“NGO’s are generally private, voluntary organizations whose members are individuals or associations that come together to achieve a common purpose.”(Mingst 233) NGO’s are incredibly diverse. Some are local while others are national and transnational. NGO’s (Non-state actors) have played a huge role in enhancing human rights. They may not have the same power and resources as the state but they do influence a lot. Culture has often been used as a blanket to reject new laws and new ideas, thus making advances and change nearly impossible. Thanks to many NGO’s and social movements there has been some change around the world. They can also been seen as tools, available to all worldwide. They have played an extremely important role in …show more content…
Because of the use of technology, NGO’s have the opportunity to make more of an impact. Thanks to the Internet such as face-book or twitter, NGOs are able to broadcast their thoughts and criticism worldwide and gain more supporters towards their cause. It is a way of putting the violators to shame until they recognize their problems and have no other choice but to fix them. This includes public awareness campaigns. They try to engage others so that the advancement of Human Rights is ensured. For example, Invisible children are an NGO who made the famous KONY2012 video about human rights abuses in Uganda. It gained millions of supporters attracting 80 million views. It made the public aware of the corrupt human rights violations occurring in Uganda, thus achieving their purpose. (Mingst 363)
Public events such as marches and demonstrations are also apart of public media. Many NGO’s have advocated publicly and have also presented messages in ways that many can understand. Messages are made to suit local communities at times. According to a well-known anthropology professor from NYU, Sally Merry states that NGO’s such as Fiji trained Fijians to carry out street performances about domestic violence. Also the United States battered women’s movement has spent most of its time working on messages in music, film and media making the public aware of women’s rights violations/problems. (Merry 159)
Many NGO’s participate in this process. NGO’s such as Friends
Today, people seem blinded by their outsized enthusiasm for social media. According to them, a few clicks can change the whole world and accomplish wonders such as curing cancer. Good intentions become sufficient on their own, as if there were no need for medicine and scientific researches anymore. Well, this is pure nonsense. Facebook’s likes cannot save African children from starvation, the same way Twitter’s 140 characters will not put an end to acts of terrorism. This notion is not even remotely debatable. For instance, the project Kony2012 had a perfect starting point; inspiring video, moving story and most importantly worldwide spread. Unfortunately, the terrorist is still at liberty, and the lack of thorough investigations is to blame. Instead of focusing on the real problems of war and kidnapping of children, the so-called activist related to the obvious and spent all of his money and energy on his movie. Ultimately, due to the predominance of weak-ties, the project was not successful. More importantly, certain tools of social networks, especially “likes” and “retweets”, encourage people to feel good about themselves, when actually they should incite them to put their efforts and means in the cause they supposedly defend. As Gladwell wrote, “[current] activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that
They argue that, many thinkers within the NGO world were mostly concerned with how these organizations would “adapt to the end of the funding boom and correct its adverse effects” yet the one major issue about the scope for introducing collective self-regulation of the organizational structure and procedures had largely been ignored. Hence corporate governance for NGOs attempt to describe how this scope could help solve some problems faced by NGOs in poor countries. The article was written in the late 1998 so perhaps some of these problems have since been addressed.
NGOs, or non governmental organizations are hurting the fight to end poverty because the free services and goods they provide destroy small business and give the people in said areas the wrong mindset.
NGOs exist independent of the governments in which they are formed and these organizations can operate in several states, or globally, depending on their mission. NGOs are endowed with a soft power. Soft power is essentially the ability to obtain their objectives by attraction instead of compulsion. Hard power is naturally not in their arsenal, but with enough funds and very little oversight, NGO activity can be a liability to any state that doesn’t conform to the ideals that NGOs subscribe to. In the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, NGOs comprised of powerful citizens and officials are able to manipulate governmental applications of law creating negative outcomes for states like Israel who may or may not actually be acting outside of international law.
