Ngos and Global Policy

Their need to keep good standing with their donor agencies obliges them to guarantee the quality of the "work product" from their grants or loans; so they tend to keep their heads down, and are disinclined to develop an independent stance over matters of general policy. Moving to a somewhat larger scale of operation, a substantial number of agencies are not confined to limited localities, but maintain more extensive - or even world wide - areas of concern. Once these organizations have developed international ambitions, they seek "observer status" at the United Nations, which can give them access to UN Headquarters, to papers that the UN Secretariat prepares for circulation to recognized NGOs, and to some direct participation in conferences in their special areas of concern.

More of this later. The status is so helpful that people sometimes think of NGOS in ways that treat only nongovernmental organizations with UN observer status as being genuine "NGOs" at all. However much the potential role of NGOS was a factor in the preparatory discussions of the UN Charter, it is worth recalling that many influential NGOs were established, and proved their worth, at a time when cooperation between the UN and external NGOS was in a very early stage of development.

Having set on one side the nongovernmental organizations I am not concerned with in this essay, let me sharpen my focus, and identify the large, transnational NGOS that are my main concern.

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Several kinds of organization are relevant here, and have much in common. Their scope is world wide, and they pursue their topics on a global scale. They operate on a transnational basis: Typically, they take no money from either industry or government, but get it through subscriptions from individuals who have their "cause" at heart. Most crucially, they seek to protect their independence of judgment, and their claim to be impartially critical, by keeping a distance from both Nation State Governments and the United Nations - dining with them as the English saying is "using a long spoon.

Another group of NGOS is grounded in shared commitments of professionals in different disciplines and countries. Physicians together, or lawyers together, find a common cause in the distinctive values of their professions. Israeli and Palestinian physicians who meet over the injured body of a shared patient, will approach his treatment in the same frame of mind, and set aside all considerations that rest only on questions of citizenship or nationality.

The same can be said in the legal profession for, e. Finally, a few transnational NGOS engage in charitable work from a commercial, not a professional or academic angle. In modus operandi, a business consultancy like McKinzie resembles Greenpeace or Amnesty: Meanwhile - though the NSGS of Europe grumbled at "unscrupulous currency dealers" - the Soros Foundation started the Central European University in Budapest and Prague in less time than it took the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, its intergovernmental counterpart, to buy marble for its grandiose entrance hall.

In the background, of course, older Foundations of commercial origin Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, etc. None of these groups of organizations - humanitarian, professional or commercial -is tempted to act as agents for a National Government. If anything, their relations with Government are conducted at arm's length to preserve both the appearance and the fact of independence.

As we shall see, the efficacy of their operations, and their credibility for those who benefit from them, depends on keeping a real distance in these relations, so that political disputes among States or peoples do not touch the NGOs' reputations as honest brokers or disinterested bringers of aid. Like so much of the educational or social services given by the State in modern secular societies, the work of NGOs was in earlier times undertaken by Churches and religious orders.

In Europe from on, the Medieval Christian Church was in effect a transnational institution, with a standing above, and apart from the secular rulers of the time. To this day, indeed, the ICRC succeeds, by acting with great care, in keeping the confidence of countries with very different cultural and religious traditions: Now, let me turn to the central issue for this essay, about the significance of the large, financially independent transnational NGOS in global affairs.

The fact that NGOS have been increasingly influential over the last twenty years is clear to observers of current events. The decline of the USSR's political authority on the international stage was accelerated by its hostile reactions to the award of Nobel Prizes to Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andre Sakharov, while Amnesty's campaign for Soviet prisoners of conscience only made matters worse: Mikhail Gorbachev therefore felt bound to invite representatives from Amnesty International to visit Moscow, to discuss reforms that might help restore Russia's standing in the larger world.

More recently, humanitarian, environmental and human rights organizations have worked with the international Press and Television to draw their viewers and readers' attention to ecological catastrophes and oppressive regimes, massacres and famines, from Alaska to Rwanda, Somalia to Guatemala, Bosnia to Kashmir.

In response, the World Powers, large or small, have felt bound to acknowledge disasters they might have preferred to ignore, and have reacted by dispatching mobile hospitals and food supplies, election observers and armistice monitors. Suffering that is visible on the TV screens of richer countries touches the conscience of electors, and so of politicians also: The fact that NGOS are influential is undeniable: The alliance of NGOS and the media is a potent instrument of change; but about the deeper significance of NGOs something more has to be explained.

