Non-governmental organization

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A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an organization that is not part of a government and was not founded by states. NGOs are therefore typically independent of governments. Although the definition can technically include for-profit corporations, the term is generally restricted to social, cultural, legal, and environmental advocacy groups having goals that are primarily noncommercial. NGOs are usually non-profit organizations that gain at least a portion of their funding from private sources.

Because the label 'NGO' is considered too broad by some, as it might cover anything that is non-governmental, many NGOs now prefer the term private voluntary organization (PVO) or Private Development Organization (PDO).

A 1995 UN report on global governance estimated that there are nearly 29,000 international NGOs. National numbers are even higher: The United States has an estimated 2 million NGOs, most of them formed in the past 30 years. Russia has 65,000 NGOs. India has 2 million NGOs. Dozens are created daily. In Kenya alone, some 240 NGOs come into existence every year.

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History

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is the world's largest group of humanitarian NGOs. Though voluntary associations of citizens have existed throughout history, NGOs along the lines seen today, especially on the international level, have developed in the past two centuries. One of the first such organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, was founded in 1863.

The phrase 'non-governmental organization' came into use with the establishment of the United Nations in 1945 with provisions in Article 71 of Chapter 10 of the United Nations Charter [1] for a consultative role for organizations that neither are governments nor member states – see Consultative Status. The definition of 'international NGO' (INGO) is first given in resolution 288 (X) of ECOSOC on February 27, 1950: it is defined as 'any international organisation that is not founded by an international treaty'. The vital role of NGOs and other "major groups" in sustainable development was recognized in Chapter 27[2] of Agenda 21, leading to revised arrangements for consultative relationship between the United Nations and non-governmental organizations.[3]

Globalization during the 20th century gave rise to the importance of NGOs. Many problems could not be solved within a nation. International treaties and international organizations such as the World Trade Organization were perceived as being too centered on the interests of capitalist enterprises. In an attempt to counterbalance this trend, NGOs have developed to emphasize humanitarian issues, developmental aid and sustainable development. A prominent example of this is the World Social Forum which is a rival convention to the World Economic Forum held annually in January in Davos, Switzerland. The fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2005 was attended by representatives from more than 1,000 NGOs. [4]

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Evolutionary stages of development NGOs

Three stages or generations of NGO evolution have been identified by Korten’s (1990) Three Generations of Voluntary Development Action. First, the typical development NGO focuses on relief and welfare, and delivers relief services directly to beneficiaries. Examples are the distribution of food, shelter or health services. The NGO notices immediate needs and responds to them. NGOs in the second generation are oriented towards small-scale, self-reliant local development. At this evolutionary stage, NGOs build the capacities of local communities to meet their needs through 'self reliant local action'. Korten calls the third generation 'sustainable systems development'. At this stage, NGOs try to advance changes in policies and institutions at a local, national and international level; they move away from their operational service providing role towards a catalytic role. The NGO is starting to develop from a relief NGO to a development NGO. Template:Fn

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Types of NGOs

Nongovernmental organizations are an heterogenous group. A long list of acronyms has developed around the term 'NGO'.

These include:

  • INGO stands for international NGO, such as CARE and Mercy Corps;
  • BINGO is short for business-oriented international NGO;
  • RINGO is an abbreviation of religious international NGO such as Catholic Relief Services;
  • ENGO, short for environmental NGO, such as Global 2000;
  • GONGOs are government-operated NGOs, which may have been set up by governments to look like NGOs in order to qualify for outside aid;
  • QUANGOs are quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations, such as the W3C and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which is actually not purely an NGO, since its membership is by nation, and each nation is represented by what the ISO Council determines to be the 'most broadly representative' standardization body of a nation. Now, such a body might in fact be a nongovernmental organization--for example, the United States is represented in ISO by the American National Standards Institute, which is independent of the federal government. However, other countries can be represented by national governmental agencies--this is the trend in Europe.

There are also numerous classifications of NGOs. The typology the World Bank uses divides them into Operational and Advocacy Template:Fn:

The primary purpose of an operational NGO is the design and implementation of development-related projects. One categorization that is frequently used is the division into 'relief-oriented' or 'development-oriented' organizations; they can also be classified according to whether they stress service delivery or participation; or whether they are religious and secular; and whether they are more public or private-oriented. Operational NGOs can be community-based, national or international.

The primary purpose of an Advocacy NGO is to defend or promote a specific cause. As opposed to operational project management, these organizations typically try to raise awareness, acceptance and knowledge by lobbying, press work and activist events.

