ABSTRACT
In 1999 Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) received the Nobel Prize. The organisation has pioneered contemporary humanitarian advocacy under the motto ‘Care for and testify’, challenging traditional humanitarianism’s reserve. MSF’s award demonstrates how humanitarian advocacy has been recognised internationally since the end of the Cold War. Humanitarian organisations have not simply become more involved in lobbying for greater official aid and campaigning to increase private donations (in Band Aid-type appeals), but have sought to intervene directly in international politics. MSF humanitarians prominently appealed in the Western media for military intervention in Bosnia and its stance has been adopted widely in the humanitarian sector. Officials from Save the Children were among those lobbying Western governments to intervene militarily in Kosovo. Save the Children’s work has always been underpinned by children’s rights advocacy, but this form of advocacy was new. More recently Oxfam, which has defined itself as a development organisation since the 1960s, has appealed for more robust responses to the Darfur crisis. Oxfam now ranks its commitment towards advocacy as equal to its commitment to development and emergency relief. Oxfam’s direction indicates how development NGOs have taken up more advocacy work and campaigning on human rights. Indeed development activities in the rights-based development model increasingly take the form of advocacy work. Oxfam has become more closely involved in campaigns such as debt relief or international trade reform that previously it might have left to its sister organisation Third World First. British aid agencies have come together to campaign under banners such as Make Poverty History as well as conducting their own advocacy work. MSF is currently prominently involved in
a campaign to make cheap generic drugs available to developing countries. Furthermore human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have also expanded their remit to include advocacy over international humanitarian law and begun cooperating with humanitarian organisations. Yet again human rights organisations such as the Aegis Trust or Genocide Watch have emerged which have primarily an advocacy role and do not conduct individual casework.
