Reducing Armed Violence With Ngo Governance

NGOs have proliferated in number and become increasingly influential players in world politics in the past three decades. From the 1970s, with the access of social movements and private NGOs to local and international institutions, NGOs have enjoyed an opening to bring impact global policy debates. Yet NGOs find themselves highly constrained in bringing their material and epistemic resources to bear in the security arena where their activities normally must be authorized by states, or international organizations acting with authority delegated from states. They also find their activities, particularly in the security arena come frequently under attack as lacking accountability or lacking legitimacy, as NGOs are self-appointed private actors, often representing only themselves, they are seen by many as self-appointed meddlers in transnational affairs, This book provides a comprehensive and accessible analysis whether, or the extent to which, NGOs can contribute as private actors to authoritative governance outcomes in the security realm, and thereby help mitigate armed violence by plugging governance gaps in this arena that state actors, or international governmental organizations (IGOs) either neglect, or can better address with NGO assistance. This book examines the current and future issues surrounding this objective in four sections: (i) a practitioner’s perspective of the potentials of conflict governance NGOs, (ii) global civil society and legitimation of conflict governance NGO activities, (iii) conflict governance NGOs as norm entrepreneurs and norm diffusion in global governance (iv) conflict governance NGOs in action.

NGOs have proliferated in number and become increasingly influential players in world politics in the past three decades. From the 1970s, with the access of social movements and private NGOs to local and international institutions, NGOs have enjoyed an opening to bring impact global policy debates. Yet NGOs find themselves highly constrained in bringing their material and epistemic resources to bear in the security arena where their activities normally must be authorized by states, or international organizations acting with authority delegated from states. They also find their activities, particularly in the security arena come frequently under attack as lacking accountability or lacking legitimacy, as NGOs are self-appointed private actors, often representing only themselves, they are seen by many as self-appointed meddlers in transnational affairs, This book provides a comprehensive and accessible analysis whether, or the extent to which, NGOs can contribute as private actors to authoritative governance outcomes in the security realm, and thereby help mitigate armed violence by plugging governance gaps in this arena that state actors, or international governmental organizations (IGOs) either neglect, or can better address with NGO assistance. This book examines the current and future issues surrounding this objective in four sections: (i) a practitioner’s perspective of the potentials of conflict governance NGOs, (ii) global civil society and legitimation of conflict governance NGO activities, (iii) conflict governance NGOs as norm entrepreneurs and norm diffusion in global governance (iv) conflict governance NGOs in action.

Each year, 740 000 people die as a result of armed violence. This publication will help the international community to understand the dynamics of armed violence and outlines what can be done to reduce it.

These three Programming Notes build on the 2009 publication entitled Armed Violence Reduction: Enabling Development. These three notes cover: armed violence in urban areas, youth and armed violence, and linkages between armed violence reduction and security system reform.

Contesting conventional assumptions of the modern nation-state, this book challenges us to rethink the segmentation of the political realm and its underlying economic and social processes. Cognizant of the historical context of systemic change, Lilyblad reconstructs how illicit social order arises from agonistic competition over territory, authority, and institutions. Immersive empirical investigation traces this bottom-up process in local conflict zones, detailing how spontaneous configurations of violence, socioeconomic resources, and legitimacy transcend the divide between public and private. Ultimately, the analytical vantage of global governance assesses the sobering implications for sovereignty to more accurately reflect the world we have, not the one we may want. By showing how these inherently local illicit social orders develop apart from – not below – the state within a global anarchic society, this book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including political scientists, economists, sociologists, geographers, as well as researchers in interdisciplinary fields such as International Development, International Political Economy, and Global Governance.

This edited volume provides new insight into the interplay between governance and conflict. The articles in this volume deal with this problematic dimension from a variety of perspectives, covering different actors and topics as well as a vast array of geographical locations and entities that include both states and de facto or unrecognized states such as Transnistria. Scholars and practitioners have contributed to this worrk to bridge the gap between academia and practice. The volume blends scholarly research with examples of practical application to approach the conundrums of governance in and during conflict in a comprehensive way.

Why are non-state actors sometimes granted participation rights in international organizations? This book argues that IOs, and the states that compose them, systematically pursue their interests when granting participation rights to NSAs. This book demonstrates that NSAs have long been participants in global governance institutions, and that states and bureaucracies have not always resisted their inclusion. At the same time, this study encourages skepticism of the assumption that increasing participation should be expected with the passage of time. The result is a study that challenges some commonly held assumptions about the interests of IOs and states, while providing an interesting comparison of secretariat and state interests with regard to one particular aspect of IO institutional rule and practice: the participation of non-state actors. Addressing the regular assumption that the power of states and the efficacy of multilateral governance have simply wilted in the heat of globalization while NSAs have flourished, this work features analysis of key institutions such as UNCEF, UNDP and the Environment Programme. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, the United Nations, and NGOs.

Offering insights from pioneering new perspectives in addition to well-established traditions of research, this Handbook considers the activities not only of advocacy groups in the environmental, feminist, human rights, humanitarian, and peace sectors, but also the array of religious, professional, and business associations that make up the wider non-governmental organization (NGO) community. Including perspectives from multiple world regions, the book takes account of institutions in the Global South, alongside better-known structures of the Global North. International contributors from a range of disciplines cover all the major aspects of research into NGOs in International Relations to present: a comprehensive overview of the historical evolution of NGOs, the range of structural forms and international networks coverage of major theoretical perspectives illustrations of how NGOs are influential in every prominent issue-area of contemporary International Relations evaluation of the significant regional variations among NGOs and how regional contexts influence the nature and impact of NGOs analysis of the ways NGOs address authoritarianism, terrorism, and challenges to democracy, and how NGOs handle concerns surrounding their own legitimacy and accountability. Exploring contrasting theories, regional dimensions, and a wide range of contemporary challenges facing NGOs, this Handbook will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners alike.