In mid-2015 the European Union changed its response to the increase of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from humanitarian to securitization and deterrence. In 2017 this became visible in the criminalization of search and rescue (SAR) organizations, which had an impact and both intended and unintended consequences. This study focuses on the impact of criminalization on the management of search and rescue NGOs in the Central Mediterranean Sea since 2017 by analysing changes in their recruitment, training and general management, their decision-making process when faced with (the risk of) criminalization and criminalization’s impact on their ability to fulfil their mission. This is done through analysing literature and conducting semi-structured interviews with four people who are active in SAR organizations affected by (the risk of) criminalization. This study finds that it is not generally known that authorities have changed strategies of criminalization. The previous more open form of criminalization partly strengthened one of the organizations as members became more resolute in their commitment to their mission and public support and donations increased by those who opposed the authorities’ strategy. The current strategy consists of mainly administrative hurdles, which are less visible but more difficult to manage for organizations.  Recruitment was impacted as there are fewer potential candidates and vetting increased. Trainings changed to give crew members additional information and enable them to obtain required licenses. In general management more sustainable structures were created for resilience to criminalization. In the decision-making process when faced with (the risk of) criminalization the organizations aim to be democratic, which makes the process more time-consuming and prone to internal conflict. The organizations’ ability to fulfil their missions was impacted by the negative influence of the media on their public image and needing to use resources for legal defence instead of SAR operations. There are currently less frequent SAR operations and it is increasingly difficult for small organizations to run their own ship.

The number of the Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has grown substantially in recent years. As the sector has expanded it has experienced a high level of internal competition especially due to scarce donor resources and their requirements such as greater financial accountability and clearer evidence of program influence. Therefore strategic thinking and the use of strategic management approaches are very much needed. While the volume of research on strategic management in large corporations is extensive research on strategic management in SMEs is relatively limited and the research on strategic management in NGOs is very limited. Therefore, following the recommendations of the prior researchers for further studies, this research is an attempt to shed light on the top mangers` perception of the importance of strategic management processes in NGOs in Palestine. This research discovered that more than half of the NGOs surveyed have strategic management systems indicating that a significant proportion of NGOs view strategic management as crucial. Managers of the studied NGOs perceived a strategic management approach as an important factor for increasing the quality of service delivery, achieving goals and increasing overall organizational performance. Regarding the internal organizational factors managers believed that employing strategic management techniques helped significantly in sorting out organizational problems, reducing organizational conflicts and aiding organizational development. The NGOs that have set a strategic management approach are more adjustable to environmental factors. The environmental awareness of managers in NGOs is very important. The managers` strategic awareness and their perception of the III benefits coming from a formal strategic planning approach within the NGO considerably impacts upon the success of the organisation. They perceived environmental scanning as a very important factor for NGO success. Environmental scanning is also perceived as a significant factor in the strategic management process and its impact upon performance. The studied NGOs placed most emphasis on a mission statement followed by evaluating and assessing and developing a vision statement and yearly goals. The respondents considered flexibility, adjustability and organizational development as important elements in implementing strategies. As the size of the NGOs increased their use of strategic management approaches such as developing a mission statement and objectives, annual and long term goals and employing formal strategic planning techniques increased. Managers of NGOs perceived the - value of leadership presented by managers¿ as the first priority in the factors which are significant for future success. This emphasises the significance of leadership as a crucial factor for success in all organizations in general and in NGOs in particular. In this research it has been recommended that donors from the international community, the Islamic and the Arab world should continue to support Palestinian NGOs. Indeed they have the right to ask the Palestinian NGOs to show transparency, accountability and to be moderate and well managed. On the other hand they should respect the Palestinian national agendas and priorities and not use the assistance being given as a political tool. The Palestinian National Authority should allow NGOs the freedom to operate effectively and ensure that the relationship between NGOs and Palestinian National Authority is a cooperative one.

