2. Participation and Representation

What is an "NGO"?

Non-governmental organizations, as a category of organizational entities, were created at the founding of the United Nations. The category was invented in order to describe a specific relationship between civil organizations and the intergovernmental process, and since then the term has been loosely applied to any organization that is not public. Outside of the United Nations process, these NGOs might be better called civil society organizations (CSOs).²⁵ In fact, there is a host of names and acronyms that have been developed to separate out different types of NGOs, who often have competing interests.

The term NGO is privative: it defines groups by what they are not, rather than what they are.²⁶ As a set of entities, civil society might be considered as "a sphere of social interaction between the household and the state", characterized by "community co-operation, structures of voluntary association and networks of public communication".²⁷ Civil society is therefore separate from the household, the state and political parties, but a strong civil society depends on a strong state, even though it is perceived as being, and in many cases is, in opposition. Civil society can be a crucial contributor to democratization because it enables and widens participation, protecting citizens against the abuse of state power and guaranteeing the political accountability of the state.

As the pace of globalization has accelerated, issues such as population and environment have become more apparent and turned into global policy issues. Other issues, such as women's rights or farmers' rights, have also received increasing prominence. CSOs have marked out these new issues for global attention, and they can use intergovernmental fora, such as the UN, as entry points for political change. They have been able formally to get issues onto the international agenda. The most visible expression of their role has been in the growth of NGO participation in international and UN conferences.

CSOs are also playing a growing role in finding on-the-ground solutions to these issues. With the end of the Cold War, international development aid is increasingly bypassing national governments and going directly to local, national and international CSOs. In 1992 the OECD estimated that 13 per cent of all development assistance (US$ 8.3 billion) was channeled through CSOs, and this amount is increasing. The amount of US overseas development assistance passing through private groups doubled from 1993 to 1996. Whereas governments previously funded development (and state stability) first and human rights (and relief/emergency aid) second, it now tends to be human rights (that now includes privatization) first and development later.²⁸
 

Who do NGOs Represent?

NGOs have become important actors in the national and international community over the past 50 years. The broadness of the term, however, carries with it some complications. As is frequently pointed out, it can be used quite loosely to describe any association of people, from youth groups to the Mafia, from the Roman Catholic Church to Greenpeace, from the International Chamber of Commerce to an agricultural co-operative in rural India. It includes organizations that are operational, providing services such as Oxfam, and those that are more advocacy-based, such as Third World Network. The term makes no distinction between broad membership-based organizations and small ones lead by inspired individuals. It does not distinguish between associations of citizens and organizations of capital, or between NGOs that work in co-operation with the state or those that seek to overthrow it. It fails to distinguish between the "big eight" that control half the US$ 8 billion market for NGOs²⁹ and the tens of thousands that struggle for funding.

The alphabet soup

The difficulty of distinguishing between NGOs has generated a lexicon of descriptors, reflecting some of the debates that characterize attempts to delimit this community (see box 2). It also creates confusions. CONGO, for example, refers not to the country or even to Africa, but to the Congress of NGOs, a group of ECOSOC-accredited NGOs. The box captures some of the acronyms current in a fast-changing NGO-speak.

Various attempts have been made within the CSO community to replace the term NGO with something more positive than privative, and which makes some distinctions between NGO groups, particularly on the grounds of money and power. The 1995 Mohonk Declaration made a distinction between organizations created for the public good (that are included in its definition of a CSO) and those created for the pursuit of profit (that it excludes).³⁰ Among grassroots groups, the term CBOs, for Community-Based Organizations, is popular. The Council for a Strong United Nations suggests the positive Dutch term maatschappelijke organisaties,³¹ a term suggesting community or friendly or mutual society. John Hontelez of Friends of the Earth-International proposed ECOs: Ecological Citizens Organizations. Jan Wiklund of Friends of the Earth Sweden suggested folksrörelser, based on the traditional Swedish concept of a people's movement, which gets around complexities of ECOs, which contains three limiting concepts — citizens, organizations, and ecology. Friends of the Earth has noted that acronym ECO could also stand for Environmental Community Organizations, and that it is a legitimate answer to a complex issue: "We were looking for a better description of what are nowadays referred to as NGOs, predominantly in international fora, but also increasingly on the national level".³²

NGOs in Global Governance: The UN Experience

Accordingly, our respective Governments...have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an organization to be known as the United Nations.

