Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International NGOs - Hardcover

Murdie, Amanda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080479197X ISBN 13: 9780804791977

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2014

Synopsis

When do international non-governmental organizations like Oxfam or Human Rights Watch actually work? Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International NGOs answers this question by offering the first comprehensive framework for understanding the effects of the international non-governmental organizations working in the area of human security. Unlike much of the previous literature on INGOs within international relations, its theoretical focus includes both advocacy INGOs―such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace, whose predominant mission is getting a targeted actor to adopt a policy or behavior in line with the position of the INGO―and service INGOs―such as CARE or Oxfam, which focus mainly on goods provision.

The book rigorously and logically assesses how INGOs with heterogeneous underlying motivations interact with those other actors that are critical for advocacy and service provision. This theoretical framework is tested quantitatively on a sample of over 100 countries that have exhibited imperfect human security situations since the end of the Cold War. These case-study vignettes serve as "reality checks" to the game-theoretic logic and empirical findings of the book.

Amanda Murdie finds that INGOs can have powerful effects on human rights and development outcomes―although the effect of these organizations is not monolithic: differences in organizational characteristics (which reflect underlying motivations, issue-focus, and state peculiarities) condition when and where this vibrant and growing force of INGOs will be effective contributors to human security outcomes.

About this title

About the Author

Amanda Murdie is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Help or Harm

The Human Security Effects of International NGOs

By Amanda Murdie

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-9197-7

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
1. Introduction, 
2. INGOs in World Politics, 
3. Signaling Principles: INGOs, Domestic and International Communities, the State, and Human Security Effectiveness, 
4. INGOs and Human Security Service Outcomes: The Case of Development, 
5. INGOs and Human Security Advocacy Outcomes: The Case of Human Rights, 
6. INGOs—Possible Angels for Human Security?, 
Notes, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

THOUSANDS OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOS), most of them international in scope, have descended upon post-Taliban Afghanistan. The vast majority of these organizations are interested in improving human security, working to provide important health and development services, and promoting rights for repressed populations in the country. Despite their lofty goals, the people of Afghanistan are not impressed. According to a 2008 and 2009 survey by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, 54 percent of people in Afghanistan think NGOs within Afghanistan are corrupt. Organizations of all sizes and creed have been accused of taking funds from the international community and not using that money to help the people of Afghanistan. Some organizations have been found guilty of their accused crimes. Many Afghans have run on political platforms concerning the ineffectiveness of the NGO sector. As the joke goes, the NGO community in Afghanistan is so bad that "first there was Communism, then there was Talibanism, and now there is NGOism" (Mojumdar 2006; see also Cohen, Kupcu, and Khanna 2008).

Similar attitudes exist in Haiti, where, in the few years since the devastating 2010 earthquake and hurricane, the small state has quickly lived up to its designation of the "republic of NGOs." Per capita, more non-governmental organizations, most of them international in scope and focus, are in Haiti than anywhere else in the world. Many of these organizations are extremely well funded, working to provide basic sanitation, education, and health services to help rebuild Haiti. However, resentment is high: graffiti in Port-au-Prince labels organizations "thieves," "liars," and "corrupt," listing organizations by name and then saying in Haitian Creole that "all [are] complicit in the misery" (Valbrun 2012). Locals often see the organizations as simply interested in filling their own coffers, buying expensive flats and SUVs in Haiti, and then, according to Birrell (2012), "heading off early to the beaches for the weekend."

Despite these negative reviews, some international non-governmental organizations are making a difference in basic service provision, both within Afghanistan and Haiti and elsewhere. Examples of successful outputs are widespread; for example, the organization Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) International reported that between late 2001 and 2003, one of its key projects in Afghanistan irrigated 2700 hectares of land, protected another 600 from flood erosion, and built 1600 cubic meters of water drawing points (CARE 2003).

Similarly, non-governmental organizations working with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti have removed "2 million cubic meters of rubble" and are "providing safe drinking water to 1.2 million people daily" (Valbrun 2010).

In many locales, there are examples of successful project outputs by nongovernmental organizations, often with overall increases in service provision within the country. For example, vaccination drives by international nongovernmental organizations have been tremendously successful. Organizations have even managed to hold vaccination days for children in the midst of civil wars, with both sides calling a "cease-fire" in order to attend vaccination clinics in the countries of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone, among others (Hotez 2001). As a result of the work of these organizations, often in concert with donor agencies and private foundations, cases of polio, a debilitating and often deadly disease that targets children, have been reduced by a whopping 99 percent since 1988. India, once the "epicenter of the polio epidemic," was actually polio free in 2011 (Pruthi 2012). As another example, international non- governmental organizations in Timor in the early 2000s were tremendously successful in providing health services after conflict; organizations there also helped empower the public health sector during reconstruction starting in 2003 (Alonso and Brugha 2006). Similarly, in 2001, organizations in Bangladesh created a government partnership for tuberculosis treatment, increasing access to key medicines for infected populations (Ullah et al. 2006).

