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ALTRUISM UNDER FIRENON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS AND
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
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Ottawa
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Published in Canada by
International Development Research Centre
P0 Box 8500, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 3H9
Contents
vii
x
xiii
AN IRREVERENT GLOSSARY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
7
22
37
60
81
98
124
147
167
181
197
214
238
NOTES
258
277
283
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
CIDSE
CRS
Solidarit
Catholic Relief Services
CUSO
DEC
DAWN
EC
FAQ
FASE
FINNIDA
GAD
GDP
GNP
GONGO
ICCO
ICRC
IDRC
IFAD
TIED
INGO
ISCA
ISODEC
ITDG
ITN
IUCN
IUEF
MSF
NORAD
NOVIB
OAU
ODA
ODA
OECD
OPP
ORAP
PSC
SAP
SCF
SCF
SEWA
SIDA
SSA
TNC
UNHCR
UNCED
UNDP
UNEP
UNESCO
UNICEF
UNIFEM
USAID
VO
VSO
WAD
Government-Organized NGO
Inter Church Coordination Committee for Development
Projects (Netherlands)
International Committee of the Red Cross
International Development Research Centre
International Fund for Agricultural Development
International Institute for Environment and Development
International NGO
International Save the Children Alliance
Integrated Social Development Centre (Ghana)
Intermediate Technology Development Group (UK)
Independent Television News
International Union for the Conservation of Nature
International University Exchange Fund
Mdecins sans Frontires
Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation
Netherlands Organization for International Development
Cooperation
Organization of African Unity
Official Development Assistance
Overseas Development Authority (UK)
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
Orangi Pilot Project (Pakistan)
Organization of Rural Associations for Progress (Zimbabwe)
Public Service Contractor
Structural Adjustment Programme
Save the Children Fund (UK)
Save the Children Federation (US)
Self-Employed Women's Association
Swedish International Development Authority
Sub-Saharan Africa
Trans National Corporation
United Nations High Commission for Refugees
WDF
WHO
WID
WWF
'WF
WF
AN IRREVERENT GLOSSARY
Donor
One who makes a donation or gift. In international development work, it can mean someone who gives 5 to
ActionAid or $5 to the American Friends Service Committee; it can mean a bilateral agency (see below) or a multi-
Bilateral
Multilateral
Umbrella agency An odd expression when you think about it. In the development business it usually refers to organizations that
act as clearing houses or that provide co-ordinating, information and advocacy services on behalf of member
agencies. Most Australian NGOs, for example, belong to
the Australian Council for Overseas Aid; in Bangladesh
x
Documents
Surplusage
religious underpinnings.
If adjectives like 'bilateral' and 'multilateral' can be transformed into nouns, nouns can become verbs. Although
this practice is not unique to the development business,
it has some regulars: 'to network', 'to access', 'to partner'
(e.g. 'This project was partnered with the Canadian Hunger Foundation').
Usually just a fancy way of saying 'papers' (as in 'project
documents').
Mark Twain's Twelth Rule of Literary Style - 'Avoid sur-
Enabling
used in connection with the word 'environment', although it has nothing to do with ecology. First used in a
development context by H.H. The Aga Khan in a 1982
Partnersh4
Technical
assistance
Inputs
Outputs
Paradigm
lessons learned
Other terms, such as 'empowerment', 'participation', 'sustainable' and 'professionalism' will be explained as far as is possible in the text. For a fuller
xii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
promising future. Roads and bridges were being built, schools and
hospitals were being opened, new businesses and industries were
being established. With only two and a half million people, Sierra
Leone was a largely unknown country. It was not likely to become a
significant player on the world scene, but it was a nation on the move,
one unlikely to require the services of people like me for long.
I still have my mark book from those years: Sahr Barbah got 80 per
cent in Form III French; Aiah James, the Head Boy, received 58 per
cent in History. Had they lived, Sahr Barbah and Aiah James would be
in their early forties. Sadly, they did not. Nor did the school. Physic-
Leone - which boasted the first university in sub-Saharan Africa had the fourth lowest GNP per capita in the world. Of 173 countries
on UNDP's 1994 Human Development Index, it ranked 170th, an
improvement over 1991, when it was last.
This book is not about Sierra Leone, nor is it an aid memoir. I begin
'development'. I was a 'volunteer', working for a Canadian nongovernmental organization (NGO), contributing to what most of us
thought was the business of 'putting ourselves out of business'. The
opposite happened. Those of us who worked for NGOs in those days
were on the ground floor of what has proven to be a high-rise growth
industry, one that has in recent years become the focus of increasing
attention - and sometimes of vilification - for academics, aid agencies, governments and politicians. In one capacity or another, I have
worked with NGOs since those long-ago days in Sierra Leone, as a
founder of one, director of another, as critic, evaluator, field worker,
trustee and consultant. It has taken me this long, however, to get my
thoughts around the subject as a whole. The Alms Bazaar is not a
whitewash, nor is it an attack. It is a practitioner's attempt to cut
through some of the syrup and the bile that alternately afflict the
development industry in general and the NGO sector in particular.
I have tried to be fair, but I may not always have succeeded, I have
tried to make the book readable. As a result, it contains quite a lot of
'anecdotal evidence' to support the points I make. I worried about this
as I was writing, until I came across something by American journalist
Russell Baker. He believes that 'only anecdotal evidence' is a phrase
coined by economists 'to shrug off tales of individual human misery
that threaten to spoil their statistical pictures of general and abundant
only once, the reference will be noted by chapter at the end of the
book. If it is used more than once, a brief description will be given by
and 'South' as much as possible, but sometimes other expressions 'developed', 'developing' - and even 'Third World' - creep in for
reasons of style, semantics or flow. I have tried to keep other develop-
people, two hundred-odd countries and an army of numbercrunching aid agencies and economists with points to make and axes
to grind. Much of the statistical picture on development is guess-work,
but numbers are important in the illustration of volumes and trends. I
have provided the source and date wherever statistics are used, but a
grain of salt may sometimes be advisable.
By way of acknowledgement, I would like to thank the International
Development Research Centre in Ottawa, which gave me a fellowship,
and therefore the time, to compose my thoughts and the book. I gratefully acknowledge permission from the OECD Development Centre to
update and reprint an earlier essay: what now appears as sections of
Chapter VII, 'Mixed messages: NGOs and the Northern public'.
