A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in humanitarianism or the social sciences; they can also include clubs and associations that provide services to their members and others. NGOs can also be lobby groups for corporations, such as the World Economic Forum. NGOs are distinguished from international and intergovernmental organizations (IOs) in that the latter are more directly involved with sovereign states and their governments.
Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons. One aspect involves voluntary emergency aid overlapping with human rights advocacy, actions taken by governments, development assistance, and domestic philanthropy. Other critical issues include correlation with religious beliefs, motivation of aid between altruism and social control, market affinity, imperialism and neo-colonialism, gender and class relations, and humanitarian agencies. A practitioner is known as a humanitarian.
International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of economic or human development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classifications such as developed country, developing country and least developed country, and for a field of practice and research that in various ways engages with international development processes. There are, however, many schools of thought and conventions regarding which are the exact features constituting the "development" of a country.
In international relations, multilateralism refers to an alliance of multiple countries pursuing a common goal.
Human security is a paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities whose proponents challenges the traditional notion of national security through military security by arguing that the proper referent for security should be at the human rather than national level. Human security reveals a people-centred and multi-disciplinary understanding of security which involves a number of research fields, including development studies, international relations, strategic studies, and human rights. The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report is considered a milestone publication in the field of human security, with its argument that ensuring "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" for all persons is the best path to tackle the problem of global insecurity.
Global governance refers to institutions that coordinate the behavior of transnational actors, facilitate cooperation, resolve disputes, and alleviate collective action problems. Global governance broadly entails making, monitoring, and enforcing rules. Within global governance, a variety of types of actors – not just states – exercise power. Governance is thus broader than government.
The Responsibility to Protect is a global political commitment which was endorsed by all member states of the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit in order to address its four key concerns to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The doctrine is regarded as a unanimous and well established international norm over the past two decades.
Michael Nathan Barnett is a professor of international relations at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Known for his Constructivist approach, his scholarship and research has been in the areas of international organizations, international relations theory, and Middle Eastern politics.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1674, adopted unanimously on April 28, 2006, after reaffirming resolutions 1265 (1999) and 1296 (2000) concerning the protection of civilians in armed conflict and Resolution 1631 (2005) on co-operation between the United Nations and regional organisations, the Council stressed a comprehensive approach to the prevention of armed conflict and its recurrence.
Cosmopolitan democracy is a political theory which explores the application of norms and values of democracy at the transnational and global sphere. It argues that global governance of the people, by the people, for the people is possible and needed. Writers advocating cosmopolitan democracy include Immanuel Kant, David Held, Daniele Archibugi, Richard Falk, and Mary Kaldor. In the cosmopolitan democracy model, decisions are made by those affected, avoiding a single hierarchical form of authority. According to the nature of the issues at stake, democratic practice should be reinvented to take into account the will of stakeholders. This can be done either through direct participation or through elected representatives. The model advocated by cosmopolitan democrats is confederal and decentralized—global governance without world government—unlike those models of global governance supported by classic World Federalism thinkers, such as Albert Einstein.
Daniele Archibugi is an Italian economic and political theorist. He works on the economics and policy of innovation and technological change, on the political theory of international relations and on political and technological globalisation.
Jennifer Sterling-Folker is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. She was the Alan R. Bennett Honors Professor of Political Science. She is a specialist in International Relations theory.
Sir Arthur "Richard" Jolly, is a leading development economist who was named one of the fifty key thinkers globally in this field of economics.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1366, adopted unanimously on 30 August 2001, after reaffirming resolutions 1196 (1998), 1197 (1998), 1208 (1998), 1265 (1999), 1296 (1999), 1318 (2000), 1325 (2000) and 1327 (2000) concerning aspects of armed conflict, the Council reiterated its aim to prevent armed conflict as part of its responsibility to maintain international peace and security.
Rorden Wilkinson FAcSS FRSA is a British academic and author. He is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and Professor of International Political Economy at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He was previously Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor of International Political Economy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor of Global Political Economy, and a Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex; and Professor of International Political Economy and Research Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. He did his doctoral work and began his academic career at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has been a visiting scholar at Brown University, USA, Wellesley College, USA, and the Australian National University.
David Hulme is Professor of Development Studies at The University of Manchester where he is Executive Director of the Global Development Institute and CEO of the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre. Currently, he is the president of the Development Studies Association. He has worked on rural development, poverty and poverty reduction, microfinance, the role of non-government organisations in development, environmental management, social protection and the political economy of global poverty for more than 30 years. His main focus has been on Bangladesh but he has worked extensively across South Asia, East Africa and the Pacific. Recently, he has been a leading international expert in the discussion of the Millennium Development Goals and the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Rodney Bruce Hall is an American Professor of International Relations and among those scholars known as Second Generation Constructivists. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in physics and subsequently a master's degree in international relations and a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Friedrich Kratochwil, one of the founding scholars of constructivism in international relations.
Humanitarianism in Africa refers to the intentions and actions of people, nations, and organizations to alleviate human suffering in Africa. Humanitarian policies have focused on improving problems in Africa such as poverty, poor-health, corruption, and ethnic/inter-state conflict. Prominent entities which engage in humanitarian action in Africa include but are not limited to: foreign nations like the United States (US), domestic nations like South Africa, international organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations (UN), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, and even personal celebrities like Bono. Prominent methods of promoting humanitarianism in Africa have been foreign aid, humanitarian intervention, and UN sanctioned peacekeeping.
James Charles Ingram is a former Australian diplomat, philanthropist and author whose career culminated in his post as the eighth executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), a position which he occupied for ten years.
The Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) is a project of the international research group Humanitarian Outcomes. Funded by USAID, it records major incidents, from 1997 to present, of attacks on humanitarian workers worldwide. As cited in the New York Times, "it is widely regarded as an authoritative reference for aid organisations and governments in assessing trends in security threats." Since its inception in 2005 as the first fully comprehensive compilation of this data, the AWSD has been a source of quantitative evidence on matters related to the security of humanitarian operations in conflict, referenced in policy debates and cited in official United Nations statements, United Nations General Assembly resolutions, United Nations Security Council documents, and reports of the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
