NGOs: more powerful than ever - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Ecologist, The, April, 2000

Non-governmental organisations are exercising an unprecedented influence on the world, reveals a new study.

A new report, published by the Worldwatch Institute, shows that in the last three decades the number of international NGOs has quadrupled. In the US, 70 per cent of the country's two million NGOs have been set up over this period. In Russia, where there were almost none before the fall of communism, there are now at least 65,000. In Kenya, some 240 new NGOs are created every year.

As NGOs have become more prolific, their role on the international stage has changed. Increasingly, governments rely on NGOs to do work that they would formerly have done themselves. Today they are regularly sent into battle zones to distribute aid. And the information they provide is often invaluable. Amnesty International, which operates in 162 different countries, has information at its fingertips which isn't available elsewhere. NGOs are also being given jurisdiction over increasing amounts of money. According to the Red Cross, NGOs now distribute more money than the World Bank.

Some are cynical about the increasingly bureaucratic and institutionalised nature of NGOs, but politicians and corporations are already responding to their growing political influence. Seattle showed just how powerful united NGO pressure can be.