I am very grateful to all the people in many countries, from Ireland
to New Zealand, Kenya, Jamaica, Pakistan and elsewhere who helped
with important information, advice and editorial comment. If a book
can have a keystone among those who helped make it possible, Chris
Smart served that function. Shah Abdulla, Gavin Andersson, Stphane
Cardinal, Philip Dunn, Ruth Groberman, Henny Helmich, Richard
Holloway, Cynthia King, Bernard Muchiri, Coim Regan, Geoffrey Salkeld, Hameed Shaikh, Heather Shapter, Rob Stevens and Bob Thomson all provided missing pieces to various puzzles. Bob O'Brien and
Loren Finnell filled in a variety of American and other gaps; and Robin
Munro followed up a chance meeting on a flight from Bangkok to
Chiang Mai with helpful information from Human Rights Watch.
Many individuals struggled with early drafts of various chapters and
grateful for the many hours they took, even if it did mean more
reading, phoning, faxing and re-writing for me. Sharon CapelingAlakija blue-pencilled her way through drafts in Candelaria, New
York and Ottawa. Tim Brodhead, Dulan de Silva, Tim Draimin, Aban
Marker Kabraji, Andrs Perez, Brian Rowe and Father William Ryan all
provided excellent advice and the occasional warning. I have tried to
incorporate as much of the former into the book as possible.
Last, but far from least, I want to thank Neal Burton, Managing
Editor at IT Publications, who nursed this book from the idea stage -
over pizza and Chianti in London - to the last dot on the last i. His
moral support, solid advice, and the steady transatlantic stream of
helpful faxes, clippings, ideas and concerns meant that I was seldom
alone in my work.
Ottawa, 1995
xvi
Introduction
B THE MIDDLE of the last decade of the twentieth century, there were
almost a million American philanthropic non-profit bodies, and there
were a further four hundred thousand non-profit, but not philanthropic organizations. The combined income of these organizations was
more than $400 billion.1 Together, they accounted for 6 per cent of
the gross domestic product and 18 per cent of the national services
economy.2 In the 1990s, American business donated about $6 billion
each year to non-profit organizations, and non-profits returned many
times that amount to the economy through the purchase of goods and
In the developing countries of the South - the 'Third World' there has also been a remarkable explosion of voluntary self-help
organizations. Tens of thousands of organizations have sprung up in
Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, a high proportion of
them in the 1980s and 1990s. Most are small, and like some of their
counterparts in the North, some are amateurish, However, many are
becoming world leaders in innovative health care, education and job
creation. Some have become very large; and some have become so
effective that they are giving advice and assistance to other countries.
Bangladesh's successful Grameen Bank, for example, has provided
1
tions that deal with health, education, jobs, the environment and
human rights. Part of the book deals with the origins of these organ-
izations and their work. Some of it deals with the messages they
convey. And a large part has to do with the role of organizations and
associations in helping to build and maintain responsible and democratic government. But the book is primarily about the challenges they
This theme - the independence of the voluntary sector - provides the central framework for the book. From this will flow its other
central preoccupations: efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, the
role of civil society in governance and democracy, North-South rela-
tions. The book will also explore public opinion and the images
created by the voluntary sector in the minds of people in industrialized countries, through fundraising and what is known as
'development education'.
The book is about organizations, movements and people that are
well known, and abOut others that are relatively unknown. Oxfam is
here, along with CARE, World Vision and Save the Children. The
Greens, the women's movement and the appropriate technologists
are here as well, as are Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka, the Self-Employed
Women's Association in India, flying doctors in Africa, and Chico
Mendes and his rubber tappers in Brazil. The book is about development (or lack thereof), and about how voluntary organizations relate
to the so-called new world order, to governments, revolution, war, the
people who donate money and to the people who eventually get it.
There are some deliberate omissions. International labour organi-
that they do not receive the attention that a larger book, or one
dedicated solely to them would provide.
hope and the possibilities of peace and stability rest not so much in
science, commerce and information, but on this idea of natural human
identity.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
Poverty is the key word: the state of being that has contributed
more to debt, war, environmental degradation and famine than any
other single factor. The effort that has gone into defining, measuring
and discussing poverty in recent years is enormous. One reason for
this is that governments and those working in development want to
know if the situation is getting better or worse. They want to know if
their efforts to alleviate poverty are working in the way they had
7
tions, and fifteen million die terrible and mostly unnoticed deaths
every year: about twice as many individuals as live in Denmark. It is as
though all the people in Finland, Israel and Norway were to die in a
year, with hardly anyone except UNICEF and a handful of voluntary
organizations saying anything about it.
Apocalypse soon?
Is the situation getting better? Yes. And no. A 1992 IFAD study of 41
developing countries showed that the percentage of the rural population living below the poverty line had declined from 35 per cent of
been an 18 per cent increase in the number of rural poor. Other bad
news: some of the figures are simply spurious, the brave figments of
governmental imagination. Ethiopia, for example, claimed to have
decreased rural poverty from 65 per cent to a figure - calculated in
the midst of massive on-going starvation, war and general wretchedness - of 43 per cent. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, with almost half
its population living in absolute poverty, had a combined 1992 gross
domestic product that was only slightly higher than that of Denmark.6
Another word on predictions: the World Bank has got many of
these wrong over the past few decades, so it will be no surprise that
others did as well. The limits to growth, an alarming book produced
by the Club of Rome in 1972, is often used as a stick to beat would-be
seers. It confidently predicted that without dramatic changes in consumption patterns, the world's mercury would be depleted by 1983.
Tin would be gone by 1985, zinc by 1988 and copper and lead by
1991. It didn't happen. Exploration, prices, commercial opportunities, national priorities and consumption patterns have all affected
these estimates dramatically. As of 1992, known world reserves of
mercury (which should have run out a decade earlier) still had a life
expectancy of 43 years. For tin, the figure was 45 years. Zinc reserves
showed a 20-year supply, copper had 33 years remaining and there
were 18 years worth of lead left.8 Known reserves of natural gas were
four times higher in 1990 than they were in 1970, and proven recoverable reserves of crude oil were 9 per cent higher in 1990 than they had
been only three years earlier in 1987.
Apocalyptic predictions about population, food and the environment have also proven to be exaggerated. The 1969 Commission on
international development, known as 'the Pearson Commission', said
that world population would increase from 3.5 billion in 1968 to a low
estimate of 6 billion by the turn of the century, and a possible high of 7
billion. In fact 1995 estimates support the lower figure, about 6.1
billion. More importantly, some of the dire predictions about the implications of population growth did not come to pass. Bangladesh, a
net importer of food when it had a population of 77 million in 1973,
had become virtually self-sufficient in food twenty years later with a
population of 115 million, a prodigious achievement for a country
unkindly dismissed by many as a basket case. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich,
Lester Brown calculated that the world was nearing the end of its
ability to produce more food. Land, energy, water, fertilizer and new
technology were available in ever-decreasing supplies, and disaster
was on the way. The world fish catch, he said, at 70 million tons a
year, was 'at or near the maximum sustainable level'. What actually
happened? The 1993 catch was, in fact, 98 million tons, a 40 per cent
increase.10
o a food deficit: in the early 1990s Nigeria was importing threequarters of a million tons of cereals;
o debt: in 1994 it paid over $2 billion in interest and principal on $29
billion worth of external debt, and had arrears of about $7 billion.
