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How Inuential Are International s in the
Public Arena?
José María Vera
Oxfam International, Nairobi, Kenya
josemaria.vera@oxfam.org
José María Herranz de la Casa
University of Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, Spain
josemaria.herranz@uclm.es
Received: 2 July 2020; revised: 30 August 2020; accepted: 21 September 2020
Summary
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 inuence in the local areas of intervention of their programmes
and in broader spaces where polices about the environment, inequality and other is-
sues are decided. However, their inuence has been threatened by the emergence of
social movements and a exible 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. -19 has brought into the public sphere some
old challenges that international non-governmental organisations (s) 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 s
concerning how they can inuence the public sphere and policy-making, with the col-
laboration of new allies and partners.
Keywords
non-prot organisations – activism – international non-governmental organisations
(s) –advocacy – communication – accountability – trust – public diplomacy
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1 Introduction
During the rst days of the lockdown to prevent the spread of -19, a taxi
driver from Nairobi said to an Oxfam colleague: ‘This virus will starve us to
death before it infects us’.
The traditional response of a non-governmental organisation () to this
type of challenge would have been to provide basic food or monetary assis-
tance to prevent that family from succumbing to hunger. Today, an ’s re-
sponse would probably combine direct aid with a public action designed to
scale up the impact of that aid, demanding that governments and institutions
ensure food security, and advocating for it by speaking out, making proposals,
gathering knowledge and applying public pressure. Indeed, rst and foremost,
ghting poverty is about honouring rights rather than providing aid.
And that makes international non-governmental organisations (s) an-
other actor in the battles of ideas, the development of public policies as an
honest intermediary and the major international agreements or responses to
challenges such as inequality or the climate emergency. All of this is in addi-
tion to their work monitoring and overseeing the business and government
sectors in negotiating a new point of view to generate social, environmental
and economic values. Thus, they play a part in ‘public diplomacy’, reproduc-
ing some highly institutionalised aspects, since they have a structure that we
could call ‘bottom-up diplomacy’ which connects people and communities
with issues and public policy-makers. This essay looks at the evolution of the
public advocacy role of s, the tensions they experience, which have been
heightened by the coronavirus crisis, and the dilemmas and decisions they
must grapple with.
2 The Evolution of s in Public Life: From Charity to Advocacy
s cannot be easily characterised but this essay is mainly talking about
those dedicated to humanitarian action and the eradication of poverty. These
include Oxfam, Save the Children and Action Aid. Some trends outlined in this
text are also applicable to key organisations in elds such as environmental
protection (Greenpeace) and human rights (Amnesty International).
These types of organisations were born and grew with the aim of engag-
ing in direct action to tackle poverty and hunger in countries referred to until
Beloe and Elkinton 2003.
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recently as the ‘third world’, sending money, people and goods to alleviate suf-
fering. In only a few cases — of which Oxfam is one example — was the advo-
cacy component present from the outset. Created by a solidarity committee in
Oxford with the aim of alleviating the famine in Greece, which was under siege
by the Allies in 1942, and sending food, Oxfam conducted political advocacy to
encourage the Allied command to allow convoys of food to pass through, to
ensure the survival of the Greek people.
Since then, some organisations have limited their action to running qual-
ity programmes with good context analysis and awareness-raising work in the
places where they operate, while others have begun a process of change that
has led them to use their knowledge and legitimacy to operate at the commu-
nity level to advocate for changes in bigger causes.
Little by little, beginning in the 1990s various s started setting up ad-
vocacy oces in Washington, New York and Brussels to pressure internation-
al institutions on adjustment plans, conict prevention and resolution, and
European development policies. Field knowledge was soon complemented by
the recruitment of researchers and lobbyists specialised in defending their ob-
jectives. As a result, in the European Union s became the second most ef-
fective organisations in their pressure and lobbying activity (46 per cent), after
business associations (51 per cent), especially in the eld of the environment.
In this context, the proximity of advocacy work between s and govern-
ment or supranational institutions reduced the efectiveness of the changes.
The advocacy style of s began to align with those at whom the advoca-
cy was directed and to employ the same technical language. Even when this
achieved results, they rarely brought about efective changes in the everyday
reality of the most vulnerable people.
Consequently, in recent years it has become clear that it is necessary to
connect more with concrete situations, localise advocacy, connect with pro-
grammes and, especially, work in partnership with local networks and social
leaders who have been waging the public battle for the same objectives for de-
cades. This work has spread to inuencing other international organisations,
such as the African Union, giving s an important consultative status in
many of them.
s have also become aware that their strength cannot lie solely in the le-
gitimacy of their causes and their expert knowledge but that it also needs to be
Black 1992.
Jordan and Van Tuijl 2000.
