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Studying the inclusion of civil society in international organizations has grown in the last decade. This article repatriates the ongoing scholarly discussions of this inclusion within organizational sociology to answer what the nature of civil society is as an organization at the United Nations. With “temporary organizations” it proposes a relational perspective whereby civil society’s temporariness induces mechanisms of exclusion and vice-versa. In practice civil society actors counter exclusion mechanisms by holding on to their autonomy.

In the study of international organizations (IOs), time and space have mostly been approached as contextual, even implicit and unrelated, factors. Instead this special issue considers them as co-constitutive of multilateralism and investigates three main questions: (i) How are IOs influenced by time and space? (ii) How are time and space experienced within IOs? (iii) How do IOs influence time and space around them? This introductory article compiles the contributions’ findings and points to a cyclical process: IOs are influenced by the spatiotemporal conditions of their enactment, leading to a diversity of practices and experiences within these organizations which in turn impact time and space, both in the way they are conceptualized and in their concrete embodiment. The special issue has proven the merit of taking time and space seriously in the study of IOs. This article concludes with a series of (non-exhaustive) research avenues to continue this promising analytical and empirical endeavor, including discussions on the relationship between IO performance and time and space, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Departing from an objective understanding of time and space, this article investigates time and space together as daily individual and social experiences within the United Nations (UN) system. Focused on both staff members and civil society partners, it explores how experiences of time and space affect the way the UN functions. Based on two case studies, it first shows that time and space as they are experienced by individuals shape UN everyday practices pointing to a form of unlimited connectedness among individuals and overlapping and delocalized temporalities. It then demonstrates that time and space constitute socially constructed resources to maintain hierarchical relations: looking at temporal and spatial experiences gives insight into power dynamics over decision-making within the UN. Overall these findings show that time and space are relevant to capture overlooked dimensions in the study of the UN.

For the past three decades, international norms about the responsibilities of governments with respect to disaster risk and resilience have been discussed and decided at world conferences led by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). Each of the three conferences resulted in a voluntary international agreement supported by member states, with the latest agreement adopted in Sendai showing more robust uptake of women's realities. One of nine civil society Major Groups within UNISDR, the Women's Major Group (WMG), constituted in part by a Japanese civil society-led delegation of women advocated for integration and key indicators monitoring the implementation of gender equality. This paper fills significant gaps in the international accounts of the Sendai Framework by tracking the specific policy demands of the WMG and member states in the lead up to the Sendai conference to reveal the areas of overlap and policy alignment among critical government and feminist civil society stakeholders. Albeit not a perfect document, we suggest that significant gains were won by the WMG in the language and approach taken in the new international agreement and in successfully creating a consensus on the importance of women's leadership in disaster risk reduction. The Sendai Framework for DRR is the first to name women as leaders and agents of change, rather than as essentialist victims.