The author assesses the politics of different humanitarian interventions in the Mexico-US border region developing a unique perspective on the significance of people, places and things to contemporary border struggles.

Security concerns increasingly influence foreign aid: how Western countries give aid, to whom and why. With contributions from experts in the field, this book examines the impact of security issues on six of the world's largest aid donors, as well as on key crosscutting issues such as gender equality and climate change.

How do religious groups, operating as NGOs, engage in the most important global institution for world peace? What processes do they adopt? Is there a "spiritual" UN today? This book is the first interdisciplinary study to present extensive fieldwork results from an examination of the activity of religious groups at the United Nations in New York and Geneva. Based on a three and half-year study of activities in the United Nations system, it seeks to show how "religion" operates in both visible and invisible ways. Jeremy Carrette, Hugh Miall, Verena Beittinger-Lee, Evelyn Bush and Sophie-Helene Trigeaud, explore the way "religion" becomes a "chameleon" idea, appearing and disappearing, according to the diplomatic aims and ambitions. Part 1 documents the challenges of examining religion inside the UN, Part 2 explores the processes and actions of religious NGOs - from diplomacy to prayer - and the specific platforms of intervention - from committees to networks - and Part 3 provides a series of case studies of religious NGOs, including discussion of Islam, Catholicism and Hindu and Buddhist NGOs. The study concludes by examining the place of diplomats and their views of religious NGOs and reflects on the place of "religion" in the UN today. The study shows the complexity of "religion" inside one of the most fascinating global institutions of the world today.

International Institutions (IIs), International NGOs (INGOs) and Transnational Hybrid Organizations (THOs) play a hugely important role in the modern world economy. Despite having been studied by scholars from a range of disciplines, these organizations have never before been approached from a management perspective. This ambitious book analyzes the management challenges associated with international cooperation and sheds light on how these organizations have evolved as the political, economic and business environments have changed around them. Covering an admirably broad canvas, the authors pursue two main objectives. Firstly, they explore the main management frameworks developed in the context of the corporate and national public/non-profit organizations and adapt them to the specificity of IIs and INGOs. This leads to the identification of a "tailored" approach to IO management based on their institutional and operational settings, stakeholder groups, core business, staff profile, and financial arrangements. Secondly, they "bring theory into practice" by linking frameworks to several case studies and best practices of organizations currently experimenting with management systems and tools, with case studies including the World Bank and the Gates Foundation. This comprehensive textbook is a must-own resource for students and academics involved with studying and working with international organizations.

Knowing what deep participation is, and how it works, can make a critical difference in solving 21st century economic, political, and social problems. This book provides a new approach to hands-on change and begins formulation of a participatory social theory promising greater prosperity and justice for all.

This book describes how Christian communities in South Africa have responded to HIV/AIDS and how these responses have affected the lives HIV-positive people, youth and broader communities. Drawing on Foucault and the sociology of knowledge, it explains how religion became influential in reshaping ideas about sexuality, medicine and modernity.

This book examines the polarization of positions surrounding the transnational boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement aimed at ending the Israeli occupation. The vast discrepancy in portrayals of the movement - framed alternately as a nonviolent movement for freedom and human rights and as a form of war by other means - is intriguing, and the passion on both sides of the issue suggests the tactic is powerful and resonates deeply. Drawing on first-hand interviews with activists and opponents, press coverage, and organizational materials, this book systematically compares four cases of BDS activism in the United States, using an analytical framework that draws from the literature of social movements, nonviolent resistance, discourse analysis, and contentious politics. It will be of interest to students, scholars, policy makers, and activists.

The authors present an overview of private development aid in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the EU as a whole. They illustrate how private aid organisations receive support as well as the relations they have with their respective governments.

This volume provides a novel and relational sociological approach to the study of EU civil society. It focuses on the interactions and interrelations between civil society actors and the forms of capital that structure the fields and sub-fields of EU civil society, through new and important empirical studies on organized EU civil society.