Burson-Marsteller 2013.
Hudson 2002.
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backed up by their ability to enter the media and the public citizenship agen-
das. Their inuence has increased in the local areas of intervention of their
programmes and in broader spaces where polices about the environment,
international trade and other issues are decided. When the computer servers
were still fragile, a simple action by Oxfam to defend the price of cofee paid
to Ethiopian producers led to the collapse of the all-powerful Nestlé’s server
within two hours.
In the second decade of the 2000s, with the economic crisis destroying
public policies and decent jobs, and a global civil society increasingly artic-
ulated around multiple causes, the role of s was threatened and even
began to decline. That happened in spite of their strengths and growing in-
vestment in that ‘public diplomacy’, which was intended to bring about large-
scale structural changes to several issues such as climate change or inequality.
Nevertheless, in many cases the strategic use of communication and social
mobilisation, and their impact in the real and digital worlds, maintains their
position as key actors.
3 Pre- Trends: The Risk of Irrelevance
In recent years, four broad trends have converged to mark the work of s,
while also threatening it.
3.1 The First Trend Is Associated with Social Advocacy in a Polarised
Political Space
The discrediting of mediocre, polarised formal politics contaminates every-
thing that touches it. Engaging in parliamentary lobbying, which was some-
thing ground-breaking twenty years ago, has now become dangerous for
s, particularly with the growing risk of co-optation or manipulation,
which occurs more frequently in the heat of social media.
In a tense political climate, plagued by fake news and insults, many actors
which venture into the public arena to inuence it can be accused of being
radical or even a ‘terrorist’, however indisputable the ideas it is promoting such
as the ght against poverty and inequality or assistance for migrants. s are
associated with specic political parties, and all sorts of political and media
Herranz 2014, 45.
See Lovejoy and Saxton 2012; Schwarz and Fritsch 2014; Herranz, Álvarez and Mercado 2018;
Namisango, Kang and Rehman 2019.
Keating and Thrandardottir 2017.
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tactics and techniques are used to condition and silence — something those
organisations are not used to.
s have worked on inuencing the main global processes associated
with the environment and international trade. However, international insti-
tutions, including the UN agencies, are weakened and questioned. So, the
focus has become on rescuing the agreements to tackle climate change —
Conference of the Parties () of the UN Climate Change Conferences — or
progressing with the UN’s 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals,
which are still important for s.
s primarily operate in the global arena, seeking to inuence issues
that play out in other countries. However, the interest is centred on domestic
concerns, spurred on by sovereign nationalism. There is an overvaluing of bor-
ders, that can be closed just like hearts and minds. And that leaves no room for
universalist discourses or political action that require an appreciation of the
global public good. That said, s have to continue pushing for an interna-
tional agenda. As an example, and during the -19 crisis, Oxfam and 21
other s have signed an open letter to the UN Security Council calling on
its members to take action to bring about an immediate ceasere in Yemen,
end the humanitarian crisis and support the UN Special Envoy’s eforts to-
wards an inclusive political solution to the conict.
3.2 The Second Trend Is Related to the Institutional Dimension
New ways of doing politics are arising that, in many cases, hint at a growing
openness in the actors involved. Institutions are in crisis with regard to how
they are perceived by the population. s are part of civil society, are simi-
lar to social movements and are rooted in the community. However, they are
perceived as institutions. They have salaried teams of professionals, have been
set up with legal status, have oces and most of them have received some
form of public funding. They are viewed as more ethical than businesses, gov-
ernments and the media but less competent than businesses. Therefore, it
is easy for them to be perceived as defending their own sustainability, using
public inuence to safeguard their futures. Added to that is the low value given
to the role of intermediation. An is an intermediary of its members’ and
funders’ yearning for solidarity, the implementation of public policies and the
population’s feelings about a specic issue in public life, which speaks out and
makes proposals to those in power.
Oxfam 2020.
Charity Commission for England and Wales 2018; Give.org 2019.
Edelman 2020.
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3.3 The Third Trend Is Related to the Rise in New Social Movements
and Distributed Activism
This intermediation work is also being questioned in the areas of political ad-
vocacy and social mobilisation. Fresh and exible new social movements have
emerged, rooted in causes of general interest that use the digital world to com-
plement a strong presence in the street or to eschew the growing government
authoritarianism. These new ‘movements of the squares’ that have appeared
around the world have their roots in the Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignados
Movement and Occupy Wall Street. The feminist movement and the ght
against climate change currently have the greatest global inuence. The for-
mer has a transformative capacity that extends beyond gender justice, while
the latter (which had been agging for a decade despite the eforts of envi-
ronmental organisations after many decades of commitment) has gained re-
newed vigour thanks to the action of a young Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg.
