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NGOs : the self appointed witnesses, judges, jury & executioners

Shenali Waduge

World politics is certainly not how it used to be. We have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of fundamentalism & the topic of discussion the rise of the non-governmental organizations or “private voluntary organizations”, “civil society organizations” or “non-profit organizations”.

While initially these civil society organizations (CSOs) remained in the background of world politics they are today seen everywhere & exerting power in every aspect of policy making at national & international levels. From self-appointed witnesses, judges, jury to executioner, NGOs have today become influential players in the global political arena.

The term Non-Governmental Organization first came into existence after it was coined so by the UN in 1948. There were 40 such organizations at the time. Today, their resumes are vast & varied & include humanitarian issues, disaster matters, conflict resolution, alleviation of poverty, protecting human rights & child rights….. there is not an area that they do not venture into.

While most of us shudder in the face of disaster or catastrophe on the contrary NGOs thrive & relish when disasters take place. It is only then that they can become activated ….& start knocking on the doors of charitable hearts …open up new offices…employ more staff…& travel the globe. It has turned into a very attractive profession & everyone wants to be involved in NGO work & it is not surprising with the humanitarian & financial development financing involved why businessmen, politicians, academics & even journalists are forming NGOs to plug into these gold mines & rewarding themselves & their relatives with salaries, perks & privileges. Thus, floods, elections, earthquakes, wars & the like all eventually lead to very lucrative gains for NGOs & associated entities.

How many NGOs exist globally – no one really knows. According to the UNDP Human Development Report of 2002, nearly one-fifth of the world’s 37,000 INGOs were formed in the 1990s. The total is likely to be much higher today. While it is easy to deduce how many governments exist, it becomes a tiresome quest to derive how many NGOs exist globally & of them how many are in fact legitimate organizations & this has prompted many to consider the dangers surrounding their existence. Who runs these groups? How are they funded? What are their real agendas? & the most important question being to whom are these NGOs accountable for the monies credited to their accounts as well as for what they are promoting through their networks?

Plugging into Governance at all levels

Governance has seen significant changes over the years. Our initial understanding of governance was its association with governments. Over the years we have seen new sets of political actors coming into being largely so as a result in the lack of faith in Governments & their ability to deliver to the people. Thus, while Governments remain powerful these new “political actors” have penetrated into civil society through the late 1980s to become the people’s advocate in decision-making. It is another matter of course that what they advocate is actually the will of the people; nevertheless, this is how the NGOs have turned themselves into giants in the global political arena.

As we see them descend upon society carrying laptops, descending from SUVs, living in plush apartments & drawing a pretty salary they make fine preachers, critics of governance & often portray that only they have the answer to the worlds ills.

While we do not deny that there are endless cases of corruption & scandals involving governments, UN itself, world corporations, the religious entities we cannot say that NGOs are immune from corruption either.

The NGOs today have risen to become mammoth organizations. The big players like World Vision, Save the Children, Oxfam & Care have significant financial backing sometimes exceeding that of smaller nations. World Vision’s annual budget as of 2006 was around $2.1billion this is thirty times the annual GDP of countries like Nauru, San Marino ($1 billion), Liechtenstein ($1.7billion) or Andorra ($1.8billion) Nauru’s population is 13,000 only while World Vision’s global staff accounts for 23,000.

NGOs didn’t spring overnight. Before the NGOs emerged Foundations took prominence especially in America & Europe. In the US, the combined assets of the top 20 American foundations in 2005 was around $151billion & was easily more than the budget of the European Union (Euros 106billion - $148billion) that same year. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has assets of $29billion followed by the Ford Foundation with $11.6billion. In Europe, the top 50 European Foundations located in 8 countries had a combined asset totaling $98billion. Wellcome Trust (UK) has assets work $24.5billion while Fondazion Cassa di Risparmio has assets of $7.8billion.

One can perhaps begin to understand how much of clout these groups have & how easily they can outweigh any government especially the smaller ones.