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Purposes

NGOs exist for a variety of purposes, usually to further the political or social goals of their members. Examples include improving the state of the natural environment, encouraging the observance of human rights, improving the welfare of the disadvantaged, or representing a corporate agenda. However, there are a huge number of such organizations and their goals cover a broad range of political and philosophical positions. This can also easily be applied to private schools and athletic organizations.

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Methods

NGOs vary in their methods. Some act primarily as lobbyists, while others conduct programs and activities primarily. For instance, such an NGO as Oxfam, concerned with poverty alleviation, might provide needy people with the equipment and skills they need to find food and clean drinking water.

Another example of a NGO is Amnesty International. They are the largest Human rights organization in the world. It forms a global community of human rights defenders with more than 1.5 million members, supporters and subscribers in over 150 countries and territories.

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Networking

The International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), founded in 1992, is a global network of more than 60 non-governmental organizations that promote and defend the right to freedom of expression

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Public Relations

The most important department of the non-governmental organizations is the human resources. All organizations around the globe must perform a healthful relation with the society in order to activate the people’s requests. Public relations obtain foundations to get encouraged. Altruistic charities use sophisticated public relations campaigns to raise funds and standard lobbying techniques when government taxation policy affects their income. Equally, all interest groups and lobbies are of political importance, precisely because their pressure influences social and political outcomes. They do not necessarily operate in a secretive manner in the corridors of power and they do at times seek to mobilize public support. When they engage in political debate, company representatives often argue for general abstract values that go beyond their specific concrete interests. Companies can only challenge the public interest – or more precisely public opinion – at the risk of damaging their public reputation, their brand values and their income. Many companies more positively promote what is often seen as the public interest. They may donate profits to charitable activities, identify directly with environmental values to benefit from green consumerism or even reduce consumption of energy and raw materials to reduce costs. Trade unions usually go much further than companies in making explicit their endorsement of a wide range of political values. They also allocate money, personnel and other resources to campaigning, both independently and in coalition with other pressure groups.

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Consulting

Many international NGOs have a consultative status with United Nations agencies relevant to their area of work. As an example, the Third World Network has a consultative status with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). While in 1946, only 41 NGOs had consultative status with the ECOSOC, by 2003 this number had risen to 2,350.

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Project management

There is an increasing awareness that management techniques are crucial to project success in non-governmental organizations. Template:Fn Generally, the roles of Non-Government Organisations, which are private, have a community or environmental focus. They address varieties of issues such as religion, emergency aid, and humanitarian affairs. They mobilise public support and voluntary contributions for aid; they often have strong links with community groups in developing countries and they often work in areas where government-to-government aid is not possible. NGO’s are accepted as a part of the international relations, and while they influence national and multilateral policy-making, they are becoming more and more involved. by mat goodacre

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Management of non-governmental organizations

Two management trends are particularly relevant to NGOs: diversity management and participatory management. Diversity management deals with different cultures in an organization. Intercultural problems are prevalent in Northern NGOs that are engaged in developmental activities in the South. Personnel coming from a rich country are faced with a completely different approach of doing things in the target country. A participatory management style is said to be typical of NGOs. It is intricately tied to the concept of a learning organization: all people within the organization are perceived as sources for knowledge and skills. To develop the organization, individuals have to be able to contribute in the decision making process and they need to learn.

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Staffing

Not all people working for non-governmental organizations are volunteers. Paid staff members typically receive lower pay than in the commercial private sectorTemplate:Fact. Employees are highly committed to the aims and principles of the organization. The reasons why people volunteer are not necessarily purely altruistic, and can provide immediate benefits for themselves as well as those they serve, including skills, experience and contacts.

There is some dispute as to whether expatriates should be sent to developing countries. Frequently this type of personnel is employed to satisfy a donor, who wants to see the supported project managed by someone from an industrialized country. However, the expertise these employees or volunteers may have can be counterbalanced by a number of factors: the cost of foreigners is typically higher, they have no grassroot connections in the country they are sent to and local expertise is often undervalued.Template:Fn

The NGO-sector is an important employer in terms of numbers. For example, by the end of 1995, CONCERN worldwide, an international Northern NGO working against poverty, employed 174 expatriates and just over 5,000 national staff working in ten developing countries in Africa and Asia, and in Haiti. It is contradictory to the nature of NGOs to expect a member from the executive of a country to be its manager, director, etc.

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Funding

Large NGOs may have annual budgets in the millions of dollars. For instance, the budget of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) was over $540 million dollars in 1999.[5] Human Rights Watch spent and received US$21,7 million in 2003. Funding such large budgets demands significant fundraising efforts on the part of most NGOs. Major sources of NGO funding include membership dues, the sale of goods and services, grants from international institutions or national governments, and private donations. Several EU-grants provide funds accessible to NGOs.

