International NGO Engagement, Advocacy, Activism

The Faces and Spaces of Change

Helen Yanacopulos

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137315090
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The world of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has dramatically changed during the last two decades. The author critically analyses the engagement of INGOs within the contemporary international development landscape, enabling readers to further understand INGOs involvement in the politics of social change.

1

The Current State of INGOs

Suffering, disease, and famines: these are the stories of humanitarian appeals and one of the primary means by which many people contribute to international development. When the urge to help is ignited, people tend to turn to international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) to make their donations, such as Oxfam, Save the Children, Action Aid, CARE or faith-based organisations such as CAFOD, World Vision or Christian Aid, to name but a few. Such organisations are international ‘charities’ that work in international development and humanitarian relief in most continents where there is extreme poverty, primarily in Africa, Asia and Latin America. While the term non-governmental organisation (NGO) describes a vast range of different types of organisations working on issues of development and humanitarian relief, human rights or the environment, and can refer to a ‘one man in an office’ operation, or to an internationally based organisation such as Oxfam, the focus here is specifically on INGOs working in the field of international development and humanitarian assistance. ¹

Through these organisations, people living in the global north not only have the ability to ‘help’ those in need, but also to receive a great deal of information about the problems of poverty, how their donations can help, and what it means to be involved in development.² With few exceptions, INGOs are the intermediaries between concerned northern publics and the recipients or beneficiaries of development work, primarily in the global south. INGOs have also become involved in large-scale campaigns such as Live Aid in the 1980s, the debt cancellation campaigns of Jubilee 2000 in the 1990s, and the Make Poverty History campaigns of the mid-2000s. Such large-scale campaigns as well as the campaigns of individual INGOs raise awareness of the suffering, disease and famines, and without INGOs, many people would neither know that such situations existed, nor would they have the ability to somehow take part in helping. But one of the questions that have long been important within the INGO community is how they can move beyond emergency appeals and sporadic spikes in public consciousness, to engender the changes in vast global inequalities and poverty that are needed to make a better world? ³

There is no shortage of either practitioner or academic writings on the nature of INGOs, their accountability and legitimacy, the imagery they use, their relation to governments and the private sector and the effects of their day-to-day work. However, a more in-depth analysis is required to situate INGOs within contemporary shifting landscapes. Michael Edwards (2008: 48–49) succinctly outlines a key problem with INGOs that he calls ‘the elephant in the room’, claiming that they, ‘will never achieve the impact they say they want to achieve, because their leverage over the drivers of long-term change will continue to be weak.’ In exploring INGO engagement, strategies and structures, the hope is to foster a further discussion and examination of Edwards’ elephant in the room.

Why INGOs?

To say that the world of INGOs has dramatically changed during the last two decades is an understatement. We have witnessed the civil society sector rapidly increasing in size and visibility at unheard-of rates. One indicator of this increase can be seen in the statistics of the Union of International Associations (UIA); while the statistics do not reliably capture all of the different types of organisations in operation, the trend of increase in the statistic of INGOs is reflective of the growth of the sector. According to the UIA, the number of non-governmental organisations (including both international NGOs and NGOs operating in one country) rose from 22,334 in 1990 to 58,588 in 2013.⁴

Within the international development and humanitarian relief sector, the total aid disbursed through INGOs increased ten times between 1970 and 1985 and Keane (2003: 5) states that close to 90 per cent of all non-governmental organisations have been formed since 1970. At their core, INGOs are set up to act as an interface, where we – the public – give them money, and they – the INGOs – feed a child, build a school or provide mosquito nets, for example. By the mid-1990s, the Union of International Associations recognised over 15,000 INGOs operating in three or more countries and drawing their finance from more than one country. Whilst there was a comparatively low volume of funding being directed through non-governmental organisations in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a surge within the sector during the 1980s and 1990s. Again, according to the Union of International Associations, three quarters of the entire 27,472 international NGOs active in 2005 had been created since the mid-1970s (UIA figures quoted in Turner, 2010: 3).

Within the development sector, by the end of the 20th century, an estimated US$7 billion of official aid and foundation funding was being channelled through INGOs, surpassing the volume of the combined UN system of US$6 billion (Reimann, 2005: 38). There are many sets of statistics attempting to quantify the number of INGOs, but as no formal international organisation overseeing the INGOs sector exists, it is difficult to calculate the exact number of INGOs in operation. However, there is little disagreement that the sector has expanded dramatically during the last three decades. Epstein and Gang (2006) state that all official development assistance (ODA) to INGOs increased by 34 per cent between 1991/92 and 2002, from US$928 million to US$1,246 million, and that the number of INGOs grew by 19.3 per cent over the same decade. The publication 100 Top NGOs (2013) states that according to their calculations, many of the largest INGOs are now operating with larger aid budgets than the budgets of many developing countries, and they go on to cite the example of World Vision (the largest development INGO), whose budget is greater than the aid budgets of Italy and Australia combined, while Save the Children’s budget is greater than that of Austria (100 Top NGOs, 2013: 35).

