The Role of NGOs in Preventing Ethnic Conflict

CivNet Journal

November/December, 1998

David Callahan

During the middle decades of this century, one of the most exciting developments in world politics was the rise of powerful international organizations. The United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund reconfigured the terrain of international relations. These global organizations were soon followed by a set of regional bodies like the Organization for African Unity and the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe. But in recent years, the quest for better tools for managing world politics has taken a new twist: non-governmental organizations have begun to play a growing role on the international scene, most notably in seeking to defuse armed conflicts.

The presence of non-governmental organizations in war zones is hardly a new phenomenon. The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in 1863 to care for the victims of modern warfare. More recently, a number of international relief organizations like Oxfam, CARE, and Catholic Relief Services have been highly visible players in coping with the great African famines of the past thirty years. What is different about the NGO activism during the 1990s in zones of conflict is that many groups are now playing a role in trying to defuse nascent or full blown wars, as opposed to just cleaning up the human suffering that results. NGOs like the International Crisis Group, International Alert, and the Center for Preventive Action have become involved in a wide range of conflict prevention and resolution activities, including: monitoring conflict and providing early warning of new violence; opening dialogue between adversarial parties; playing a direct mediating role; strengthening local institutions for conflict resolution; and helping to strengthen the rule of law and democratic processes in countries with a history of political violence.

In the wake of the cold war, in an era in which dozens of new conflicts have broken out around the world, these groups have emerged as important partners to both national governments and international organizations engaged in diplomacy and conflict resolution. Also, these NGOs have played a critical role in seeking to turn loose talk about “global civil society” into a concrete reality. Operating at a transnational level, often against great odds, they have taken the lead in proselytizing such norms as respect for human rights, the rule of law, and the need to resolve political and ethnic differences through political processes.

Like international relief agencies, NGOs focused on conflict resolution were created to respond to what their founders saw as major failures on the part of the international community to deal effectively with global problems. Too often, the United Nations and other multilateral international organizations prove slow and cumbersome in dealing with an emerging crisis situation. Also, both international organizations and governments often have institutional and political limitations that hamper their effectiveness in situations of enormous complexity and delicacy. NGOs, by contrast, are often able to operate in very difficult circumstances. As the final report by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflicts stated, these groups “often have legitimacy and operational access that do not raise concerns about sovereignty, as government activities sometimes do.”

International Alert and the Center for Preventive Action are two groups that exemplify the new NGO activism in the realm of conflict resolution and prevention. Formed in 1985 and based in London, International Alert was created to monitor nascent conflicts and find ways to prevent greater violence. The organization provides training for conflict negotiators, serves as a neutral mediator in conflict situations, and tries to raise the alarm within the international community when it sees a conflict rapidly growing. Like other NGOs in the conflict prevention business, International Alert has found itself badly overextended in the 1990s. Currently, it has efforts under way in Sri Lanka, where a bloody ethnic conflict is now in its second decade; in West Africa, where the situation in Liberia is still unstable; in the former Soviet Union, where several conflicts, including the Abkhazia situation, are still unresolved; and in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, where there is much volatility in Burundi and Rwanda.

The Center for Preventive Action, a project of the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City, is a relative newcomer to this area and takes a less activist, hands-on approach than International Alert. Founded in 1994, CPA sends teams to pre-explosion crisis areas for extensive fact-finding missions. The teams engage in dialogue with a wide range of groups and then return to the United States to map out a strategy for defusing conflict. Next, the CPA plays an advocacy role, trying to galvanize action by national governments and international organizations. During its first few years of operation, the CPA has chosen to focus its attention on exceptionally intractable situations. First, it launched a major initiative in 1995 to prevent an escalation of conflict in the South Balkans. It created a working group to study the issues involved and sent a delegation to the region, which visited Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, and Albania. In 1996, the CPA then put forth a comprehensive plan for defusing a situation of growing tension. As subsequent events in Kosovo have shown, the CPA and other groups failed to galvanize the kind of international action that might have prevented a wider conflict. A second major initiative of the CPA has been in Nigeria. For the past five years, since the annulment of democratic elections in 1993, Africa’s most populous nation has been on the brink of disintegration. The goal of the CPA’s work has been to help stabilize a tense situation by looking for ways to strengthen civil society and democratic processes within Nigeria and to draw international attention to a potential cataclysm in the making. Currently, events in Nigeria remain highly precarious, and it is unclear how effective the CPA and other crisis prevention organizations have been in this situation.

