Religious NGOs at the United Nations

Religious NGOs at the United Nations

Author: Claudia Baumgart-Ochse

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-27

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1351111213

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Examining the involvement of religious NGOs (RNGOs) at the UN, this book explores whether they polarize political debates at the UN or facilitate agreement on policy issues. The number of RNGOs engaging with the United Nations (UN) has grown considerably in recent years: RNGOs maintain relations with various UN agencies, member-state missions, and other NGOs, and participate in UN conferences and events. This volume includes both a quantitative overview of RNGOs at the UN and qualitative analyses of specific policy issues such as international development, climate change, business and human rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, international criminal justice, defamation of religions, and intercultural dialogue and cooperation. The contributions explore the factors that explain the RNGOs’ normative positions and actions and scrutinise the assumption that religions introduce non-negotiable principles into political debate and decision-making that inevitably lead to conflict and division. Presenting original research on RNGOs and issues of global public policy, this volume will be relevant to both researchers and policy-makers in the fields of religion and international relations, the United Nations, and non-state actors and global governance.


Religious Voices in the Politics of International Development

Religious Voices in the Politics of International Development

Author: Paul J. Nelson

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 3030689646

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This first study of faith-based development NGOs’ (FBOs) political roles focuses on how U.S. FBOs in international development educate and mobilize their constituencies. Most pursue cautious reformist agendas, but FBOs have sometimes played important roles in social movements. Nelson unpacks those political roles by examining the prominence of advocacy in the organizations, the issues they address and avoid, their transnational relationships, and their relationships with religious and secular social movements. The agencies that educate and mobilize U.S. constituencies most actively are associated with small Christian sects or with non-Christian minority faiths with historic commitments to activism or service. Specialized advocacy NGOs play important roles, and emerging movements on immigration and climate may represent fresh political energy. The book examines faith-based responses to the crises of climate change, COVID-19, and racial injustice, and argues that these will shape the future of religion as a moral and political force in America, and of NGOs in international development.


Religious NGOs in International Relations

Religious NGOs in International Relations

Author: Karsten Lehmann

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-29

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1317499042

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Over the last 30 years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become increasingly present in international discourses and ​active in international decision-making. Among the estimated several million NGOs in existence today, an increasingly visible number of organizations are defining themselves in religious terms – referring to themselves as "religious", "spiritual", or "faith-based" NGOs. This book documents the initial encounters between the particularly international segment of those organizations and the UN while at the same time covering the Protestant and Catholic spectrum that dominated the early years of their activities in the UN-context. This book focuses on the construction of the human rights discourse inside two religiously affiliated organizations: The Commissions of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) and Pax Romana (IMCS / ICMICA). These organizations have been formally accredited as NGOs by the UN, label themselves as religious, and look back upon a long and intense cooperation with the UN. Lehmann presents material from the archives of those two organizations that has so far rarely been used for academic analysis. In doing so, as well as documenting the encounters between those organizations and the UN, and looking at the Protestant and Catholic spectrum, the book provides new insights into the very construction of the notions of ‘the religious’ and the ‘secular’ inside those organizations. This work will be of great interest to all students of religion and international relations, and will also be of interest to those studying related subjects such as global institutions, comparative politics and international politics.


NGOs and Human Rights

NGOs and Human Rights

Author: Charity Butcher

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2021-06-15

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0820359483

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This study examines and compares the important work on global human rights advocacy done by religious NGOs and by secular NGOs. By studying the similarities in how such organizations understand their work, we can better consider not only how religious and secular NGOs might complement each other but also how they might collaborate and cooperate in the advancement of human rights. However, little research has attempted to compare these types of NGOs and their approaches. NGOs and Human Rights explores this comparison and identifies the key areas of overlap and divergence. In so doing, it lays the groundwork for better understanding how to capitalize on the strengths of religious groups, especially in addressing the world’s many human rights challenges. This book uses a new dataset of more than three hundred organizations affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council to compare the extent to which religious and secular NGOs differ in their framing, discussion, and operationalization of human rights work. Using both quantitative analysis of the extensive data collected by the authors and forty-seven in depth interviews conducted with members of human rights organizations in the sample, Charity Butcher and Maia Carter Hallward analyze these organizations’ approaches to questions of culture, development, women’s rights, children’s rights, and issues of peace and conflict.