Even though the term 'non-governmental organization' implies independence of governments, some NGOs depend heavily on governments for their funding. A quarter of the US$162 million income in 1998 of the famine-relief organization Oxfam was donated by the British government and the EU. The Christian relief and development organization World Vision US collected US$55 million worth of goods in 1998 from the American government. Nobel Prize winner Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) (known in English as 'Doctors Without Borders') gets 46 percent of its income from government sources.Template:Fn

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Monitoring and Controlling NGOs

In March 2000 report on United Nations Reform priorities, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote in favor of international humanitarian intervention, arguing that the international community has a 'right to protect' citizens of the world against ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity. On the heals of the report, the Canadian government launched the Responsibility to Protect R2P project, outlining the issue of humanitarian intervention. While the R2P doctrine has wide applications, among the more controversial has been the Canadian government's use of R2P to justify its intervention and support of the coup in Haiti.

Years after R2P, The World Federalist Movement, an organization that supports "the creation of democratic global structures accountable to the citizens of the world and call for the division of international authority among separate agencies" has launched Responsibility to Protect - Engaging Civil Society R2PCS. The project, which is a collaboration of the WFM and Canadian government, aims to bring NGOs into lockstep with the principles outlined under the original R2P project.

NGO Monitor is a conservative pro-Israel site that aims to promote "critical debate and accountability of human rights NGOs in the Arab-Israeli conflict." The organization has successfully conducted campaigns against Oxfam and the Ford Foundation - leading to formal apologies and changes in practice - on the grounds that these organizations are too anti-Israeli.

NGOWatch is a project of the American Enterprise Institute that monitors NGOs. The site is an indispensable source for news on NGOs and highlights an interesting convergence of interests for the political left and right.

Indian NGOs is a portal of over 20,000 covered in this portal which works with the corporate sector in India. Much like the research above on The 21st Century NGO, this portal offers insights into how the corporate sector is using NGOs to benefit their program. In recent years, many large corporations have beefed up their Corporate Social Responsibility departments in an attempt to preempt NGO campaigns against certain corporate practices. As the logic goes, by working with NGOs, NGOs will not work against corporations.

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Legal status

NGOs are not legal entities under international law, like states are. An exception is the International Committee of the Red Cross which is considered a legal entity under international law, because it is based on the Geneva Convention.

It has been argued by various critics that NGOs are subversive in outcomes but well intentioned. They criticize that imperialism and NGOs share a fine line. One of the first modern NGOs, for example, was the American Colonization Society. Another famous example includes various Christian missionaries throughout the Americas, Asia, and Africa during colonial times. It has been argued that such NGOs have been well intentioned but ended in imperial outcomes.

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Academic Literature on NGOs

There is a host of literature that objectively looks at the role and workings of transnational civil society. In particular:

  • Hall, Rodney Bruce and Biersteker, Thomas. The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, 2003)
  • Hilhorst, Dorthea. The Real World of NGOs: Discourses, Diversity and Development, Zed Books, 2003
  • Roelofs, Joan. Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003).
  • Smillie, Ian, & Minear, Larry, editors. The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World, Kumarian Press, 2004
  • Tarrow, Sydney. The New Transnational Activism, New York :Cambridge University Press, 2005
  • Ward, Thomas, editor. Development, Social Justice, and Civil Society: An Introduction to the Political Economy of NGOs, Paragon House, 2005

More useful are regional histories and analyses of the experience of NGOs. Specific works (although this is by no means an exhaustive list) include:

  • Meyer, Carrie. The Economics and Politics of NGOs in Latin America, Praeger Publishers, July 30, 1999
  • Abdelrahman, Maha. Civil Society Exposed: The Politics of NGOs in Egypt, The American University in Cairo Press, 2004. Al-Ahram Weekly has done a review of the book.
  • Kamat, Sangeeta. Development hegemony: NGOs and The State in India, Delhi, New York; Oxford University Press, 2002
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Notes

Template:FnbKorten, D. Getting to the 21st century: voluntary action and the global agenda. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1990, p. 118.
Template:FnbWorld Bank Criteria defining NGO
Template:Fnb Mukasa, Sarah. Are expatriate staff necessary in international development NGOs? A case study of an international NGO in Uganda. Publication of the Centre for Civil Society at London School of Economics. 2002, p. 11-13.
Template:Fnb Campbell, P. Management Development and Development Management for Voluntary Organisations, Occasional Paper No. 3, International Council of Voluntary Agencies, Geneva, 1987.
Template:Fnb Intractable Conflict Knowledge Base Project of the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado
Template:Fnb 'Sins of the secular missionaries,' The Economist, January 29, 2000.

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External links

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