Paper short abstract:

What challenges did NGOs working in development worldwide face due to Covid-19 in 2020? How did they respond to those challenges? This paper explores the experiences of national NGO platforms from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, using primary data collected between May and September 2020.

Paper long abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in development in similar ways to those that affected many other sectors: reducing the income available and forcing many NGOs to shut down operations or to change the way they operate, in some cases radically. And as in many other aspects of social, political, and economic life, the pandemic has also accelerated existing trends that were already exerting pressure on the sector and pushing for transformation, such as calls for aid localisation and the closing of civic space in countries experiencing a rise in populist and authoritarian forms of government. Working in different contexts and coming from different histories and civil society traditions, NGOs across the globe faced different challenges during the most challenging periods of 2020 and responded to the multiple crisis caused by the pandemic in different ways.

This paper explores differences between NGO responses to Covid-19 in different parts of the world, using data from a survey of 20 national NGO platforms from countries in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, conducted between May and July 2020. The survey was initially conducted on the topic of innovation, but the challenges and responses to Covid-19 were covered during the follow-up semi-structured interviews conducted with platform staff from 11 platforms between August and September. The discussion of the findings will focus on the experiences of NGO platforms themselves, as networks and national coordinating bodies, and will explore implications for the future.