Non-governmental organisations and international organisations: an ambivalent relationship

Most agencies, funds and programmes of the UN system would agree that non-governmental organisations provide the following assets: local accountability, independent assessment of issues and problems, expertise and advice, important constituencies, provision and dissemination of information, and awareness-raising. The role and influence of civil society and of non-governmental organisations, in particular, consists, inter alia, of spurring the UN system towards greater transparency and accountability. This chapter focuses on the availability to representational non-governmental organisations, which can assume an important role as representational agents of accountability, of mechanisms to ensure that accountability.

When considering remedial action to ensure accountability of international organisations, representational NGOs find themselves on familiar ground. The identity and quality of the respondent, be it a state or an international organisation, does not seem to influence the procedural obstacles they are facing.

The range of relationships between international organisations and non-governmental organisations is as broad as the functional areas covered by the international organisations themselves, ranging from arrangements in which the NGO has a constitutional role (such as trade unions in the ILO) to relatively less-developed links with international organisations, such as those of a military nature. The appropriateness of available remedies will vary accordingly.

When non-governmental organisations are acting as an instrument of the policy of an international organisation – for example, as implementing partners for agencies of organisations in the areas of development or humanitarian assistance – appropriate, possibly separate, means of redress and remedial mechanisms will have to be designed for issues of shared or concurrent accountability.