Advocacy

WARW’s advocacy is driven by the need to address the knowledge and information asymmetry which creates and sustains imbalances in the opportunities and benefits accruable to different interest groups engaged in or affected by extractive operations.

Advocacy has to do with getting the more powerful and influential to act in the interest of those with little or no power and influence. For a successful advocacy, we need a clarification of the political agenda. This agenda will provide the motivation; inspiration and focus to enable us tackle the common goal of realizing the optimum from natural resources. As the definition above reveals, at the centre of is power imbalance among stakeholders.

For many NGOs, what defines their work at both community level and advocacy at messo and global levels is the desire to help redress power imbalance at the different levels in which they operate. These NGOs then define the objective of their community work as empowering the poor and marginalized while defining their advocacy work as giving a voice to the voiceless or enabling the voiceless to define and articulate their own concerns including their rights and entitlements. While the first deals with domestic politics, the latter has to do with national levels, especially by northern (international) NGOs, using northern governments and the institutions they control to try to bring about change in southern governments. This framework of advocacy makes a number of very important assumptions that determine the success or failure of our efforts: 1. That the influence exerted on southern governments will lead not only to the desired change at the country level but will leave a balance of power globally which is consistent with the desire to strengthen the weak of all types over the powerful; 2. That the choice of issues and forums are the most efficient one; and 3. That the alliances they form (including northern governments) in the process are consistent with the primary objective.

The political challenge to NGOs advocacy is therefore not simply whether or not their activities are informed be a political objective like redressing power imbalance. More importantly it is about how well they understand the power relations along the entire power relations chain linking local communities to the global (such as the way power relations are established, expressed and transmitted along and throughout the chain)(Abugre, 1996, Akolgo, 1999).

There is equally the challenge of ensuring that changes we seek at one point of the chain is consistent with the preferred power balance at all levels of the chain. This clarity is crucial in understanding and determining the choice of allies at the different levels along the local-global chain and the choice of battleground (i.e. institutions and fora). Unfortunately most NGOs advocacy work is neither strongly rooted in a consistent global political economy analysis framework nor adequately informed by an understanding of where they are located along the local-global power chain. NGO analysis of power relations tends to be limited to the community level power relations and the nature of the state. There is both a limited understanding of and interest in global relations and how people and Governments are inserted in it. It is within this framework that NGOs often tend to define the objective of their advocacy work as empowering weaker sectors of society and hardly about empowering weaker or embattled Governments under an unfair global system, mediated by Governments.

Northern NGOS advocacy is implicitly based on a pervasive and stereotypes distrust of developing Country Governments, even when they are democratic but poor. This accounts partly for the inherently anti-state character of their postures and the arms lengths nature of their relationships with the state. This narrow view of the nature power imbalances can result in accentuating global power imbalances, if for example the effect of NGO advocacy contribute to further weakening the capacity and negotiating positions of southern Governments such as is often the case with Governance conditionalities and negotiations at trade and other related forums.

A globalization framework for advocacy requires recognition of the vulnerability of states and the importance of states as important counter-actors to the process that concentrates power and resources in the hands of a few in the global context. A comprehensive understanding of the nature of the global context, which understanding dictates that in certain situations (such as inter-Governmental negotiations) the natural alliance is with southern Governments irrespective of the nature of their domestic governance.