11
Its interest payments were 25 per cent of its exports: not as bad as
some, but worse than most;
o declining social services: fewer Nigerians in rural areas had access
to safe drinking water in 1990 than was the case in 1980, government health expenditure dropped by 41 per cent in the 1980s, and
education budgets fell by 66 per cent;
o deteriorating terms of trade: the country's major exports had all
plummeted in value. In constant dollars, petroleum was earning
almost 33 per cent less in 1992 than it did in 1975. The price of
groundnut oil stood at one third of its 1975 world price and palm
kernels were less than half;
o corruption: in the worst example, a government enquiry found that
$12 billion had gone missing from offshore government accounts
between 1988 and 1994;
o religious and ethnic conflict: between Muslims and Christians; between the Ogoni and the Adoni; between the Tiv and the Jukun;
between the Hausa and the Kataf;
o arbitrary arrest and detention, an emasculated judiciary, and a serious curtailing of press freedoms.12
Nigeria's three decades of alternating and mainly botched experiments with military and civilian government rendered the country
increasingly unstable, with dire predictions emanating from all sorts
of 'doomsters' such as, for example, the US State Department's Bureau
of Intelligence and Research: 'The country is becoming increasingly
ungovernable . . ethnic and regional splits are deepening . religious cleavages are more serious; Muslim fundamentalism and evan.
Winston Brill, and perhaps Ronald Bailey too, may have overestimated the ability of silver bullets like biotechnology to deal with
debt, plummeting terms of trade, religious fundamentalism, ethnic
mistrust and military coups.
Biotechnology has not helped much with the global fish harvest
either. True, the global catch did increase by 40 per cent between
1973 and 1993. But by 1993 the situation had changed. In 1990, landings of commercial fish in New England were at their lowest ebb in a
generation, causing a loss of $350 million to the fishing industry and
the end of 14000 jobs.14 Two years later, salmon fishing off Wash-
interior have less arable land than is the case in Bangladesh. The
scope for more irrigation and higher yields is limited. Combined with
a growing population, the net effect will be a decrease of 25 per cent
in arable land per capita by 2010. Already there is an internal migra-
India, which have about 40 per cent of the world's people, other
candidates for this sort of turbulence are Nigeria, Indonesia and Brazil, which together have another 10 per cent.
In Egypt, the turbulence has already arrived. Corruption, poverty
and terror have become the order of the day. In 1995, 12 per cent of
the population was destitute and more than half lived below the
poverty line, a 30 per cent increase in only a decade. In Algeria, more
than 6000 civilians died in 1994 from political and religious terrorism,
and in Karachi, where the same sort of chaos prevailed, the murder
rate rose to almost a thousand. A ten-year war against Kurdish separatism in eastern Turkey took an estimated 14000 lives between 1985
and 1995.
The impact of poverty and the concomitant disorder may seem to
exact a low and indirect price from industrialized countries. Perhaps
cheap labour and cheap commodities will always be available in the
South. Perhaps the industrial exports which support current Northern
lifestyles will always be in demand elsewhere. It may seem possible to
draw a line in the sand between the North and the South, across which
The chaos and troubles of Nigeria and Liberia do make the occasional Northern headline. Not so well known is the deterioration
elsewhere: Togo in turmoil; the Ivory Coast, once a model of economic rectitude, dropped in recent years from the World Bank's list of
African 'success stories'. The Ivory Coast now has a growing food
deficit, a debt burden that tripled in the twelve years after 1980, a debt
service load that represents 32 per cent of its export earnings, and a
big cathedral in the jungle. In 1993, Gambia, hitherto a paragon of
democratic virtue, fell to a military coup. In 1995, Sierra Leone, a small
country rarely in the news up to then, had 400 000 internally displaced
people, 400 000 refugees from Liberia, and another 100 000 of its own
people living in distress in Liberia and Guinea. Armed gangs roamed
the rural areas and the government's writ covered less than two-thirds
of the country. This - in a country of 4.4 million, with a young army
captain as head of state - did not augur well for the future. Similar
situations, some more severe, some less, prevailed during the early
1990s in Somalia, Rwanda, Zaire, Algeria, the Balkans, the Caucasus,
Turkey, parts of Sri Lanka and Cambodia, in the hills of Negros and
Peru, in Kashmir, Chiapas and in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
In his influential book, The transformation of war, Martin Van Cre-
veld says that this is the shape of things to come. The days of war
between nation states are ending, just as the nation state itself goes
into decline. In its place is a brave 'new world order', the globalization
of capital, manufacturing, knowledge, culture, terrorism and crime, a
world of mega-trading blocks, of unrestricted information superhighways, and an end to sovereignty. This end, or at least this decline in
sovereignty, manifests itself in the power of transnational institutions
like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to enjoin
structural adjustment upon poor countries, hiking their debt loads
higher so they can repay the loans they incurred for failed projects
urged on them in other Development Decades.
Structural adjustment and the IMF aside, there are few effective
transnational instruments of law, order, peace, security or human
rights. What we have instead is a growing horror, described well by
Kaplan: 'an epoch of themeless juxtapositions, in which the classificatory grid of nation-states is going to be replaced by a jagged-glass
pattern of city-states, shanty states, nebulous and anarchic regionalisms.' Little Palau is an example, The thirtieth new country to enter the
polity. This seems reasonable, even agreeable when a polite arrangement can be concluded, as between the Czechs and the
Slovaks. But the average nation state dies hard. Countless futile
deaths in the Caucasus, the Balkans, Sri Lanka, Somalia and Ethiopia
are testimony to this. Unfortunately, what emerges in the process is
monk who incorrectly predicted that the end of the world would
occur in 1260.* 'The neo-Malthusians' pessimism is challenged by
others,' The Economist observed (others who are presumably not
flakes). These others are 'often economists, who believe in the ingenuity of man to adjust to new circumstances and scarcer resources.
in behaviour - especially the education and liberation of women will bring down birth rates. Population policies. have a high likeli.