UN Charter

The opening words of the UN Charter reads: "We, the peoples...." The earlier attempt to establish a global organization, the League of Nations, began with the less interesting phrase, "The High Contracting Parties..." Despite its retrospective appeal, the phrase, "We, the peoples", was added as an afterthought — the people are rarely mentioned in the remainder of the document.³³

The UN Charter refers to people again in Article 71, providing for the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to arrange consultation with NGOs concerned with matters within the competence of ECOSOC. Fifty years after the formation of the UN, there are now just over a thousand NGOs with consultative status. The Charter, however, gave NGOs no means of consultation with the General Assembly, the Security Council or the International Court of Justice, even though NGOs have long demonstrated an interest in issues such as peace and security.

In the 1990s, this picture is changing dramatically. NGOs are now involved at levels previously unimaginable within the UN process, from the delivery of humanitarian relief to policy advice on global environmental management. International conferences have catalyzed a spectacular growth in sheer numbers of organizations interested in playing a part in global decision-making. Apart from the UN system, civil society organizations (CSOs) have proliferated at national and local levels, and new opportunities have emerged for their involvement in the international arena. There are several reasons why NGOs have been increasingly active at the UN. First, the NGO Forum at international UN conferences has become an active site of NGO organizing. Second, the UN needs support from civil society and has welcomed NGO participation at a higher level than before.
 

The State of Civil Society in Global Governance

Chorus or cacophony of voices?

Any assumptions that global civil society is homogenous will not withstand even the most superficial scrutiny. Like any community of people, its members and organizations vary enormously in terms of age, experience, gender, access to various resources, and basic interests. There are very little data or basic descriptive material on international civil society.³⁴ One attempt has been made to establish data about the international NGO community in relation to the UN system. In 1994, the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway commissioned a study of international civil society access to global governance. This study surveyed 500 NGOs that go to, or wish to go to, international UN conferences, over the period from late 1994 to March 1995, and was published as a report, Democratic Global Governance: Report of the 1995 Benchmark Survey of NGOs.³⁵ The Benchmark Survey provides the best snapshot of the demographics and perceptions of the international NGO community that exists at this time.

The size of the international NGO community changes daily. A full accounting would include those that are formally connected to the process of intergovernmental debate, principally those with consultative status with ECOSOC or other UN Agencies. But it would also have to include a plethora of other NGOs that are unaccredited and find a way to come to these meetings; and unaccredited and accredited NGOs that do not come to these meetings but feel they have an international mandate. Accredited international NGOs that do not come to intergovernmental meetings include, for example, the Union of International Associations, based in Brussels: "over many years our own position is basically now one of avoiding any attempt at being heard at such [international intergovernmental] events".³⁶

In other cases, particularly for poorer grassroots organizations, non-attendance at international events may be caused by lack of funds, not lack of interest. An Indian secretary of a grassroots organization, with 9 years experience with his NGO, got the survey from his donor organization, an ECOSOC-accredited large international NGO based in the UK. He commented: "Ours is a grassroots organization. We would love to attend official inter-governmental conferences though we did not have the opportunity so far". Later, he comments: "Money is the major constraint for small and grassroots NGOs, though they are very active". This perspective recurs frequently in other responses from grassroots NGOs. Many of their most talented members leave to seek higher paying jobs in other sectors.

Despite the appearance of tremendous instability in the NGO population as a whole, it was interesting that a third of respondents of the Benchmark Survey were in their forties. Fifteen per cent had international experience from before the 1980s. A quarter had international experience from 1980-1989, and another quarter from 1990-1993. This was true of respondents from both developed and developing countries.³⁷

UN global conferences

Some women's groups have been involved with the UN system for decades. At the first World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975, 2,000 government delegates and 6,000 NGO delegates attended. Five years later, 8,000 NGO delegates went to the 1980 women's conference in Copenhagen. In Nairobi in 1990 there were 11,000. In 1995, Beijing hosted the Fourth World Conference on Women; 40,000 NGO delegates attended, along with 6,000 governmental delegates. Over the course of four conferences in 20 years, the number of government delegates to the international conferences had merely tripled while the number of NGOs had increased more than sixfold (see figure 1).

