Civil Society Actors

Abstract

The sovereign state has become the “prototype of [the] international actor” (Schreuer 1993: 448). States create international law and international organizations (IOs). Other stakeholders affected by legal agreements at the international level are generally not admitted to these processes. Nevertheless, civil society actors have emerged in the past 150 years, representing certain groups and interests, aiming to influence international policies. In the mid-nineteenth century, nongovernmental actors began to form associations across national borders. Probably the most famous of these are the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Movement of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, founded in 1863 by Henri Dunant and notable citizens of Geneva (Amerasinghe 2005: 3; Klabbers 2002: 17–18).