Society and Culture: The international NGO movement deeps its roots in that decade too, with the
The role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the world today has been increasingly questioned in recent literature as people begin to recognize the flaws of our development aid industry. The article “NGOs – A Tainted History” by Firoze Manji and Carl O’Coill explores the history of the rise of NGOs in Africa in order to demonstrate that their aim is to control and colonize Africa. Similarly, the novel Damned Nations: Geed, Guns, Armies & Aid by Samantha Nutt emphasizes the patriarchal tendencies of the aid industry and the influences of the political objectives of donor countries with descriptions of her first hand experiences on the field. With the articles “Challenging Indifference to Extreme Poverty: Considering Southern Perspectives on Global Citizenship and Change” by Barbara Heron and “International NGOs and the Aid Industry: constraints on international Solidarity” by Molly Kane in mind, I considered the effects and roles of NGOs as development organizations and instruments of change. Whereas the compilation of stories in Generation NGO, edited by Alisha Apale and Valerie Stam, recollected individual experiences of development workers, highlighting the moral and ethical challenges they faced day-to-day. Analysis of the abovementioned readings allowed me to conclude that NGOs are destructive in the developing countries in which they are situated because they impose colonialist influences, are biased towards their political supporters, are ineffective when faced
The inalienable human rights is something undeniably important in the view of everyone in the world, as nearly all government in the world have some sort of written law that ensure the rights of its citizens, like the Bill of Rights that protect the rights of Americans. Yet, when applying that significance in protecting human rights to people outside of their nation’s border depend considerably on the interests of the government, the interactions between the different nations, and the response concluded from the international institution, like the United Nations. As evident through the events in Rwanda, all members of the United Nation Security Council expressed their concerns and sadness about the human rights abuses in Rwanda by the Rwandan government, yet, when debating on the course of action, only a minority of the members actually supported humanitarian intervention in Rwanda. The violations on the principle of human rights in Rwanda were ignored as several council members cited the lack of funds and resources, along with infringement on sovereignty to be the reasons of nonintervention, despite the widespread support of these natural rights. Even if a proposal of intervention was passed, the movement to protect these human rights often failed due to the difficulty to come to a compromise when determine how the intervention would played out, as countries tried to pursue the policy in their own stance, as well as the crucial aspect of the response time. Although the
This section will discuss the main themes and present the findings which arose from the interview process and subsequent data analysis. This section will define and discuss GDP per capita based on the World Bank’s 2016 data. Sub-Saharan African countries that are currently worked in by chosen NGOs are then categorized as disadvantaged, mid-advantaged and advantaged based on GDP per capita. The GDP data of countries that NGOs are funding is important for this research because it contributes to my hypothesis, as I believed that more advantaged and mid-advantaged countries were chosen because of the high amount of resources in those countries. it seemed initially that funding and resources were what drove NGOs choices on which countries to
The debate of human rights extensions to non-governmental organizations has focused on the following key questions. The most basic questions are if and should corporations have any responsibilities at all? For further question they ask: whose human rights they should consider, which human rights obligations they should consider, and what are the resources to corporate resources should be devoted to human rights protection?
For the last two decades, human rights advocacy and the documentation of human rights abuse have embodied naming and shaming, a tactic that attempts to subvert notorious human rights abusers as well as coerce local state powers into acting and condemning the abuse taking place within their state or region. Initially, the tactic proved to be remarkably effective, resulting in a “global outrage” towards human rights abuse and an increased pressure on governments to challenge the abuse taking place within their borders or within their actual political institutions (Zakaria 2014). “Naming and shaming” produced an increased proliferation in global awareness and constructed real accountability. But, as we have observed with the increased
Women’s movements have long used their voices as a disruptive force to subvert and undermine the patriarchal institutions at work. It is through their art and writings that their voices are heard by those who are listening. However, only being heard by those who are willing to listen is not sufficient enough to permanently install their presence in the public arena. This is why artists have turned to the method of performance art to actively communicate their messages without being disregarded by the public. Performance art goes beyond the relative scope of visual art in that it is actually executed in front of an audience. It is an aggressive “form of consciousness raising” that not only breaches the confines of one’s personal space but
Non-Governmental Organizations, otherwise known as NGOs are non-profit and voluntary citizens’ group that is organized as an individual in your own local community, in national communities and in global communities. NGOs are task-oriented and are driven by people with a mutual interest for helping others. Non-Governmental Organizations perform a variation of service and philanthropic jobs such as bringing citizen concerns to governments, advocating and monitoring policies and encouraging political participation through provision of information. Some NGOs are organized around specific issues, such as human rights, environment or health (Definition of NGOs 2014). Some of the NGOs in certain countries are very helpful and NGOs in other countries hinder the improvement of the country. Although the Rwanda and Haiti have some apparent similarities, the difference between the NGOs in Rwanda and Haiti are pronounced.
Global inequalities are the things that society identifies as not equal and unfair. There are many inequalities in Kenya including income, life expectancy, education, water, gender and poverty inequalities. Although these are negative problems, opportunities in Kenya have shown improvement as people are starting to make a difference by sending more people to school and giving children education they need and also food and water for people to survive. Amnesty International and Unicef are all apart of the world trying to make a difference. Amnesty International is the world’s largest and most-respected human rights organisation. Amnesty campaigns against abuse of human rights around the world. The other NGO that I have chose is UNICEF who promotes the rights and wellbeing of every child in the world.
Many NGOs are associated with the use of international staff working in 'developing' countries, but there are many NGOs in both North and South who rely on local employees or volunteers.
Historically, the nature of the NGO sector to specialise – on an issue or on one community- has had positive and negative implications. The positive aspect of this specialisation is that it is easy to implement, monitor and report. The negative aspect of this specialisation is that it can create tension/spite between the affected party and the excluded party (Ruwanpura, 2007). This makes employing an approach that solely focuses on mobilising a challenging task to do. This magnifies the attraction towards a market-orientated approach. Paying for a service can be empowering. It derives a feel good, uplifting utility. Some projects in Bangladesh experienced success that justifies the utility derived from the ability to pay for something. Women felt empowered because they were making money; they no longer need to ask their husbands for money (Bebbington et al, 2007). This utility derived by women implies