As IR scholars thinking about the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in shaping international norms, we rarely think to ask those doing the work on the ground what they think (this author is guilty as charged). Â Plenty of work has gone into researching how...
James Ron, Archana Pandya, and David Crow’s article investigates the resource mobilization of local human rights organizations (LHROs) in India, Mexico, Morocco and Nigeria. Having theorized the...
Policy schools prepare students to work in the public policy realm, most often training students for positions in government. But policymaking is an increasingly diverse field, policy issues span...
[As two fellow NGO researchers, Wendy and Maryam are going to collaborate on some posts to provide contrasting views on hot-button issues related to NGOs. Think of us as the Siskel and Ebert of NGOs...
In her seminal 1997 article, Power Shift, Jessica Mathews argued that a power shift was underway in international politics marked by a redistribution of power from states to non-state actors—mostly businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Almost two decades later, NGOs are trying to foster a new sort of power shift, this time transferring power from the global north to the global south. This power shift was one of the substantive topics of discussion at the BISA NGO Working Group workshop I wrote about last week. The BOND report and subsequent presentations by academics, Amnesty...
In my grad class every semester, I always ask the students if IR is really the best field for studying human security. Undoubtedly, I get some students who respond that political science is the best discipline and IR is the best field – or even the only field – to really study human security. However, I usually also get a large minority of the students who acknowledge off the bat that most of the phenomena we study could be similarly examined in other social sciences or  -gasp!- could even be looked at by people in the humanities. This is definitely the case for the study of human security...
Charli’s posts on Human Rights Watch and Autonomous Weapons got me thinking: should we really expect human rights international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to influence weapons systems?  On the whole, human rights NGOs are a pretty powerless lot: NGOs don’t control military resources like states do and they are typically not at the decision-making table. Why would a powerful state ever listen to the musings of an NGO? Are all of these reports and calls-for-action by NGOs really just hot air? This large question – the impact of organizations like Human Rights Watch – has been on...
I am trying to find examples of humanitarian organizations that spoke out against the use of landmines by the Soviet Union during its invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-1989. Landmines were big as one of the weapons issues put up for debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the UN General Assembly. The first specific legislation against them was Additional Protocol II to the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons. (A regulatory treaty as opposed to a banning treaty.)Even if the original APII was pretty weak (it was amended in 1996 which greatly strengthened it) there is no question that...
There has been so much going on with the international law front, it’s kind of hard to know where to begin. In sum:The Obama administration has decided to put Khalid Shiek Mohammed on trial at Guantanamo rather than New York City.The Obama administration has released a legal opinion on the Authorization Use of Military Force in Libya. The ICRC is concerned over unexploded ordinance in Libya (UXO).The ICRC will be releasing it’s update to the International Customary Law study very soon. (Register here!)Human Rights Watch doesn’t like incindiaries. (Surprise!)Richard Goldstone has backed down...
Yesterday the General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution declaring “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life."The vote passed with 122 countries voting and 41 countries abstaining, including United States, Britain, Canada, Australia – but also other nations like Botswana and Turkey. On the other hand, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain and Brazil backed the resolution.This vote comes after many years of debate. Water, increasingly seen as a strategic issue and a natural resource, is not...
Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris says NGO Monitor should practice what it preaches when it comes to transparency about donations from government funders. The dialogue in comments on this and older threads is illuminating and raises some interesting questions about the accountability of the NGO sector. Like Heller, I would like to see greater transparency from both Human Rights Watch and NGO Monitor.I think it's a shame that NGO Monitor is so policitized by its emphasis on Israel because the general argument it makes is quite cogent: who watches the watchers? The NGO sector of global civil...
I know I was asked to comment here on international political economy issues, but how can I pass up the opportunity to point you all to the Online Security Jam?Yes, on February 4, you too can participate in an online discussion of important security issues. You will "help make the world a safer place...online." The Jam is being co-produced by the European Commission and NATO, who are just so..so..cutting edge, yes? Well, ok, it's actually being organized by Security and Defence Agenda, a think tank, and IBM. The goal is to engage literally thousands of experts and non-experts alike in...