hood of success.'2
More 'others' were quick to join the furious debate that followed the
Kaplan article. They pointed out that world child mortality is down,
adult literacy and life expectancy are up, and that food production has
always outstripped population growth. Economic growth rates in the
South have outpaced those in the North, fertility rates have declined,
and as for global warming, well, forget about it. There is a growing
belief, especially among economists, that the financial cost of cutting
will hold. And while generally things don't look so good in Africa,
South Africa somehow 'promises to be a powerful motor of economic
growth for the whole region'.2'
Such views are held by what Matthew Connelly and Paul Kennedy
call 'cornucopians'. Like doomsters, they extrapolate selected past
trends uncritically into the future, as though the global fish catch can
and will grow to 140 million tons. They ignore the slowing growth in
food production and the fact that world population will still reach 6.1
billion by the end of the century and 8.1 billion in the 25 years after
that, But let us assume for a moment that there is room for at least
cautious optimism about 'the coming global boom'. For Connelly and
Kennedy,
For this, Kennedy - author of The rise and fall of the Great Powers
and Preparing for the Twenty-first Century, and Director of International Security Studies at Yale - will probably be labelled 'doomster' as well.
He and a legion of others paint increasingly gloomy pictures of faltering international institutions, of Southern governments beset with
17
ever-greater problems, equipped with dwindling amounts of the human, financial and moral capital needed to stave off further decline.
These are not campus-bound debates. For anyone with eyes and a
television, the evidence of the new world disorder is there in the riottorn slums of Karachi, in the wasted cities and war-torn countryside of
Algeria, in the breakdown of Sierra Leone and Somalia, in the killing
fields of Cambodia and Rwanda, the battlefields of tomorrow's Angola
and next year's Nicaragua. It is evident in an industrial world of governments 'downsizing' and 'outsourcing', relying increasingly on concepts of vaguely regulated transnational 'growth' for their salvation,
on the private sector for service delivery and on voluntary organiza-
22 per cent of its gross domestic product over the next two
decades;
o Commitment to the financial agreements reached at the UNCED
Summit in 1992 was dead before the last jet took off from Rio. Of
the $510 million pledged to promote CFC-free technologies during
1994 6, only $31 million - about six per cent - had been delivered by early 1995;
*World population during this period has not quite doubled, while the refugee
population has increased tenfold. If displaced people - most of whom feel, act
and look like refugees - are included, the number has actually increased by a
factor of almost twenty.
18
o Less money was devoted by industrialized countries to official development assistance in 1993 than in any previous year since 1973.
Further cuts took place in 1994 and 1995.
Maybe this last point does not really matter if, as UNDP says, only
15 per cent of aid goes to health and education, and less than half of
this is earmarked for human priority concerns.24 If the 1995 UN Social
19
if both pessimists and optimists are correct, 'the gap between rich and
poor will steadily widen as we enter the twenty-first century, leading
not only to social unrest within developed countries but also to growing North-South tensions, mass migration, and environmental damage
from which even the 'winners' might not emerge unscathed.'26
needs expand, the demand for more and better independent social
institutions will grow. Voluntary organizations are important in the
charitable sense: to help the helpless in an age of government decline
and 'outsourcing'. But they can also provide an integrating function,
another way of organizing, of building community and citizenship.
'Historically, community was fate,' he says. 'In the post-capitalist
society and polity, community has to be commitment.'27
There is something a little too glib, however, about the way many
conceive of this 'social sector': what its constituent parts are, where
they fit, what they can do. Often, as a writer nears the end of a diatribe
against environmental myopia, neo-liberal economics or the official
aid establishment, he or she starts looking for alternatives. Nongovernmental organizations invariably emerge as part of the solution.
In a massive critique of the World Bank, Mortgaging the earth, Bruce
Rich says that 'the public should pressure the Bank's member governments to encourage and support a diversity of alternative institutions
and channels for foreign assistance. He names four: the InterAmerican and African Development Foundations, Appropriate Technology International and Oxfam. These are nominated to help save
the world only sixteen pages before the end of the book.28
Thomas Homer-Dixon suggests that development assistance policy
should focus more on Southern non-governmental organizations.29
Towards the end of their detailed study of the global economy and
transnational corporations, Global dreams, Richard Barnet and John
Cavanagh talk about the 'crying need for political vision' in a global
system characterized increasingly by war, militant fundamentalism,
20
21
CHAPTER II
Britain's old age pension scheme of 1908 and the National Health
Insurance and Unemployment Insurance Acts of 1911.
Much analysis of today's voluntary organizations, in both the North
and the South, assumes that the phenomenon springs from the same
ground. Despite national similarities, however, there are distinct differences. The evolution of the voluntary sector can be categorized
under three broad headings. The first is based on the failure of both
markets and government to meet the demand for the kinds of services
voluntary agencies provide. The second, focusing on disciplines or
countries where philanthropy and voluntarism are weak, has to do
with a concept of 'voluntary failure'. A weak voluntary ethic allows
the state to usurp or bypass what might otherwise be a more vibrant
non-profit community.
A third area of study focuses on the organizational culture in which
voluntary action develops. In Sweden and Norway, for example, domestic voluntary organizations are a common feature of everyday life,
and most people belong to several. These voluntary associations commonly act as interlocutors between their members and government,
participating actively in government decision-making and policy formation. In fact official Swedish development assistance was initiated
not by government, but by non-governmental organizations. A group
24
state and market existed in forms that could succeed or fail. And
modern Southern non-profits evince very different growth patterns
from one country to another. When Bangladesh was a province of
Pakistan, a modern NGO movement barely existed. Within five years
it had taken off, a phenomenon that did not occur in what had been
West Pakistan for the better part of another generation. Need, state
and market failure, and laissez-faire government attitudes all assuredly played a role in the different growth patterns. The sudden
multitude of Northern donor organizations in Bangladesh also made a
difference, as did cultural homogeneity. But perhaps most important,
trial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types - religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very
limited, immensely large and very minute. Americans combine to give
fetes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send
missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons and schools take
shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate
some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an
association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where
in France you would find the government or in England some territorial
magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
and need the government to come to their help. This is a vicious circle
of cause and effect
Guilt is disparaged by most progressive charities, but it is used often blatantly - in some of the most effective fundraising campaigns. It motivates the giver, but it also motivates the asker. 'I felt
impelled to do it out of a sense of rage and shame,' Bob Geldof said of
his fundraising efforts for Ethiopia in the mid-1980s. 'Shame was the
over-riding thing. I felt ashamed that we allowed these things to happen to others.'5
Fear, sometimes described as self-interest, can also be a powerful
motivating force in the creation of, and public support for, voluntary
organizations. The medieval fear of marauding bands of paupers has
Both the charity ethic and the reform ethic have powerful detractors. 'Do-gooders' and 'bleeding-hearts' are mistrusted and are often
regarded as naive or hypocritical, or both. Charity, stigmatized by its
association with paternalism, helplessness and pity, seems to come
under the heaviest fire during times of greatest stress for the poor,
when economies are at their most precarious, or when social revolution seems only a step away. Thomas Malthus, writing at the end of
the eighteenth century, said that public relief of the poor should be
stopped, that private charity was little more than a palliative. If all
relief were withheld, he wrote, the poor would quickly learn 'to defend themselves, [and] we might rest secure, that they would be fruitful enough in resources, and that the evils which were absolutely
irremediable, they would bear with the fortitude of men and the
resignation of Christians.'8
This survival-of-the-fittest assault on charity differs from more radi-
of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it
is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember
it back.
