NGO Forum

UNHCR has been working with NGOs since we first began helping the forcibly displaced in the early 1950s. As our work and size grew to cope with emerging refugee crises in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, especially in Africa, Asia and Central America, so did our ties with a wide range of newly formed humanitarian and refugee-related NGOs.

In 2007, UNHCR adopted the Global Humanitarian Platform’s Principles of Partnership that set out common standards of equality, transparency, complementarity and a results-oriented approach among all humanitarian groups. We integrated the Principles of Partnership in to our ‘Framework for Implementing with Partners’ as an institutional approach to collaborative partnerships.

by Kelly Campbell, Shazeen Virani, and Jessica Lanney

Not many would associate innovation with large, service-oriented nonprofits with decades of history. But in our study of many such organizations—including World Vision, Habitat for Humanity, The Salvation Army, and Save the Children—we found a handful are innovating by seeking out data, taking it seriously, and then using it to pivot their approach from serving constituents’ needs to tackling the underlying problems that produce them.

by Rhea Karuturi

This Thursday, China passed a new law that has attracted the world’s attention. It is a law that increases police supervision of foreign NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and affects almost 7,000 foreign NGOs. The law gives the government more control over the workings of these organizations and makes it mandatory for the NGOs to have local partners. And China is not alone in this move towards more regulation of NGOs — it is a part of a much larger trend that includes countries like Russia, India, Uganda and Kenya.