This book provides a detailed analysis of the contributions, constraints and opportunities available for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in peacemaking and peacebuilding. This book will critically appraise both NGO assets, such as their typical idealism, organizing talents and mediation capabilities, as well as their deficits (including the NGO tendency to polarize and to politicize, to disorganize and to destabilize, and to delegitimate and at once to legitimate) and to make recommendations for more effective interventions.

Notwithstanding its many successes since 1945, the project of European integration currently faces major difficulties, from financial crises and mass immigration to the impending departure of the UK from the European Union. At the same time, these challenges have spurred civil society organizations within and across Europe, revealing a shared public sphere in which citizens can mobilize around refugee rights, opposition to austerity policies, and other issues. Europeanization in Sweden assembles new empirical research on how these processes have played out in one of the continent's wealthiest nations, providing insights into whether, and how, the "Swedish model" can guide European integration.

Tracing the boom of local NGOs since the 1990s in the context of the global political economy of aid, current trends of neoliberal state restructuring, and shifting post-Cold War hegemonies, this book explores the "associational revolution" in post-socialist, post-conflict Serbia. Looking into the country's "transition" through a global and relational analytical prism, the ethnography unpacks the various forms of dispossession and inequality entailed in the democracy-promotion project.

By highlighting the scope and limitations of local NGO agencies, this book presents a unique perspective of the relationship between peacebuilding theory and its application in practice, outlining how well-educated, well-connected local decision makers and thinkers navigate the uneven power dynamics of the international aid system.

In recent decades there has been a great expansion in the number, size and influence of International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) involved in international relief and development. These changes have led to increased scrutiny of such organisations, and this scrutiny, together with increasing reflection by INGOs themselves and their staff on their own practice, has helped to highlight a number of pressing ethical questions such organisations face, such as: should INGOs attempt to provide emergency assistance even when doing so risks helping to fuel further conflict? How should INGOs manage any differences between their values and those of the people they seek to benefit? How open and honest should INGOs be about their own uncertainties and failures?

This book consists of sustained reflections on such questions. It derives from a workshop held at Melbourne University in July 2007 that brought together a group of people - for the most part, reflective practitioners and moral and political philosophers - to discuss such questions. It explores honestly some of the current challenges and dilemmas that INGOs face, and also suggests some new ideas for meeting these challenges. Our hope is that the kind of explicit reflection on the ethical issues INGOs face exemplified in this publication will help to promote a wider debate about these issues, a debate that in turn will help INGO managers and others to make better, wiser, more ethically informed decisions.

Since the early 1990s, China has witnessed an influx of international NGOs, many of which have Christianity as their foundation. The presence of international Christian agencies in China, however, is not new. Christian missionaries went to China in the age of imperialism. Historians argue the work of missionaries was inextricably linked to the idea of a 'civilizing mission'. This book critically assesses the idea of a Christian 'civilizing mission' over time, and explores the relevance of the idea to the contemporary context. By examining the non-Han people's perception of international Christian agencies, this book advocates the importance of engagement through in-depth dialogue between international Christian NGOs and ethnic communities.

Calling all change-makers! Open your mind, and buckle up for a bumpy ride through a truth-telling journey about the dysfunctional relationship between foundations and non-profits. We all know that its broken. So why haven't we fixed it? Enter the Unicorns. Join unicorns Jane Leu, Vu Le, and Jessamyn Shams-Lau for a nitty-gritty, inside look at how foundations and non-profits relate today, and why we're stuck in the status quo. Next, get ready for a rocket-ship ride to a future filled with EPIC Partnerships grounded in equality, trust, and creativity; partnerships to help us think bigger, bolder, and better about social change. Finally, make it happen! Roll up your sleeves and dive into a series of fun and thought-provoking exercises for you to do and discuss with your team, your partners, and your board. This is a whimsical journey through a challenging conversation that could hold the key to slaying the dragons of injustice and inequity once and for all.

Focusing on NGOs that work in the areas of rural development, women, and children, the authors' goal is to shed light on the contributions of the sector in the spheres of social welfare, empowerment, service, and rural development. In addition, the problems and difficulties experienced by NGOs are analyzed and explained. This important new book traces the rise of NGOs in India and their transformation over the years, revealing the importance of NGOs in India's development after Independence.