Since 1990, the UN has hosted a number of international conferences, covering issues such as environment, human health and urban development. Each conference adopted and applied rules for NGO participation. Within the UN system this has caused some confusion. NGO consultations are allowed under UN Resolution 1296, which governs ECOSOC-mandated meetings. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development, for example, defines nine major groups of NGOs, which include youth, women, industry, labour, and environment groups, and each has representative status at the CSD. This resolution does not apply to conferences called by the General Assembly, hence the variety of accreditation programmes for the global conferences. To compound the problem, arrangements for accreditation are different in other UN-affiliated bodies as well, such as the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization.

Despite the complexity of rules for access, the CSOs have high hopes for their role in the process. (Otherwise, why would 40,000 women go to Beijing?) After decades of antipathy towards the UN, there is a renewed interest from CSOs to get involved. Human rights groups, for example, have asserted themselves in the UN bodies, most conspicuously at the 1993 UN Conference on Human Rights in Geneva.

New UN needs from CSOs

In its current form, the UN is unable to carry out all the tasks given to it by an unstable world. Urbanization, migration, poverty, displacement, the breakdown of the family and ethnic identity, civil war: these are now endemic in many parts of the world.³⁸ Economic and communications globalization can bring about major and enduring social fractures. In addition, the relative authority of the UN has declined dramatically in relation to finance and trade institutions, such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, and these institutions often do not collaborate closely with the UN. The UN's financial crisis has exacerbated its problems. The UN is thus in need of allies both to perform its operational tasks and to increase its legitimacy and status in the new global power-play. CSOs and NGOs can be those allies.

In this context, it is not surprising to see new relationships being brokered by the UN and international civil society that can give the UN more moral authority and political relevance. Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali acknowledged this relationship in ways that many received with astonishment because they are so new:

Non-governmental organizations are a basic form of popular representation in the present-day world. Their participation in international relations is, in a way, a guarantee of the political legitimacy of those international organizations. It is therefore not surprising that in a short space of time we have witnessed the emergence of many new non-governmental organizations.³⁹

This collaboration, however, is changing the roles that organizations and governments play, such as in the area of humanitarian relief. National and international humanitarian relief passes with increasing frequency through NGOs. UN officials acknowledge that they cannot supply relief and undertake peace-keeping operations without help from outside groups. This is creating a set of complex issues for all parties: What are the implications of this new relationship between the UN and service-providing or "operational" NGOs? Are we witnessing a takeover of national social service functions by NGOs in countries where the state has collapsed? What are the implications for reconstruction, for democracy and for national sovereignty?⁴⁰

At the same time that the UN is welcoming NGO access, some global CSOs increasingly see the relevance of their work in relation to the new international economic agenda and its institutions. In many places the political decisions of the state are strongly influenced by economic actors, be they transnational corporations or international financial institutions — and in these areas, CSOs have little access and very few procedures for participation and influence.

While the UN is the international governance institution where NGOs have the longest history, the relationship has only blossomed in recent years. Although the arrangements are still in flux, there is access with active participation and representation. This history, particularly the recent relationships between the UN and NGOs, holds lessons for broader questions of how best to integrate NGOs and the interests they represent into global governance.

25 There is debate about the use of descriptive terms for civil society that this paper does not try to resolve. The term global CSO is used loosely to describe civil society organizations that are interested in issues of global governance, development and democracy. The term NGO is used here mainly in reference to the UN.

26 Stephen Toulmin, The Role of Transnational NGOs in Global Affairs, paper presented to the conference on The UN and Japan in an Age of Globalization, Peace Research Institute, International Christian University, Tokyo, November 1994, p. 8.

27 Michael Bratton, Civil Society and Political Transition in Africa, Institute for Development Research, Working Paper No. 10, Boston, 1994.

28 Antonio Donini, "Bureaucracy and the free spirits: Stagnation and innovation in the relationship between the UN and NGOs", in Thomas Weiss and Leon Gordenker (eds.), Non-governmental Organizations, the United Nations and Global Governance, a special issue of Third World Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 3, 1995, pp. 421-439. These papers were originally produced for a conference of the same title held at York University, 10-11 April, 1995; they have also been published, under the same title, by Lynne Reinner Publishers, Boulder, 1996.