In a dozen ways, we are at a turning point in the history of State Power and Sovereignty: In the long run - I shall argue - the Nation State Governments can no more monopolize the political conduct of global affairs than OPEC can monopolize the World market for petroleum. The heart of the matter is this. After a brush with dissident nobles in the Fronde, he used all available force to create the unitary State that France has since remained, both as a monarchy and as a republic.

In theoretical terms, European ideas about the power of the Nation State are dominated by the model in Hobbes' Leviathan. On this view, the prime function of the Sovereign is to provide security to his Subjects or Citizens: The authority of the Sovereign is displayed in the use of State Violence, to preserve domestic order by the power of the Police, and to protect the State's external integrity by the power of its Armed Forces.

Against the Sovereign's legitimate Force, Hobbes saw no scope for any legitimate resistance. The execution of King Charles I in marked for him the final breakdown of the State: In the three and a half centuries since the Peace of Westphalia, the political Powers of the World have constructed a diplomatic system in which every Sovereign is free to ensure the domestic order and external integrity of the State. By both formal and tacit agreement among these Sovereign authorities, all States respect each other's monopoly in the domestic use of Violence, and they will resist each other's external use of Force, only if their own compelling interests are threatened.

The United Nations Treaties did nothing to weaken the power of this Cartel: Since the end of the Cold War, the authority of States to protect Sovereign interests has been qualified in ways that are now familiar. A new rhetoric constructed around such novel ideas as human rights law and the international community - a community with needs and interests of its own - is winning currency in debates at the UN, as well as in other forums: The crucial transition was the case of lraq vs. Initially, the attempt by one member of the UN and OPEC Cartels to seize the assets of a fellow member was found unacceptable for purely Westphalian reasons.

But the penalties to which the Sovereign State of Iraq was exposed, and the lengths to which the alliance opposed it went in its interpretation of the Security Council's resolutions, give evidence of a change of view. The use of those resolutions, for instance, to warrant intervention between the Baghdad authorities and their Subjects in Kurdistan to the North, and in the Delta to the South, imposed restraints on the exercise of Iraqi Sovereignty that had very little to do with its seizure of Kuwait.

On the contrary, these actions rested on pre-Westphalian ideas of State Sovereignty. In short, the actions of Saddam Hussein against the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs were condemned as those of an "unjust" Sovereign: Iraqi Kurds were entitled to appeal for support and understanding in resisting those actions, as much as the Netherlanders of the s were entitled to support and understanding against religious persecution by Philip of Spain's Army.

On the Hobbist view, the only "injustice" a Sovereign can do to his Subjects is to fail to preserve the State's domestic peace and its external integrity: Yet this is just the argument the Security Council did not let Saddam use in his own cause. On a pre-Westphalian view, however, a Sovereign's obligations went beyond those of preserving domestic peace and external security. Legitimate Violence may be a way to create and maintain an effective State; but, if a Sovereign were to retain legitimacy, his actions must meet other conditions.

In general, it was not acceptable for Subjects to rebel, but the way in which Philip II persecuted the Netherlands Protestants gave them a right to "abjure" their earlier loyalty to the Spanish Crown. Loyalty was a two-way affair. The Sovereign was expected to act in his Subjects' interests, not just vice versa: Claims about a Sovereign's "injustice" carried conviction for Aquinas but, until , they had little weight in the UN. At the high point of the Modern Nation State, matters of Power were interpreted as questions about a State's ability to bring Military Force into action.

Since , the capacity for Military Force is longer the only measure of political influence. Even now, Shame may only a limited ability to say change the minds of the Burmese junta. But limited power is not zero power: So one reason why major transnational NGOS can win and retain public respect just is their manifest abstention from Violence. As I wrote some years ago, The day that Amnesty International takes possession of a machine gun, let alone an atom bomb, its ability to gain a hearing and influence events will be at an end Amnesty International's moral authority is that much the greater, just because it is a Lilliputian institution 2 While the Superpowers boasted about nuclear arsenals, NGOS were seen as inherently nonviolent.