NGO & the question of accountability

Funding of NGOs immediately brings us to the question of accountability since practically all NGOs operates across national borders. In the United States, all NGOs must file its finances annually with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the federal agency in charge of taxation – these files are accessible to the public. These NGOs also have to register with the state in which it is resident & must publish an annual report. However, in the cases of other NGOs in other parts of the world there looms the need for greater transparency in the light of how they get their funds, from whom to draw conclusions on whose interests these NGOs may be promoting.

While NGOs have effectively held large institutions & governments accountable & exposed them to public scrutiny for corruptions & bad governance they don’t welcome too many criticisms against the manner in which they work. There is no global method to ensure that NGOs are accountable to anyone it is they who in fact carry out their “business” with impunity.

Transparency & accountability is a growing need but very few wish to debate it on international platforms as most of those entities themselves are members or patrons of international NGOs.

While some organizations like Amnesty International, Greenpeace became household names for their landmine campaigns others gained notoriety for their violent protests during official meetings of the WTO, World Bank, IMF….during the 1992 East Summit in Rio de Jinero, 17,000 NGO representatives staged an alternative forum to the UN sponsored meeting while 1400 were involved in the official proceedings….almost the same exercise took place during the 4th World Conference on Women in 1995 when 35,000 NGOs organized an alternative forum while 2600 participated in the official conference… however by & large most NGOs have remained non violent. It is a few of the group’s efforts from the 1980s that generated the need for NGO involvement in decision making. Thus, from the street efforts the NGOs now have secured an exclusive status amongst world diplomats & State bureaucrats. We can well understand their air of bravado in the light of the growing public & private grants alongside the contracts flowing to them.

Should we then be surprised at how powerful they must feel in global politics? It was only natural that many organizations would soon hide themselves under the acronym NGO.

Thus in large part as the needs for social, economic & political changes began to surface vis a vis global catastrophes that were either man made or natural so did the virtuous NGOs expand in numbers. Having soon aligned themselves with movements like the United Nations Organization itself, the NGOs were soon able to even outsource some of the UN activity into their portfolios of services.

The outsourcing of UN work to these NGOs has increased over the years. The bigger NGOs are benefiting as most corporate too are switching to those with better profiles leaving the smaller ones near extinction. World Vision Australia accounted for 40% of all funds raised from public for international development in 2003 alone.

In these turbulent times the need for salvation & “giving” has immediately created the “takers” in the form of the NGOs & they have been able to quickly align themselves to “causes” close to the hearts of civil society. The Americans are the most charitable when it comes to charity so much so that they rarely doubt the NGOs that they fund. Very few NGOs, one could say have even have fallen out of business for their “global causes” but they have definitely gone global drawing big bonanzas as they enter different continents.

Let us take a look at some facts from 2006.

From the arena of Torture :

400 detainees from more than 30 nationalities were held at Guantanamo Bay; 200 had staged hunger strikes since the camp opened; 40 had committed suicide; 3 died in June 2006 after apparent suicide. The US let us note is the champion of human rights for all. The numbers of detainees held in secret detention centers around the world is unknown.

From the arena of global firearms:

85% of killings worldwide involve the use of small arms & light weapons. 60% of the world’s firearms are in the hands of private individuals.

From the arena of Women:

At least 1 in 3 of the world’s women had been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused. 70% of casualties in conflicts were non-combatants – mostly women & children.

It becomes a laudable venture when NGOs use these “causes” to promote their existence & fund raising itself becomes an effortless endeavor.

The most recent case of human catastrophe occurred with the 2004 Tsunami. It was a natural disaster of mammoth proportions since it affected over 12 countries. It required the prompt attention of the world & charities. 80% of the people in the UK donated & similarly, many people from USA to Europe equally contributed to any charity that came forward to help the “victims of the tsunami”. It created a scenario for many NGOs to set up shop & open avenues to collect funds.

NGOs have created a very effective nucleus even in countries like Bangladesh where foreign aid has created a “franchise state” in which large areas of public service are run by NGOs. Cambodia’s entire health service is run by NGOs.

