The UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, in charge of granting NGOs UN-accreditation, is currently meeting in New York. UN accreditation or "consultative status" provides NGOs with real benefits, such as attending international conferences and events, making written and oral statements, organizing side events, entering UN premises, and having opportunities to network and lobby.
On January 29, 2014 the Committee reviewed an application from Freedom Now, based in the United States. The organization represents individual prisoners of conscience as pro bono clients and works to free them from illegal detention "through focused legal, political and public relations advocacy efforts." China, Pakistan and Sudan, all members of the UN NGO Committee, responded to the application by derailing its accreditation. China's representative asked that the organization answer:"what was meant by 'prisoner of conscience'?" Sudan questioned the organization's activities in Africa. As a result, decision on UN accreditation was postponed.
China also blocked decision on Zala briviba, a Latvian-based NGO on the grounds that the organization didn't delete the link on its website to the "Free Tibet" organization as the Chinese had been requesting since 2012. And China blocked the Zoological Society of London, an NGO from the United Kingdom and demanded it "use the correct United Nations terminology for Taiwan Province of China."