This task will require some literature and research. I will be uploading all the materials to work with-including links and pdfs. I am available for further clarification. Please see below the instruction for the course work:
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Assignment
#5
Address the issue
of the future of NGOs and CSOs in the next decade and the measures they must
take to remain relevant and effective in a series of short essay responses to
exam questions.
You can
use any of the common fonts (Arial, Calibri, TimesRoman) and 11 or 12 pt.
Please space at 1.5 to make commenting easier. Bullet point answers are fine or
paragraphs, whatever works for you. Please post on TurnItIn by May 12..
1. First, listen to the two videos about Donut Economics found on
this page – one is
her TED talk and the other is about the city of Amsterdam using her methodology
in their planning process (or here if the link doesn’t work:
https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/). Second, here’s the scenario: You
are the external relations director for an INGO, and a US-based mining company
has reached out to you for a potential partnership in a land reclamation
program once the mine closes down that could include things like water
decontamination, reforestation, and restoration of farmlands. Your INGO
board and leadership have agreed that a litmus test for partnerships with the
private sector actors is a serious discussion about Raworth’s model. You
are going to make a presentation about the Donut to their team and layout your
basic expectations for a fruitful collaboration. What would be your key talking points and asks, keeping
in mind you are interested in exploring the collaboration because they are
saying the right things and promising good money? (Up to 750, 40 points) The scenario is based on the 2 videos: https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/
2.
In classic political theory, civil society is recognized as having a co-equal
role with government and the private sector, representing and mediating
(through entities organized around interests) with those two powerful sectors,
but also as an outlet to express community and self-actualization (think sports
clubs, theater groups, faith-based organizations). Many of the readings have
argued that the space for CSOs and NGOs is increasingly limited, especially for
advocacy and human rights NGOs in parts of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and to
some extent in Latin America. Even in North America and Europe NGOs are working
under increasing constraints – financial, political (being sidelined under the
Trump and in the UK Johnson administrations), and regulatory. Under these circumstances and
drawing lessons from the case examples (positive and negative) we examined in
the course (and anywhere else you chose), what can national and international
NGOs do to better enhance their own legitimacy, promote civil society, protect
civic space, and encourage governments to pursue equitable development?
(Up to 500 words, 30 points)
*
Question 2: is really
about what can NGOs and INGOs do to enhance their legitimacy and authority.
Another way of putting it might be, based on the successful cases we’ve looked
at, what are some best practices for NGO effectiveness and accountability (but
please, please, please be specific, e.g. do not just say coalition-building,
b/c there is effective coalition-building an ineffective coalition-building.
Some literature to use Effectiveness Review of Oxfam America’s Extractive Industries Campaign
in El Salvador: A ‘WIN’ Case Study. An Oxfam America Evaluation Report
3.
One of the big challenges of global advocacy is what I call the policy translation
problem. Agreements and even commitments may be made at the global level – such
as greater transparency around extractive industry financing, and commitments
to the SDGs to national policy that gets implemented. Likewise, we’ve seen that
commitments that humanitarian INGOs have made to localization seem to be
difficult to put into practice at the, you guessed it, at the local level.
Again, considering the course material, what would you say are necessary conditions that motivate
or pressure governments to develop and implement policies for the general
welfare (consider characteristics of government, civil society, private sector
actors, and development funders and INGOs and how they inter-relate). Be
specific and use examples. (Up to 500 words, 30 points)
Question
3 is more of a
strategy question where I’m pushing your thinking a bit. We have focused
on success cases in the course, but many advocacy efforts fail or are only
partial successes. A smart advocate looks at the context and sometimes decides
that the context is so adverse that it doesn’t make sense to take up an
advocacy issue or that doing so is a multi-year and even decades-long process.
To offer some examples of the former, you aren’t going to do anti-war
advocacy in Russia at the moment; you aren’t going to launch a campaign in
China in defense of the Uighurs; you aren’t going to propose ambitious national
reforms in countries that are bordering on being failed, severely
incapacitated, or fragmented states (e.g. Somalia, Haiti, Nigeria). But even in
more open contexts, there are some issues that are non-starters for a range of
issues, e.g. lack of public interest, the excessive power of some actors, the
nature of the political process (some issues are too hot to touch in an
election year, extreme partisanship). This question requires you to dig
deep into the course materials, including the readings, to map out to
some extent what positions an
NGO to be effective (w/o simply repeating the answer to question 2), but more
importantly for this question, when do government and the private sector offer
leverage points for change (and when don’t they – for example, naming and
shaming doesn’t work if the actor is shameless), and the types of commitments
advocates have to make to an issue. This almost is a Strategy Memo.
Links to literature:
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2020/07/13/decolonisation-aid-humanitarian-development-racism-black-lives-matter?
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