and test a country's most fundamental attitude towards nongovernmental organizations: freedom of assembly, freedom of belief, freedom of speech. There can be a cost to free speech, and the
prices exacted in the United States, Britain and Canada are similar.
Charitable organizations (as opposed to organizations that are only
non-profit) are often, and sometimes irrationally restricted from activities which seek to influence legislation. The dividing line between public education and political lobbying, although often a grey
area, can therefore become one of enormous financial importance if
one type of organization can issue receipts for tax purposes and is
eligible, say, for government grants, and another is not.
individuals and organizations across national boundaries, all supporting a shared ideal
in continuously shifting networks and
.
coalitions."3
Subscribing to the generally accepted concept of voluntary organ-
o public service contractors that function as market-oriented nonprofit businesses serving public purposes;
o people's organizations that represent their members' interests, have
member-accountable leadership and are substantially self-reliant;
o governmental NGOs (GONGOs) that are creations of government
and serve as instruments of public policy. 14
teers for the large part of what they do. Some of their income, in
varying degrees, may be raised by public subscription, but this is
usually done through very sophisticated fundraising techniques
where the 'shared value' of donors, as often as not, is a response to
emotive appeals for relief or welfare: a first generation response to a
dynamic (male) civil servant with his heart firmly rooted in community development, inspired a number of women to take advantage
of financial support offered by the Janasaviya Trust Fund. The Janasaviya Trust Fund is a support mechanism for NGOs designed and
paid for by the Government of Sri Lanka and the World Bank. None of
this makes much difference to the women who now run their own
Federation, nor does it matter to the savers and borrowers who look
very much like savers and borrowers in any NGO project. Nor does it
make much difference to the volunteers who provide the community
backbone of the Janashakthi Bank.
The Korten typology describes elements of what anyone familiar
with the Northern and Southern NGO scene knows. Its weakness,
however, is that by default, because most NGOs are not significantly
volunteer-based, it more or less throws all of them into the rather
unattractive 'public service contractor' category. As an attempt to nudge
NGOs into more thoughtful behaviour, this is perhaps useful. As a way
of explaining or describing a complex set of institutions doing a wide
o formal - the organization is institutionalized to at least some extent: probably incorporated, but at least formalized in the sense of
having regular meetings, office bearers and some degree of organizational permanence;
o private - it is institutionally separate from government, although it
perhaps receives government support;
o nonprofit-distributing - the organization may generate a financial
surplus, but this does not accrue to the owners or directors;
o self-governing able and equipped to control and manage its own
activities;
o voluntary there is some meaningful degree of voluntary participation in the conduct or management of the organization. 'This does
not mean that all or most of the income of an organization must
come from voluntary contributions or that most of its staff must be
volunteers'.
will vary from country to country, over time, and according to the
pace of development and the predominating ideology. The following
is a different way of looking at it.
Stage One is community-based voluntarism. This stage is characterized by a high degree of direct personal involvement and responsibility for the delivery of humanistic service. Small, community-based
self-help efforts, the community-based welfare activities of a village
church, and personal voluntary service fall into this category, which
was most common, in most countries, until the early years of the
twentieth century.
Stage Two could be called institutionalization. The institutionalization of humanistic service grows out of necessity because of greater
needs, and greater concentrations of people. Responsibility remains
with individuals, but through the formation of associations which may
Stage Four might once have been called the welfare state. This is the
ultimate in humanistic delivery systems, one in which a society decrees that all members will be provided with an appropriate level of
health care, education, cultural enjoyment and social well-being. In
theory, charities and voluntary organizations become redundant and
cease to exist. The extension of government social security programmes throughout Europe and North America after the Second
World War represented a growth in the belief that 'collective action' as
reflected in the state, rather than the individual, was the most appropriate way to deal with strangers in need.19
While Stage One organizations conform more or less with Korten's
first generation NGOs, the comparison does not hold through subsequent stages. For example a mature, professional Stage Three NGO,
such as the Red Cross, might be involved in relief and welfare, or
development projects, or systems analysis. Or it may well be involved
in all three. There is no relative value judgement to be placed on
development or systems analysis, or welfare. An organization need
not 'graduate' from one to the other. Rather it grows in the maturity
and professionalism that it applies to the mandate it has chosen for
itself.
action, how they cope with conflicting interests, how they make
choices and compromises, and how they influence public opinion.
Finally, it may not have gone unnoticed that the lamentable and
much deprecated term 'NGO', assiduously avoided in the early paragraphs of this chapter, has become more common towards the end.
Even if a rose is not always a rose, there is a reason for sticking with
this ungainly and unloved expression. First, defining something in
negatives is not as unusual as development neologists make out. Nonaggression, non-aligned, non-combatant, noncommittal, nonconfor-
in the 1945 UN Charter, is commonly used throughout most international development organizations. It is widely understood in the
South, and it seems more or less intent on not going away. There is a
better reason for this than habit. One writer has observed, quite
rightly, that NGOs see themselves as being what governments are not:
'not bureaucratic, not rigid, not directive, and not stultifying of local
36
CHAPTER III
NORTHERN NGOs, even the newest of them, have extensive root systems and complex historical origins. This chapter will touch briefly on
the beginnings of modern humanitarian and development assistance,
and will then examine three strands that have helped form the work
and thinking of today's NGO community: volunteer-sending organizations, appropriate technology, and the environmental movement.
These are not exclusively Northern in origin and they are by no means
predominantly Northern today. But all stories require a starting point
and a chapter heading, and so it is with these. Other important strands
such as the women's movement and emergency assistance will be the
subject of full chapters in Part Two.
