Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, are autonomous, voluntary, and politically unaffiliated organizations that advance a particular cause or set of causes in the public interest. The scope of their activities may be local, national, or international. In authoritarian countries, some NGOs are created or controlled by governments, but by and large they function independently of governments. A small percentage of NGOs are for-profit corporations, but the great majority are nonprofit organizations.
The range of causes on which an NGO can focus is unlimited (human rights, environmental protection, women's rights, immigration, social justice, anti-nuclear movements, disaster relief, and development assistance are just a few), but a cardinal principle is that each NGO is obligated to operate in a manner consistent with the objectives for which it receives funds. Because NGOs are independent organizations, donations are their lifeline. Funding can come from governments, private trusts and philanthropies, individual donors, religious institutions, the United Nations, other NGOs, or a combination of these. While NGOs can contribute to democracy by challenging governments and promoting social interests, they themselves are not democratic institutions and have no democratic accountability. An NGO is only accountable to its particular funding organizations and members.
NGOs have existed for hundreds of years, but the term "non-governmental organization" was not coined until roughly the time of the United Nations' founding in 1945 - to differentiate private organizations from inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), such as the UN itself.
NGOs vary widely in their structure and size. Most are small, grassroots organizations unaffiliated with any international body. But there are also many large international NGOs that are transnational federations of national groups. Other international NGOs are mass-membership organizations.
The activities of NGOs take many different forms, from providing information and technical expertise on various issues to governments and international organizations, to advocating on behalf of specific policies, to providing humanitarian relief and development assistance, to reporting human rights abuses, to monitoring the implementation of environmental regulations.
After World War II, NGOs began to grow dramatically in number, a trend that gained even greater momentum in the 1970s, particularly at the national and local levels. Among the factors that have contributed to the proliferation of NGOs are: globalization; the growth in UN-sponsored global conferences, which often include parallel NGO forums; the technological revolution that has facilitated long-distance communication via fax, Internet, and email; and the spread of democracy, whose atmosphere of freedom has facilitated the formation and operation of organizations. As of 2005, there were some 6,000 recognized international NGOs.
Though generally unaffiliated with governments, NGOs influence the policies of governments and IGOs by their presence at, and participation in, the meetings at which government officials identify political and economic priorities. Article 71 of the UN Charter authorizes the Economic and Social Council to grant consultative status to NGOs, thereby permitting them to participate in UN-sponsored conferences. (As of 2005, more than 2,000 NGOs were officially accredited with such status.)
The NGOs profiled in this section of DiscoverTheNetworks are those whose work focuses primarily on benefiting people outside the United States.
