Social pioneers come of age - development of Non Govermental Organizations around the world - Statistical Data Included

Non-governmental organizations took centre stage in Seattle, but many have been spinning their web for several decades around the globe

Everywhere we turn there is good economic news. The massive growth of the global economy, fed by revolutionary changes in communication, promises unending prosperity that will, it is said, benefit even the poorest people on earth.

Protestors in Seattle who questioned the role of the WorldTrade Organization in supporting the present contours of globalization were widely portrayed in the media as new activists focusing on small issues such as the fate of the sea turtle. Yet the "Battle in Seattle" was but one tip of a mountain range of non-governmental challenges to politics as usual.

This worldwide explosion of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) actually began about thirty years ago, in response to the intertwined crises posed by poverty, population, and environmental degradation. Population growth can lead to deforestation or soil exhaustion, and thus increased poverty. The latter fuels migration to giant urban centres, or to more remote areas where the cycle begins anew. Moreover, environmental destruction by multinational corporations can further poverty by disrupting the traditional co-existence between people and the land.

NGOs, including the grassroots movements featured in this issue, have focused on these priorities for some time and have pushed governments to do so as well. The recent surge of activism testifies not to a change in purpose, but a growing realization that certain shared problems are partly caused by the common root of globalization. Targets like the agencies of international trade and finance are hardly new, though their current prominence reflects an era of much greater NGO co-ordination in the face of rapid economic change and unresponsive national governments.

The real question, however, is whether a growing global civil society, even in concert with willing governments, could begin to match the magnitude of the global challenge. No one alive today can answer this question, but an overview of what is happening may provide some clues.

International NGOs (INGOs) generally focus on development, relief, refugees, human rights or democratization. As of 1995 there were an estimated 20,000 INGOs with branches in at least three countries, plus 5,000 or more northern NGOs working internationally that are based in only one developed country.

Although INGOs have quadrupled in number since 1970, their contribution to relief and development pales beside the demands posed by increasing numbers of complex human emergencies. In 1995 only about $10 billion of $60 billion in overseas development assistance flowed through NGOs.

Yet these organizations have become prominent global players. They lobby official international organizations with increasing frequency and success, and have become important actors in agenda-setting meetings. From the Montreal Protocol regulating ozone emissions in 1987 to the 1994 Cairo Population Conference and the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference, they have accompanied their partner organizations in keeping such issues as human rights, women and environmental deterioration on the front burner.

The most dramatic chapter in the NGO story has been their proliferation in the global "South." Beginning about thirty years ago, increasing numbers of well-educated young people took advantage of foreign financial assistance to create NGOs. Although a few organizers created local "counterparts" to INGOs, most others used funds from several donors to define their own programmes. Several of these organizations provided protection from political repression.

Almost everywhere, this process depended on partnerships between two types of NGOs: grassroots organizations (GROs) and grassroots support organizations (GRSOs). Grassroots organizations have local members and help develop their own communities. Although some, such as women's groups, are new, others evolved from traditional community organizations such as rotating credit societies that have existed for thousands of years. There are now probably several hundred thousand GROs in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Faced with the deterioration of their environment and the increasing impoverishment of the 1980s, GROs and local individuals began organizing networks and movements among themselves. A network of lane committees in Oranji, Pakistan, for example, has provided clean water and sewage for 100,000 people. An estimated 50,000 largely professional GRSOs, meanwhile, help channel international support to these lower levels. In Bolivia, for example, a set of GRSOs focuses on propagating solar greenhouse technologies.

Other organizations work on corruption or human rights. An anti-corruption centre in Maharashtra, supported by a GRO network, succeeded in getting forty local revenue officers dismissed and has received requests for help from other localities intent on pursuing complaints through the courts. This type of political activism sometimes reaches the global level, as the Philippine indigenous leader Victoria Tauli-Corpuz explains (p. 24-25).

The retreat of authoritarian rule, meanwhile, has led to the creation of new types of NGOs concentrating on broader democratic processes such as public deliberation, voter registration and election monitoring, and even to the election of some grassroots leaders to local office. Many NGOs also advocate major political changes, though protests are not always at the street-level. A Brazilian NGO, for instance, provides citizens with a toll-free "green phone" to report environmental crises. Nor is there a clear distinction between advocacy and collaboration. One network in India, the Integrated Child Development Service, campaigns for political change through both NGOs and "chapters" in federal and state governments.

Stronger civil societies are also emerging in Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Only a minority of the estimated 75,000 "Eastern" NGOs were previously tied to Communist regimes, with the rest created or resurrected by an inflow of foreign assistance after 1989. Because these NGOs emerged with the collapse of governmental social services, they are more likely to be service providers than tied to members at the local level. Indeed, some forms of local organization such as co-operatives acquired a bad name under Communism.

Among the more innovative NGOs in this region are those organized in response to the emerging environmental crises of the 1980s. Originating as quasi-opposition movements, they have continued to challenge governments. Microcredit, initiated in the developing world, has also gained at least a toehold in the transitional countries.

The non-profit sector has also grown in the developed countries. In the United States, for example, 70 per cent of non-profit organizations are less than thirty years old. Even more recent are the protest and other social change movements fuelled by the growth of the Internet, such as those described by student activist Andrea del Moral (p. 22-23).

If nothing else, this overview highlights the difficulties in mapping a complex, vast and dynamic global civil society still in its infancy. On a global level, some business networks focus on sustainable development, and national NGOs as diverse as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Working Capital in New Hampshire (U.S.) promote businesses. Thus, the non-governmental challenge to mindless globalization is not opposition to profits, but rather support for broader ownership and competition. Most importantly, true civil society is more than a collection of NGOs, but rather a measure of how citizens associate, talk and act together in public life.

Much has been made of the Internet and how it may contribute to a stronger civil society. Yet though the Internet has helped create global coalitions on hundreds of issues, billions of people still have no access to a telephone, much less to a computer. Even if people gain access, they may be more likely to see an advert for a soft drink than learn how to purify water. Ultimately, the contribution of the Internet to the governance of globalization will depend on the human ties that are established off-line.

* Programme officer at the Kettering Foundation, an institute based in Dayton, Ohio, devoted to research into improving the workings of democracy. Her most recent book is Non governments: NGOs and the Political Development of the Third World (Kumarian Press, 1997).

COPYRIGHT 2000 UNESCO
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group