Deadline updated to May 27.
Dear esteemed NGO leaders,
I am writing to you as the President of CoNGO (Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations), requesting you to kindly consider adding your endorsement to the attached statement entitled "COVID-19 Recovery: Building Back Better".
If you send your endorsement before Tuesday, midnight of 26 May, New York time, your endorsement will be included in the mailing that will go to relevant UN officials and Missions at the UN of member states. Endorsements after that date will be included in an update at a later date and will be published in the CoNGO website.
Through the leadership of Martina Gredler (Second Vice President), Laurie Richardson (Board member), and Ilona Grenitz (former Vienna Vice President), working with the chairs of CoNGO substantive NGO committees in Vienna, this statement was drafted and concluded. Initial signatures from Vienna included 22 organizations.
This statement comes after our CoNGO Declaration on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations issued October last year. It complements the assertions we made in the declaration for the global collaboration needed to address lingering and emerging issues of concern, not the least about global health. COVID-19 is one such concern whose virulent effect on lives and livelihoods, indeed on people and the planet, we did not anticipate happening. There is abundant proof that this global pandemic may yet do what World War II did to those who imagined what it would be like for the world community to address the scourge of war and let us not be visited by such wars again. COVID-19, it has been suggested may yet provide the impetus for a reimagined United Nations--certainly, one that is more inclusive, transparent, accountable, but also fully funded. If you have not endorsed the CoNGO Declaration on the 75th anniversary of the UN, please visit: www.ngocongo.org.
COVID_19 has visited upon us, and is ravaging lives and livelihoods, imperiling people and the planet even more--on top of already worrisome global warming, global forced migration, global poverty, global disregard for human rights, global unpeace and insecurity, and more.
The situation requires all of us, especially civil society, to act collaboratively at local, national, regional and global levels. I commend this statement on COVID-19 Recovery as a tool for framing the pandemic in such a way that its intersections with the other global issues I mentioned above are not lost but rather reinforced. I hope you will use it as a tool for advocacy and action.
Thank you. I hope you are keeping well and healthy.
Best regards,Levi
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Liberato C. Bautista, DDPresident, Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO)777 United Nations Plaza, Suite 7CNew York, NY 10017 USA
Tel: +1.212.973.1701
Download request: COVID-19 and Recovery. Building Back Better (PDF 1MB)