Both UK and American INGOs are well funded; UK INGOs have a large private donor base and according to the Johns Hopkins Comparative Non-profit Sector project, the UK ‘international affairs’ INGO sector is three times that of the Western European average. According to Kendal and Almond, (1999: 193–194, in Stroup and Murdie, 2012: 429), the UK INGO sector that focuses on what they call ‘international activities’ is significantly larger, compared to other fields, than that of any other country on which data is available.

As INGOs’ funding and profile in international politics has risen, they have in turn become higher-profile political actors. First, most INGOs have been forming their own federations; where there were eight relatively unconnected sister Oxfam organisations in the mid-1990s, there is now a much more co-ordinated and centrally structured Oxfam International with 17 sister Oxfams sitting under the Oxfam umbrella. Oxfam is not unique in this sense, as many other INGOs have followed this international strategy. Second, there has been an increase in large-scale transnational advocacy campaigns, bringing together many influential actors, and some have had a great deal of success, and INGOs have played a significant role within such campaigns. Increasingly, development INGOs have become one of the primary ways that people in the global north engage with development. In the special issue of the Journal of International Development, Smith and Yanacopulos (2004) outlined how NGOs construct, mediate and represent development to their constituents as well as to the public at large. For many people in Europe and North America, INGOs are the primary interface between themselves and people in the south.

Definitions of NGOs have been contested, but at least some consensus exists that NGOs consist of durable, bounded, voluntary relationships amongst individuals to produce a particular product, using specific techniques. NGOs tend to be not-for-profit, voluntary and to work with a public purpose for the interests of an issue or a group. When NGOs operate in more than one country, they are classed as INGOs. Weiss and Gordenker (1996: 18) claim that the broad term NGO has a host of alternative uses, namely: the independent sector; volunteer sector; civic society; grassroots organisations; private voluntary organisations; transnational social movement organisations; grassroots social change organisations; and non-state actors.

Certain key similarities exist between NGOs, as outlined by Alan Fowler (1997: 39), who claims that NGOs differ from government and businesses in that:

•they are not established for and cannot distribute any surplus they generate as a profit to owners or staff;

•they are not required nor prevented from existing by law, but result from people’s self-chosen voluntary initiative to pursue a shared interest or concern;

•they are formed by private initiative and are independent, in that they are not part of government nor controlled by a public body;

•within the terms of whatever legislation they choose to register themselves, they also govern themselves;

•registration means that the founders wish to have social recognition – this calls for some degree of formalisation and acceptance of the principle of social accountability.

NGOs form a part of civil society and frequently the terms ‘NGO’ and ‘civil society’ are used synonymously. In this messy terrain of civil society, distinctions are often drawn between ‘local’ NGOs (those working within the countries they have been set up in) and ‘international’ NGOs (those working in more than one country). While such distinctions remain problematic, as do the terms ‘north’ and ‘south’ when referring to NGOs, they do at least provide a schematic difference between different types of NGOs. The INGOs examined in this book originated in Europe, and more specifically in the UK. While they would be considered northern INGOs, they all have strong connections to the south, either by employing people from the south, having their head offices in southern countries or working closely with southern partners. While broad terms such as ‘south’ and ‘north’ may be somewhat misleading, the INGOs in question all have their heritage and loci of power in the north, which is also where their funders and supporters are based. The work of INGOs is also diverse in its focus, with some development and humanitarian INGOs focusing on education, health or gender. Most of the large INGOs, however, have programmes that cut across many of the sectors identified in addressing poverty. Most development INGOs work on service delivery, humanitarian relief and advocacy, and all are part of what is frequently termed the ‘NGO industry’ (100 Top NGOs: 2013: 39).

Thus, to define the exact nature and role of INGOs is difficult, as the term is used for a wide variety of organisations all of which have different historical trajectories, fulfil different identified needs and have different institutional abilities and mandates. There are INGOs, for example, which are relief and welfare agencies, those that provide technical innovation, and those which are contracted to carry out public service contracts. There are also development organisations, grassroots development organisations or advocacy and lobbying groups advocating for change. However, as Farrington and Bebbington argue (1993: 3), part of the problem in discussing INGOs as a broad category is that such classifications do not fully differentiate between the function, ownership and scale of operation of the organisations. To overcome this, later chapters in the book will explore the various functional ways that INGOs are organised and consequently engage with their publics.

