International NGO Engagement, Advocacy, Activism: The Faces and Spaces of Change

191 Pages·2015·1.65 MB·English

by  Helen Yanacopulos (auth.)

Non-Governmental Public Action
Series Editor: Jude Howell , Professor of International Development, London
School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Non-governmental public action (NGPA) by and for disadvantaged and margin-
alized people has become increasingly significant over the past two decades.
This book series is designed to make a fresh and original contribution to the
understanding of NGPA. It presents the findings of innovative and policy-rele-
vant research carried out by established and new scholars working in collabora-
tion with researchers across the world. The series is international in scope and
includes both theoretical and empirical work.
The series marks a departure from previous studies in this area in at least two
important respects. First, it goes beyond a singular focus on developmental
NGOs or the voluntary sector to include a range of non-governmental public
actors such as advocacy networks, campaigns and coalitions, trades unions, peace
groups, rights-based groups, cooperatives and social movements. Second, the
series is innovative in stimulating a new approach to international comparative
research that promotes comparison of the so-called developing world with the
so-called developed world, thereby querying the conceptual utility and relevance
of categories such as North and South.
Titles include :
Marian Burchardt
FAITH IN THE TIME OF AIDS
Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein
THE POLITICS OF AUTONOMY IN LATIN AMERICA
The Art of Organising Hope
Chris van der Borgh and Crolijn Terwindt
NGOS UNDER PRESSURE IN PARTIAL DEMOCRACIES
Barbara Bompani and Maria Frahm-Arp (editors)
DEVELOPMENT AND POLITICS FROM BELOW
Exploring Religious Spaces in the African State
Brian Doherty and Timothy Doyle
ENVIRONMENTALISM, RESISTANCE AND SOLIDARITY
The Politics of Friends of the Earth International
Dena Freeman (e ditor)
PENTECOSTALISM AND DEVELOPMENT
Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa
David Herbert
CREATING COMMUNITY COHESION
Religion, Media and Multiculturalism
Jude Howell and Jeremy Lind
COUNTER-TERRORISM, AID AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Before and After the War on Terror
Jude Howell ( editor)
GLOBAL MATTERS FOR NON-GOVERNMENTAL PUBLIC ACTION
Jude Howell (editor)
NON-GOVERNMENTAL PUBLIC ACTION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Jenny Pearce ( editor )
PARTICIPATION AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Tim Pringle and Simon Clarke
THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSITION
Trade Unions in Russia, China and Vietnam
Andrew Wells-Dang
CIVIL SOCIETY NETWORKS IN CHINA AND VIETNAM
Informal Pathbreakers in Health and the Environment
Thomas Yarrow
DEVELOPMENT BEYOND POLITICS
Aid, Activism and NGOs in Ghana
N on-Governmental Public Action Series
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International NGO
Engagement, Advocacy,
Activism
The Faces and Spaces of Change
Helen Yanacopulos
Senior Lecturer in International Politics and Development,
Open University, UK
© Helen Yanacopulos 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-0-230-28456-2
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yanacopulos, Helen.
International NGO Engagement, Advocacy, Activism: The Faces and Spaces
of Change / Helen Yanacopulos, Senior Lecturer in International Politics and
Development, Open University, UK.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Non-governmental organizations. 2. International cooperation. I. Title.
JZ4841.Y36 2015
341.2—dc23 2015026344
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements vi
List of Abbreviations v iii
1 The Current State of INGOs 1
2 Political Spaces of INGOs 21
3 Cosmopolitan Spaces of INGOs 35
4 INGO Spaces of Engagement 60
5 INGO Organisation and Strategy 86
6 Networked Spaces of INGOs 106
7 Digital Spaces of INGOs 132
8 Conclusions 154
Notes 1 59
References 1 63
Index 177
v
Preface and Acknowledgements
Watching the news footage of the Ethiopia famine in 1984 touched me
in a profound way. I had never seen that level of suffering on television
and, months later, the Live Aid concert filled me with hope and the
promise that we could change the world. Needless to say, many decades,
concerts, fundraisers and campaigns later, I now write more about the
limitations of such types of engagement than of their hope and promise.
And yet, the questions that continue to resonate for me are: How do we
move beyond such events, such sporadic spikes in public consciousness,
to engender the changes in vast global inequalities and poverty that are
needed to make a better world? What can we do to help?
Through having researched and taught at the interface of International
Politics and Development Studies for almost two decades, as well as
having worked in the International Non-Government Organisation
(INGO) sector, I see the role of INGOs as paramount to the ways many
forms of development occur. I am a long-standing supporter of develop-
ment INGOs, having volunteered for them in the 1980s, studied and
worked for them in the 1990s, and researched and written about them
since the 2000s. Additionally, I have worked on numerous international
development-related projects for television during the past decade, a key
form of development engagement both within the UK and internation-
ally. Thus, I have been involved and have contributed to the ways that
international development is constructed, mediated and represented to
publics, and this has allowed me to understand the production processes
of television and other media as well as to understand the challenges of
relaying complex issues of poverty and inequality to large audiences.
Effectively relaying the complex issues of international development to
publics in an accessible and interesting way is the holy grail of those
working in the public-facing aspects of development. As a consequence
of having worked in the public engagement of development as an INGO
practitioner and an academic, my aims in writing this book have been
both analytical and, hopefully, constructive. Throughout the book I am
frequently critical of development INGOs, but my aim is not to tarnish
or dismiss them, but to help improve the work that they do, and the
potential work that they are capable of. Thus, my aim in this book is to
be a ‘critical friend’.
vi
Preface vii
The purpose of this book is to first look at the politics of INGO public
engagement in a holistic way, through their use of media, their values
and frames, their organisational structures, as well as their different
uses of space in that engagement. The second purpose of this book is
to instigate a debate around the ways that INGOs operate and how this
contributes to constructions, mediations and representations of devel-
opment. The final purpose of this book is to provide insights and reflec-
tions from key informants from within the INGO sector on the future
of the INGOs, given the somewhat dramatic changes in their operating
environments.
I would like to thank those who agreed to be interviewed for this book.
I appreciate the demands my interviewees have on their time, making
their generosity even more impressive. A number of colleagues have
commented on drafts of the book, including Kate Wright, Jim Whitman,
Wendy Wong, Melissa Butcher and Martin Scott. I thank them for their
extremely useful comments, although any errors within the book can
only be attributed to myself.
List of Abbreviations
BOAG British Overseas Aid Group
BOND British Overseas NGOs for Development
CSOs civil society organisations
INGO International Non-Governmental Organization
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
OCOs Online Campaigning Organizations
ODA Overseas Development Assistance
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
TAN Transnational Advocacy Network
UGC user-generated content
UIA Union of International Associations
WDM World Development Movement
WSF World Social Forum

viii
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 organi-
sations 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 dona-
tions 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 cancel-
lation 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
1