Beyond basic service provision for human security, the success of international non- governmental organizations on human rights promotion, as another key area of human security, also appears mixed, with tremendous success by some organizations in some countries on certain issues and catastrophic failure by other organizations in other situations. Another example is the work of organizations in North Africa. Even two decades before organizations aided in orchestrating some of the peaceful protests and advocacy associated with the Arab Spring of 2011, human rights international non-governmental organizations in Morocco had worked to limit government repression, including the use of torture during interrogations. The work of human rights organizations even led to the closure of the infamous Tazmamart secret prison (Granzer 1999). Organizations pressured regime leaders directly and brought powerful international actors, including United States and French foreign policy leaders, into the advocacy network, providing background reports on Moroccan practices and empowering diaspora groups to take up the cause.

At the same time international non-governmental organizations in Morocco were stopping government abuses of physical integrity rights, however, organizations were having very limited success at stopping the practice of female genital cutting in the whole North African region. This was an issue that many organizations thought they could quickly outlaw and eradicate. Governments had very little interest in the practice, roles of women in society were quickly expanding, and many international resources were devoted to the cause. To a large degree, all of this work by international non-governmental organizations was for naught: a huge cultural war was created by the international efforts, framing advocacy related to the eradication of female genital cutting as paternalistic and "postcolonial imperialism" (Boyle 2005, 1). The efforts even led some domestic advocates to wonder why the practice of genital cutting was being pushed for eradication by international non-governmental organizations from Western countries, where the use of breast implants, seen as another form of genital mutilation, was widespread (Wilson 2002; Lake 2012). International advocacy on the issue created a backlash: more adult women in Burkina Faso and Yemen had undergone genital cutting in 2005 than in 1998 (WHO 2010). Most of the survey data on the issue finds that women in the region generally support the practice, even after the highly publicized eradication campaign of the 1990s (Wagner 2011). Among Moroccans, where female genital cutting was not historically practiced, there is now even anecdotal evidence of its use, even by those who have emigrated out of the region.

Beyond Morocco, it is even more difficult to ascertain when and where organizations are successful in improving human rights practices. International non-governmental organizations have been credited with everything from the end of apartheid in South Africa (Heinrich 2001) to the drastic human rightsimprovements in Guatemala after their civil war in the late 1990s and, to a lesser extent, Mexico in the mid-1990s (Ropp and Sikkink 1999; Godoy 2002). And yet, continued human rights advocacy by international non-governmental organizations over the use of the death penalty in China has fallen on deaf ears; similar calls for the end of abusive practices in Russia and Syria have also been wholeheartedly ignored by regime leaders.

What explains when and where international non-governmental organizations will be successful at improving human security? Why were organizations focused on development and health largely successful in India, Timor, and Bangladesh but not in Haiti and Afghanistan, where far more attention and international donor funds were directed? Within Haiti and Afghanistan, why are some organizations successful and others not? For organizations involved in promoting human rights, what determines when success happens? Why were organizations successful at getting the government of Morocco to change the fundamental ways it controlled the population (torture, political imprisonment) but similar organizations were not successful at getting individuals to stop a private practice (female genital cutting) that, prior to the 1990s in the region, was arguably already on the decline? Further, why did a little prodding by INGOs work to change human rights practices in Guatemala and Mexico but continued criticism has not been successful in China? In short, under what conditions should we expect international non-governmental organizations to matter for human security?

This book offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the effects of international non- governmental organizations (international NGOs or INGOs) on human security, briefly defined as a set of outcomes ensuring that an individual enjoys freedom from "want" and "fear" (UNDP 1994; Paris 2001). Many INGOs work tirelessly on issues of human security. As the examples above show, INGOs are active in all countries in the world, doing everything from providing vaccinations and basic sanitation in rural areas to pressuring world leaders in the United Nations to end political disappearances. Within the INGO world, organizations that work on issues of human security can be typically thought of as either primarily focused on service provision, like development or health organizations, or focused on advocacy, like organizations that focus on changing a government's human rights practices. In human security language, organizations that focus on service provision would be working to ensure that individuals were free from "want." Organizations working to promote human rights would be working to promote freedom from "fear."

Since the 1980s, the number of international non-governmental organizations that are active in the world has increased significantly. These organizations, such as the well-known Amnesty International or Oxfam organizations, have increased their world presence drastically since the end of the Cold War, often setting up multiple permanent offices and expanding their volunteer bases within countries. In the last 20 years, for example, over 50 countries have seen the number of INGOs that are active within their borders increase over 500 percent; some countries saw the number of INGOs increase over 20-fold (Landman 2005; UIA 2008/2009).

