Lecture 09:Non-governmental

organisations (NGOs)

What is an NGO?

• ‘Any group of people relating to each other regularly in some formal manner and engaging in collective action, provided that the activities are non-commercial and non-violent, and are not on behalf of a government’.

• Baylis, Glossary definition

States and NGOs• Realists think that non-state actors,

such as NGOs and civil society, are not important

• Realists and diplomats tend to talk about ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics:

• High politics are seen as transactions between states and other powerful actors over (mainly) military, economic and diplomatic matters

• Low politics is seen as matters such as human rights which involve transaction between ‘lesser’ actors such as NGOs

Questions• Is this distinction accurate or meaningful?• Is the world still dominated by states?• Are states powerful in some areas and not others?• Is globalisation changing the way that politics is

structured?• Is the world becoming one ‘community’ rather than

a collection of states giving NGOs more influence?

• Is public or global opinion something NGOs can utilise?

Case Study: Greenpeace and the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau

• 2006: President Chirac announced that the asbestos-laden warship Clemenceau would return to France

• France was seeking to dump toxic waste from France in India

• Greenpeace claimed that their actions and an embarrassing international scandal left France with little choice but to abandon the attempt to dump waste in India

• Back in December 2005, Greenpeace highlighted France's attempts to dump an old warship leaden with toxics like deadly asbestos on India

• France didn't want to deal with its own toxic mess and Greenpeace blocked the departure of the Clemenceau from the French port of Toulon

Greenpeace versus the French Republic

• Greenpeace claimed it was wrong for France to dump a 27,000-tonne warship full of asbestos, PCBs, lead, mercury, and other toxic chemicals in India to be broken up by hand in a scrapyard where impoverished workers are injured and die every day

• France insisted it was right and sent the ship to India

• In January 2006, Greenpeace boarded the warship in the Mediterranean and called on Egypt to block the passage of the ship

• The French government intervened at the highest level to ensure the ship could continue to India

Media interest in India

• Meanwhile in India there was a growing media and public scandal surrounding the Indian government permitting France to dump a ship full of hazardous waste in India

• Indian courts ordered the warship to stay out of Indian waters pending a final ruling. However, France kept the asbestos ship steaming towards India

• Media interest intensified and levels of public anger in India and France increased with every day the ship continued to steam towards India

• Chirac was due to visit India in February 2006, but gave in to pressure and called the ship back to France

• Greenpeace claimed that ‘the case of the Clemenceau has become a symbol of the moral injustice of rich countries dumping their toxic waste on poorer countries. Having tried and failed to offload the ship to other countries to avoid responsibility for the toxic mess of its own making, France has finally been forced to clean up its own act’

Round One to Greenpeace

• Greenpeace claim that every year ships containing toxic substances – asbestos, PCBs and heavy metals – end up in shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh, India, China and Pakistan, where they are cut up in the crudest of fashions, taking a huge toll on human health and the local environment

• Shipbreaking is one of the most visible forms of the trade in toxic waste that ends up dumped in developing countries

• So: was everyone complaining because it was an ex-aircraft carrier?

Yet more dead ships

• Greenpeace believes that rich governments should look at the precedent of the Clemenceau case and take action to stop the dumping of toxic waste in poor countries

• It claims that only effective action will prevent another Clemenceau-style scandal

• Two other elements need to be added to this: • a) there was considerable anger about

France’s nuclear testing in the Pacific in the late 1990s

• b) the Clemenceau wasn’t broken up in France but in Britain by Able UK, at their yard in Graythorp; thus Greenpeace only won part of what it wanted

Collective protest

The Clemenceau at Toulon before coming to England in 2009

 

Analysis: what does this incident tell us

about NGOs? • Hard v. Soft Power• France is a major military power but it was unable to use

this to force through the Clemenceau shipment • Does this undermine realist conceptions of military

power?• Both the French and the Indian governments, with their

political resources, were not able to force the shipment• Two powerful governments were ‘afraid’ of domestic and

international opinion or were at least influenced by it• Greenpeace was able to mount a press campaign and

take physical action to prevent the Clemenceau from crossing through the Suez Canal

One conclusion 

• NGOs through the internet and the international media made use of globalisation to exert change

• This shows that in certain ‘issues areas’, such as the environment, that NGOs may have power

• ‘Civil society’ can mobilise around certain issues internationally – however, only those issues that can be clearly seen as ‘moral’

What about these ships?

The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov

The Liaoning, China’s first aircraft carrier

Could every government be influenced by NGO campaigns?

NGOs and states

• NGOs have the power to influence state policies, and even embarrass the governments of powerful states, but their powers have real limits

• In authoritarian states where governments are less sensitive to public opinion, NGOs face severe restraints on what they can do

• If the Admiral Kuznetsov or the Liaoning had been sent to India for breaking up, could a Greenpeace campaign have achieved similar success?

NGOs in Russia• Most of the 230,000 NGOs in Russia

are concerned with local issues• A small number are active in monitoring

human rights and exposing corruption:

• GOLOS: monitors the fairness of elections

• Moscow Helsinki Group: the country’s oldest human rights organisation

• Russian branches of groups like Transparency International and Amnesty International

The “Foreign Agents” amendment

• In June 2012, the ruling United Russia party proposed changing the law on NGOs.

• Under the changes, all NGOs receiving funding from abroad – whether state or private – would be classified as “foreign agents” if they became involved in political activities.

• United Russia said the bill would not obstruct the work of NGOs, but added they would have to “disclose the true essence of their activities”.

• Sponsors of the bill said similar legislation already existed in the United States and elsewhere.

Opposition to the legislation• One campaigner said the rules aimed: “to discredit and

effectively ruin major civic organisations independent of the authorities in our country“.

• Others pointed out that even the Russian Orthodox Church would be affected by the changes.

• The Moscow Helsinki Group noted the American laws apply only to official lobbyists working on behalf of foreign governments or firms.

• “We protect our citizens when their rights are breached. We do not work for foreign states.”

» Moscow Helsinki Group

Action against Russian NGOs

• In April 2013 the first Russian NGO – the election monitoring group Golos – was fined under the country’s new ‘Foreign Agents’ law

• Putin’s government was particularly hostile to Golos for its uncovering of election fraud in Russia