It must be borne in mind that some changes or the advocacy impacts can take
a long time to materialise.
It is not only individual activists — mostly young women like Greta
Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai — who mobilise millions behind a struggle.
Although they may not attract the same level of attention, today anyone can
champion a cause and operate in the public arena on policy issues and corpo-
rate actions. Interconnected global activists may support a cause or action of
an but will not ally themselves exclusively to that organisation or any
other. In fact, it is rather the other way around: they will promote their own
ghts and hope that organisations back them up.
In this context, Oxfam has been working with youth movements and their
leaders on the streets in places like Bolivia. Oxfam supported youth organisa-
tions in the Bolivian municipalities of El Alto and Sucre and in the department
of Tarija, and decided to work together to inuence local laws that better t
those organisations’ own views and address their specic issues through the
project ‘It’s Time … Build Your Law!’
Vicente-Mariño, Papaioannou and Dahlgren 2020.
Gerbaudo 2012.
Anduiza, Cristancho and Sabucedo 2014.
Hanegraaf 2015.
Castells 2009.
Oxfam 2019.
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3.4 The Fourth Trend Is the Tension between Desire and Reality in the
Context of Fundraising
The political attacks that s receive, the polarisation of society and the
inevitable political stance that organisations must take — however rigor-
ously non-partisan they may be — generate a tension between s and
their social base, especially if it has been built up over decades according to
a strict principle of ‘non-political charity’. s walk a ne and tense line
between nancial viability in a fundraising market that in many countries is
quite mature, and the need to enter the arena of causes and inuencing on
public issues which is also essential for connecting with younger segments of
society. This problem is less pronounced in organisations that opt to limit their
public action to more neutral and innocuous aspects, although they also have
less impact.
These factors raise the need to promote a culture of transparency and trust,
which citizens are now demanding. Accountability is not an optional extra
but rather an essential element for an organisation’s continued existence and
it must be integrated within the strategic management process.
Having said of all that, s have acquired public relevance and weight
in many countries and in the global arena. That is why they are now being
monitored, which is reasonable for any public actor, and virulently attacked
from positions of power and privilege. For instance, when Berta Cáceres was
killed in Honduras for speaking out against the hydroelectric companies that
were stealing the land, water and lives of her people, it was organisations like
Greenpeace and Oxfam that rallied behind the family and indigenous groups.
That support led to the production of reports that were used by the justice sys-
tem to sentence the killers and prompted international investors to withdraw
from the hydroelectric project.
4 The Impact of -19 on the Public Action of s
Coronavirus has deeply changed the world’s social life and political life. It is
also having a devastating impact on the planet’s most vulnerable populations.
The crisis has accentuated some of the trends outlined above, making it nec-
essary for s to take decisions while also responding to the situation of
health and economic vulnerability.
Lewis 2001; Ebrahim 2003.
Edwards and Hulme 1998.
Kearns 1996.
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The way -19 has afected developed countries has brought attention
rmly onto domestic issues in the short term — precisely when international
co-operation and multilateral action is most needed to tackle the virus. At the
moment, anyone who wants to talk about the situation in Yemen to people in
Spain or the United Kingdom will have a hard time being heard. The thematic
agenda has also changed. Today, it is harder to discuss climate change or femi-
nism when so many people are faced with the possibility of unemployment
and hunger.
The political polarisation and radicalisation of discourse have also in-
creased, with the space for civil society being severely reduced amid the emer-
gency and lockdown. Harassment of social leaders and violations of civil and
political rights have become commonplace in a growing number of countries
that are moving towards authoritarianism. Fears are being fuelled, generating
anxiety in vulnerable people who face precarity and poverty.
-19 represents a global public health emergency and afects everyone
but it is experienced unequally by people living in poverty; people of colour;
women; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or questioning) and inter-
sex individuals; and the elderly. Measures taken in response to the virus must
respect individual rights. Oxfam has joined other organisations advocating for
a response to the pandemic that protects human rights by launching the ‘10
Principles for a Rights-Respecting Response to the Corona Crisis’.
The digital world has become practically the only sphere of interaction for
some months and social media has been buzzing with the search for whoever
was responsible for the deadly impact of -19, as well as thousands of
enriching transformational initiatives for life after the pandemic. It is hard to
predict where this social energy and drive for change will take us. But there is
no doubt that it will be vibrant — extreme in the need for safety on the one
hand and the longing for a better world on the other.
Finally, the nancial crisis is hanging over s. The shift of focus to the
local level and the loss of purchasing power and even jobs, combined with the
predictable cutbacks in social policies, will give rise to a need to restructure
and prioritise donor retention and fundraising over other areas of activity.