While the policies of NSGs were slanted by their own ambitions, and the speeches in the Security Council were aimed at national advantage, NGOs seemed free of ulterior interests - grinding no axes, uncommitted to one country rather than another, speaking not for any Government but for its victims, the sufferers and the oppressed. Put idealistically, NGOS became Humanity's Conscience, and were taken seriously because their arguments were disinterested. Of course, this view involved an element of exaggeration. If pressed, UN officials who handled nongovernmental organizations would reply that NGOS can act in ways as self-interested as those of any Government.

But this reply involved a counter-exaggeration, too. The basic insight still holds good: Oxfam and Amnesty are not inherently self-interested parties, and their arguments can be taken as meaning just what they say. At Cairo, a coalition of NGOS and women's groups - above all, from the developing countries that suffer most from population pressures - played a major role by preventing the representatives of NSGS from making concessions to the Vatican and other conservative male religious groups, which were trying to destroy the effectiveness of the Conference's final documents.

NSG spokespeople are exposed to a clash of interests among different groups on their domestic scene: The interests for which the NGOs spoke were less ambiguous and more clearly defined; and they mounted a powerful operation to defend the central purposes of the Conference. Here we can begin to answer one of the larger questions facing this meeting, about the relative efficacy of the UN's political and technical agencies. They are subject to the familiar criticisms that ordinary people direct at politicians back home: The technical activities are effective, on the other hand, to the extent that their goals are defined in advance clearly enough to ensure a consensus.

We may thus form an impression that the technical agencies of the UN function well, and its political institutions badly. But this impression rests on a confusion over this division of tasks.

The single-mindedness of NGOS makes them natural allies of the technical agencies: In passing, let me remark on a stratagem that NGOS use to shift the field on which issues are debated. At the end of the Cold War, groups like International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility argued that nuclear weapons are a public health problem, like communicable diseases and polluted drinking water, so that nuclear disarmament has to be viewed as a public health issue. The stratagem had both strength and weakness. On the one hand, it focused attention on the catastrophes that will follow any use of nuclear weapons: Policy debates about nuclear weapons or disarmament, per contra, have for long focused not on radiation and the like, but on the balance of interests involved in nuclear deterrence: Certainly, there is a virtue in replacing political and diplomatic issues by technical and professional ones, wherever this is practicable; but it cannot be done completely, or in all cases equally.

On the contrary, medical information serves only to spell out, in detail, the consequences that should be a necessary component in all political and diplomatic equations: The absolute sovereignty of Nation States is now constrained, not just by their economic interdependence, but also by the ability of self-appointed NGOs to raise a worldwide response from world opinion by their advocacy of humanitarian, environmental, medical or human rights causes.

The difficulties in question are sometimes trivial: At a meeting in the Netherlands, I spoke of Greenpeace as a serious organization, and was surprised by the Japanese representative's disgust: Greenpeace and its works filled him with distaste. But it was clear that his reaction was a response, in part, to the deliberately shaming and melodramatic character of Greenpeace's public demonstrations, which are intended to put the industry or government being criticized in the wrong before the general public.

Yet this is only one half of Greenpeace's mode of operation. The other half acts as a counterbalance: Behind injured feelings, however, the difficulties are real and sometimes painfully embarrassing. The intervention in Somalia by the United States and the United Nations was triggered by a humanitarian crisis, notably at Baidoa: The first international response was a flow of medical help and food to relieve this crisis; but it soon became clear that much more was needed.

The prevalence of banditry and the risk of injury and even death to aid workers, at the hands of gangs run by a dozen rival warlords, persuaded the US government and the UN to introduce military forces, hoping - vainly, as it proved - to create a framework within which a stable government could be established in Mogadishu that might regain effective authority over the rest of the country. The story is fresh in our minds. Its opening was the most ironic of all: But before long the security situation became totally ambiguous: It was and still is unclear if peaceful humanitarian doctors or relief workers and heavily armed government armies can operate effectively on the same ground: Yet State governments remain open to a well-intended pressure or temptation to interpose forces, in places where much good can seemingly be done in an otherwise desperate situation.

The intervention at Goma, on the Rwanda-Zaire border, was one case where government force and humanitarian agencies cooperated to good effect in the short term, to relieve an immediate disaster; but the intervention's inconclusive political effect leaves the underlying problems as obscure as ever. For the time being, States having a capacity for disinterested helpfulness are liable to slip into political quagmires, once their help goes beyond medical supplies and food, and involves putting armed force on the ground.

