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Human rights advocates [say] that in recent years China had flooded Geneva [the Swiss city where the U.N. is located] with dozens of “fake” NGOs — so-called “GONGOs,” short for “government-organized nongovernmental organizations.” While NGOs are expected to be independent, GONGOs instead hold close ties to governments or political parties. Many of the GONGOs identified by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) parroted the Chinese state’s positions during U.N. sessions.
GONGOs often seek to occupy as many speaking slots as possible, blocking the opportunities for representatives of other NGOs to speak. GONGOs also surveilled and intimidated human rights activists, many of whom have given up attending U.N. sessions, ICIJ and its partners learned. Our investigation sought to quantify the scale of the issue and the growing number of Chinese GONGOs at the U.N.
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