While we cannot deny that many of these NGOs do in fact contribute to enhancing the lives of people there are others in this NGO bandwagon whose actions become questionable…cases of interfering in parliamentary elections in Macedonia, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Belgium have also come to light? Some NGOs even work for States by gathering intelligence & promoting their interests. The British Foreign Office finances a host of NGOs including Global Witness….perhaps this is one reason why NGOs are accused of espionage. It was however, not until the world saw a surge in terrorist activity that many began to see how easy it was to use NGOs as a means to promote terrorist activity. There are many highly publicized cases of NGOs promoting terrorist activity as well as using its operations to collect funds for these terrorists. There are in some cases Governments that use NGOs to carry out the links with such terrorist entities. Even the former Russian President Putin has accused British NGOs of working with the British Secret Service to gather information

We can then begin to see the unpleasant face of globalization taking shape…it is this dominance of transnational forces taking liberties over sovereign states that has rooted the notion of neocolonialism to surface. The dominating manner in which these entities walk into the political arena of a country has not helped matters either. However corrupt Governments may be the public generally tend to rally around “their own” against these transnational forces. Thus we begin to hear the cries of anti-NGOs taking place.

To add fuel to fire has been the many cases against NGOs as well. The most recent case in Sri Lanka was of a UNICEF consultant being fired for possession of drugs. In 2006, in Batticoloa allegations of staff of NGOs being used for pornography came to light. Employees taken to distant places on the pretext of training in hotels & coerced into posing nude for cash handouts. The names of four leading NGOs have been linked to this. More than 300 NGOs & INGOs work in the district of Batticoloa employing over 10,000 staff. The racket came to light when a doctor who carried out more than 75 abortions made a confession. The Cambodian police arrested a 55-year-old US citizen, who runs an NGO, Bhaktivedanta Eco Village (BEV), in Kollur, Karnataka (India), on charges of sexually abusing two children. In Chad, a French NGO (L'Arche de Zoé - Zoe’s Ark) was accused of trafficking children. Some French families have paid upto $8,600 a child. Zoe’s Ark had collected over $1.4 million through its internet campaign & was planning to host 1000 families. A profit of over $250,000 per transfer tax free too. The NGO links with religious & sectarianism has also brought forth the question of conversions where we have witnessed mass scale religious conversions for a packet of food or a roof over ones head…all these are taking place in developing nations where innocent people can easily be manipulated by people who appear as saviors. Does it then come as any surprise if the general public treat NGOs suspiciously?.

There are other such actions of NGOs that become questionable. Child labor is an issue that many NGOs take up however little do they understand that they garner an income for destitute families. In 1995, an outcry by NGOs against soccer balls been stitched by children in Pakistan led to Nike & Reebok closing down their factories & sacking its women employees & around 7000 children. The income of these families fell by over 20% & no alternate income means was offered by the NGOs. In fact it was possible that these children may have been led to doing greater ills like prostitution or drugs just to bring some food for their brothers & sisters.

Most of these NGOs are promoters of Western values of life & it is through their notion of Western living vis a vis womens rights, civil rights, protection of minorities, freedom, equality that their portfolios function upon. This liberal list of virtues is perhaps not so agreeable to people whose cultures are very different. In a patriarchal Muslim country would the people encourage aggressive women empowerment forcefully?

However, the realization that the strength of NGOs depend on the existence of problems the world over, does not give NGOs much credibility especially as NGOs keep springing like mushrooms globally raising the question of accountability to whom. A world without any of the problems for which these NGOs were created to solve clearly connotes to mean a jolt to their job status. Would any NGOs give up the set environment of foreign travel, VIP status & recognition etc to accept that their “cause” is now over – there is a larger picture out there? It is in this context that we must evaluate the NGOs per se for it is their ulterior motives in sustaining their sources of income & job security that overshadows any integrity or loyalty to find a solution to any problem that they may venture to resolve.

Keeping problems in stalemate situations is their best modus operandi.

Shenali Waduge

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