In President Clinton's speeches, the rhetoric of "national interests" blurs into one of "our natural humanitarian interests"; but as in the case of Haiti his political critics are now becoming hard nosed about the limited extent of America's truly "national" concerns. Yet there is little doubt that the underlying tension will continue. People in the rich countries will go on demanding that their Governments react to disasters of all kinds - floods or starvation, torture or "ethnic cleansing" - and the political implications of that demand will remain as ambiguous as ever.

In situations of anarchy Somalia or civil war Bosnia and Rwanda the lack of effective authority puts humanitarian workers at risk in ways no outside State can remedy, short of imposing a colonial administration. So it is no wonder that the ways in which governments react to calls for intervention in good causes are coming to sound like the alarm from the Trumpeter of Cracow - the first arrow to the throat brings it to a sudden stop. Earlier, we remarked on the narrower, pre-Westphalian concept of Sovereignty. When a Sovereign's treatment of his Subjects deeply offended the Consciences of the other Powers, considerations of Shame could oblige him to change his policies and correct his actions, in ways that left questions about Force and Violence on one side.

In the three centuries and more of the Modern era, appeals to morality and shame lost much of this effectiveness. A few rulers - King Bomba of Naples in the early s - and a few major powers - the 19th century Ottoman forces in Bulgaria - acted in ways so outrageous as to attract general condemnation; but Shame was rarely sufficient to change their minds or their policies. Now, however, though we still face unresolved practical problems, our situation at least testifies to the renewed power of Shame as an influence in global affairs. Some current regimes - the Burmese junta. Even there, however, an awareness of being international pariahs, and the experience of being besieged by a delegation of Nobel prize winners, weakens their ability to ignore outside criticism and continue imposing their power with unrestricted force.

Though something less than outright Shame, this is a move in the same direction.

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Transnational Representative Institutions Let me return to an idea implicit in my earlier discussion: More should be said about the limits of this parallel: But the central point holds good: To pose a topical question: Or is the effectiveness of NGOS paradoxically increased by the ability of separate and independent organizations to reach consensus? Certainly, the centralized authority of the Vatican undermined rather than strengthened its credibility at the Cairo conference.

Vatican representatives at that meeting acted so like Nation State Governments in, e. This question is part of a larger institutional problem facing the whole UN: The institutions of the European Union are currently criticized for their "democratic deficit": The recent enlargement of the authority of the European Parliament go some way to correct this deficit, but much more remains to be corrected. A similar criticism applies to the institutions of the UN.

The General Assembly e. Unless that "deficit" can be remedied - it may be argued - the Governments of the Member States, however unrepresentative on the domestic level, will keep a monopoly of national representation, when the interests of the peoples over whom they rule come up for debate in the UN's institutions. What alternative is there - a directly elected World Parliament? As matters stand, this proposal is visionary but impractical. The Governments of many Member States are unwilling to hold, on their territories, free and fair elections to which all permanent residents of the State have effective access 7.

So there is little prospect that these States have either will or experience needed to organize elections for a World Parliament that are acceptable by transnational standards. The consulting firm conducting the poll begins with a useful back-history of the problem: As originally conceived in the UN Charter discussions, NGOs would be recognized by the Economic and Social Council as important participants in considering issues before the Council and that's all.

Subsequently, large numbers of NGOs arrived at official UN conferences and made their presence felt through specialized conferences, and UN staff planning meetings. In the World Health Organization, NGO expertise was given prominence in drafting international guidelines and standards on infant formula sometimes equal to or greater than individual Governments. The Bergen conference on sustainable development experimented with a five sided formula: Governments, business, youth, labour and environmental groups had to agree on. Several things are clear in this account. Early on, they felt the need to "make their presence felt" at meetings, by staging "counter-conferences, parallel events and demonstrations": Finally they still need to follow a strategy of "counter conferences, parallel events, and demonstrations.

The Upstairs conference declined to listen to the Dalai Lama, or anybody who saw Tibet as raising issues of human rights. Downstairs in the basement, the NGOS meanwhile listened to the Dalai Lama, took on other issues the NSGS evaded, and gave a running commentary on the meeting that the World Press by all accounts found more interesting, informative and entertaining than the Upstairs proceedings. Similar counter-events took place at the Rio Environmental meeting and the Cairo Population conference: Sadako Ogata, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has regular meetings with humanitarian and other NGOs that work on the problems of refugees in war torn and starving regions.

