Cooperation of INGOs in times of humanitarian crises. : A case study from Rwanda.
Abstract: This study is looking at the cooperation between international NGOs within one particular humanitarian crisis, namely the genocide and following refugee crisis in Rwanda 1994. While researching the topic of NGO cooperation, it became clear that plenty research about NGO cooperation can be found whereas very little research exists concerning the cooperation of INGOs. Hence, the relevance to research this topic further stems from the assumption that cooperation is an important tool to organize humanitarian work more efficiently and should, therefore, be improved. The work at hand is a desk study and tries to answer whether cooperation exists and how it is pursued. A theoretical framework was created by combining a model of functions that civil society should fulfil with an inter-organizational knowledge sharing approach in order to elaborate on those questions. The used method is the case study approach. The history of Rwanda in 1994 was used as a setting for the study because it is one particularly well-researched topic and provides a good entry point to explore the field of INGO cooperation with other INGOs. In conclusion, the results show that cooperation exists and is pursued in different sectors. Successful cooperation does, however, always require the willingness to reduce competition and find compromises. The extent to which INGOs are doing so varies. In the future, more organizational documentation is needed to truly explore this topic in-depth. It should also be noted that serious problems were met in finding good sources of information from the INGOs involved in this study and that they did not actively reply to requests of supplying further information.
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