On the NGO movement

[Guest guest]

Of late, we have seen several messages on this list on the way animal

welfare NGOs function.This article should be of generic interest for a bit

of soul searching for all of us.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/credib/2002/1009altruist.htm The

Self-Appointed Altruists By Sam Vaknin*United Press

International*<http://www.upi.com/>

*

October 9, 2002*

 

**

 

*Their arrival portends rising local prices and a culture shock. Many of

them live in plush apartments, or five-star hotels, drive sports utility

vehicles, sport $3,000 laptops and personal digital assistants. They earn a

two figure multiples of the local average wage. They are busybodies,

preachers, critics, do-gooders and professional altruists. *

 

*Always self-appointed, they answer to no constituency. Though unelected and

ignorant of local realities, they confront the democratically chosen and

those who voted them into office. A few of them are enmeshed in crime and

corruption. They are the non-governmental organizations. *

 

*Some NGOs -- like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Doctors without Borders or

Amnesty International -- genuinely contribute to enhancing welfare, to the

mitigation of hunger, the furtherance of human and civil rights, or the

curbing of disease. Others -- usually in the guise of think tanks and lobby

groups -- are sometimes ideologically biased, or religiously committed and,

often, at the service of special interests. *

 

*NGOs -- such as the International Crisis Group -- have openly interfered on

behalf of the opposition in the recent elections in Macedonia. Other NGOs

have done so in Belarus and Ukraine, Zimbabwe and Israel, Nigeria and

Thailand, Slovakia and Hungary -- and even in Western, rich, countries

including the United States, Canada, Germany and Belgium. *

 

*The encroachment on state sovereignty of international law -- enshrined in

numerous treaties and conventions -- allows NGOs to get involved in hitherto

strictly domestic affairs like corruption, civil rights, the composition of

the media, the penal and civil codes, environmental policies, or the

allocation of economic resources and of natural endowments, such as land and

water. No field of government activity is now exempt from the glare of NGOs.

They serve as self-appointed witnesses, judges, jury and executioner rolled

into one. *

 

*Regardless of their persuasion or modus operandi, all NGOs are top heavy

with entrenched, well-remunerated, extravagantly-perked bureaucracies.

Opacity is typical. Amnesty International's rules prevent its officials from

publicly discussing the inner workings of the organization -- proposals,

debates, opinions -- until they have become officially voted into its

Mandate. Thus, dissenting views rarely get an open hearing. *

 

*Contrary to their teachings, the financing of NGOs is invariably obscure

and their sponsors unknown. The bulk of the income of most non-governmental

organizations, even the largest ones, comes from -- usually foreign --

powers. Many NGOs serve as official contractors for governments. *

 

*NGOs serve as long arms of their sponsoring states -- gathering

intelligence, burnishing their image, and promoting their interests. There

is a revolving door between the staff of NGOs and government bureaucracies

the world over. The British Foreign Office finances a host of NGOs --

including the fiercely " independent " Global Witness -- in troubled spots,

such as Angola. Many host governments accuse NGOs of unwittingly or

knowingly serving as hotbeds of espionage. A few NGOs derive some of their

income from public contributions and donations. The more substantial spend

one tenth of their budget on public relations and solicitation of charity.

In a desperate bid to attract international attention, so many of them lied

about their projects in the Rwanda crisis in 1994, recounts The Economist,

that the Red Cross felt compelled to draw up a 10-point mandatory NGO code

of ethics. A code of conduct was adopted in 1995. But the phenomenon

recurred in Kosovo. *

 

*All NGOs claim to be not for profit, yet many of them possess sizable

equity portfolios and abuse their position to increase the market share of

firms they own. Conflicts of interest and unethical behavior abound. *

 

*Cafedirect is a British firm committed to " fair trade " coffee. Oxfam, an

NGO, embarked on a campaign targeted at Cafedirect's competitors, accusing

them of exploiting growers by paying them a tiny fraction of the retail

price of the coffee they sell. Yet, Oxfam owns 25 percent of Cafedirect. *

 

*Large NGOs resemble multinational corporations in structure and operation.

They are hierarchical, maintain large media, government lobbying, and public

relations departments, head-hunt, invest proceeds in professionally managed

portfolios, compete in government tenders, and own a variety of unrelated

businesses. The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development owns the license for

second mobile phone operator in Afghanistan, among other businesses. In this

respect, NGOs are more like cults than like civic organizations. *

 

*Many NGOs promote economic causes -- anti-globalization, the banning of

child labor, the relaxing of intellectual property rights, or fair payment

for agricultural products. Many of these causes are both worthy and sound.