The question of what agenda drives NGO peacebuilding in post-conflict setting has been raised in a number of literatures which make generalized conclusions that NGOs tend to respond to the liberal peace agenda, and in the process co-opt local peacebuilding initiatives. Liberal peace agenda refers to the post-conflict peacebuilding approach based on the promotion of democracy, economic liberalization, human rights and the rule of law. As such, NGOs are seen as privatizing peacebuilding, marginalizing local initiatives and applying unsustainable approaches to peacebuilding in post-conflict contexts. Provoked by these assertions, I conducted field research in northern Uganda, which up to 2006 had experienced 22 years of conflict between the Lord¿s Resistance Army (LRA) and Government of Uganda (GOU). I contend in my findings that while to some extent the generalized observations made by liberal peace critics are true, they fail to fully engage with the micro aspects of post-conflict peacebuilding. The macro-analytic assertions of the liberal peace critics ignore the plurality of the NGO peacebuilding practice, the diverse internal organizational culture, and the complexities and diversities of the contextual dynamics of post-conflict settings. My research was based on a micro level analysis and demonstrated that the peacebuilding process in northern Uganda was interactive, and, as such, engendered diverse encounters of sense-making, relationship building and co-construction of peacebuilding discourse and practice between NGOs, donors and local community. The study shows that peacebuilding was essentially relational and developed through a process of relational constructionism, which denotes social processes of reality construction based on relational encounters.

Why are non-communicable diseases (NCDs) near the bottom of the list in terms of global health funding and political priority when together they account for the most death and suffering globally, particularly amongst the world’s poorest populations? The dissertation engages this puzzle by analyzing the work and impact of two model public health programs, one which succeeded in making legible the problem of NCDs as understood and experienced by citizens in the Global North in Finland and one which is challenging that understanding, based on the experiences of the poor in the Global South in Sierra Leone. The North Karelia Project, launched in eastern Finland in the early 1970s, generated science and practice that was taken up by the World Health Organization (WHO) (Puska 2002) and has become hegemonic, dominating global NCD public health discourse and rendering understandings of alternative causes and potential interventions invisible (Weisz and Vignola-Gagné 2015). The integrated NCD clinic at Koidu Government Hospital is the first clinical program to treat ongoing chronic illnesses—an issue that is frequently assumed to be too expensive for poor governments to address—in post-conflict and post-Ebola Sierra Leone, which hosts one of the weakest health systems in the world but which is part of a broader movement to challenge the dominant WHO NCD policy (PIH 2019; NCD Synergies 2015). Drawing on theories from medical sociology, science and technology studies, and global and transnational sociology, I use this comparison to explore how and why some understandings of NCDs prevail and why others fail. I also use it to gain leverage on three important related questions: (1) How are depictions of the burden of NCDs and their severity constructed in different material and social settings? (2) How do those depictions become stabilized (or not) in the global discourse about global health priorities? And, (3) What are the implications of such contrasting stabilization processes? I approach these questions by using a triangulated qualitative comparative case study research design (Bartlett and Vavrus 2016; Rihoux 2006), building on existing models of comparative research in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) (Knorr-Cetina 1999; Crane 2013). I conducted participant observation at organizational headquarters and clinical settings; semi-structured interviews with leaders, researchers, and clinical staff; and critical discourse analysis of the scientific literature, reports, and other historical and organizational materials generated by the actors. Each component compares the two cases (North Karelia Project, Finland and Koidu Government Hospital, Sierra Leone) along the lines of material setting, discourse, and science-making practices. Differences in epistemic practices reveal how power and politics are enacted and reproduced through public health science. I find that public health scientists in both cases must work to quell, or neutralize, persistent sociological ambivalence – irreconcilable tensions in values, interests, and politics – to solve local public health problems and produce science that can travel beyond the local. Ambivalences inherent in local public health science-making are quelled in patterned ways, shaped by an institutional field of struggle and strategies of accumulation of scarce symbolic and material capital. The North Karelia Project exemplified a public health social epistemology that I term “UHC-Insulated Population Optimization” which deployed three tactics for quelling persistent ambivalence such as offloading obligations, epistemic normality, and utilitarian construction. Conversely, the integrated NCD clinic at Koidu Government Hospital’s public health social epistemology, characterized as “Attending to Undone Care”, utilized other strategies for quelling ambivalence: making preferential option for the poor obligations, hybrid methods, and polar distinctions. The field of global health struggle, and the doxa on which it rests, is rooted in principles of distinction and hierarchy built from the legacies of extractive colonialism which remain powerful today in maintaining enormous health inequalities between the Global North and South. This dissertation and the comparison on which it rests opens new ground on the material conditions for epistemic justice and the material reparations necessary to ‘decolonize global’ health. / 2025-09-21T00:00:00Z

