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Global Organisations - Coggle Diagram
Global Organisations
Non-Governmental Organisations
There are millions of NGOs worldwide and nearly 5000 have special consultative status at the UN, meaning they can attend meetings of the Economic and Social Council and influence UN policymaking.
NGOs carry out a wide range of work from campaigning and advocacy to humanitarian assistance and long-term development work.
E.g. Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Save the Children
Funding comes from donations from individuals, national governments and organisations such as the UN.
NGOs vastly expand the range of actors involved in development work beyond IGOs and nation-states.
Smaller NGOs operating at a local level can build local skills and expertise, reducing dependency on international aid.
NGOs and their resources:
The International Committee of the Red Cross is based in 100 countries with 18,800 staff and has an annual expenditure of approximately $2 billion.
Save the Children operates in over 100 countries. In 2019 it spent £271 million on its projects. It received £73 million from private individuals and £131 million from the EU, the UN and the UK government.
Impact and focus of NGOs:
The ICRC focuses on humanitarian assistance in conflict, particularly in Syria, South Sudan and Iraq. It had provided medical care, distributed food and helped displaced people.
Save the Children focuses on education, food and medicine for vulnerable children. It has worked in sub-Saharan Africa to alleviate child malnutrition and has supported girls' education. It provided emergency grants to vulnerable children during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Multinational Corporations
Multinational corporations create jobs and tax revenue that keep unemployment low and provide funding for public spending. For neoliberals, they should be as free as possible from state intervention to allow them to grow and innovate naturally within a free market. For dependency theorists, MNCs are part of the global capitalist model that locks individuals in a state of underdevelopment.
Many MNCs have great wealth and influence that gives them considerable bargaining power over states and can sometimes force states to change their economic policy to attract foreign inward investment by keeping business tax low and regulation minimal.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that between $100-250 billion annually is lost in tax revenue globally due to MNCs avoiding paying corporate taxes, sometimes entirely legally. the G7 and G20 have attempted to take action to reduce tax loopholes but have had limited success
MNCs are also increasingly understanding the benefit to society and their public image of investing in corporate social responsibility projects. For example, Apple's operation in India have invested in a number of renewable energy projects and in education and disaster relief management. Some states have passed legislation which requires companies to allocate a certain amount of their profits to corporate social responsibility projects.
United Nations
There are many well established
UN agencies involved in development
and alleviating poverty.
UNICEF works in 190 countries to provide clean water, food, education and emergency support for children.
The UNDP is the UN's lead agency for implementing the sustainable development goals
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Success:
Extreme Poverty was reduced by half, falling from 1.9 billion people in 1990 to 836 million in 2015
Increase in primary school enrollment, from 83% in 2000 to 91% in 2015, the number of girls increased
Child mortality was reduced from 90 to 43 deaths per 1000 live births between 1990 and 2015
Maternal health improved, mortality declined by 45% worldwide since 1990
Notes of Caution:
Economic development and rapid Growth in China was responsible for most of the global success of eradicating extreme poverty. Progress had been slower elsewhere
The target of halving the number of people suffering from hunger was not achieved
Global inequality remained a significant issue
The private sector was not given enough of a role in the implementation of the MDGs
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Agreed in 2015, the SDGs were the successor to the MDGs and will last until 2030.
The SDGs introduced new goals on the environment including action on climate change, clean water and more sustainable management of ecosystems.
There is a reference to political freedom as a goal for the first time, through the inclusion of peace, justice and strong institutions.
The SDGs retained many of the MDGs where progress had been made but there was still more to do, such as the commitment to end poverty.