29 The "big eight" are: CARE; World Vision International; Oxfam; MSF (Médecins Sans Frontičres); Save the Children Federation; CIDSE (Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité), the Coalition of Catholic NGOs; APDOVE (Association of Protestant Development Organizations in Europe); and Eurostep (Secular European NGOs).

30 UN, Report of the Seminar on the Involvement of Civil Society in the Follow-up to the Social Summit, Mohonk Mountain House, New York, 22-23 June 1995.

31 UN General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Forty-ninth session, Substantive Session of 1994, Agenda item 10, Report of the Economic and Social Council, (report of the open-ended working group on the review of arrangements for consultations with non-governmental organizations), A/49/215 E/1994/99, 5 July 1994.

32 Jan Wiklund and John Hontelez, "Of NGOs, ECOs and SMOs", LINK 71, March/April 1996, p. 21.

33 Erskine Childers with Brian Urquart, Renewing the United Nations System, Dag Hammerskjold Foundation, Sweden, 1994, p. 171.

34 This is one of the major concluding comments of Leon Gordenker and Thomas Weiss in their article entitled "NGO Participation in the international policy process", the summary essay in Thomas Weiss and Leon Gordenker (eds.), Non-governmental Organizations, the United Nations and Global Governance, op. cit., pp. 543-555.

35 Some 350 responses came from NGOs at the NGO Forum at the World Summit for Social Development, Copenhagen, March 1995. See Benchmark Environmental Consulting and Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Global Governance: Report of the 1995 Benchmark Survey of NGOs, Oslo, Norway, September 1996, referred to in this paper as the Benchmark Survey.

36 Anthony Judge, Assistant Secretary General, Union of International Associations, letter to Riva Krut/Benchmark Consulting, 25 October 1994.

37 In the Benchmark Survey, demographics of the respondents were sorted against six indicators, three for the individual and three for the individual's organization. These six independent variables were based on (1) gender, (2) age, (3) years of personal experience in the international arena (year of first international conference), (4) location of the organization (developed country, developing country, or country in transition), (5) organizational accreditation status (consultative status with ECOSOC, accredited to another UN system agency but not ECOSOC, not accredited), and (6) organizational size (see Benchmark Survey, pp. 7-10).
Within the male and female respondent population, the age range was similar. 40 per cent were over 50 years of age, 33 per cent in their 40s, 25 per cent in their 30s, 12-13 per cent under 30. The ages of respondents did not differ much between Northern and Southern countries, although there were more older respondents (over 60) within the Northern than the Southern respondent population.
Respondents from developed and developing countries both had a large degree of recent experience in participation at international conferences, though respondents with more prolonged experience (active since before 1980) come predominantly from Northern countries. Respondents represented organizations of all sizes, from those smaller than 99 members to those over 10,000 members. A high proportion (43 per cent) of the non-accredited NGOs had large memberships (over 10,000 members).
Respondents came from some 100 countries and all major regions. Using the UN geographic definitions, of the 440 respondents to this question, 54 per cent were from developed countries, 43 per cent from the developing countries, and 2 per cent from countries in transition. Survey data provide a sufficiently large sample and geographic distribution from developed and developing country NGOs to analyse possible differences between their political behaviour and perceptions.
Thirty-eight per cent of respondents had consultative status with ECOSOC or another UN agency, and 62 per cent were non-accredited NGOs. Of those surveyed who work for accredited organizations, just under two thirds have consultative status with ECOSOC, and just over one third with other UN agencies. The actual proportions of accredited to non-accredited NGOs operating in the international arena is unknown. Survey data provide a sufficiently large sample and geographic distribution from both populations to analyse the differences in political behaviour and perceptions between accredited and non-accredited NGOs. Data also make clear the new demographics of civil society active at international UN conferences, and the challenge to the hegemonic position of ECOSOC NGOs there.

38 UNRISD, States of Disarray, op. cit.

39 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, speech to the DPI Annual Conference, United Nations, New York, September 1995.

40 Antonio Donini, statement at the conference on The Fate of Democracy in an Age of Globalization, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 15 March 1996; see also "New tasks for the aiders", The Economist, 22 June 1996, p. 44.