Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have become central to the administration of foreign aid during the last two decades. Under Clinton the NGO share of US AID went up from 13% to 50%.   The funds transferred by northern NGOs have increased at twice the rate for international aid as a whole.

Angels of Mercy or Development Diplomats: NGOs & Foreign Aid by Terje Tvedt Paperback (1998)

Is the world witnessing a global associational revolution spearheaded by development non-governmental organizations (NGOs)?    Is the relationship between states and societies being fundamentally redefined, even in remote, rural corners of the world?   What role does the mushrooming of development NGOs play in this political-ideological process?    And what about the NGO staff?   Are they angels of mercy, government-paid development diplomats, propagandists for a triumphant West?   This book analyses and questions this great change:  Do NGOs provide a convenient excuse for spending cuts?   Or are NGOs genuinely better at spending the budgets than government agencies?

Paperback (1998)

The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements (Global Environmental Accord) by Jonathan Fox, David Brown Hardcover (1998)

Hardcover (1998)

"The search for accountability in international institutions is a key topic in today's global agenda. This work provides a variety of useful and important examples of efforts to increase transparency and accountability in World Bank operations."  -- Dr. Alvaro Umaña, Chairman, World Bank Inspection Panel
After a history of funding environmentally costly mega-projects, the World Bank now claims that it is trying to become a leading force for sustainable development.

Paperback (1997)

Nongovernments: NGOs and the Political Development of the Third World (Kumarian Press Books on International Development) by Julie Fisher Hardcover (1997)

Hardcover (1997)

Fisher does not write in an anatomical metaphor; nor does she use the jargon of complexity theory with its “self-organizing on the edge of chaos.” But it is all there. A living body of networking organizations has emerged to fill the niche produced by dysfunctional post-colonial governments. A plethora of unique interdependent organs assuming specialised functions which serve the whole have almost magically become the body that promises better life for the people in developing countries, and the whole Earth. Grassroots Organizations (GROs) formed by the people in remote villages, have risen by the tens of thousand to solve local problems with local skills and local resources. They network horizontally with one another to provide mutual aid. Grassroots Support Organizations (GRSOs) have emerged independently in the cities, capitals and universities to answer their own need for social usefulness by providing information, material and services, to the remote and the disadvantaged GROs. Overseas International NonGovernmental Organizations (INGOs) have recognized the failure of Governments and U.N. run “Development Decades” to provide “direct aid” to the people in their villages. This whole global Civil Society is a new phenomena. It was not planned by the bureaucrats, not even by the participants themselves. It emerged and self-organized as a working whole within the last two decades. It is now composed of hundreds of thousands of new organizations each playing a unique role in the new body politic. Fisher writes with more humility than she deserves. The book is filled with statistics and case studies of this emerging political and social phenomenon in the Third World. Perhaps, like David Korten, who cut his
teeth by leading the Third Word movement for self-help development, or like Francis Moore-Lappé, who spent her early years dissecting the myths of Third World hunger, Fisher will next turn her microscope and scalpel to dissecting the emerging Civil Society in the industrial world. For it is the Industrial Culture’s transition to Gaian Cultures which is required if human civilisation is to continue, and it is our Civil Society which must lead, and is leading, the way.

NGO's and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine by William Korey Hardcover (1998)

In this book, William Korey deftly describes how NGO's, the Non-Governmental Organizations officially accredited to the United Nations, have had a powerful influence in sensitising mankind's conscience to the frequent violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the UN fifty years ago.   It was the NGO's which laid the groundwork for the destruction of the Soviet Empire, as well as the Apartheid system in South Africa, and established the principle of accountability for crimes against humanity.   In this book, William Korey has demonstrated that is the NGO's which have placed human rights at the the heart of humankind's current and future agenda.

A series of studies that were shared among participants in a series of meetings and carved to comprise a unified treatment of how non-governmental organizations have served the United Nations by criticising the imperfections of international society, stimulating progress, promoting new ideas, raising voluntary funds for development, and publicising the United Nations and its agencies.  NGO activity in the 1990s is often claimed to be unprecedented, yet it is not so new. The first victory by NGOs in the UN was fifty years ago, when they obtained provision in the UN Charter for their own participation with 'consultative status'. Since then their influence has grown steadily, to cover all the work of the Economic and Social Council, along with the operational programs in developing countries, the specialised agencies and UN conferences. Booknews, Inc., 1996