Globalizing Social Justice: The Role of Non-Government Organizations in Bringing about Social Change

271 Pages·2009·1.16 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Atkinson, Martin Scurrah, Jeannet Lingán, Rosa Pizarro, Catherine Ross (auth.)

Globalizing Social Justice
International Political Economy Series
General Editor: Timothy M. Shaw, Professor and Director, Institute of International Relations, The
University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
Titles include:
Lucian M. Ashworth and David Long (editors)
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNATIONAL FUNCTIONALISM
Jeffrey Atkinson and Martin Scurrah
GLOBALIZING SOCIAL JUSTICE
The Role of Non-Government Organizations in Bringing about Social Change
Robert W. Cox (editor)
THE NEW REALISM
Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order
Frederick Deyo (editor)
GLOBAL CAPITAL, LOCAL LABOUR
Stephen Gill (editor)
GLOBALIZATION, DEMOCRATIZATION AND MULTILATERALISM
Björn Hettne, András Inotai and Osvaldo Sunkel (editors)
GLOBALISM AND THE NEW REGIONALISM
Christopher C. Meyerson
DOMESTIC POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN US–JAPAN TRADE POLICYMAKING
The GATT Uruguay Round Agriculture Negotiations
Isidro Morales
POST-NAFTA NORTH AMERICA
Volker Rittberger and Martin Nettesheim (editor)
AUTHORITY IN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
Justin Robertson (editor)
POWER AND POLITICS AFTER FINANCIAL CRISES
Rethinking Foreign Opportunism in Emerging Markets
Michael G. Schechter (editor)
FUTURE MULTILATERALISM
The Political and Social Framework
INNOVATION IN MULTILATERALISM
Ben Thirkell-White
THE IMF AND THE POLITICS OF FINANCIAL GLOBALIZATION
From the Asian Crisis to a New International Financial Architecture?
Thomas G. Weiss (editor)
BEYOND UN SUBCONTRACTING
Task Sharing with Regional Security Arrangements and Service-Providing NGOs
Robert Wolfe
FARM WARS
The Political Economy of Agriculture and the International Trade Regime
International Political Economy Series
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Globalizing Social Justice
The Role of Non-Government
Organizations in Bringing about
Social Change
By
Jeffrey Atkinson
and
Martin Scurrah
with
Jeannet Lingán,
Rosa Pizarro
and
Catherine Ross
© Jeffrey Atkinson and Martin Scurrah 2009
Chapter 7 © Catherine Ross 2009
Chapter 8 © Martin Scurrah, Jeannet Lingán and Rosa Pizarro 2009
Foreword © Jeremy Hobbs 2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22113-0
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First published 2009 by
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DOI 10.1057/9780230277939
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Contents
Foreword vi
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
Explanation of Terms Used xii
List of Abbreviations xv
1 Types and Tactics 1
2 Challenges and Questions 30
3 Oxfam and its Global Campaign on Trade 52
4 Case Study: Garment Workers in Sri Lanka 67
5 Case Study: Trade and Agriculture in India 94
6 Oxfam’s Global Extractive Industries Campaigning 118
7 Case Study: Natural Gas Project in Peru 133
Catherine Ross
8 Case Study: Jobs and Health in Peru 166
Martin Scurrah, Jeannet Lingán and Rosa Pizarro
9 Legitimacy, Accountability and Voice 207
10 Conclusions 236
Index 245
v
Foreword
Increasing globalization has meant that democratic space has shrunk,
and with it has come the concentration of power in global institutions,
global business, and global media, often to the detriment of national
governments’ sovereignty. Yet at the same time, civil society organ-
izations, including non-government organizations (NGOs), have been
able to seize opportunities offered by globalization – the internet, rapid
global communications, use of online campaigning technology com-
munications and the role of global media – to increase democratic
space across national boundaries, in ways that compliment national
level campaigns and increase the leverage of local NGOs.
This book documents how NGOs have repositioned themselves in
this dynamic context. Nearly all major global development networks,
including Oxfam International, now engage in some level of cam-
paigning and advocacy, many from a rights based approach. However
we are all at different stages of the process. Moving from a traditional
project based focus to integrating global, national and local campaigns
and programmes, requires major managerial and cultural change, and
ensuring that both programme partners and donors understand the
rationale. And increasingly our partners are embracing advocacy, and
expecting the same of their international NGO partners.
This book brings some uncomfortable truths to the fore, as well as
positive learnings. It is a practical book for active campaigners, written
by two experienced practitioners who bring a powerful ethical frame-
work to their analysis. Jeff Atkinson and Martin Scurrah’s book isbased
largely on case studies of campaigns with which they are familiar, and
isgrounded in the nuts and bolts of social change.
It focusses on the campaigning work of Oxfam, and its strength is that
it is written by Oxfam insiders, who have been both actors in, and wit-
nesses of, the organization’s embrace of globalized campaigning over the
last 20 years. Despite this, they bringobjectivity to their analysis with an
emphasis on understanding what actually works and what does not.
