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Introduction: Transnational NGOs and Legitimacy, Accountability, Representation

  • Chapter
Evaluating Transnational NGOs

Abstract

As non-governmental organisations (NGOs)1 are playing an increasingly important role in international governance, their legitimacy and accountability have become issues of concern to academic researchers, public commentators and activists alike. While early academic studies on the influence of NGOs in world politics saw them as being — at least on some issues — ‘the conscience of the world’ (Willets, 1996, p. 11), attitudes towards these organisations have become much more sceptical. Some empirical examples may illustrate this trend. In 2007, six collaborators of the French humanitarian NGO ‘L’Arche de Zoé’ were arrested in Chad as they were about to put 103 children on a flight to France. They were charged with child abduction and sentenced to eight years hard labour by a Chadian court for the attempted airlift. Following intense diplomatic interaction with France, the President of Chad pardoned them in 2008. The NGO staff argued that the children they were attempting to ‘rescue’ were from the war-torn Darfur region in Sudan, and that they were orphans. However, officials of international aid organisations who investigated the case found most of the children to be Chadian and to have at least one living parent. The French government and other humanitarian NGOs publicly criticised the action by ‘L’Arche de Zoé’ as illegal, irresponsible and amateurish.

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Authors
  1. Jens Steffek
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  2. Kristina Hahn
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

    Jens Steffek (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Research Centre ‘Transformations of the State’, University of Bremen, Germany

    Kristina Hahn (Senior Research Fellow) (Senior Research Fellow)

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© 2010 Jens Steffek and Kristina Hahn

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Steffek, J., Hahn, K. (2010). Introduction: Transnational NGOs and Legitimacy, Accountability, Representation. In: Steffek, J., Hahn, K. (eds) Evaluating Transnational NGOs. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277984_1

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