Alas, most NGOs lack economic expertise and inflict damage on the alleged

recipients of their beneficence. NGOs are at times manipulated by -- or

collude with -- industrial groups and political parties. *

 

*It is telling that the denizens of many developing countries suspect the

West and its NGOs of promoting an agenda of trade protectionism. Stringent

and expensive labor and environmental provisions in international treaties

may well be a ploy to fend off imports based on cheap labor and the

competition they wreak on well-ensconced domestic industries and their

political stooges. *

 

*Take child labor -- as distinct from the universally condemnable phenomena

of child prostitution, child soldiering, or child slavery. *

 

*Child labor, in many destitute locales, is all that separates the family

from all-pervasive, life threatening, poverty. As national income grows,

child labor declines. Following the outcry provoked, in 1995, by NGOs

against soccer balls stitched by children in Pakistan, both Nike and Reebok

relocated their workshops and sacked countless women and 7,000 children. The

average family income -- anyhow meager -- fell by 20 percent. *

 

*This affair elicited the following wry commentary from economists Drusilla

Brown, Alan Deardorif, and Robert Stern: " While Baden Sports can quite

credibly claim that their soccer balls are not sewn by children, the

relocation of their production facility undoubtedly did nothing for their

former child workers and their families. " *

 

*This is far from being a unique case. Threatened with legal reprisals and

" reputation risks " (being named-and-shamed by overzealous NGOs)

multinationals engage in preemptive sacking. More than 50,000 children in

Bangladesh were let go in 1993 by German garment factories in anticipation

of the United States' never-legislated Child Labor Deterrence Act. *

 

*Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich observed: " Stopping child labor

without doing anything else could leave children worse off. If they are

working out of necessity, as most are, stopping them could force them into

prostitution or other employment with greater personal dangers. The most

important thing is that they be in school and receive the education to help

them leave poverty. " *

 

*NGO-fostered hype notwithstanding, 70 percent of all children work within

their family unit, in agriculture. Less than 1 percent are employed in

mining and another 2 percent in construction. Again contrary to

NGO-proffered panaceas, education is not a solution. Millions graduate every

year in developing countries -- 100,000 in Morocco alone. But unemployment

reaches more than one third of the workforce in places such as Macedonia. *

 

*Children at work may be harshly treated by their supervisors but at least

they are kept off the far more menacing streets. Some kids even end up with

a skill and are rendered employable. *

 

*The Economist sums up the shortsightedness, inaptitude, ignorance, and

self-centeredness of NGOs neatly: " Suppose that in the remorseless search

for profit, multinationals pay sweatshop wages to their workers in

developing countries. Regulation forcing them to pay higher wages is

demanded ... The NGOs, the reformed multinationals and enlightened

rich-country governments propose tough rules on third-world factory wages,

backed up by trade barriers to keep out imports from countries that do not

comply. Shoppers in the West pay more -- but willingly, because they know it

is in a good cause. The NGOs declare another victory. The companies, having

shafted their third-world competition and protected their domestic markets,

count their bigger profits (higher wage costs notwithstanding). And the

third-world workers displaced from locally owned factories explain to their

children why the West's new deal for the victims of capitalism requires them

to starve. " *

 

*NGOs in places like Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Albania

and Zimbabwe have become the preferred avenue for Western aid -- both

humanitarian and financial -- development financing, and emergency relief.

According to the Red Cross, more money goes through NGOs 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 NGOs to

plug into the avalanche of Western largesse. In the process, they award

themselves and their relatives salaries, perks, and preferred access to

Western goods and credits. NGOs have evolved into vast networks of patronage

in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. *

 

*NGOs 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 feeds the

NGOs. *

 

*NGOs are proponents of Western values -- women's liberation, human rights,

civil rights, the protection of minorities, freedom, equality. Not everyone

finds this liberal menu palatable. The arrival of NGOs 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 NGOs irritating and bothersome. *

 

*The British government plows more than $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 NGOs in Bangladesh, fueled by $300 million of annual foreign

infusion, evolved from humble origins to become mighty coalitions of

full-time activists. NGOs like the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee

and the Association for Social Advancement mushroomed even as their agendas

have been fully implemented and their goals exceeded. The latter NGO 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

International, are 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. *

 

*Human Rights Watch, quoted in the Economist lately offered this tortured

argument in favor of expanding the role of human rights NGOs: " 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 Center 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 World Health

Organization published an inanely titled document -- " A Human Rights

Approach to Tuberculosis " . *

 

*NGOs 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, " NGOs 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. " *

 

*NGOs 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 NGOs determine many of its policies. *

 

*NGO activists have joined the armed -- though mostly peaceful -- rebels of

the Chiapas region in Mexico. Norwegian NGOs sent members forcibly to board

whaling ships. In the United States, anti-abortion rights activists have

killed doctors. In Britain, animal rights zealots have both assassinated

experimental scientists and wrecked property. *

 

*Birth control NGOs carry out mass sterilizations in poor countries,

financed by rich country governments in a bid to stem immigration. NGOs buy

slaves in Sudan thus encouraging the practice of slave hunting throughout

sub-Saharan Africa. Other NGOs actively collaborate with " rebel " armies -- a

euphemism for terrorists. *

 

*NGOs lack a synoptic view and their work often undermines efforts by

international organizations such as the U.N. High Commission for Refugees

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 NGOs 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. NGOs 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 bit more sensitive and somewhat less

ostentatious. But then they wouldn't be NGOs, would they?*