Rebasti, Emanuele --- "Beyond Consultative Status: Which Legal Framework for an Enhanced Interaction between NGOs and Intergovernmental Organizations?" [2008] ELECD 145; in Dupuy, Pierre-Marie; Vierucci, Luisa (eds), "NGOs in International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: NGOs in International Law

Editor(s): Dupuy, Pierre-Marie; Vierucci, Luisa

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847205605

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Beyond Consultative Status: Which Legal Framework for an Enhanced Interaction between NGOs and Intergovernmental Organizations?

Author(s): Rebasti, Emanuele

Number of pages: 50

Extract:

1. Beyond consultative status: which
legal framework for enhanced
interaction between NGOs and
intergovernmental organizations?
Emanuele Rebasti

INTRODUCTION
Interaction with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) is a central part of
NGO's (non-governmental organization)1 activity at the international level. The
institutional structures of international cooperation provide NGOs with the
forum they need to make their voices heard beyond the boundaries of the nation-
state and with a political target for the exercise of their non-governmental diplo-
macy. Thus it is not surprising that NGOs have hardly been indifferent to
intergovernmental institutions: either confrontational or cooperative, NGOs'
action is often defined with reference to IGOs' policies or aims at influencing the
outcomes of intergovernmental processes. Similarly, IGOs have increasingly

1 As is exhaustively explained in the Introduction to the present book, the notion
of a Non-Governmental Organization is not univocal in international practice or in acad-
emic debate. While it is commonly understood that NGOs are organizations established
by private initiative, formally free from any governmental influence and without a profit-
making aim, it is much more debated whether in that category may also fall organizations
which promote professional or class interests; which represent social or ethnic groups;
which lack legal personality in their national law order; which have a political or religious
nature or which carry out their activity in the territory of a single state. In practice, every
IGO which establishes a formalized relationship has its own definition of an NGO. In
recent times, however, IGOs have ...