Many secular Northern organizations can trace their ancestry to
missionary organizations, and these have a long history, Many were
designed centuries ago to minister to new-found colonial empires,
particularly to colonies in North America, where educational and welfare requirements in the days of the early settlements were great. One
of the earliest recorded examples was a shipment of food sent from
Ireland to New England in 1647: 'to the poor, distressed by the late
war with the Indians'.1 One of the oldest overseas assistance organizations still extant was itself founded in the colony of New France, in
1653. Les Soeurs de la Congregation de Ntre Dame, based in Quebec,
ized labour also had its outreach programmes: The British Trades
Union Congress was established in 1868, the Co-operative Union in
1868, and the American Federation of Labor in 1881. Temperance
societies founded in the late nineteenth century formed branches
abroad, and organizations formed to promote universal suffrage and
the emancipation of women provided scholarships and other educational services to their counterparts overseas. Among these were the
Frederika Bremer FOrbundet, established in Sweden in 1884, the
Paris-based International Council of Women and the US National
Council of Women, both founded in 1888.
The shape of the modern NGO scene began to form in the years
between the First and Second World Wars, for here were people not
only ministering to the poor and suffering, but attempting to deal with
some of the causes. In 1919 Eglantyne Jebb founded Save the Children in Britain to help young victims of World War I. The 1924 Declaration of Geneva, a precursor of today's UN Rights of the Child, was
ish Civil War. In its early days, the American Branch was closely
affiliated with the pro-Loyalist North American Committee to Aid
Spain, while others, such as the American Friends Service Committee,
38
the Committee for Impartial Civilian Relief in Spain, and the Red Cross
attempted to provide food and medical assistance to both sides.
During the Second World War and immediately afterwards, a num-
ber of today's best-known organizations were formed. Oxfam, initiated to provide famine relief to victims of the Greek Civil War in 1942,
is today one of the world's largest NGOs. A close runner-up is CARE,
which began by sending food packages from the United States to
Europe in 1946. World Vision, one of today's largest and fastest growing Northern NGOs, was the brainchild of an American missionary in
Asia during the Korean War. These organizations or spinoffs found
support throughout Europe, North America, Australasia, and in some
cases, Japan. Redd Barna in Norway and Radda Bamen in Sweden are
part of the Save the Children family. Oxfam spread to Belgium, Canada and the United States. CARE established branches in Canada,
Australia and throughout Europe. Church organizations were created
specifically for relief and development work: the Mennonite Central
Committee; Evangelische Zentraistelle fr Entwicklunshilfe (EZE) in
Germany; ICCO and CEBEMO in the Netherlands; Comit Catholique
Contre la Faim (CCFD) in France; Christian Aid and the Catholic Fund
for Overseas Development in Britain.
Many of these organizations began with and retained a strong em-
he saw his first hyena, smoked his first hashish, witnessed his first
murder (so he said) and caught his first dose of gonorrhoea.* And a
month before his two-year assignment was to end, he was 'terminated' after being accused of involvement in an assassination plot
*The total number is not a matter of public record.
39
many returned Peace Corps Volunteers, and when they began joining
the State Department and working in the embassies, these institutions
were the better for it.'2
Although the Peace Corps is a government organization, many of
the other volunteer groups that sprang up were not. The British Vol-
that they provided opportunities for a generation of young Europeans, North Americans, Japanese and Australians to see, and hopefully to understand something about the lives of people in countries
hitherto accessible mainly through the pages of National Geographic.
It has been largely forgotten, but the volunteer-sending organiza-
sole, spent several days with Mahatma Gandhi, who was returning to
India following constitutional meetings in London. Ceresole was profoundly affected by Gandhi's practical attempts to advance the same
sort of peaceful revolution advocated by SCI. Three years later, when
Bihar was devastated by an earthquake, Ceresole and three companions went to India to help in the reconstruction effort. The four
volunteers spent three years in Bihar, living, working and eating with
the villagers, facing the same joys and hardships. Remarkable for their
era, they were, in a sense, the first non-church Western volunteers to
work in the South, long before volunteerism or even 'technical assistance' had been conceived and formalized.
Twenty years later, in the early 1950s, members of the Australian
committee of World University Service, concerned about their country's negative 'white Australia' policy, devised a plan to send volun-
ranks were augmented by tens of thousands of Europeans and Japanese who joined them as newer organizations were founded. Thousands more served through a United Nations Volunteer Program,
which recruited in the South as well as the North. As the years passed,
Over the years, the basic formula - small, simple, cheap, nonviolent - attracted a surprisingly large volume of debate. Some observers insist on a clear distinction between 'appropriate technology',
and 'intermediate technology'. Penicillin, for example, is very appropriate to the health needs it addresses worldwide, but it is hardly an
intermediate technology. Likewise, the use of a satellite to predict
hurricanes and cyclones is not an intermediate technology, but to
people in the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean and the low-lying delta
areas of Bangladesh, the warning that this sophisticated, expensive
technology can provide is more than appropriate.
Intermediate technology is a relative term: a technology that stands
somewhere between what is known - the traditional technology and the modern, In Africa, animal traction, falling half way between
the hoe and the tractor, may be an intermediate technology. In Asia,
where animal traction is well developed, a power tiller might conceivably be the intermediate technology. But in some cases, neither of
these examples may be appropriate. In Africa, the most appropriate
advance on traditional slash and burn agriculture might be better
seeds, the use of fertilizer, an improved hoe. In Asia, the power tiller
might not be the most logical progression on animal traction. It might
be a better plough, improved irrigation, better organization.
In 1966, the concepts of appropriate and intermediate technology
were simply that, concepts. Ten years later there were an estimated
five hundred organizations, groups and institutions with an appropriate technology focus, and by 1980 the number had doubled
to a thousand.8 The idea also spread quickly in the South. The University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, established a
44
wood, plastic; pumps powered by the sun, the wind, bicycles and
oars. Small biogas plants producing methane from animal waste - a
technology developed concurrently in India and China - began to
appear throughout the Third World.
The widespread diffusion of technologies which seemed genuinely
relevant, however, proved far more difficult than had been imagined.
movement has matured, and has become more professional. Although weaknesses persist, there is a growing body of success and
much greater sophistication in dealing with the societal and political
obstacles which in the past have held progress back.
