Humanitarian movement, charity and moral imagination

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of some of the key themes in the current discussion of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) legitimacy and accountability. The main objective is to set out a framework for identifying the main tangible and intangible sources of NGO legitimacy, specifically identifying the question of whether communication, and above all fund raising ability, influences NGO legitimacy. I will observe some strategies of communication (such as lobby, advocacy, fund raising) of some international organizations, both governmental and non, to investigate the role played by NGOs in building a respectable global citizenship . In doing so, this paper is divided in three main parts. First, it presents different factors which have challenged the legitimacy of NGOs in the last five-ten years. Secondly, it examines the main topics and methods that humanitarian marketing practitioners use as they promote and negotiate “humanitarian space”. Finally, it examines the political role of NGOs, focusing on the influence that the «spectacle of suffering» (Boltanski 1999) has on our moral imagination and exploring the ambiguous relationship between our commitment as spectators-benefactors and our responsibility as citizen-consumers.