This tremendous growth in INGOs has been coupled with drastic increases in the amount of aid and media attention these organizations receive. In fact, "some now estimate that more aid to developing countries is funneled through the NGO sector than the United Nations or the World Bank" (Brown et al. 2008, 25). INGOs have been heralded in the popular media for their work; multiple organizations, including Amnesty International, International Committee of the Red Cross, and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), have won Nobel Peace Prizes.

As the sector grew, many saw INGOs as an "emerging second superpower," capable of assisting in the fulfillment of human security when previous state and intergovernmental efforts had failed (Moore 2003). In her 1997 Foreign Affairs article, Jessica Matthews sums up the general praise directed at the whole NGO world in the midst of this tremendous growth period:

At a time of accelerating change, NGOs are quicker than governments to respond to new demands and opportunities. Internationally, in both the poorest and richest countries, NGOs, when adequately funded, can outperform government in the delivery of many public services. Their growth, along with that of the other elements of civil society, can strengthen the fabric of the many still-fragile democracies. And they are better than governments at dealing with problems that grow slowly and affect society through their cumulative effect on individuals—the "soft" threats of environmental degradation, denial of human rights, population growth, poverty, and lack of development that may already be causing more deaths in conflict than are traditional acts of aggression. (63)

Despite all this praise and growth, surprisingly, very little is known about the actual effects of INGOs across countries. Even outside of the academic literature, INGO workers themselves wonder about the effects of their efforts:

Counting marketable achievements such as how many leaflets were distributed, or the quantity of funds raised, prevents us from reflecting on what changes have been achieved, or the strength of our resistance to corporates or government, or, more realistically, from analysing our effectiveness long-term in a struggle against power that isn't meant to come with quarterly "successes." (Francie 2011, 60)

Now, to be sure, most organizations have ways to measure their individual organizational output. Interviews with INGO leaders of United States–based organizations have revealed that INGOs do care about "whether or not we are sort of getting the tasks achieved that we set for ourselves" but that the individual organizations "can't determine the outcomes.... We don't necessarily know how many people it will affect" (Mitchell 2010, 6).

Going beyond the work of one organization or one joint movement, the academic literature has not yet provided definitive answers on whether the overall INGO sector actually delivers "outcomes" for the citizenry in locations where INGOs are active. We have not cross-nationally examined what conditions make positive outcomes more likely. A cursory look at the top journals in international relations reveals that we, as academics, have spent far more time debating the effectiveness of intergovernmental organizations, like the United Nations or the European Union, than the effectiveness of INGOs.

Despite the overwhelmingly large number of INGOs, academic inquiry is especially lacking for organizations involved in service delivery, which have been almost completely omitted from both the theoretical and empirical literature on INGOs. The literature has focused primarily on advocacy INGOs, like human rights organizations, and has often attributed the issues and dynamics in the advocacy realm to service organizations. Despite this focus on advocacy INGOs, there has actually been more growth in the number of service INGOs, such as those providing economic development or health services in developing countries (Cameron 2000).

THE THEORETICAL DEBATE

Much larger than just the empirical question of whether INGOs matter, there exists a huge theoretical divide in international relations over how INGOs are viewed and what, if any, impact these organizations could have in the international system. Most of this divide is between the classic theoretical schools of realism and constructivism. On one hand, realism has very little space for INGOs and nonstate actors in general (Ahmed and Potter 2006). According to realism, the international system today is dominated by states and, as Kenneth Waltz (1979) classically puts it, "So long as the major states are the major actors, the structure of international politics is defined in terms of them" (94). The focus in realism is on state interactions in an anarchic system. As Hocking and Smith (1990) point out, consistent with realism, states are critical actors in international relations because they possess sovereignty, recognition, and control over territory and population. None of these things are benchmarks of INGOs, of course, which are actually often advocating for changes in ways states control their population through force (i.e., the protection of human rights). Like realist notions of the role of intergovernmental organizations, realism sees INGOs as instruments of states, working to carry out the policies of state actors (Geeraerts 1995). As such, INGOs could be influential, perhaps, on service provision that would be in line with what major states want, providing development assistance and basic service provision in a country that is a strategic partner of the INGO's home state. INGOs would be unable, however, to push state actors to change their behavior on issues that went against the desires of the regime in power. If a country does not want to stop torturing its citizens, no amount of INGO pressure would be enough to make it do that.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Help or Harm by Amanda Murdie. Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080479197X
• ISBN 13: 9780804791977
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320