held via remote participation only.”
It will be the second time ICANN has held a public meeting solely with remote participation. ICANN67, which was slated to be held in Cancún, Mexico, in March was ICANN’s first entirely remote virtual meeting. “Following the success of ICANN67 as a Virtual Community Forum, the ICANN org sought the ICANN community’s feedback on how to improve future virtual meetings,” ICANN said. The procures for the remote sessions, held with Zoom, are described here.
ICAO Council Held Virtual Briefing
The governing Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization on April 9 held its first virtual meeting, an “informal briefing” on the impact of Covid-19 on the aviation sector.
More that 170 people were online, including industry representatives such as the International Air Cargo Association. The meeting, like other Council meetings, was closed to the public and not streamed.
ICAO can do live broadcasts of meetings, but has been selective in doing so.
In September of 2019 decided not to webcast committee discussions about climate change at its triennial Assembly meeting in Montreal. Although three of the five ICAO committees were ”livecast” on the ICAO YouTube channel, two were not: the Administrative Commission and the Executive Commission, which has the environment mandate. (See EYE article.)
UNHRC Document Cites Capacity Concerns
The UN Human Rights Council based in Geneva held its “world premier” virtual meeting April 9, but l concerns were expressed about its ability to handle frequent virtual meetings.
Foreign Policy reported on the leaked minutes of an April 1 meeting in which a representative of the U.N. Office at Geneva (UNOG) “stressed that conducting meetings via an online platform would be labour intensive and require a significant amount of human resources, thus under the current circumstances UNOG would only be able to service one meeting per day.”
More Reading
See excellent reporting on these issues in the context of climate negotiations by Chloé Farand in Climate Home News: Zoom climate diplomacy: ‘Technology doesn’t help build trust’. The value of sofa talks and bourbon tastings highlighted in this PassBlue article by Stéphanie Fillion that also points to the likely reduced opportunity for journalists to talk with diplomats emerging from meetings.
