Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Amnesty International and Oxfam to Greenpeace and Save the Children are now key players in global politics. This accessible and informative textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the significant role and increasing participation of NGOs in world politics. Peter Willetts examines the variety of different NGOs, their structure, membership and activities, and their complex relationship with social movements and civil society. He makes us aware that there are many more NGOs exercising influence in the United Nations system than the few famous ones. Conventional thinking is challenged in a radical manner on four questions: the extent of the engagement of NGOs in global policy- making; the status of NGOs within international law; the role of NGOs as crucial pioneers in the creation of the Internet; and the need to integrate NGOs within mainstream international relations theory. This is the definitive guide to this crucial area within international politics and should be required reading for students, NGO activists, and policy-makers.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Amnesty International and Oxfam to Greenpeace and Save the Children are now key players in global politics. This accessible and informative textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the significant role and increasing participation of NGOs in world politics.

Peter Willetts examines the variety of different NGOs, their structure, membership and activities, and their complex relationship with social movements and civil society. He makes us aware that there are many more NGOs exercising influence in the United Nations system than the few famous ones.

Conventional thinking is challenged in a radical manner on four questions:

• the extent of the engagement of NGOs in global policy- making;
• the status of NGOs within international law;
• the role of NGOs as crucial pioneers in the creation of the Internet;
• and the need to integrate NGOs within mainstream international relations theory.

This is the definitive guide to this crucial area within international politics and should be required reading for students, NGO activists, and policy-makers.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Transforming Digital Worlds, iConference 2018, held in Sheffield, UK, in March 2018. The 42 full papers and 40 short papers presented together with the abstracts of 3 invited talks in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 219 submissions. The papers address topics such as social media; communication studies and online communities; mobile information and cloud computing; data mining and data analytics; information retrieval; information behaviour and digital literacy; digital curation; and information education and libraries.

Private groups, such as Amnesty International and Save the Children Fund, have had a formal consultative status with the United Nations since its founding. Such groups--known as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs--have come to exert considerable influence on the UN's agenda setting, decisionmaking, and policy implementation. This book examines the role of the NGOs in world politics and the accomplishments of selected groups dealing with the environment, women's rights, children's problems, human rights, and refugee and famine crises. Although these organizations and the UN generally act as partners and collaborators, there are also some tensions, as the NGOs do not have voting status and must remain independent and innovative. In the area of human rights, in particular, the NGOs have applied slow but steady pressure to force the UN to institute real sanctions against individual governments, thus earning the title "conscience of the world." Contributors are Seamus Cleary, formerly at the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development; Jane Connors, senior lecturer in law at London University and specialist in women's rights; Helena Cook, former legal officer of Amnesty International; Richard Hoggart, former assistant director-general of UNESCO; Michael Longford, UK representative to several international groups; Sally Morphet, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Angela Penrose, Save the Children Fund; John Sankey, former UK representative to the UN in Geneva; John Seaman, Save the Children Fund; Bill Seary, formerly at the National Council for Voluntary Organizations; Henry Steel, leader of the UK delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission; and Douglas Williams, former deputy secretary of the UK Ministry of Overseas Development. Copublished with the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies Available through Brookings in North America only

In recent years, the UN has been the focus of intense activity by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the major global conferences - the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Vienna human rights conference, the Cairo population conference, the Copenhagen Social Summit and the Beijing women's conference. This book explores the influence of the NGOs, which has grown steadily and now covers all the work of the Economic and Social Council, along with programmes in developing countries, the specialized agencies and UN conferences. Their importance in human rights, disaster relief, development and the environment is illustrated by case studies demonstrating their influence. But what are non-governmental organizations? What are their historical roots? How do they gain recognition at the UN and at conferences? What rights of participation do they have and how do they gain influence? This volume sets out to answer all these questions.