The second is a growing recognition in the North that big is not, of
itself, better. Mass production and giant industries grew out of a particular approach to organization and out of ideas about the primacy of
price and economies of scale. But there have always been dissenting
views, some of them rediscovered and used to excellent advantage
first by Japanese firms in the 1970s. The most successful Japanese
companies, which by world standards are enormous, have focused
clearly on the customer, on innovation and on close, personalized coordination between divisions, managers and the shop floor. But there
is something else. An automobile has approximately 20000 parts. The
average Japanese car maker produces only 30 per cent of the parts
itself, sub-contracting the rest to smaller firms. The average American
car maker produces about half of its own requirements, and thus
operates much larger and more complex plants. The story doesn't
stop there. General Motors deals with 3500 sub-contractors, whereas
Toyota deals with only 300. The difference between the complexity of
the American network and the Japanese is as day is to night. But there
is a further difference: Toyota's sub-contractors, with whom it is able
to develop a very close, personalized relationship, in turn subcontract much of their own work to a second tier of 5000 firms, which
in turn deal with a further 20000 smaller third- and fourth-tier firms.11
the south. Characterized by a vast number of small firms, EmiliaRomagna has been one of the fastest growing of Italy's 20 regions. Its
350 000 registered firms have an average of only five employees each,
and an estimated one-third of the work force is self-employed. And
yet Emilia-Romagna has the highest per capita income in Italy and
accounts for 10 per cent of the country's exports. With imports to the
region accounting for only 4 per cent of the country's total, EmiliaRomagna contributes an international trade surplus of $5 billion to the
statistics which show that the formal sector is not creating jobs at a
rate anywhere near the demand, and that the jobs it does create are as
prohibitively expensive as they were when Schumacher wrote on the
subject in the 1960s. Zimbabwe's 1986-90 National Development
Plan, for example, forecast an increase in wage employment of 21 000
workers, with an expected investment of Z$1 .4 billion. This put a
staggering price tag of US$26 000 on each job.15 At this rate, it would
have cost over US$4 billion per annum to mop up the backlog, an
amount equivalent to 90 per cent of the country's entire GNP. Needless to say, it didn't happen. In Kenya, estimates are similarly overwhelming. Even with continued economic growth and investment, it
is estimated that only 1.4 million jobs can be created by the turn of the
century, leaving approximately 40 per cent of the labour force, or 5.6
million people jobless.
If people are to work, there are three solutions. The first is that the
cost per workplace in the formal sector will have to come down
dramatically, as Schumacher said it must if chaos is to be avoided. The
second is that the informal sector - of prime concern to many NGOs
47
The envfronmentIists
And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of
the earth, and upon everyfowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the
earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they
delivered.
Genesis 9:2
been set aside for parkland in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The creation of national parks, in fact, established one of the first
debates in the environmental movement, between the protectionists
and the conservationists. The former, including the founders of the
Sierra Club in 1892, sought only to protect and preserve nature from
predatory human inclinations. The conservationists, however, usually
professionals, such as, zoologists, foresters, marine biologists believed in the sustainable utilization of natural resources.
One of the earliest outcries of concern for endangered species had
to do with big game in Africa, particularly the elephant. The slaughter
of African animals reached epic proportions in the last two decades of
life existing in a wild state which are either useful to man or are
harmless."9 Ironically, this limited notion of animal protection actually encouraged the further killing of lions, leopards, wild dogs and
spotted hyena, all high on the 'vermin' list. Between 1924 and 1945,
more than 320 000 animals were killed in southern Rhodesia alone in
an anti-tsetse campaign.
The American Dustbowl caused soil conservation to rise suddenly
on the global environmental agenda. Produced partly by drought but
more by bad farming practice, 1.3 million square kilometres of the
Great Plains were severely eroded between 1934 and 1937, devastating 16 states and adding to the economic and human havoc of the
American depression. By then the need for an international conservation organization had been apparent for decades, but various
49
half-hearted attempts had failed or had been halted by war. With the
end of the Second World War, the international environmental agenda
altered. The push for an international agency, pioneered by UNESCO
and the governments of more than a dozen countries, had been advanced by the appearance of several books which presaged The Silent
Spring. The titles, Deserts on the March by Paul Sears (1937), The
World's Hunger by Frank Pearson and Floyd Harper (1945), and Our
Plundered Planet by Fairfield Osborn (1948) give a sense of their
message.
Complex marriage arrangements, a great deal of diplomatic intercourse, and a two-year gestation period finally produced a child. The
50
said 'for better or for wOrse', it meant worse: 'In Tanganyika alone,
the government recently ordered 100 per cent Africanisation of the
game service by 1966' (emphasis in the original).21
1961 was a good year for NGOs. In addition to the African Wildlife
Foundation, it saw the birth of Amnesty International and the World
Wildlife Fund (WWF).* WWF was established as a direct effort to raise
money for IUCN and to popularize some of the issues with which
IUCN was concerned. Largely a British initiative, the international
headquarters of WWF was eventually located in Switzerland, and
branches were soon set up throughout Europe, North America, and in
later years, in India, Pakistan, Malaysia and South Africa. One of
IUCN's major WWF-supported initiatives at the time, was something
called the African Special Project, which aimed to encourage new
African leaders to associate themselves with conservation and to understand - as a rather paternalistic issue of IUCN's Bulletin put it in
1961 - 'the virtue of living off the income of their natural resources,
not the capital'.
lapse of a slag heap above the Welsh village of Aberfan killed 144
people in 1966, and the following year saw the first major oil spill
when the Torrey Canyon struck a reef near Land's End, dumping
117000 tons of crude oil into the sea. Scientific knowledge of the
environment and the effects of industry and modernization was growing incrementally, and environmentalists benefited from crossovers
with other movements of the 1960s: the anti-war movement, the civil
rights movement, the women's movement, and the growth of an antiindustrial, anti-consumerist counter-culture.
No longer a quiet crisis, the environment became the subject of a
series of apocalyptic new books: Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb
in 1968, Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle in 1971, and the Club of
*Later Worldwide Fund for Nature except in the US and Canada, where the original name was retained.
51
The Limits to Growth, which popularized the concept of nonrenewable resources, eventually sold over ten million copies in 30
languages. Although many of the dire predictions contained in these
studies have not come to pass, too many have: the depletion of global
fish stocks; the limits of, and costs associated with the green revolution; the destructive effects of acid rain; and a stream of disasters
associated with reckless and inadequately regulated industrial growth:
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, the
burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields, the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal.
More important than the precision of predictions, was an increasing
recognition that the concept of exponential economic growth had real
limits and contained real dangers, and that broad international strategies would be necessary if the obvious, present-day problems were
to be dealt with effectively.