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It is argued that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has close ties to local religious traditions. At the same time, the international community has agreed on eliminating FGM. Therefore, this thesis investigates the friction between a local tradition and international pressure. Using the method of qualitative content analysis, the thesis analyses the reports from three different international non- governmental organizations (NGOs) to examine how they have designed their programme for eliminating FGM. Three organizations were selected on the basis of their attitude towards religion, as FGM is closely linked to local religious traditions. The results of the reports are analysed using a coding scheme based on theories of religion as a social construction, approaches to human rights and power structures. This paper discovered that an NGO's relationship to religion influences who participates in the programme, and that all of the organizations recognized that they require assistance from local actors to gain access to local communities to implement social change. Findings show that each organization fills a gap the others fail to access. Together, the three development programmes include a large local population as well as national agencies.

In Georgia the non-governmental organisations are active and manifold despite the Sovietheritage of a trampled civil society and lengthy violent conflicts, frozen yet not forgotten.NGOs seek to deal with the problematic issues through information, strengthening civilsociety and building bridges between antagonists. An organisation consists of individuals andthe work is done through “their” individuals towards other individuals. Martha Nussbaum'sapproach on human well-being, which does not count income or ask for a minimum set ofutensils for a universal basic standard, is being offered as a more just way of judging nationalgrowth than the GDP. Nussbaum's approach of basic human capability cherishes individualityand different cultures, recognising that not every one wishes the same things in order to feelfulfilled. The capability approach allows persons to choose a preferred way of life, yet listsdemands of equal opportunities to all for reaching personal development and accessingpossibilities. By analysing the narrations of NGO-staff members thematically according to thecapability to affiliate, a relevant feel for the possibilities of successful and satisfyinginteraction in the NGO-sector emerges and some contemporary issues in the local contexts arepresented. The interviews were conducted in Georgia during two months in 2010, and thefocus was on relationships and experiences connected to work. Exercising the capability ingood measure is presented in the narratives as gaining the individual increased emotion andfurthering personal development. Areas where living up to the capability is hampered becomealso visible: affiliating may brush against existing stereotypical norms in the society. Yet theindividuals challenge the restrictions and in doing so develop their civil society andthemselves.

NGOs have been actively involved in both global and national policy processes resulting to promotion of human rights. However, NGOs involvement in policy process heavily depends on their success, since policy makers choose to engage only successful NGOs. In determining whether NGOs are successful, indicators of NGO success should be evident in their operations. This thesis focuses on three indicators of NGOs success namely, sufficient resources, embeddedness in the community and an already established success in the country where NGOs are geographically located, with an aim to show that successful NGOs have a role in policy process, and such NGOs promote enjoyment of rights such as right to health and freedom from discrimination. The indicators are related to each other and are equally important for an NGO to gain success. Therefore, indicators of NGOs success have great impact on NGOs success that has an impact on NGOs role in policy process.

<p>In Senegal, local communities have faced a wide range of economic and political challenges. In their attempt to address these issues, local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have engaged in a wide variety of improvement projects, and have often partnered together in these efforts. This dissertation examines the linkages formed between Senegalese and international NGOs in their efforts to achieve their aspirations of improvement for the country in a context of global interconnection. By engaging with relevant literature and ethnographic data collected through anthropological research efforts, I seek to provide a more in-depth understanding of the perspectives and experiences of NGO practitioners in Senegal while considering the interrelated issues of global connection, civil society and social hope. My research aims to contribute to the anthropological discourse on NGOs by examining how practitioners engaged in a variety of NGOs in Senegal understand and approach their work and how they engage in the complex power relationships entailed by these international NGO partnerships. In addition, this study explores the issue of social hope among NGO practitioners, examining how they approach and experience the concept of hope through their NGO efforts at improvement. With a focus on implementing programs targeted at certain groups over a short period of time, the hope of NGO staff involves a desire for long-term change despite the challenges faced. This study also considers the aspirations of NGO staff with respect to their political engagement with the state and their perception of Senegal’s place in the world. This involves exploring their belief that civil society and NGOs are the basis for hope in Senegal rather than the state. In this context, NGOs seek improvement by working within the political and economic system, constrained and limited by the dictates of their external donors and their approach to social change.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)