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Ref : |
000000108 |
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Date : |
2001-01-26 |
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Langue : |
English |
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NGO |
| NGO |
In the 1980s, when journalists spoke of an NGO (a Non Governmental organisation), it was to describe the humanitarian aid organisations of rich countries intervening to save civil populations from poor countries, the victims of wars or natural disasters. It was the era of the charity business and a world that was still bipolar.
The 1990s saw the multiplication of large United Nations conferences discussing the most glaring global issues. Thus in Rio 1992 on the environment or in Beijing 1995 on the situation of women, several thousands of NGOs the world over were given accreditation to participate in debates, without counting the thousands of other NGOs taking part in parallel forums. It was the era of dialogue, but also of the instrumentalisation of the NGO by states and international organisations.
Since the Cologne demonstration in June 1999 in favour of cancelling the debt in the poorest countries and that of Seattle in November 1999 against the WTO and commercialisation of the planet, when the media (notably the financial papers) spoke of NGOs, it was to describe the throng of organisations that protested in the four corners of the planet against what it is now convenient to call economic globalisation, materialised in international summits (Bangkok, Washington, Okinawa, Prague, Nice, Davos). This is the era of competition and the apparent triumph of the liberal economy.
At the beginning of the 21st century, NGOs undeniably became the political players in international relations, notably thanks to the publicity they received. So, it is indispensable to ask what real NGOs are. This is a determining factor, since it will condition their inventory and their typology, and therefore in some way, the evaluation of their political and symbolic force.
According to the Union of international associations, an NGO is an association comprised of representatives belonging to several countries and which is international in its functioning, make-up and the direction and sources of its finance. It is non-profitable and has a consultative status with an intergovernmental organisation. The Union of international associations estimates that they cover a hundred sectors of activity, grouped into ten sections: political, religious practice, recreational activities, education, living conditions, social problems, industry and commerce, transport, employment, society, medicine, fundamental sciences. Around 30,000 NGOs in the world correspond to this definition.
Nevertheless, since the international campaigns and mobilisations against debt or the WTO, some associations in developing countries who in fact have no international vocation in their social objective and cannot therefore be qualified as NGOs, have been able to associate with these campaigns and thus to be considered as NGOs or at least as affiliated to the NGO collectives. Moreover certain authors estimate 110,000 NGOs in Brazil and 100,000 in India; which would lead to the belief that there are hundreds of thousands of NGOs in the world.
In fact, in Western countries, you only speak of NGOs for associations intervening on behalf of developing countries. Indeed, a structure defending battered children or public education in France will be considered a simple association, and not as an NGO. On the other hand, in a developing country such a structure will be called an NGO.
The only solution to overcome this semantic problem would be to reject the definition of the Union of international associations and to consider as NGOs associations working to promote human development, the fight against poverty and inequalities, sustainable development and peace. On the one hand this evolution would run alongside the evolution of the current world, since a small Angolese or Philippine association concerned with aids in its region, for example can provide answers for others if it forms a part of an international network, via the Internet, North-South or South-South cooperation. On the other hand, this solution would allow the wheat to be sorted from the chaff, since behind the word ‘NGO’, sometimes hide associations promoting industrial and commercial interests, sects or non-democratic states.
The expression ‘Non-governmental organisation’ often raises a smile for NGOs from all over the world are often, in part, financed by public or governmental funds. However, this is completely normal since a democratic state must promote the existence of counter-powers at its heart. Besides, this would be to forget that the NGOs are at the origin of the creation of certain United Nations organisations, such as the International Labor organisation (ILO) or the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Moreover, according to the domain, NGOs have objective allies in certain states. Thus, at the conferences on the fight against gas emissions and the greenhouse effect, the European Union and Japan not being oil or gas producers and having high population densities are favourable to the NGOs, in contrast to the United States, Nigeria or Russia. To cite just another example, the Canadian state, alongside NGOs which had received the Nobel prize, played a large role in the adoption of the Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel mines.
Taking into account the publicity surrounding the NGOs, it is clear that the expression has taken on a very strong symbolic connotation and that as such it exerts real political effects on public opinions, governments, multinationals and international organisations. For all that, for new political actors and taking into account their number, NGOs are not necessarily united and can have diverging interests. Besides this, their influence is largely exaggerated for in Seattle, the symbolic point of departure of the globalisation of NGOs, WTO negotiations failed due to disagreements between Europe and the United States and from the refusal of developing countries to follow the negotiations; the NGOs’ demonstrations only exacerbated these tensions.
It is still the case that the growing power of the NGOs remains and will remain the fact that they increasingly make up a network and they incarnate the realisation, despite enormous cultural differences and differences in living conditions, by the inhabitants of planet Earth that they all have vital interests in common.
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