NGOs were more or less spared searching critiques in the 1980s, but since the 1990s – specifically starting with the work of Edwards and Hulme (Hulme and Edwards 1992; Edwards and Hulme, 1995; Hulme and Edwards, 1996) – they have been criticised about their accountability and legitimacy, about their professionalisation and perceived depoliticisation. More recently, pejorative terms such as ‘NGOisation’ (Choudry and Kapoor, 2013) have entered the contemporary civil society lexicon. There have been accusations, too, that many of the INGOs in the development sector have lost sight of their values and mission (Banks and Hulme, 2012). While all these critiques need to be considered, and some may indeed be valid, it is important to consider where such critiques are originating and whether they are politically motivated. Frequently, when INGOs – and specifically the larger INGOs – are criticised, little distinction is made between the different political visions, strategies, constituencies and organisational structures within the sector. These critiques come from not only outside of the sector, but also within it. One Director of a UK based INGO interviewed stated that ‘they (INGO) are out of touch ... they are afraid of being criticised as they see it as a negative thing rather than it being helpful, something that jeopardises their brand and fundraising’ (NGO133).

We have seen INGO involvement in global campaigns such as Make Poverty History with its millions of supporters worldwide. And we have observed the development INGO sector becoming highly professionalised, not only in fundraising, branding and marketing, but also in supporter communications. However, despite, or perhaps partly in response to, the large-scale global campaigns, the growing public profile of INGOs, the changing dynamics of global advocacy, and diverse initiatives to raise the public understanding of development, our comprehension of the ways that INGOs engage and mobilise northern publics requires further thought. Additionally, following Stroup and Murdie (2012: 427) while the north–south divide amongst INGOs has been well examined, what require further examination are the differences amongst northern INGOs.

Evaluating the terrain of INGO operations is timely. They have now had adequate time to adjust to technologically driven shifts in communications. As funding sources have started to decrease, some INGOs have reverted to using emotive and ‘negative’ images in their fundraising. The justification for well-off countries giving aid to poorer countries is currently being debated, including challenging the conventional wisdom of the aid paradigm, with a ‘growing scepticism about the effectiveness [of development aid] ... with calls to refocus the development debate on the quality of results rather than the quantity of money spent’. (Glennie et al., 2012: 2) Wendy Harcourt (2012: 2), too, states that a major structural change is occurring in the development industry that ‘Civil society activities, the bread and butter of progressive advocacy NGOs and social movements formed in the last 20 years, is now being swept up in very different forms of mobilisation with vastly new ideas and methodologies on how to connect and work together.”

Thus, INGOs are at a turning point. One useful way of thinking about INGOs is provided in Sabine Lang’s 2013 book NGOs, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, where Lang lays out two characterisations of INGOs. In the first characterisation, she uses the analogy of ‘David and Goliath’, in which INGOs are portrayed as poor and marginalised, but are seen as defenders of human rights, democracy and social justice (as opposed to governments who are seen as powerful). Together with most who have worked in the INGO sector, Lang actually sees the reality of INGO/government relations as being more complicated, calling them a ‘co-dependency between unequals’. The second characterisation is what Lang terms ‘counter public’, in which INGOs are portrayed as catalysts for civil society, organising concerned citizens and providing an alternative voice to that of governments. Again, however, INGOs frequently do not provide much of an alternative perspective to that of governments.

For INGOs, the arenas are large and the stakes are high. As INGOs work in many countries, they are frequently federations or alliances of national organisations, and have their constituencies and donors from the global north. They are complex and highly strategic organisations in an extremely competitive environment. INGOs, such as those examined in this book, are multi-national and multifaceted organisations that both work on the ground running programmes, operating within their own national contexts and political structures, as well as advocate internationally in issue based transnational networks.

Changing political landscapes

During the 2000s, and despite eminent figures such as Kofi Annan claiming that the 21st century is ‘the era of NGOs’, the development NGO sector has come under increasing critical scrutiny. INGOs in particular have been influenced by global paradigms such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the measurement of development impacts, leading development organisations to reconsider and realign their goals to conform to broadly agreed programmes of action with a view to measurable outcomes. Many (such as Ferguson, 1994; Banks and Hulme, 2012; Choudry and Kapoor, 2013) have argued that this has depoliticised development, leading NGOs to become more engaged with delivering development programmes than with becoming agents of social change. An alternative perspective would argue that the INGOs have not been depoliticised per se, but have become engaged in different political paradigms, driven by other international development actors – which itself is a type of politics. A further challenge has arisen from the increased importance of the relationship between INGOs and the media, as there is increasing competition for public attention in relation not only to INGO fundraising, but also in how INGOs brand themselves, thus differentiating themselves from other INGOs (see Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Fenton 2008; Chouliaraki, 2012; Boltanski, 1999). And yet, there are still expectations that INGOs will spearhead...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  The Current State of INGOs
• 2  Political Spaces of INGOs
• 3  Cosmopolitan Spaces of INGOs
• 4  INGO Spaces of Engagement
• 5  INGO Organisation and Strategy
• 6  Networked Spaces of INGOs
• 7  Digital Spaces of INGOs
• 8  Conclusions
• Notes
• References
• Index