SEMINAR -

▪ NGO IS COMMONLY REFERED TO AS NON-GOVERNMENTAL

ORGANIZATIONS AND ARE USUALLY NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
INDEPENDENT OF GOVERNMENT .
▪ A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a non-profit, citizen-based group
that functions independently of government. NGOs, sometimes called civil
societies, are organized on community, national and international levels to
serve specific social or political purposes, and are cooperative, rather than
commercial, in nature.
▪ CARE International
▪ Amnesty International
▪ Oxfam International
▪ MERCY CORPS
▪ DOCTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
▪ WOSM
▪ GREENPEACE
▪ CARE INTERNATIONAL –
▪ CARE International is a large humanitarian INGO that is committed to fighting poverty. They take a
special interest in empowering poor women because "women have the power to help whole families
and entire communities escape poverty". The mission and explicit goals of CARE, as described on
their website, are to facilitate lasting change by:
▪ Strengthening capacity for self-help
▪ Providing economic opportunity
▪ Delivering relief in emergencies
▪ Influencing policy decisions at all levels
▪ Addressing discrimination in all its forms

▪ One of CARE's projects is responding to natural disasters. For example, CARE has been an
integral part of the relief effort in the outbreak of cholera in Haiti. Some of CARE's relief tactics in
Haiti are:
▪ distributing high-energy biscuits, water purification tablets, oral rehydration salts, and hygiene
kits,
▪ instructing Haitians on how best avoid and prevent cholera, and
▪ providing clean water and safe latrine facilities to people living in camps for survivors of Haiti's
January 12 earthquake.
▪ Amnesty International –
▪ Amnesty International is an INGO that is dedicated to the promotion and protection of
internationally regarded human rights as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Their goals,[20] as described on their website, are to:
▪ Stop violence against women
▪ Defend the rights and dignity of those trapped in poverty
▪ Abolish the death penalty
▪ Protect the rights of refugees and migrants
▪ Regulate the global arms trade

▪ This organization uses more of an advocacy approach to promote change and human rights
within the government. Their website claims they mobilize "public pressure through mass
demonstrations, vigils and direct lobbying as well as online and offline campaigning" in order
to promote their ongoing campaigns, which reflect their goals. [20]

▪ An organization like Amnesty International, unconnected to the government allows them to

approach human rights in ways governmental organizations like the United Nations cannot. [21]
▪ AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL -

▪ They were an integral part in making the gap that existed between IGOs and finding
solutions to international human rights principles and practices. [22] In conjunction
with other INGOs, Amnesty International was able to help create a lot of accepted
guidelines surrounding human rights law. These include everything from core treaties
to the creation of official guidelines on how human rights should be implemented.
They have also led to boundaries on the extent states should be allowed to ignore
human rights violations in other countries under the guise of diplomacy and
maintaining the peace.[22]
▪ The intention of human rights is to put people and their safety above all else and
Amnesty International does this both through their external work with other countries
but also within their organization. They can thus report on human rights violations
that the United Nations may have political pressure to ignore. This was the case in
May 1992 when they reported on violations in Tibet that had been glazed over by the
United Nations.[4]
▪ Greenpeace -

▪ is a non-governmental[3] environmental organization with offices in over 39 countries

and an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, the Netherlands Greenpeace
was founded in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, Canadian and US ex-pat
environmental activists.
▪ Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all
its diversity"[5] and focuses its campaigning on worldwide issues such as climate
change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering,
and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, lobbying, research, and ecotage[6] to
achieve its goals.