Despite this context, s have been able to react and demand the suspen-
sion of the external debt of poor countries this year, campaign for a -19
vaccination to be ofered as a free universal public benet and promote forms
of food assistance and minimum income provision that curb hunger.
Oxfam 2020.
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5 Proposals for Political Advocacy in the Upcoming Scenario
In the coming months or years, s will have to address various dilemmas
and tendencies that, as indicated above, could erode their relevance as politi-
cal actors in the public sphere. Those dilemmas include:
1. Maintaining expert knowledge, being referenced thanks to their proxim-
ity to crucial situations of rights violations and their capacity to trans-
form that knowledge into speaking out and making proposals. At the
same time, new, more innovative and transparent forms of advocacy
need to be developed that are connected with society and are open to
the direct participation of activists, especially the people and communi-
ties afected, without always acting as ‘intermediaries for the voices of …’.
Political advocacy and lobbying actions must be extended to inuence
values and ideas, imaginations and social attitudes. The cultural battle
is much deeper, longer and more relevant than the short-term political
battle; indeed, that is where the future of civil, political, social and eco-
nomic rights will play out.
2. Being faithful to the organisation’s roots and strategy. In times of polari-
sation and extremist attacks, they must demonstrate now more than ever
their non-partisan stance and the strength of their policy positions, root-
ed in their rigour and operations. Co-optation, which has always been
harmful, could now be fatal.
3. Connecting causes and spaces. Avoid being swayed by the ‘let us take care
of our own, rst’ arguments of people who really do not care that oth-
ers’ rights are being violated. On the contrary, ensure the relevance of
the cause in the domestic sphere to strengthen it at the global level. Tax
fraud through tax havens undermines public nances in Europe, as well
as in Peru or Kenya; there are thousands of men who kill women in any
country and the climate emergency is global.
4. Develop more sophisticated communication and social mobilisation
strategies, anticipating trends in the digital sphere through in-depth
audience analysis based on how each generation (X, Y or Z) uses this
ecosystem.
5. Opening alliances, not only with peer organisations or local partners but
also with other actors and sectors, including academia, businesses and
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entrepreneurs who want to promote change. While multi-actor allianc-
es are time consuming and require compromises to be made, they take
organisations out of their natural space and expand the reach of their
proposals.
6. Recognising the primacy of social movements when channelling and
inuencing the drive for change. This does not mean disappearing but
rather collaborating without occupying the space or dictating the strat-
egy. s must learn to provide value without needing to lead the ac-
tion. Sometimes, they may add their image and brand, alongside allies,
networks and movements; other times, they may be behind the scenes,
open to listening to what is needed and changing how they act in the
interest of generating larger mobilisations.
s should engage in public and policy-related actions. Saying this at the
end of this essay may seem like stating the obvious. However, there are man-
agers and governance bodies that question this approach, or rather want to
limit it to the most obvious areas that have no colour or edge and that reduce
the risk to zero. That is all well and good but it should be borne in mind that
that decision will erode the organisation’s relevance in the process of shaping
the world in which we live. Organisations should be prepared to take risks —
sometimes in the corridors of power, and always through activism and on the
streets — to tell the truth about power and privilege, starting by acknowledg-
ing their own. This may require them to reduce in size and establish a diferent
form of relationship with a changing social base. It will also be the only way
not just to stay alive but to renew themselves so that they are more inuential
in future — a role that is more necessary now than ever.
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José María Vera
was appointed as Oxfam International Interim Executive Director, begin-
ning on 25 October 2019. After having studied chemical engineering and vol-
unteering in Peru, he rst joined Oxfam Intermon as Campaigns and Policy
Director before spending six years at the Ibero-American General Secretariat
coordinating programmes of its Heads of State Summits. He rejoined Oxfam
Intermon in 2012 as Executive Director and has since worked closely with
Oxfam International senior management on Oxfam’s transformation process
that has seen the confederation become more aligned and globally balanced.
He has represented Oxfam internationally, reecting his experience in long-
term development, humanitarian responses and high-level advocacy. He also
jointly founded Ingeniería sin Fronteras (Engineers without Borders) in Spain.
José María Herranz de la Casa
is a Tenured Professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, Spain,
in the School of Communication where he teaches Specialised Journalism
and Corporate and Organisational Communication. He has published pa-
pers and research about: communication and transparency in social organ-
isations and non-governmental organisations; business and organisational
communication; social responsibility and Sustainable Development Goals;
and innovation and specialised journalism. He has worked as a journalist for
the most important sports newspaper in Spain, MARCA. He has also taught
at the Catholic University of Avila and at the European University Miguel
de Cervantes. At both, he was the Director of the Oce of Communication
and Marketing.
