What is the role of international organizations—and, more generally, of international institutions—in the performance of collective tasks?

Nguyễn Thị Bích Lộc

QH.15.E11

Subject:  International Organization

Topic: What is the role of international organizations—and, more generally, of international institutions—in the performance of collective tasks?

Essay:

With the proliferation of global problems nowadays, International organizations (IOs) have becoming an integral part of the world politic. International Institutions, especially the Intergovernmental organizations and the Nongovernmental Organization have a dramatical contribution to the performance of collective tasks in terms of Peace and Security, Economic, Human and Environment issue.

Initially, to acquire the comprehensive knowledge about this issue, it is integral to know what the International Organization is. International Organization belongs to Global Governance and “sometimes is used as a synonym for Global Governance” (Karns et al., 2015, p.2). Rorden Wilkinson, 2014 defined it as “the sum of the informal and formal ideas, values, norms, procedures, and institutions that help all actors-states, IGOs, civil society, and TNCs- identity, understand, and address trans-boundary problems” or Claude (1964:4) saw it as “the long-term process of organizing collective efforts to deal with shared problems- past, present, and future” (as cited in Karns et al., 2015, p. 2-3). Along with other actors of Global Governance, Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) and Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) are the 2 main types of International Organization playing an important part in collective mission of the world. These collective tasks are possibly correlated with resolving the international problems like the global economic, peace and security (like conflict, terrorist attack), humanitarian relief and environment because these problem can not be solve by single country, all require corporation of some sort among states and growing number of nonstate actors, many require the active participation of ordinary citizens; some demand the establishment of new international mechanism for monitoring or the negotiation of new international rules (Karns et al., 2015). Analysing the case that international organization/institutions have involved in will help bring out fundamental roles of the international organization in the performance of collective tasks.

The first and foremost task among them is Peace and security maintenance. Specifically, preventing war is considered the priority as it is the motivational factor for creating IGOs, from the establishment of EU, League of Nation to the UN (Karns et al., 2015). They attempted to create the global structures including international law and IOs for negotiation, prevention and discussion of the potential conflict. United Nation is a typical example of an IGOs involving in the attempt of keep peace. It gives the international materials for dealing with the security issues, based on the concept of collective security like the peace-keeping troops derived from voluntary donation of state members, delegate, meadiational system to approach the security issue or prevent conflict ( Karns et al., 2015). Because these systems are built by the multilateral efforts, the state members can have a neutral arbitrator to follow for the benefit of every member to resolve one contradiction. Accompanying with preventing war, keeping peace is very essential mission of the UN; for example, since 1990 the UN has been in charge of peace operations with mandate ranging from enforcement to post conflict peacebuliding along with sanctions and other measures (Karns et al., 2015, p. 288). NGOs, in another hand, play as advice and research implements for IGOs or government. The NGOs such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, International Peace Institute, International Crisis Group have become useful consultants for the IGOs like the UN, EU to figure out solution for avoiding conflict, do research about military matters, enhance the awareness of maintaining peace, give expert advice (Karns et al., 2015). Some NGOs concentrates mainly on military and weapon control, other are account for releasing humanitarian problem during the conflict ( Karns et al., 2015). Actually, the cooperation and partnership between these actors are operating the security and peace-keeping system effectively when being put together in a collective tasks.

In terms of the economic issue, it is the IO that foster the economic stability by controlling the economic problem, improving the economic development and spreading the transnational economic corporation. Many IOs have become significance in the global economic governance like IMF (International Monetary Fund), viewed as a solution for economic crisis by providing conditional assistance. An example is the case of the Asian economic depression  in 1997-1998. IMF carried out the bailout package up to nearly $100 billion to Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, which was economically effective, prevented it from widely spreading (Karns et al., 2015). The transgoverment trade agreement and organization also impulse the economic development of every state. WTO, one of the most important IOs, whose some of the central principles focus on economic nondiscrimination, reciprocity, which allows the equality and encourages the interstate trading between both weak and strong nations. (Hoekman & Marvoidis, 2007; as cited in Karns et al., 2015).  Moreover, they supply technical helps and commercial stimulation to weak countries to overcome the fear and impediment when dealing with powerful states (Karns et al., 2015).

Thirdly, humanitarian issue such as human right protection and refugee problems are tough question requiring action of IOs. Human right in some areas is still violated and need the NGOs, IGOs, particularly, the UN to globalize human right by creating the norms, regimes, laws, actions (Karns et al., 2015). NGOs are good at creating movements and propagating human right, for example Invisible Children prevailed on 80 million Western audiences to fight against the human right crisis in Northern Uganda, where children were kidnapped and forced to fight in war (Karns et al., 2015). The acts of NGOs mainly contribute to the raise of people’s awareness and antagonism with human violation around the world as well as appeal the interstate action to tackle with these problems. Another serious problem is refugee. These unplaced people hardly find anywhere to come and live become a burden of other countries nearby the original country. Handling with this matter, UNHCR was establish as one of the most prominent IOs responsible for registering people and providing relief. During Syria refugee disaster, it worked with Turkey NGOs and IGO to construct 22 refugee camps, give education, health care and food for the refugees (Karns et al., 2015). .

Finally, tackling with the environment issue such as global warming, resource depletion is very essential. Meyer et al. (1997) confirmed that it have become part of the public agenda only in the past 5 decades, in large part as a result of 2 major long term trends which are the increased knowledge and awareness thanks to the scientific collection of date about this problem, and the proliferation of NGOs like the Sierra Club, the Commission for the international protection of Nature and other civil society associations (as cited in Karns et al., 2015, p. 536).  Furthermore, big IGOs like the UN has connected states to carry out many agreement to protect the environment and create the stable development. For instance, the UN General Assembly founded the World Commission on Environment and Development, which enforced the critical balance between environment, energy, agriculture with the economic development; this agreement then was adopted in 1987 by UNEP World Bank, many NGOs (Karns et al., 2015). IGOs also serve as the sponsors for NGOs working in this issue (Karns et al., 2015). These efforts is aimed at increasing human interest to protect environment as well as connecting people, organizations and governments to deal with this global problem together.

In conclusion, with the considerable endeavour of IOs, it is undeniable that the collective subjects have been implemented and the stability of the world is somewhat enhanced more positively. It still needs time to complete the goals of Peace, Human and Economic development and Environment Preservation, but what IOs have done is still very optimistic and significant.

Word count: 1250

List of reference:

Karns M. P., Mingst K. A., & Stiles K. W., (2015). International organizations: the Politics and Processes of Global Governance (3rd ed.). United States of America: Lynne Reinner Publishers, Inc.

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