Events in Burundi over the past four years provide a more clear-cut example of where NGOs have played a decisive role in heading off a major war. Following the explosion of genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994, there was widespread concern that a similar bloodbath would consume Burundi. Indeed, Burundi was widely seen as one of the most precarious international security situations of the mid-1990s. As such, it attracted enormous attention from an NGO community that felt it had learned hard lessons in recent years about crisis prevention—not just in Rwanda but in Bosnia as well. From the summer of 1994 onward, there was a critical mass of NGO energies focused on Burundi. Dozens of groups worked on different aspects of the crisis, including monitoring massacres in the countryside, seeking to prevent the delivery of new arms, promoting peaceful dialogue between Hutu and Tutsi, addressing discrimination in work and education, trying to counter “hate radio,” dealing with nutritional and medical needs, attempting to strengthen government organs in Burundi like the judiciary, and aiding efforts to bring war criminals to justice from massacres that occurred in the country in 1993. With their extensive field operations in Burundi and their networks of local contacts, these groups had access to a wide array of information about the Burundian crisis that was not available to either international organizations or to national governments.

In Washington, the Burundi Policy Forum was a focal point for an unprecedented level of coordination between the United States government and NGOs working on Burundi. Organized by several nonprofit groups, the Burundi Forum held its inaugural meeting in January, 1995. Holding regular meetings thereafter, the Forum brought organizations concerned about Burundi together to exchange information and discuss policy initiatives. American policymakers from the State and Defense departments, the National Security Council, and the Agency for International Development consistently took part. Ambassador Richard Bogosian, the U.S. Special Coordinator on Rwanda and Burundi, was a regular participant in the Forum; and in 1995, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake met with NGO leaders represented in the Forum to explain U.S. policy in the region.

This high degree of cooperation between American officials and representatives from NGOs, while part of a growing trend at conferences dealing with women’s issues (e.g., Beijing 1995, Vital Voices 1997) or civic education (CIVITAS at Prague 1995, and Pretoria 1997), remains unusual overall, particularly in security matters. In the case of Burundi, however, American policymakers relied on these relationships both to gain information and to coordinate action on Burundi policy. Organizations like International Alert and Human Rights Watch, often vocal critics of U.S. foreign policy, found themselves in the strange position of actively helping to shape such policy. In particular, these NGOs offered critical advice about how the United States could help draw the various factions in Burundi into constructive dialogue. The Burundi Policy Forum also established a strong rapport with representatives from international organizations, trying, for instance, to enhance the U.N.’s role in Burundi. In addition, high level officials from Burundi addressed the group.

Not long after its founding, the Burundi Policy Forum spun off another organization to help defuse the crisis called the Security Working Group. This group, largely organized by Refugees International and Search for Common Ground, focused heavily on security aspects of the situation in Burundi, including the challenge of suppressing “hate radio” and strengthening the country’s police and judicial system. Like the Burundi Policy Group, it succeeded in opening up lines of communication to international organizations and national governments. As Lionel Rosenblatt, executive director of Refugees International commented in 1996, the Security Working Group “has served as an informal body for a frank, off-the-record exchange of ideas among government, U.N., and NGO representatives where the dialogue is candid and solution-oriented.”

Despite the critical role that NGOs played in helping to stabilize the situation in Burundi and elsewhere, the future contribution of NGOs within the international security system remains uncertain. Partnerships between NGOs and governments or international organizations are inherently difficult and awkward. For example, NGOs are often harsh critics of American foreign policy, attacking Washington for differences over human rights policies, arms sales, and responses to refugee crises. On the one hand, Human Rights Watch is a natural ally for U.S. policymakers, since it has repeatedly distinguished itself for providing first-rate analysis of deteriorating crisis situations and making clear who is to blame. It has extensive local networks in many countries and specialization and knowledge that is not widely available in the American diplomatic corps. On the other hand, Human Rights Watch flays the U.S. government constantly in its reports. Cooperating with one’s critics is not easy for anybody, and it can be especially difficult for policymakers who always worry that information that they share with others might be turned against them or cause embarrassment.

The most likely scenario is that future ties between NGOs and the U.S. government, along with other national governments, will be very much dependent on the circumstances of particular crisis situations. National policymakers will turn to NGOs for help when they must, but otherwise will not take steps that would institutionalize these ties. The leadership of international organizations is likely to be more open to closer ties with NGOs, although it remains to be seen how these relationships will evolve or be formalized.