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Dean Donev, MA in Social Ethics
Ethics of taking actions in and of non-governmental organizations
Starting from the statement and conclusion about what and how the state should be and unfortunately, living in a world in which countries and those who present it, very often forget about this, and the answer of solving the need for a change of such conditions results from the one for whom states exist – the citizen. Namely, aware of the fact that the condition in which he will be just an instrument of the state policy cannot exist any more, his highness, the citizen, has found ways to get organized, to find a form through which he will say “no” to such states. Such means, the way and form for that so necessary “no”, are undoubtedly non-governmental organizations that have met the expectations of every citizen to a great extent: to affect the ethical awakening of the state and authorities, those who practice it.
There is no doubt in the justification of the conclusion that the NGO sector is only one of the ways of taking actions and solving problems in the world we live in. It is about a way that is based on representation, defense and broadening human rights and freedoms. It is their essence, the base of their taking actions and the necessary ethical consequence of that – ethical awakening of each of us as a citizen to a real, ethically established civil democratic society. It proves the need of again establishing the correlation politics-ethics and vice versa, political actions based upon the ethical criteria during their evaluation.
Hence, the undoubted ethical criterion according to which non-governmental organizations should be evaluated is the degree to which they meet their function: protection, advancement and broadening human rights and freedoms. The essence of taking actions and actions taken for realization of such functions and goals can be seen, above all, in the idea and effort the field of human rights and freedoms to be spread in different fields and all around the world. As a result, the non-governmental organizations’ taking actions is necessarily inspired by ethics, as the basis and criterion for every kind of activity. In practice this confirms the big relevance, role and influence that non-governmental organizations have nowadays as corrective on both local and international plan. The feedback of such realized concrete influence on both local and international plan is that the states more often take care of the non-governmental organizations’ attitudes in order to avoid an international condemnation. Taking into consideration the ethics of taking actions in and of non-governmental organizations, regardless of the goal or field of their taking actions and the methods they use for realization of the given goal, is the fact that it is necessary to point out that the term “non-governmental organization” does not mean non-participation by the authorities, but an activity based on undoubtedly ethical values to meet the basic objective of each civil society – the power and the state to be citizen’s service and not the citizen to be a source and victim of maintaining the systems.
Consistently with the above mentioned, it is completely clear that regardless of the fact whether non-governmental organizations are of local or national character, upon such based working principles they also become a global factor, as with consistent keeping to basic ethical values and efforts to build a real civil society in a country, the NGO also offer an answer for many issues in front of which the world today is right. More precisely, with all this, it is not only that they are a global factor with socio-economic and political consequence, but they become a way of living and thinking that enables development of such kind of awareness, regardless of religion, politics, cultural and other choice, on global level, that without cooperation, mutual tolerance, understanding and dialogue, there is not a world that will be a global civil society based upon the basic objective of every existence – creating such type of ethics in the society that would free the world of the danger of self-destruction, bringing back the world and man to real values. They are the values that necessarily have to be in the basis of acting mechanism of the whole non-governmental sector and single within each non-governmental organization.
Hence, the choice of well-profiled goals upon ethical values according to which they are managed is imposed as the basic postulate, and according to which their activity is evaluated and proper results are required. Thus the value becomes an expression of our awareness of life, relations between people and our actions, and also the thing we would be evaluated by and we would evaluate others in their actions. This implies that values, real ethical values, are not only an inspiration of the non-governmental organizations, but are their modus vivendi of taking actions in order to realize their role, goal and function – to be an ethical bridge between citizens and society. That is the reason why the third sector, more precisely the non-governmental organizations, has become vox populi.
Formed from that need, to hear people’s voice, they have become vox populi and turned to the needs to which authorities and states are deaf, not having enough resources or will to meet them. Covering this space, enabling meeting such needs and realizing their role of necessary ethical corrective of such authorities, the non-governmental organizations have provided governmental partnership with the government and have at the same time become a key factor without which neither citizens nor the government will in the future be able to reach the goal of what is global awareness of each ethically awaken person – real, ethically established, civil, democratized society.
Confirmation of such role and relevance of non-governmental organizations are also the results, not only on the Balkans, but globally too. Namely, they have become unavoidable factor of peace, democracy, economic welfare because as a result of their own ethical choice of real universal ethical values, such as: fight for protection and spreading human freedoms and rights, solidarity, dialogue, cooperation, volunteering, peace, firstly and primarily, they have enabled the citizen to take his responsibility for himself and in front of the others and secondly, they have offered room to the systems by respecting the above mentioned ethical values, to mature.
(the author has an MA in social ethics)
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