The documents following the Rio Conference - e.

How is it decided which NGOs shall participate in such meetings? At these meetings, democracy is not "one person one vote": Organizationally, then, much still needs doing to create modes of collaboration among NGOS and the UN bureaux and councils, before the UN's operations can seriously claim to be democratic. Hitherto, in any case, the major humanitarian and environmental NGOs have been unwilling to coordinate their administrative practices, let alone establish a framework of common institutions.

Much of their influence the argument goes comes from the fact that their goals are exactly defined. There was a long and painful internal debate before Amnesty International enlarged the organization's targets to include capital punishment: For the most part, however, this collaboration is only arranged ad hoc, in response to the needs of a particular crisis in say Bosnia or Rwanda, not with any expectation of creating a standing Council or permanent Assembly of NGOs 8.

From the start, the UN Organization was an "inter-national" inter-State or inter-Governmental organization. At its 50th anniversary, it is unwilling to broaden its representation of Citizens, at the cost of States or Governments.

On the contrary, many Member States fear to offend the oligarchies that dominate their own politics. It is not that the goals of NGOS are intrinsically technical, but their single mindedness sharpens their attention in a quasitechnical way. Transnational Judicial Institutions The peripheral institutions of the UN have similar limitations, arising from the fact that the UN is intergovernmental not transgovernmental, international not transnational.

The World Bank is a good example.

Public Policy and Administration

Its statutes prevent it from making loans directly to agricultural cooperatives or other NGOs. All of its funds have to go via NSGs for allocation within a country, and some of them fail to reach their intended beneficiaries, being diverted to pay for Mercedes cars for the State elite. Yet, as the Grameen Bank found in Bangladesh, local agricultural cooperatives run by women default on their 1oans at a markedly lower rate than regular commercial firms, let alone Governments.

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This discovery has, however, been frustratingly slow to influence thinking at leading international financial agencies 9. For NGOs in the field of human rights, however, the crucial global institutions are judicia1; and there the weaknesses of a purely inter-governmental system are flagrant. The International Court of Justice, e. This leaves no provision for actions in which individual citizens, or classes of citizens, seek to press claims against Sovereign States: As matters stand, indeed, Sovereign Immunity - a product of the Westphalian era - stops individuals bringing suits in the domestic Courts of their own country; and the Cartel of inter-Governmental institutions stops them doing so under International Law.

Even less are there tribunals in which transnational humanitarian agencies can bring "class action" suits for groups of citizens who are penalized, or discriminated against, matters of International Law, by the Government of a State. Whether as individuals, as classes, or through NGOS as guardians Citizens have no "standing" in the tribunals responsible for adjudicating matters of International Law.

Some analysts believe that these successes resulted from increasing globalization and the pressure of ordinary citizens to control and regulate the world beyond the nation state. The Coalition for an International Criminal Court was indispensable to the adoption of the Treaty of Rome and another NGO mobilization forced governments to abandon secret negotiations for the Multilateral Agreement on Investments in In the late s, the NGO Working Group on the Security Council emerged as an important interlocutor of the UN's most powerful body, while the Jubilee Campaign changed thinking and policy on poor countries' debt.

The Role of Transnational NGOs in Global Affairs

These recent NGO victories have often been due to effective use of the internet, enabling rapid mobilization of global constituencies. NGOs operate with many different methods and goals. Some act alone while others work in coalitions. Some organize noisy protests and demonstrations while others prefer sober education or quiet diplomacy.

Some "name and shame" those in power who abuse citizen rights, while others work closely with the authorities. Some simplify the issues for broad public campaigns, while others produce detailed studies to inform policy makers. NGO action can be analyzed on three different levels: Some NGO campaigns combine all three.

For example, the World Court Project, a network of NGOs opposed to nuclear weapons, successfully brought a landmark case to the World Court in on the legality of nuclear weapons. Getting the Court to accept the case was a victory in the arena of micro-policy, but the larger campaign goal included macro-policy changing governments' strategic reliance on nuclear weapons and norm-setting persuading the public that nuclear weapons are immoral and a threat to real security.

