Civil society

Attending sessions
Civil society engages with the climate change process through representative non-governmental observer organizations.

Admission: Article 7, paragraph 6, of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides for the admission of non-governmental organizations to sessions of the Convention bodies as observers.  New applicant organizations are formally admitted by the Conference of the Parties following the successful completion of the admission process.  Admission to the Conference of the Parties also applies to the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.  Participation at sessions in between the SB sessions and the COP is limited to those organizations that have been admitted or provisionally admitted at previous SB sessions and COPs.

Once an organization is admitted, its representatives may attend sessions of the Convention bodies as observers.   Those observer organizations that have been admitted to a COP in the past do not need to reapply for admission.

Attendance: Admission is not the only way to attend sessions.  If your organization is not admitted and you have missed the deadline for application, or if your organization is not eligible for admission, the representatives of your organization might be nominated to attend sessions by already admitted observer organizations who agree to nominate them.  Visibility will be given to the name of the nominated organization on the official list of participants under the name of the admitted organization.  The contact details of the admitted observer organizations are available here.

Notification:  Official notification of sessions will be posted on our website three months prior to the start date when sessions are known in advance.  It is the responsibility of the admitted observer organization to check for notification updates.  You can find current information at http://unfccc.int.  On the left side of the screen click on Parties & Observers, then click on Notifications.

Nominations:  UNFCCC has launched an online registration system for all sessions.  Once the notification for a session has been posted, the designated contact point (DCP) of the admitted observer organization will have approximately four weeks in which to nominate names via the online registration system.  No nominations will be accepted after the deadline which will be set in the notification.  Information about the online registration system can be found at https://onlinereg.unfccc.int/.

For more information please contact cool@unfccc.int

• Mandate for admission: Article 7, paragraph 6 English Español Français
• Single admission process for COP and CMP: Decision 36/CMP.1 (paragraph 2c) English Español Français 
• Standard admission process English (107 kB) Español (55 kB) Français (149 kB)
• Contact details form English (146 kB) Español (147 kB) Français (146 kB)
• List of admitted organizations
• Cumulative admissions of observer organizations COP 1-19 (52 kB)
• Participation breakdown COP 3-19 (48 kB) (data as of 25 November 2013)

• Draft rules of procedure
• Guidelines for Participation (116 kB)
• Use of cameras and audio/video recording devices (146 kB)
• UN Security guidelines (174 kB)

• Constituencies and you  English (95 kB)   Español (91 kB)   Français (92 kB) (version as of June 2011)
• Constituency contacts (107 kB)

• Providing input through submissions (68 kB)
• Participating in workshops English (56 kB) Español (62 kB) Français (67 kB)
• Subscribing to the UNFCCC newsletter
• Providing input to the project-based mechanisms [CDM, JI]. public awareness, education and training [CC:iNet] or on technolgy transfer [TT:CLEAR]