TCSO’s and CSO’s: Impacting the World?
Thousands abound thousands of different organizations work to make a change in the world such as Faith based organizations (FBO’s), NGO’s, INGO’s, for the purposes of this paper all of these different types of organizations will be referred to as a Transnational Civil Society Organization or TCSO for short. A TCSO can be defined as organizations that “are not primarily a part of a governance organization, nor of a profit-making enterprise and are engaged in activity that take place beyond the borders of the state in which they are headquartered, is intended to impact events outside their state”(Pallas). The purpose of the change in terminology from INGO’s to TCSO’s can be best stated by Dr. Pallas “…the INGO term obscures more then it reveals”, he states this because typically INGO’s are given such a title by the resource they have or will be acquiring. However this does not account or describe the type of service/ advocacy activity they are doing in the global scene.
This paper will be focusing on if TCSO actually have an impact in global governance/ policy and in providing aid/ relief throughout the world. In order to analyze this, the paper will focus various variables that need to be accounted for: types of activities, people they claim to represent, and funding/ donors.
I. Literature Review
A. Activities
TCSO can part take in two different types of activities, this is advocacy and or service delivery. TCSO that focus on advocacy primary focus is to shape, establish or make changes in a state by advocating for specific needs. While a service delivery TCSO focus on actually providing services for the local population. A prime example of this is the World Health Organization (WHO) and the way they dealt with HIV/AIDS. They began by advocating about harmful diseases, and focusing on HIV/AIDS (Seckinelgin). This campaign was to bring awareness to governments and to local populations at risk at contracting such diseases. However, this later turned into actually treating people of the disease then just merely advocating for change. Other examples of service delivery are doctors without borders and CARE. While some more advocacy groups can be Survival international, and the Human Rights Watch just to name a few.
B. Representation
The Purpose of all TCSO is to be the voice of those not heard or that don’t have a voice at all. These TCSO often work with local Civil Society Organizations in order to make changes within a state. This can be seen with the case study of the Sardar Sarovar project in India, this can show how CSO and TCSO can become the voices of the unheard but also provide the opportunity to show when TCSO don’t exactly voice the local population. The project was quite simple the Indian government was going to build a dam in order to provide electricity to the nearby areas. However, in order to build the dam many Indian citizens where going to be displaced, this lead to a TCSO advocating for the government give more favorable terms of resettlement for the displace of these citizens as if they didn’t it would be violating their human rights. Dr. Pallas states “Instead of fighting for a change of resettlement, Northern TCSOs working in the World Bank donor and their Indian donor partners fought to stop the project” (Pallas 2013). In this case study the focus of the campaign change drastically as it went from the local CSO which had its focus on the human rights side and pressuring the resettlement issues to when it became an international campaign which switched its focus on stopping the dam all together. This shows the representation of TCSO can often seem as having the local people interest at heart but often can get distorted and turn into something else entirely.
TCSO can part take in two different types of activities, this is advocacy and or service delivery. TCSO that focus on advocacy primary focus is to shape, establish or make changes in a state by advocating for specific needs. While a service delivery TCSO focus on actually providing services for the local population. A prime example of this is the World Health Organization (WHO) and the way they dealt with HIV/AIDS. They began by advocating about harmful diseases, and focusing on HIV/AIDS (Seckinelgin). This campaign was to bring awareness to governments and to local populations at risk at contracting such diseases. However, this later turned into actually treating people of the disease then just merely advocating for change. Other examples of service delivery are doctors without borders and CARE. While some more advocacy groups can be Survival international, and the Human Rights Watch just to name a few.
C. Funding
Much of the literature around funding focuses on donors and loans. These two types of funding at the end boil down to the same set of persons, the donors. Most of the loans and grants given out to the TCSO are usually come from the World Bank in the for of loans from the International Development Association (Pallas). These loans are very unique compared to other loans that a normal bank can lend, because often they have very long repayment time and little to no interest on the actual loan. This means that most TCSO do not repay their loans quickly yet take their time, leading the IDA to be replenished quickly in order to allocate more loans. This directly leans to more donor money as donors must quickly replenish the IDA, the incentive to do so is the power that their donations hold (Eichenauer and Knack). Donors typically like to add conditionalities to their donations in order to have some type of return.
The second form of funding comes from straight donations without going through another organization such as the IDA. This can be from different types of donations such as single person donation/ gifts, grants, public donations. As an example the International Red Cross can be used as an example of this, their highest revenue/contribution comes from donations, grants and gifts which worth around $568,000,000. Parks affirmed that "In countries with viable domestic sources of funding, NGOs with a good reputation and perceived autonomy can attract national donors". These national donors at times can be wealthy individuals or just ordinary persons wanting to donate into an accredited and transparent organization.
II. Analysis
TCSO can make great changes in the world bring much changes in global governance, services local populations need, and bring issues to the discussion table. However, to really know if TCSO can really make that positive change we must analyze different case study to best show us how they work and their issues. The example I will be focusing on is the Ottawa Convention, this was the Convention where state adopted and ratified the ban of landmines. This was a great feat for the world as such weapons would kill and injure more persons after a war then during one. The biggest take away from this was the new role that International Civil Societies where taking in the global governance world. The Ottawa Convention was spear headed by TCSOs throughout the world, all with different reasons on why banning land mines was needed. “Thus, for example, Human Rights Watch and the ICRC regarded landmines as a human rights and humanitarian law issue, while such groups as Medico International, Physicians for Human Rights, or Handicap International saw it as a medical and public health issue, while still others, such as the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation saw it as a matter of dealing with the consequences of war in a social and developmental sense” (Kenneth 2000). This led to a coalition of NGOs, as there was a global push for the ban. These NGOs would then in turn put pressure on states to adopt policies that would place ban on land mines. This slowly snowballed into an international policy change where most of the world wanted change. However, the United States wasn’t completely on board yet. Regardless, the world was able to come together at the Ottawa convention and ban landmines internationally. This is the perfect example of how TCSOs make changes in global governancs. By becoming the voices of millions the TCSOs were able to advocate for change even if the hegemon of the world didn’t see the need for it. However, this isn’t always the case, in some instances TCSOs can lead to no change or negative changes. This can occur when donors ask the NGOs for goals that might not be attainable (Reith 2010). Reimann also states in his article “…advocacy NGOs have been criticize for failing to live up to the high expectations of international donors”. This can limit the amount and change the goals of which NGOs have; leading them to no longer be the voice of the people that they claim to represent. Yet to conform to the ideologies of the donors simply for securing funding that is needed. This limits the credibility that NGOs have on making global governance more democratic.