The Self-Appointed Altruists - Part II
NGO's in places like Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, Albania, and Zimbabwe have become the preferred venue
for Western aid - both humanitarian and financial - development
financing, and emergency relief. According to the Red Cross,
more money goes through NGO's than through the World Bank. Their
iron grip on food, medicine, and funds rendered them an
alternative government - sometimes as venal and graft-stricken
as the one they replace.
Local businessmen, politicians, academics, and even journalists
form NGO's to plug into the avalanche of Western largesse. In
the process, they award themselves and their relatives with
salaries, perks, and preferred access to Western goods and
credits. NGO's have evolved into vast networks of patronage in
Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
NGO's chase disasters with a relish. More than 200 of them
opened shop in the aftermath of the Kosovo refugee crisis in
1999-2000. Another 50 supplanted them during the civil unrest in
Macedonia a year later. Floods, elections, earthquakes, wars -
constitute the cornucopia that feed the NGO's.
NGO's are proponents of Western values - women's lib, human
rights, civil rights, the protection of minorities, freedom,
equality. Not everyone finds this liberal menu palatable. The
arrival of NGO's often provokes social polarization and cultural
clashes. Traditionalists in Bangladesh, nationalists in
Macedonia, religious zealots in Israel, security forces
everywhere, and almost all politicians find NGO's irritating and
bothersome.
The British government ploughs well over $30 million a year into
"Proshika", a Bangladeshi NGO. It started as a women's education
outfit and ended up as a restive and aggressive women
empowerment political lobby group with budgets to rival many
ministries in this impoverished, Moslem and patriarchal country.
Other NGO's - fuelled by $300 million of annual foreign infusion
- evolved from humble origins to become mighty coalitions of
full-time activists. NGO's like the Bangladesh Rural Advancement
Committee (BRAC) and the Association for Social Advancement
mushroomed even as their agendas have been fully implemented and
their goals exceeded. It now owns and operates 30,000 schools.
This mission creep is not unique to developing countries. As
Parkinson discerned, organizations tend to self-perpetuate
regardless of their proclaimed charter. Remember NATO? Human
rights organizations, like Amnesty, are now attempting to
incorporate in their ever-expanding remit "economic and social
rights" - such as the rights to food, housing, fair wages,
potable water, sanitation, and health provision. How insolvent
countries are supposed to provide such munificence is
conveniently overlooked.
"The Economist" reviewed a few of the more egregious cases of
NGO imperialism.
Human Rights Watch lately offered this tortured argument in
favor of expanding the role of human rights NGO's: "The best way
to prevent famine today is to secure the right to free
expression - so that misguided government policies can be
brought to public attention and corrected before food shortages
become acute." It blatantly ignored the fact that respect for
human and political rights does not fend off natural disasters
and disease. The two countries with the highest incidence of
AIDS are Africa's only two true democracies - Botswana and South
Africa.
The Centre for Economic and Social Rights, an American outfit,
"challenges economic injustice as a violation of international
human rights law". Oxfam pledges to support the "rights to a
sustainable livelihood, and the rights and capacities to
participate in societies and make positive changes to people's
lives". In a poor attempt at emulation, the WHO published an
inanely titled document - "A Human Rights Approach to
Tuberculosis".
NGO's are becoming not only all-pervasive but more aggressive.
In their capacity as "shareholder activists", they disrupt
shareholders meetings and act to actively tarnish corporate and
individual reputations. Friends of the Earth worked hard last
year to instigate a consumer boycott against Exxon Mobil - for
not investing in renewable energy resources and for ignoring
global warming. No one - including other shareholders -
understood their demands. But it went down well with the media,
with a few celebrities, and with contributors.
As "think tanks", NGO's issue partisan and biased reports. The
International Crisis Group published a rabid attack on the then
incumbent government of Macedonia, days before an election,
relegating the rampant corruption of its predecessors - whom it
seemed to be tacitly supporting - to a few footnotes. On at
least two occasions - in its reports regarding Bosnia and
Zimbabwe - ICG has recommended confrontation, the imposition of
sanctions, and, if all else fails, the use of force. Though the
most vocal and visible, it is far from being the only NGO that
advocates "just" wars.
The ICG is a repository of former heads of state and has-been
politicians and is renowned (and notorious) for its prescriptive
- some say meddlesome - philosophy and tactics. "The Economist"
remarked sardonically: "To say (that ICG) is 'solving world
crises' is to risk underestimating its ambitions, if
overestimating its achievements."
NGO's have orchestrated the violent showdown during the trade
talks in Seattle in 1999 and its repeat performances throughout
the world. The World Bank was so intimidated by the riotous
invasion of its premises in the NGO-choreographed "Fifty Years
is Enough" campaign of 1994, that it now employs dozens of NGO
activists and let NGO's determine many of its policies.
NGO activists have joined the armed - though mostly peaceful -
rebels of the Chiapas region in Mexico. Norwegian NGO's sent
members to forcibly board whaling ships. In the USA,
anti-abortion activists have murdered doctors. In Britain,
animal rights zealots have both assassinated experimental
scientists and wrecked property.
Birth control NGO's carry out mass sterilizations in poor
countries, financed by rich country governments in a bid to stem
immigration. NGO's buy slaves in Sudan thus encouraging the
practice of slave hunting throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Other
NGO's actively collaborate with "rebel" armies - a euphemism for
terrorists.
NGO's lack a synoptic view and their work often undermines
efforts by international organizations such as the UNHCR and by
governments. Poorly-paid local officials have to contend with
crumbling budgets as the funds are diverted to rich expatriates
doing the same job for a multiple of the cost and with
inexhaustible hubris.
This is not conducive to happy co-existence between foreign
do-gooders and indigenous governments. Sometimes NGO's seem to
be an ingenious ploy to solve Western unemployment at the
expense of down-trodden natives. This is a misperception driven
by envy and avarice.
But it is still powerful enough to foster resentment and worse.
NGO's are on the verge of provoking a ruinous backlash against
them in their countries of destination. That would be a pity.
Some of them are doing indispensable work. If only they were a
wee more sensitive and somewhat less ostentatious. But then they
wouldn't be NGO's, would they?