NGOs in the News

Here are 6 news links relevant to NGOs for my POL2260 students. The last one is perhaps the most important.

Putin says West may use NGOs to stir unrest in Russia.- Russia has been clamping down on NGOs that it sees as strengthening opposition to Putin's regime (see next link). Now we have a linkage to the increased tension between Russia and the West over Ukraine.

Russia: “Foreign Agents” Law Hits Hundreds of NGOs: This Human Rights Watch report goes into some detail about the difficulty Russia NGOs are having. It is also interesting to scroll through the list of NGOs if only to get a sense of the different types working in Russia.

Monitoring NGOs: Civil society groups say govt trying to control their activities: Russia isn't the only country that is clamping down on NGOs. This article from Pakistan's Express Tribune reports claims that the government is trying to control NGO activities with new audit and reporting regulations. Give it a quick read and then, while you are there, click around on the paper's website to see what Pakistanis are hearing about. Keep in mind that the upper class in Pakistan generally operates in English and so this site is aimed at them.

First official estimate: An NGO for every 400 people in India: There not much to this beyond the astonishingly large number of Indian NGOs.

NGOs best suited to tackle child abuse: Bhagwati: This short piece from 2009 quotes former Indian Chief Justice P. N. Bhagwati (even the Indian press doesn't want to type out Prafullachandra Natwarlal) as saying the NGO are better suited to deal child abuse and sex trafficking than the government. He blames government apathy for a lack of action. (Note he is the brother of  the economist Jagdish Bhagwati.)

Justice P.N. Bhagwati Lectures on India's Human Rights Law: This article summarizes PN Bhagwati's reflections on the development of India's human rights laws, or rather the judicial interpretation of them. This is worth a thorough read because it shows an activist judiciary at work, but the last 7 paragraphs are particulrly rekevant as they describe the role Indian NGOs have played in the courts. In India, the courts have allowed NGOs to petition the court on behalf of other people (epistolary jurisdiction) and to file friend of the court (amici curiae) briefs on the behalf of poor people who cannot afford to be represented.