From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWER1950s and 1960s was replaced by self-help mantras in the 1970s and1980s (captured in the slogan ‘Give a man a fish and he eats for a day,teach a man to fish and he eats for life’). Since the mid1990s, a ‘rightsbasedapproach’ has steadily gained ground among many INGOs andsome government donors. The shift to a rights-based approach hasplaced civil and political rights and economic, social, and culturalrights centre-stage. Also growing in weight are concerns for theenvironment (suppose pollution kills the fish?) and sustainability(suppose the man catches all the fish?). 159The practice of INGOs has also expanded beyond communityleveldevelopment and relief work. In recognition of the impact ofwider social and political processes on their work, beginning in thelate 1970s, INGOs took up the task of building solidarity with strugglesagainst oppression in Southern Africa and Central America. Thedeveloping-country debt crisis and IMF structural adjustmentprogrammes in the 1980s and 1990s then moved INGOs to devoteincreasing resources to public education, campaigns, and lobbying,aiming to influence the behaviour of governments, corporations, andother institutions that affect the lives of poor people.Today, INGOs are far more than providers of finance (their budgetsare dwarfed by those of government donors). Rather, they act as catalysts,brokering relationships between social movements, governments, andthe private sector, raising public awareness directly or through themedia, and as lobbyists, putting co-ordinated pressure on internationalorganisations such as the World Bank or the WTO. Southern-basedINGOs are increasingly influential in this work.From the mid 1990s onwards, the largest development NGOs beganto formalise their relationships into federations and confederations,such as Oxfam International. They recognised that the collapse ofCommunism, the new drive for globalisation, and powerful newcommunications media made a global response to suffering andpoverty both necessary and feasible. No longer just loose collections ofnational NGOs bearing the same name, these INGOs are nowtransnational organisations responding globally on issues such as aid,debt relief, the roles of the UN, the IMF, and World Bank, the armstrade, climate change, and international trade rules.372