May 27, 2016
UNITED NATIONS — The countries that rendered a verdict Thursday on whether an advocacy group for press freedom can freely roam the halls of the United Nations included those that have jailed and harassed journalists: Azerbaijan, China, Pakistan.
They were among the countries on a panel that rejected a bid by the group, the Committee to Protect Journalists, to acquire accreditation at the United Nations.
The group’s application had been deferred seven times. This was the first time the application was put up for a vote before a United Nations accreditation panel, composed of 19 countries.
The vote was 10 to 6 to reject, with three abstentions.
The Committee to Protect Journalists monitors attacks on journalists around the world and campaigns for the release of those who are jailed, including most recently in Azerbaijan.
Granting the committee’s application for consultative status would have given it access to meetings at the United Nations in New York and Geneva that are open only to accredited advocacy groups, known as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.
Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement that he was disappointed that the group’s application had been rejected by a “small group of countries with poor press freedom records.”
Samantha Power, the ambassador from the United States, among those that voted for accreditation, expressed anger over the outcome.
“It is increasingly clear that the NGO committee acts more and more like an anti-NGO committee,” she said.
Advocacy groups can be a testy presence at United Nations meetings. Earlier this month, a number of countries moved to exclude nearly two dozen advocacy groups, mainly those representing transgender people and drug addicts, from a global summit meeting to combat H.I.V. and AIDS.
The rejection of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ application came as the accreditation panel has been deferring decisions on a larger share of applications by advocacy groups, lengthening a backlog.
At the session this week, the accreditation panel received 219 new applications and still had 245 deferred applications to review, according to the United Nations.
Last year, the panel received 212 new applications and had 176 deferred applications to review.
The vote on the application by the Committee to Protect Journalists reflected the sensitivities over press freedom in a variety of countries.
The no votes came from Azerbaijan, Burundi, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Sudan and Venezuela. The yes votes came from Greece, Guinea, Israel, Mauritania, the United States and Uruguay.
India, the most populous democracy, abstained, along with Iran and Turkey, which both have reputations for persecuting journalists.
