Pros and cons of NGO mediation... by Ajantha - Monday, 27 August 2012, 12:34 AM

It was a nice kick off about the role of the NGOs in MSH by Chris Roche. In absolute terms, how NGOs have impacted on rebuilding nations from some natural catastrophes is remarkable and Tsunami disasters in 2004 and 2011 are just two good examples.

Nevertheless, NGOs are not exception for critiques on what they do! Especially when politically sensitive, ideological involvement is present NGOs are naturally subject to criticism (as Kim D. Reimann of Georgia State University has pointed out), During the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, a clearly defined set of critiques of NGOs have appeared focusing on: 1. NGO performance and actual effectiveness, 2. Accountability, 3. Issues of autonomy, 4. Commercialization, and 5. Ideological and/or political interpretations of their rising influence. (download his book chapter here).

There is a heavy critisism on Oxfam's work on West Bank issue by Israel. Not only Oxfam, lots of NGOs are subject to criticism according to NGO Monitor in Israel. Their 2011 Annual Report discloses lots of facts on their allegations against NGOs. (find NGO Monitor's web page on Oxafam here)

This is true for Sri Lanka as well (SL is because I live their and we are going to discuss a case study in SL). Thousands of NGOs worked in Sri Lanka during war and most of those NGOs were criticized as to have been ideologically biased. Specially when human rights issues were charged against SL Govt., NGOs were heavily criticized within and outside the country including the UN.

As I said at the seminar, is this because of the Principal-Agent problem in NGO mediation? How can a country guarantee that a particular NGO comes with a true face? Can an NGO perform with no "market" influence leading to profit seeking?

Some great points Ajantha! I do believe NGOs should be closely scrutinised, both from an ethical point of view as well as financially.

Paul Collier talks about the Bottom Billion (the poorest countries falling behind) and what he calls Development Biz. He argues that aid agencies and the companies that get the aid contracts like things the way they are and dont want to change what they do, how they do it, and where they do it.

However, at the same time, many oppressive governments use the close scrutiny of NGOs to practically make them unable to operate. One example is Rwanda, an African country that is most famous for its 1994 genocide where 800,000 people were brutally slaughtered and raped, several million forced to flee or become internally displaced.

The Rwandan government has since implemented laws and regulations making it so burdensome for NGOs to register and operate that many of them have been forced to close down, its local members arrested and international reps forced to leave the country. Any NGOs that speak up about the abuse of human rights, assassinations of political opponents and journalists, and lack of freedom of speech are at risk. The government is even infiltrating some Human rights organisations. So in order to be able to operate they must obey the increasingly stringent government registration and operational rules.

As for NGOs being perceived as being biased in many conflicts my guess they often are. First of all, not only do they depend on donor money and as such to a certain degree have to act within the interest of the donors. Furthermore, I can imagine being on the ground in protracted conflicts where people are being oppressed and abused, that this would impact on the perspective of the NGOs (for example the occupation of Palestine by Israel is the longest running refugee crisis in the word).

I think these are good examples of the incredibly difficult situations many NGOs operate within and the challenges they face.

Chris spoke about Owen Barder on Friday. He has a podcast series called Development Drums. Episode 28 has an interesting discussion about auditing NGO's, saying that the culture at the moment is that if organisations confess to failure and try to learn from it donor's back away from them. I think this is makes it quite difficult for NGO's to change to a culture of being more open about failures and learning from them instead of keeping any failures hidden. So I think scrutiny is important but in the spirit of learning not punishing, if that is possible.

Great ideas and examples are discussed inrelation to this subject. however, what we donot acknowledge is that NGOs are organisations that work in very hostile environment and they have many conditions to satisfy such as the donors, the host governments and the clients they respond to. In such situations NGOS are unable to meet all demands from all corners rather they try their very best to serve the intended clients whilst adhering to other demands. As we all know there are NGOs who faciliate Aid and humantarian work such as OXfam who have a higher call of duty to their funders however, there are small NGOs who are working very effectively at community levels but are not supported financially by local or international governments rather self funding.

What iam trying to say here is that NGOS roles are important and valued by the people they work with and they work in most hostile places in the developing countries where no government services. Working in partnership would be another option for NGOS & all the stakeholders in Development.

http://www.newint.org/issues/2005/10/01/

This is a link to an article that reviews the actions of NGO's post 2004 tsunami.

The whole edition is an ongoing discussion about the BINGO's and worth a read to look at how some views of the loss of humanitarianism is evident in the sector.

I like what Jenny has said - there is a role for NGO's, and alongside that a role for governments and civil society and each and every corporation, business, church, shelter, group, man, woman and child....

Alberto posted this link pointing to the literature review done by Daniel Bray on page 42 - offers great insight on this topic!

http://www.acfid.asn.au//resources/docs_resources/Promoting%20Voice%20and%20Choice%20ACFID%202010.pdf

If you'd like to read more on this topic, do have a look at Petras' article: NGOs : In the service of imperialism / James Petras.

This is available via the Library catalogue.

Thank you for the links!

The magazine article raises the following question: how are the NGOs representing? Their own objectives?; The donors?; The communities they are working with?

I remember what Nali said about her project being successful because she was given a time frame (much more than three years) to work with the community. She also said that that is quite unique when working for a big NGO. However, Nalini also said that after the tsunami ‘a lot’ of money was ‘pure’ into the country, and this changed. Nevertheless, all of the work they had done together with the community helped them to overcome the situation.

My question is how do we relay less in donors?

Should we focus in small scale projects to gain independence?