Beginning with a detailed history of voluntarism in India and examination of NGOs around the world, the authors provide the framework for examining NGOs in India as a force contributing to development. They then focus on partnerships and cooperation between NGOs and the government, advocacy and policy implications of NGO activity, accountability within organizations, approaches to problems and delivery of services, NGO life cycles, and the need for a code of ethics within NGOs. Case studies on NGOs designed to assist women, children, and rural development are presented and discussed in the context of development in general and improving the quality of life for all Indian citizens. This careful and comprehensive examination is a unique addition to a growing field of literature on India.

This edited volume explores development in the so-called 'fragile', 'failed' and 'pariah' states. It examines the literature on both fragile states and their development, and offers eleven case studies on countries ranking in the 'very high alert' and 'very high warning' categories in the Fund for Peace Failed States Index.

Development education is a radical form of learning that addresses the structural causes of poverty and injustice in the global North and South. This volume debates development education practice and the policy environment in which it is delivered. It affirmatively points to the transformative power of education as a means toward social change.

The world of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has dramatically changed during the last two decades. The author critically analyses the engagement of INGOs within the contemporary international development landscape, enabling readers to further understand INGOs involvement in the politics of social change.

Drawing on years of research and direct experience in Bangladesh, Stiles pulls together theoretical strands from economics, sociology, and anthropology to help explain an emerging social structure in the Third World. These structures, which he calls intermestic development circles, bring together international donor agencies with various domestic community and private organizations. In Bangladesh not-for-profit agencies are dramatically transforming their operation and organizational cultures, while in turn Western NGOs are themselves changing in subtle ways. Scholars of development will find Stiles's intriguing account of the reciprocating effects of extensive interaction, cooperation, and tensions between international donors and domestic recipients informative and provocative.

Moving through three discernable phases, each one explainable by resort to different theories, these development circles grow from mere trading arrangements to a coherent social structure, separate from the rest of civil society in Bangladesh. While in the process of the not-for-profits receiving assistance become wealthier and more effective, they lose much of their local identity and become part of a transnational network. At the same time, donors must recast themselves in order to work effectively with these agencies, which often creates tension between local and home offices. The book closes with some recommendations that might attenuate some of the more troubling effects of this transformation.

This book reviews the remarkable growth, diversity and challenges of child sponsorship. It features the latest progress in child sponsorship practice and necessary tensions experienced by some organisations as they seek to maximise impact.

This book investigates whether international standards of good governance are applied to sub-state actors as well as to states. By examining the international response to self-determination claims, this project demonstrates that the international community does indeed hold sub-state groups accountable to such standards. Claimant groups that have internalized human rights and democratic norms are more likely to receive international support in the form of empowerment (promoting some form of self-governance). To illustrate the causal forces at work, the book presents three qualitative case studies--Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Western Sahara--to demonstrate that predictable changes in the international response occur as international perception of each claimant group's democratic record varies over time.

What did South African AIDS activists contribute, politically, to early international advocacy for free HIV medicines for the world's poor? Mandisa Mbali demonstrates that South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) gave moral legitimacy to the international movement which enabled it to effectively push for new models of global health diplomacy and governance. The TAC rapidly acquired moral credibility, she argues, because of its leaders' anti-apartheid political backgrounds, its successful human rights-based litigation and its effective popularization of AIDS-related science.The country's arresting democratic transition in 1994 enabled South African activists to form transnational alliances. Its new Constitution provided novel opportunities for legal activism, such as the TAC's advocacy against multinational pharmaceutical companies and the South African government. Mbali's history of the TAC sheds light on its evolution into an influential force for global health justice.

In original essays written by both senior scholars as well as rising younger scholars in the field of international ethics, this volume addresses the ethics of war in an era when non-state actors are playing an increasingly prominent role in armed conflict. Central to this concern is the issue of whether, or under what conditions, non-state actors can be said to have the "authority" to participate in war. The contributors therefore explore and analyze the problems with, and possibilities for, incorporating non-state actors into the traditionally state-centric moral vocabulary about war--namely, the just war tradition.