Inadequate coordination of international nongovernmental organizations and programmes

Nature

Irrespective of whether INGOs duplicate each others' activities, INGOs with complementarity programmes, preoccupations, common positions, or common operational problems have considerable difficulty in linking together in some coordinated activity of other than a token nature. The absence of powerful inter-INGO federations with a common position considerably weakens their ability to act under certain circumstances and makes it easy to out-manoeuvre their separate actions and difficult to support their common position.

Counter-claim

It is questionable whether the organizational models for such confederations are adequate for the complexity of the pressures which they are expected to bring into focus and reconcile. In addition, emphasis is now being placed on functional and regional decentralization. INGO disarray is paralleled by that of the agencies of the UN system; weak and inadequate systems of coordination are in fact a general problem of the times.