NGOs at the G-20: A Sign of How Things Have Changed
By Sherine Jayawickrama
The swarm of advocates and activists around meetings of the G-20 and G-8 have now become the norm. As I follow the engagement of NGOs in Pittsburgh this week, however, I am struck by how much NGOs have evolved in the past decade.
The Oxfams of the NGO world have long been comfortable operating in the policy arena, but issues relating to global trade regimes and the international financial system are (somewhat scary) new ground to many other NGOs who, when it came to the policy arena, tended to stick to issues that were directly related to their field programs.
In the past decade, there has been a significant awakening (among NGOs) to the policy and institutional underpinnings of persistent poverty. While they may not say it quite so bluntly, many NGOs now acknowledge that the best projects may not add up to much if policies and institutions remain the same. So, NGOs are playing new roles, acquiring new skills and creating new collaborative mechanisms to influence policy and mobilize constituencies for change.
Proof of this evolution can be seen on their website and in the numbers of NGO staff who have descended on Pittsburgh. Scan this handful of sites - InterAction (the major coalition of U.S.-based NGOs), Save the Children, ActionAid, Oxfam, World Vision and Bread for the World - for a taste of the arguments made and recommendations proposed.
Personally, I find the increasingly active engagement of NGOs in the policy arena a very encouraging trend. It adds several layers of complexity to NGOs, though. They now combine the roles of reliable project implementer, grantors to and capacity builders of local civil society groups, and contractors to western governments with the identities of advocates for the poor and activists campaigning for social change. This is a lot to balance and manage - and the need for focus and accountability becomes imperative.
Sherine, thank you for this posting.
Increasingly, INGOs and private foundations are realizing that project interventions alone will not move us far toward social justice nor overcome global poverty. A full analysis of the problems we are tackling leads us to realize that effective solutions require both project interventions and advocacy aimed at changing policy environments to be more responsive to the poor and marginalized. Depending on the source of the policy-related problem, this advocacy might be aimed at a local or national government, or a donor government like the United States.
That is, INGOs’ increasing engagement in the policy arena is not another separate area of activity, but rather is evidence that we are analyzing problems more fully and responding to them more holistically. Yes, more complex. Complex development problems require complex solutions.
I think you have identified some important trends, Sherine.
I think many INGOs are recognizing that many problems of poverty and marginalization cannot be solved at just the local or just the national or just the international level — but rather require change at multiple levels. Improving the price paid to Mali cotton farmers invovles enhancing the capacities of farmer coops AND imrpoving national institutions for buying and selling cotton AND reducing the impact of US cotton subsidies on international cotton prices — among other factors. Building INGO capacities to conceive and implement campaigns that influence national and itnernational institutions as well as grassroots activities will be increasingly critical to making a long-term difference.
We are also beginning to recognize the interactions of apparently different problems that have historically generated separate INGO traditions. It is increasingly obvious, for example, that the problems of impoverishment, political oppression and environmental degradation all tend to have the most devastating impacts on excluded and marginalized groups. Emerging development ideas are beginning to connect these problems and their solutions. The concept of “sustainable right-based development,” for example, potentially integrates the concerns of poverty alleviation, human rights and environmental NGOs to generate initiatives that combine economic, political and ecological perspectives.
But combining different problem-solving traditions and applying them across levels does indeed make the development and implementation of change strategies very complex and challenging. Some of this complexity can be managed by increasing the capacities of particular INGOs. But I think we will also see the rise of more coalitions and interorganizational alliances that bring together the expertise and the legitimacy needed to intervene effectively across levels and problems. So INGOs may need to grow in both their internal capacities and their abilities to create and operate coalitions that link across problems and levels.
[...] enjoyed reading Sherine Jayawickrama’s post on NGO advocacy at the G-20 a couple of weeks ago. Her comments point to something that Oxfam America calls “smart [...]
[...] couple of months ago, I blogged about how much NGOs have changed in terms of their readiness and their capacity to engage …. In that post, I cited NGO advocacy and campaigning at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh as an [...]