Non-governmental Organizations
Non-governmental Organizations
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can best be understood as part of the spectacular growth in the past few decades of "third-sector" organizations, so called because they are different from the first sector (government) and the second sector (business). Instead of being formed primarily for profit-making purposes or brought into being simply by a government decision to extend its reach, third-sector organizations reflect the organized efforts of citizens motivated by social, religious, or ideological concerns for action.
definition and characteristics of ngos
This broad family of third-sector organizations is active across a vast spectrum of activities from welfare services to leisure pursuits, from political pressure groups to arts and hobby societies. Third-sector organizations have come to play a significant role in many, if not all, areas of public life. In the matters of foreign affairs and international relations, they serve as powerful nonstate actors and activists within international politics and development policy around the world. Whether they are providing services, forming the basis for community self-help initiatives, or campaigning on public issues, a range of different types of third-sector organizations have a high profile in most countries of the world.
Perhaps the best-known subgroup of the third-sector organizational family is that of the NGOs. Although they form a diverse and wide-ranging group, NGOs are usually understood to be organizations engaged in humanitarian, human rights, or environmental activities at local, national, or global levels. Well-known NGOs include Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and CARE. The profile of NGOs has increased steadily among policy makers, activists, and researchers in both the rich industrialized countries of the North (usually taken to mean North America and Europe) and among the lower income, lesser developed countries of the South (a common shorthand for Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean).
NGOs therefore include many organizations funded by international aid agencies such as the United Nations (UN) and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The NGO category also includes the growing numbers of public interest groups funded by government or private sources or dependent simply on volunteers engaged in a wide range of activities such as service delivery, policy advocacy, and campaigning work. The category of NGO is also sometimes taken to include the self-help efforts of organized local community groups to improve their conditions of life or solve grassroots problems.
The term NGO first achieved prominence within the UN system established after World War II (1939–1945). The designation of NGO was awarded to international nonstate organizations that were given consultative status within UN activities. Since then the term has become more and more commonly used, and the numbers of NGOs active at the international level has continued to grow.
What explains the recent rise of NGOs within international governance and politics? Likely reasons include: (a) the growth of intergovernmental negotiation around domestic policy brought about by integration of the world economy; (b) the end of the Cold War, which eliminated the polarization of global politics around the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union; (c) the emergence of a global media system, which provides a platform for NGOs to express their views; and (d) the spread of democratic norms, which may have increased public expectations about participation and transparency in decision making.
NGOs have also come to be seen as part of an emerging civil society in many countries, generally taken to mean the public arena in which people come together to act collectively about something because they care enough to do so. Civil society is therefore often seen by many people as a useful counterweight to the excesses of the state and the market and one that can help balance interests in institutional life by providing a form of citizen power.
This role has grown because there is a common perception at the international level that the "old order" of international governance primarily through states is changing to one in which governments are increasingly challenged by nonstate actors. First, private for-profit corporations are eager to take advantage of the new opportunities provided by an increasingly integrated global market. Second, NGOs increasingly are seeking to contribute to or challenge international policy against the backdrop of the processes of economic, technological, and cultural change that have together become loosely referred to as "globalization."
In the sphere of international relations and politics, nonstate networks of environmental, gender, and human rights campaigning organizations have become increasingly active. Within the international development field, NGOs began to make their presence felt at the series of UN summits held on key issues such as environment, population, and women during the 1990s.
ngos, environment, human rights, and conflict
NGOs have long been active in the international arena, contributing to such causes as the abolition of the slave trade in the nineteenth century, the rise of international humanitarianism in the form of the Red Cross movement, and more recently to the establishment of the UN convention on the rights of the child. These international roles are set to grow even more. These changes in global governance increasingly mean that no one framework of international law can be exercised through a single global authority. Instead, there are different levels of regulation and forms of authority negotiating around common goals, the resolution of disputes, and the balance of conflicting interests. Some therefore see a new model of international governance emerging, which—although untidy and less predictable than regimes that went before—may offer a stronger voice for local and global citizens.
This trend is apparent in the global environmental arena. NGOs have played important roles in the emergence of the international environmental agenda, from the "green" perspectives of the 1970s to the sustainable development paradigm that gained momentum in the 1990s. The emergence of codes of conduct for national and international business is one strategy pursued by NGOs in conjunction with social movements, religious groups, and investors.
For example, in 1989 the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies established a ten-point environmental code of conduct for corporations based on what were termed the Valdez principles, named after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster of that year. These principles related to minimizing pollutant releases, the conservation of nonrenewable resources, and the use of sustainable energy sources. Companies that subscribe to the code are obliged to report annually on their compliance. Progress with cooperative and voluntary strategies for engagement with the corporate sector has been dealt a severe blow by the failure of some countries, and in particular the United States, to endorse the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
fast facts
The Kyoto Protocol is a legally binding international treaty that requires countries that have signed to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in an attempt to reduce global warming.
