Sunday - Information and Planning

We got our accreditation badges today! This gives us access both to the NGO-Sector and the negotiations, which will take place in a Hotel nearby.

Although I am still a bit confused with the acronyms, things start to clear up a bit. For this COP, we have three main objectives:

1. Support any delegation* that needs support. Especially Kiribati, since we've been working with them last year. But also Ghana, Gambia and the Marshall Islands signalled interest. We also had some other youths signing up to help, so we've got a backup of manpower to meet whatever need there is. Mainly we'll be helping with translations and providing minutes and reports.

* Well, those delegations that have less than 15 members and that are not considered unfree by the Freedom In the World Report.

2. We set up a blog that is supposed to collect minutes from the meetings, were we'll upload our minutes and inform delegations that they can access them from there. We try to connect as many NGOs as possibly to send us their minutes, but before we put them on our blog, we need to check for bias. Bias is quite a big problem when delegations have to rely to external source's reporting --> point 3.

3. Publish a Report to the UNFCCC that outlines the problems small delegations face. 

The fact that there are no official transcripts for the meetings is outrageous and very un-UN-style. Most people we've spoken to could not believe that there are no transcripts made. So delegations that cannot afford to go to all the meetings (which often take place at the same time) have to rely on external source's minutes, if there are any. Obviously, it's impossible to know how much bias those minutes contain.

The UNFCCC does make videos of the meetings and posts them online. The problem with the videos, however, is that many developing countries are lacking the bandwidth to watch them, besides the unpracticalities of not being able to download them, or to jump between sections, and many just simply lack the time that is consumed listening vs. reading a transcript. Producing transcripts and making them publicly available, would be a simple way to increase small countries' possibility to participate.

Secondly, only the main negotiations have translators. For many countries, the language barrier is an issue. In a survey undertaken by UNfairplay last year, some francophone African countries, for example, have expressed that they feel they can participate less than their anglophone fellow African countries.

There are some other issues that the report covers. We hope we can present it to the UNFCCC this week (before all the crazyness in the 2nd week when the global leaders arrive) and we'll try to get as much Media coverage as possible. This is our long-term goal so that hopefully, in a couple of years, we are not needed anymore.