Routledge Handbook of NGOs and International Relations

Routledge Handbook of NGOs and International Relations

Author: Thomas Davies

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 933

ISBN-13: 1351977490

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Offering insights from pioneering new perspectives in addition to well-established traditions of research, this Handbook considers the activities not only of advocacy groups in the environmental, feminist, human rights, humanitarian, and peace sectors, but also the array of religious, professional, and business associations that make up the wider non-governmental organization (NGO) community. Including perspectives from multiple world regions, the book takes account of institutions in the Global South, alongside better-known structures of the Global North. International contributors from a range of disciplines cover all the major aspects of research into NGOs in International Relations to present: a comprehensive overview of the historical evolution of NGOs, the range of structural forms and international networks coverage of major theoretical perspectives illustrations of how NGOs are influential in every prominent issue-area of contemporary International Relations evaluation of the significant regional variations among NGOs and how regional contexts influence the nature and impact of NGOs analysis of the ways NGOs address authoritarianism, terrorism, and challenges to democracy, and how NGOs handle concerns surrounding their own legitimacy and accountability. Exploring contrasting theories, regional dimensions, and a wide range of contemporary challenges facing NGOs, this Handbook will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners alike.


International Religious Freedom Advocacy

International Religious Freedom Advocacy

Author: H. Knox Thames

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13:

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The first resource of its kind, International Religious Freedom Advocacy equips activists and policymakers with an intimate knowledge of the governmental institutions, NGOs, and laws that work to safeguard religious liberties across the world. Beginning with an overview of the international legal protections, these advocacy veterans explain the intricacies of and resources available within the United Nations, European Union, Council of Europe, Organization of American States, African Union, and more. They conclude with in-depth case studies of Turkmenistan and Vietnam and a host of additional helpful information.


NGOs in International Politics

NGOs in International Politics

Author: Shamima Ahmed

Publisher: Kumarian Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13:

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Non-governmental organizations have gained a great deal of popularity in recent years. The awarding of the Nobel Prize to The International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1997 and to Medicins Sans Frontieres in 1999 has highlighted the emergence of these organizations as "new" forces in international politics. Yet, there is no work to date that has provided an overview of the varieties of interaction between NGOs and states, international organizations and in international politics. This is especially true of books aimed at undergraduates. NGOs in International Politics surveys a range of NGO activities and relationships in a manner accessible to students in the classroom. Despite the gap in the textbook literature, non-governmental organizations are being taught in undergraduate courses, either in theoretical terms or as components of service learning. This book is designed to remedy the gap between interest in NGOs and accessible literature for use in the classroom.


Development, Civil Society and Faith-Based Organizations

Development, Civil Society and Faith-Based Organizations

Author: G. Clarke

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2007-11-28

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0230371264

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This book examines the role of faith-based organizations in managing international aid, providing services, defending human rights and protecting democracy. It argues that greater engagement with faith communities and organizations is needed, and questions traditional secularism that has underpinned development policy and practice in the North.


Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

Religion, NGOs and the United Nations

Author: Jeremy Carrette

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-03-23

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1350020389

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How do religious groups, operating as NGOs, engage in the most important global institution for world peace? What processes do they adopt? Is there a “spiritual” UN today? This book is the first interdisciplinary study to present extensive fieldwork results from an examination of the activity of religious groups at the United Nations in New York and Geneva. Based on a three and half-year study of activities in the United Nations system, it seeks to show how “religion” operates in both visible and invisible ways. Jeremy Carrette, Hugh Miall, Verena Beittinger-Lee, Evelyn Bush and Sophie-Hélène Trigeaud, explore the way “religion” becomes a “chameleon” idea, appearing and disappearing, according to the diplomatic aims and ambitions. Part 1 documents the challenges of examining religion inside the UN, Part 2 explores the processes and actions of religious NGOs - from diplomacy to prayer - and the specific platforms of intervention – from committees to networks – and Part 3 provides a series of case studies of religious NGOs, including discussion of Islam, Catholicism and Hindu and Buddhist NGOs. The study concludes by examining the place of diplomats and their views of religious NGOs and reflects on the place of “religion” in the UN today. The study shows the complexity of “religion” inside one of the most fascinating global institutions of the world today.


Religion, State and the United Nations

Religion, State and the United Nations

Author: Anne Stensvold

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-22

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1317382587

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This volume approaches the UN as a laboratory of religio-political value politics. Over the last two decades religion has acquired increasing influence in international politics, and religious violence and terrorism has attracted much scholarly attention. But there is another parallel development which has gone largely unnoticed, namely the increasing political impact of peaceful religious actors. With several religious actors in one place and interacting under the same conditions, the UN is as a multi-religious society writ small. The contributors to this book analyse the most influential religious actors at the UN (including The Roman Catholic Church; The Organisation of Islamic Countries; the Russian Orthodox Church). Mapping the peaceful political engagements of religious actors; who they are and how they collaborate with each other - whether on an ad hoc basis or by forming more permanent networks - throwing light at the modus operandi of religious actors at the UN; their strategies and motivations. The chapters are closely interrelated through the shared focus on the UN and common theoretical perspectives, and pursue two intertwined aspects of religious value politics, namely the whys and hows of cross-religious cooperation on the one hand, and the interaction between religious actors and states on the other. Drawing together a broad range of experts on religious actors, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of Religion and Politics, International Relations and the UN.