NGOs have long been associated with conflict, from the Red Cross work with relief and humanitarianism to newer agendas of conflict resolution and mediation support. In the field of disarmament, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was a coalition of NGOs that mobilized campaigning across the world that led to a 1997 convention banning antipersonnel landmines, Signed by 122 states, this convention was later adopted as a treaty within the UN. The speed with which this movement achieved tangible results demonstrated the growing power of NGOs in international politics. This example also demonstrates the diversity of interests among the NGO,' or third-sector community. For example, the National Rifle Association in the United States strongly resists the attempt to control international arms flows.
Demonstrations outside the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 brought to center stage both the growing movement against globalization—variously defined by protestors as the rise of neo-liberalism, the growth of free trade, and the expansion of industrialized country production at the expense of developing country markets—and the role of NGOs as key actors within this movement. Since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 the position of the international NGO community has become polarized around different positions in relation to the "War on Terror." There are concerns that some NGOs are becoming drawn into roles that make them merely subcontractors in relation to foreign policy interests, particularly in the conflict zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Challenges have also been made to the spirit of pluralism that exists among the NGO community in the form of attacks on NGOs by organizations such as the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
ngos and policy advocacy
The role of NGOs in international politics is largely dominated by the idea of NGOs as policy advocates. Whether NGOs are effective as policy advocates is often very difficult to judge. It is possible to assess the effectiveness of an NGO advocacy effort not just in terms of achieving the desired policy impacts but also in terms of the process of advocacy itself, which is seen as making a contribution to a healthy civil society and increasing levels of trust, political participation, and stability in society. NGOs can help to build these relationships at the local level, and they can also act within wider networks to balance power in multiorganizational alliances serving as a bridge that links the grassroots level with national or international action, or forming connections between different kinds of organization.
Advocacy work by NGOs of the North has been part of the post–Cold War development policy agenda that has aimed to help build democratization processes within both the developing and post-communist worlds. There have been some notable NGO-driven successes at the level of health and economic policies, such as the baby milk marketing code, drafting essential drugs list, and the removal of restrictions on international trade for some items from poor countries (e.g., the textile quotas from Bangladesh that helped create new women's employment during the 1990s). Advocacy has also become an important activity for developing countries and NGOs of the South, where environ-mental campaigns such as that against the Narmada Dam in India have been built by local organizations with international links. The efforts of NGOs from both North and South at the UN global summits such as the Rio Environment or Beijing Women's Conferences indicated growing NGO influence through lobbying work on policy issues such as environment, gender, and poverty.
However, many problems have arisen with these strategies. For example, less has been achieved by NGOs in relation to the more politically and economically sensitive issues of military spending, human rights, and economic reform. The intensive work by Western donors to build and strengthen the NGO sectors and train local NGOs to undertake Western-style advocacy work in many former communist countries has proved difficult. It has been all too easy to create weak, financially dependent organizations and to create false expectations that advocacy work will be successful in the face of unaccountable or repressive states. There have also been criticisms that too many active NGOs can delay or prevent important public decision making and create interest group gridlock, particularly when a strong civil society meets a weak state. The more successful advocacy strategies by NGOs tend to be based on good links with the grassroots, a relatively stable and responsive government with which they can develop a dialogue, and a set of concerns that do not threaten the existing interests and structures on their most sensitive issues.
ngos and international development
For many people, the concept of NGOs is inseparably linked with the world of international development and to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the UN or bilateral donors such the U.S. Agency for International Development. These agencies became very interested in funding NGOs for development work during the 1990s partly because they were seen as alternatives to working through government, making them more flexible, closer to communities, and less prone to corruption.
In many developing countries, the donor predilection for NGOs has helped create a situation in which aid organizations greatly enlarged both the size of local NGOs and the numbers of organizations in the NGO community. Official funding for NGO projects and programs has followed several different routes. In one funding model, both local and international NGOs put forward proposals for projects and programs to receive funding from donors in a given country. In another, NGOs become contracted partners within larger government or donor programs to undertake relief work or provide social services. This can lead to the creation of new NGOs specifically for the purpose of receiving the funds that are being made available and has sometimes led to the highly uncomplimentary view of NGOs in some quarters as vehicles for unscrupulous individuals to "get rich quick."
However, the donor view of NGOs, although definitely part of the story, presents a somewhat incomplete and oversimplified picture of the world of NGOs. Although clearly a great many NGOs are dependent on international development assistance, others seek to remain independent, relying instead on the voluntary labor of their staff or members, on contributions from the local or the international community, or on using the market for other sources of income. For example, Educare Trust in Nigeria, a small local organization engaged in education work with secondary school children, has refused numerous offers of funding from donors because it prefers to stay small, local, and personal.
conclusion
NGOs have been seen by some as agents of virtue, tirelessly working to improve the state of the world. Others see NGOs as naive idealists unaware of the Realpolitik of the modern world or as dangerous radicals seeking to impose minority perspectives through unaccountable processes on majority interests. The reality is that NGO motivations and approaches are highly diverse. Clearly, nonstate actors such as NGOs are here to stay, and they will continue to play stronger roles in both national and international politics in most parts of the world.
See also: American Civil Liberties Union; Amnesty International.
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