Glossary of Key UN Summit Terms

  • Accreditation: In this guide, we use the term to refer to the process by which an NGO gains official permission to enter the meeting grounds of a particular summit. For details about the credentialing process.
  • Caucus: A group of organizations and individuals interested in similar issues or regions that come together during a summit or PrepCom to exchange information, hold briefings, and formulate positions or statements relevant to the proceedings.
  • Commission: There are ten functional commissions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Commissions. Made up of member states, they work to monitor and promote action on key social and economic issues.
  • Host Country: The U.N. member state chosen by the United Nations to host a summit.
  • Member States: Member governments of the United Nations, the only voting category at a U.N. summit.
  • NGOs: Non-governmental organizations.
  • PrepCom: While technically shorthand for the official Preparatory Committee convened by the U.N. to plan a summit, “PrepCom” more commonly refers to the committee’s meetings. As many as four PrepComs can take place before the actual summit, and each can last from one to four weeks. Negotiations regarding draft declarations and other issues on the agenda take place at that time.
  • Programmes, Platforms, or Plans of Action: Official summit outcome documents — often titled differently, depending on the summit — detailing the assumptions, norms, and standards on which member states agree. The aim of summit negotiations is to develop outcome documents that all member states will adopt by consensus but these are not treaties to which governments become signatories.
  • Regional Meetings: Official preparatory meetings convened by the U.N.’s Economic Commissions for Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Asia to negotiate regional positions in connection with a summit. Regional preparatory meetings are generally timed in order to feed into the PrepCom process. They often produce regional documents which may continue to be used for regional policy purposes.
  • Secretariat: The U.N. division, agency, fund, or office designated to plan and convene the summit and to serve as interlocutor with member states, the host country, and civil society.

Takeaways are critical, bite-sized resources either excerpted from our guides or written by Candid Learning for Funders using the guide's research data or themes post-publication. Attribution is given if the takeaway is a quotation.

This takeaway was derived from World Summits and Conferences.

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