How influential are international NGOs in the public arena?

Abstract

International non-governmental organisations have, for some time, been operating as diplomacy actors in the national and international public spheres. There has been an increase in their influence in the local areas of intervention of their programmes and in broader spaces where polices about the environment, inequality and other issues are decided. However, their influence has been threatened by the emergence of social movements and a flexible style of individualised activism that promotes their demands, as well as by questions around their independence and legitimacy that some of their actions generate cyclically. COVID-19 has brought into the public sphere some old challenges that international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have been working on for years: health vulnerability, economic precarity and social emergency. This essay analyses this context, in which new challenges are appearing for INGOs concerning how they can influence the public sphere and policy-making, with the collaboration of new allies and partners.