Yet for all the practical focus, the authors successfully link their
experiences to the main ethical dilemmas. They explore legitimacy and
voice, responsibility and accountability, changing North-South power
dynamics and the broader challenge to civil society activism by vested
interests.
vi
Foreword vii
At the heart of this is the question of power and the right to voice.
As some Indian NGOs say, ‘nothing about us without us’; how do we
balance the practicalities of global campaigns with the need to respect
the voices of local actors and avoid occupying their political space?
As the authors note, this comes down to the nature and quality of
partnerships, something Oxfam has not always got right.
Increasingly, the relationships between large global NGOs and national
and local partners will be about’political’ alliances, and less about fund-
ing. Indeed Oxfam’s campaigns now are all strongly grounded in alliances,
such as the Global Call and Action against Poverty.
Many campaigns are about holding duty bearers – multilateral insti-
tutions, national governments and transnational or large national busi-
nesses – accountable for their responsibilities and promises. International
NGOs are also powerful and should be held accountable to the highest
standards if they are demanding this from others. There needs to be as
much emphasis on downward and lateral accountability (i.e. to partners
and allies) as there is to donors and the general public. A good start is the
regular publication of independent evaluations, such as those done for
Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign.
‘Globalizing Social Justice’, which delves deeper into the campaign
narratives and explores the learning from these cases, is a major contri-
bution to improving that accountability.
Jeremy Hobbs
Executive Director
Oxfam International
Oxford, UK
Preface
This is a book about civil society organizations (CSOs) and their role in
modern society as advocates for change. In particular it is about those
CSOs, including non-government organizations (NGOs), that have
a social justice agenda, a concern with poverty, inequality, injustice,
climate change, human rights, environmental degradation, etc, in the
poorer countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. It looks at the way
in which they attempt to bring about positive change in the lives of
the poor, the exploited or the abused by exerting influence at a local,
national and international level – either directly themselves or through
advocacy coalitions, including those that stretch across national borders
linking organizations in the under-developed ‘South’ with those in the
more affluent ‘North’.
The book takes a case study approach in that it looks in detail at a
number of particular campaigns, of varying degrees of success, at how
they were run, what strategies they used, what problems they encoun-
tered, what worked in terms of achieving the campaign’s objectives,
and what did not, and why. It also uses these detailed case studies to
illustrate and expand on some of the underlying issues, challenges and
problems facing the organizations that undertake such advocacy.
Writing on these issues and the role of CSOs and NGOs in society is
a relatively new phenomenon, despite the fact that such organizations
have been around for centuries. Until the mid-1990s, there was almost
no serious academic writing about the role of CSOs and NGOs. But
their rise in prominence during the last few decades, and their increas-
ing influence on governments and inter-governmental bodies has
prompted serious challenges to their legitimacy, their accountability,
their accuracy and their role in society, by those who oppose them or
are challenged by them. This in turn has prompted serious consider-
ation of these issues by those interested in this new phenomenon of
civil society as a third force in international affairs, in addition to busi-
ness and government, and in their advocacy role as a possible con-
tribution to global governance in the future. As a result, the last decade
has seen a dramatic increase in interest in the subject, manifested in
the appearance of an extensive literature, and even entire university
courses, looking at civil society and its role in national and global
governance.
viii
Preface ix
Most of this literature has been produced by academics and other
commentators or analysts. This book is somewhat unique in that it is
written by NGO insiders. The authors have between them over half a
century of accumulated experience working for NGOs, most of it
involved in advocacy and campaigning around various issues in a
range of countries in Asia and Latin America. The case studies
described in the book are ones in which the authors had some personal
involvement, often from the periphery but close enough to give them
access to detail and to the players involved. This is the reason for the
book having a practical as well as the theoretical aspect to it, looking at
what works and what does not in bringing about social change and
why, and at the pitfalls for NGOs in advocacy and campaigning.
But the basic aim of the book is to look at the more fundamental
questions around the role of civil society and NGOs – at the issues of
legitimacy and accountability, as well as internal democracy, participa-
tion and responsibility within advocacy networks. On each of these
issues, the case studies are drawn on extensively to illustrate the nature
of the problem and how it is manifested in practice, and to provide
examples of appropriate or inappropriate responses.
The case studies in the book have an element in common in that
they all involved the international NGO Oxfam. As such they col-
lectively provide a look at one particular international NGO involved
in transnational advocacy and at how it operates, an insider’s view
of this new and significant type of activity by a typical Northern-
based NGO. Oxfam International is a confederation of a dozen or
so national NGOs, all bearing the name Oxfam, that are involved
in development assistance programmes in the South, and have
come together in recent years to harmonize their programmes and to
advocate together on issues of common concern. While it operates
within advocacy networks involving other organizations, the internal
relations within this confederation, between the different affiliated
organizations, and between their head offices in the North and their
numerous field offices in various Southern countries and regions, mean
that it operates more like a network than a unified organization. Hence
it could be said that Oxfam International not only operates within
transnational advocacy networks, but is itself akin to a transnational
advocacy network.
The book falls into four parts. The first two chapters are an intro-
duction to civil society organizations and their advocacy campaigns,
and describe the different types of organizations that engage in such
activities and the tactics they use, and give a brief overview of some of