The Official UN Summit What It Is and Does

Summits and their preparatory and follow-up activities can involve literally tens of thousands of non-official actors engaged in a wide range of advocacy, networking, capacity-building, movement-building, and public education efforts - well beyond the perspection that they are the exclusive domain of governments. A large and growing proportion of summit attendees represent NGOs and other civil society actors from throughout the world.

• Typical Participant Types: Representatives of U.N. member states (the only voting category), staff of the U.N. conference secretariat, U.N. Secretary General and representatives of the U.N., its agencies, programmes, and funds, representatives of NGOs and other civil society groups, and media representatives.
• Preparations: This generally take about three years, with several important steps occurring early in the process including selecting host country, which is responsible for most of the summit costs, and convening official regional or sub-regional preparatory meetings. These are designed to feed into the meetings of the official Preparatory Committee, where U.N. member states develop an agenda and program of work, and negotiate working documents that will be considered for approval at the summit itself.
• Preparatory Committee Meetings – often called “PrepComs” for short – also address rules of access and procedure for the summit, including rules of access for NGOs. These offer a crucial early window through which to contribute ideas for agreements and documents, and to focus public attention on the summit agenda. Also, a PrepCom’s success in finalizing the summit document can affect who will attend the summit itself. In general, the more finalized the document, the more likely it is that governments will send high-level delegates to the official meeting. At the summit, member states draw primarily on the PrepCom document to arrive at a final negotiated consensus, but may also refer to statements by coalitions of governments, NGOs, U.N. agencies, or others.
• Summit Outcomes: Typically include a program or platform for action and a political declaration, committing member states to a range of measures upon return to their home countries. After a summit has ended, the relevant U.N. Commission generally takes responsibility at its yearly session to review progress made on summit commitments.