Challenges in the digital age to humanitarian NGOs' functionality and legitimacy as global governance actor

NGOs are increasingly becoming mediators, managing a complex set of relationships with humanitarian partners, governments, funders, beneficiary communities and third parties. Yet in this role, where powerful external agendas and geopolitical instability pressure NGOs to conform, these organizations ru the risk of being pulled away further from the core humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality to which they subscribe as well as from their legitimacy as global governance actors. Recognizing the pivotal role played by NGOs and their close-knit contact with politically and ideologically volatile regions and persons, government intelligence agencies have publicly indicated their interest in building relationships with NGOs (DemMars, 2001). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) website speaks candidly about the importance of their relationship with NGOs and seek to foster a 'shared sense of purpose' (Laipson, 2007, para. 45). Indeed, in post-conflict situations where information-sharing is an acute need, the US government has often responded with a 'willingness to share' (Laipson, 2007, para. 12) and this has extended to the US [and British] military working shoulder-to-shoulder with NGOs who have developed collaborative arrangements for information-sharing (para. 18). However, NGOs generally-speaking, have diverse views regarding cooperation and sharing of information with government entities and 'NGOs have been reluctant to associate with agencies that are involved in secret intelligence' (Prunckun, 2017, p. 49), even though intelligence gathered by such agencies indicates that there are numerous cases where the vulnerable populations assisted by NGOs have been infiltrated by terrorists (Copley, 2016). Scholars warn that although the mutual sharing of information between government agencies and NGOs may in some cases be mutually beneficial, this kind of humanitarian intelligence 'can just as easily be leveraged for surveillance and control' (Latonero & Kift, 2018, p.1). Little is known about many of the intelligence-gathering procedures as they 'must be kept from public-knowledge' however this 'makes the services dangerous to democracy and difficult to control' (Jervis, 2007, p. viii). It follows therefore, that an NGO's close relationship and working affiliation with such agencies may be viewed by some as necessary to reinforce democratic ideals, whilst others may argue that it poses a real and immediate threat to privacy and democracy. Be that as it may, stories of state and state-sponsored actors accessing humanitarian data, are increasingly common: In July 2019, hackers gained access to dozens of UN servers which housed data and sensitive information from crisis zones throughout the world including the passwords and access keys to a large volume of UN systems (Parker, 2020). Although the agenda and identities of the hackers are currently unknown 'the UN is a natural target for state-sponsored hacking' (para. 25) and this case has all the hallmarks of a sophisticated superpower's intelligence operation (Beaumont, as cited by Parker, 2020). In any case, scholars agree that as much as information gathered by NGOs is beginning to be recognized by government agencies as an untapped resource and the notion of NGOs as intelligence agencies have been discussed in academia (Aday & Livingston, 2009; Constantine, 1995; Olson, 2006), 'humanitarian intelligence' is a distinct sector missing from intelligence work (Prunckun, 2017), the understanding of the emerging role of NGOs and therefore, an area ripe for exploration (Zwitter, 2016).