Governments and international organizations at times find NGOs a nuisance or even threatening to their interests. But officials nonetheless look to NGOs for innovative ideas and information. Officials also grudgingly recognize that consultation with and support from NGOs gives their public decisions more credibility.

NGOs are very diverse and by no means all are equally laudable. In addition to the great organizations dealing with human rights, environmental protection and humanitarian assistance, there are NGOs representing industry associations like soap and chemicals, narrowly zealous religious organizations and advocates of obscure causes like Esperanto and space colonization.

While some NGOs are fiercely independent, others are known as the creatures of governments, businesses or even criminal interests. Some have hundreds of thousands of members around the world while others speak for only a handful of people. Some have large central secretariats and some are very decentralized. With such diversity, generalizations about NGOs can be difficult. Recently, the number of NGOs has been growing rapidly. Many observers see these trends as signs of increasing pluralism and democracy, because authoritarian and paternalistic governments have either outlawed independent NGOs or confronted them with severe administrative hurdles and harassment.

Large numbers of NGOs certainly help to reflect a complex and diverse social reality and represent a rich variety of citizens' needs and concerns that governments on their own could scarcely identify or accommodate. As NGOs take an increasingly important role in political life, some critics are concerned that NGOs speak in many different and conflicting voices, that can fragment and weaken political action.

Often, there are many competing NGOs in the same policy field and their mutual contest for influence can undercut political effectiveness. Many respected NGOs work hard to overcome this narrowness by operating in close partnership with others. Some NGOs themselves specialize in coalition-building. Interaction, for instance, serves as the umbrella for dozens of humanitarian organizations in the United States.

Even the most democratic governments subject NGOs to some type of control, such as registration and financial oversight. International organizations like the UN require officially-accredited NGOs to pass through a review process to determine which are legitimate partners. Thanks partly to these controls and to the ethos of public service in the NGO community, NGOs are not often accused of corruption, breaches of the law, gross failure to live up to their mandate or other serious abuses.

Compared with the frequent scandals of corruption and abuse of authority by officials of nation states, NGOs appear as relatively virtuous. Nonethelsss, some accuse NGOs of being structurally undemocratic and unaccountable. Elected government officials often defend themselves against NGO criticism by pointing out that NGO leaders are not elected.

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Though it is true that NGO leaders do not stand for election, they are held accountable by boards of directors, membership bodies, and other constituencies. They also must win voluntary financial support each year from members and donors and cannot rely on legally-enforced taxation as governments do. Large international NGOs may have operational budgets in the tens of millions of dollars, though most NGO budgets are considerably smaller. Compared to corporations and governments that count their annual revenue in multiple billions, even the largest NGO budgets are very small indeed.

NGOs are usually financed by a combination of sources. Traditionally, membership dues have provided the main source, but today NGOs tap many other sources including grants or contracts from governments and international institutions, fees for services, profits from sales of goods, and funding from private foundations, corporations and wealthy individuals. In the s, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees expressed alarm that governments were increasingly channeling funds for humanitarian assistance to their own national NGOs rather than to multilateral agencies.

The agencies were losing their capacity to coordinate relief in large scale emergencies, as dozens of NGOs appeared on the scene. According to UN staffer Antonio Donini, public grants represented 1. This trend inevitably exposes NGOs to pressure from governments and limits their capacity to act independently. When NGOs take money from businesses, big foundations and rich individuals, such hefty grants can likewise create relations of influence and potentially lead NGOs away from their mandate to serve the broader public.

Increasingly also, NGOs sell products or services, just like a private company. To many observers, this looks more like a financial services company than an NGO. Thousands of other hard-pressed NGOs worldwide have taken the business path -- selling credit cards, internet services, travel tours and key rings, while charging for services they once provided free.

Though NGOs have long operated internationally, their role in the sphere of official diplomacy was relatively restricted until after World War II. NGOs won their right to a voice at the United Nations by heavy lobbying during the wartime negotiations Their rights were eventually guaranteed by Article 71 of the UN Charter and affirmed by many subsequent decisions. By , about 2, NGOs had consultative status with the UN and many thousands more had official arrangements with other organs in the UN system and other intergovernmental bodies.

The Earth Summit in Rio in set the pace for intense NGO participation in world conferences, with 17, NGO representatives participating in the NGO parallel forum and 1, directly involved in the intergovernmental negotiations.