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held
in Stockholm in the summer of 1972, was one of the first international
attempts to do this. Although in retrospect the impact of Stockholm
may seem limited, it broke new ground in a number of ways. Attended by the representatives of 113 countries, it focused on the
human aspects of environmental distress, and placed the concerns of
Third World governments squarely on an environmental agenda that
had hitherto been driven by Northern concerns. It had the effect of
transforming environmentalism into a comprehensive global issue,
one to be taken seriously by governments at a national policy level,
rather than one fuelled (as was sometimes charged) by ad hoc, alarm-
grew by more than 400 per cent.22 Some of the older NGOs had
reached a level of professionalism that made them an asset to, and an
ally of governments and international development agencies. With the
52
old boat, renamed it the Greenpeace, and with a small book about
Indian myths for reading material, they set off for Alaska. The book
was called Warriors of the Rainbow, and would give the name to
Greenpeace vessels in the years to come. In the beginning, Greenpeace's only interest was nuclear testing. It was not until 1975 when
the organization started to grow, that it began its direct confrontation
with governments over whaling, sealing and the disposal of toxic
waste. By the early 1990s, Greenpeace had become a major international NGO, with offices in two dozen countries and donor members
numbering more than a million worldwide.
53
tional programme has focused on the damage done to the environment, and more particularly to poor people, by the large infrastructure
projects of international financial institutions, most notably the World
Bank. Building coalitions of Northern and Southern NGOs, the EDF
became instrumental in drafting American environmental legislation,
and in halting or changing some of the more reckless World Bankfinanced projects: a massive Indonesian Transmigration Project, the
Narmada Dam project in India, and the Polonoroeste Project, responsible for the devastation of vast areas of Brazilian rainforest and the lives
of those dependent upon it.
too early, however, for Petra Kelly, founder of the German Green
Party. Shortly before her death in 1992, she said, 'The Earth Summit
54
petitive with one another. And they can be just as ideological, sanctimonious and egocentric as their developmental cousins. In his book
about elephants and NGOs, At the Hand of Man, Raymond Bonner
describes the hypocrisy and shortsightedness of some. In the early
1990s, many did their utmost to have the ivory trade banned,
regardless of the impact this might have on people. In Botswana,
Zimbabwe, South Africa and elsewhere, elephants were not an
This divide, still pronounced in the North, is fading in the South where the
relationship between human development and environmental protection is much
better understood.
55
there were incomes to be made from limited 'culling'. More importantly, for villagers whose small farms, houses and livelihoods could be
destroyed overnight by a single elephant, protection was essential. The
Northern hysteria against killing elephants, however, provoked initially
by the African Wildlife Foundation, became not only a lucrative crowdpleaser for Northern NGOs, it forced organizations like WWF and IUCN
- well aware of valid environmental and developmental reasons for
large carnivores in Serengeti'. Kasiaro read the poster and then said to
Bonner, 'They care only about the animals; they say nothing about the
people. They could have said there are also people, the Masai, who
were living here for many years. They are living outside now and they
are suffering. They don't have water. Even they need help. Not just the
wild animals.'28
Elephants aside, it may be useful to think about the relative success
some environmental NGOs have had in changing public attitudes, in
56
One obvious reason is that the media, writers, environmental organizations and politicians have made the environment a domestic
issue. People can see the problem with their own eyes, and can make
the link between a disappearing rainforest in British Columbia, and
one in Brazil. Environmentalism offers an alternative way of portraying the world to people who have become alienated from consumerism, industrialization and politics. But there are other, less attractive
reasons. Regardless of the means used in supporting conservation whether direct support to save the whales (or pandas or the Thai
Jewel Thrush), whether research into the environmental policies of
the World Bank, or confrontation at sea with the French Navy Northern environmentalists generally have as an end objective nature,
rather than people.
In the North, individuals have strong beliefs about why people are
at war, jobless, orphaned or sick. They have strong attitudes about
people who speak with different accents, whose habits or culture or
religion or skin colour are different. They have no such problem
with animals. A brown bear is as interesting as a polar bear. Conditioned by books and film from childhood, by Gerald Durrell, Jacques
Cousteau, Marlon Perkins and National Geographic, people accept
nature as natural, and can tolerate scenes of a lion bringing down a
young wildebeest without condemning the United Nations for inaction. In nature, humans (often foreigners) are the only villain: burning, chopping, killing. Whaling, sealing and poaching are all bloody
business; forestry is noisy, dirty and clearly destructive of natural
beauty. A panda is just a panda, not a foreign panda with strange
ideas and habits. It is an animal at one with its environment - not
lazy, not producing too many offspring (any number is acceptable),
not eating too much (as far as we know), not venal. It has no responsibility for its own situation. Our rose-coloured image of nature conforms perfectly with Mark Twain's observation that man is the only
animal that blushes. Or needs to. Conservationists, as in the case of
AWF and the ivory ban, play on all these attitudes. At their worst,
they attack those seeking a compromise between people and nature,
through 'sustainable development', as 'humaniacs'. At their best,
most simply leave the human dimension out of their publicity material and fundraising.
57
Thoughtful Northern environmentalists, however, do see the limitations of, and are critical of the dominant growth model of development. This is taken by some critics as left-wing anti-capitalism. Rachel
Carson, for example, was painted as a standard bearer for the 'leftwing academic brigade'.29 Others, such as Friends of the Earth and
Greenpeace, are assailed from the left: 'What neither of them has
attacked in any serious sense is the nexus of state and commerce
which leads to the practices they so ardently condemn.'3
A final difference between most Northern development NGOs and
some of their most politically active environmental counterparts has
to do with the heavy reliance of the former on government financial
support. Government dependence breeds not only self-censorship, it
can skew programming in directions favoured by the funder. It involves a selection process which cuts risk and controversy out of the
herd at an early stage. But many environmental NGOs do take money
from government and manage to criticize government policies at the
same time. Unlike their development cousins, this was a primary
raison d'tre for many environmental NGOs, one that has remained
front and centre. The fundamental goal was to change government
policy, rather than to serve it; to advocate, rather than to be implementers of project-based 'assistance'.
ownership, inappropriate tax structures. The concept of 'conscientization' developed by the Brazilian, Paolo Freire, held that development could occur only through the growth of a public consciousness
about the shortcomings of one's own society and political system. An
58
By the 1990s, those like CARE, Foster Parents Plan and World
Vision that had remained largely 'operational' (devising and running
their own overseas projects) were finding themselves the last of a
fading, and somewhat expensive breed, the last cars on the lot with
raiment, damaging public opinion and encouraging recessionplagued governments to retreat behind 'new' concepts of accountability, participation, and the role of 'civil society'. The implications
for NGOs were to become enormous.
59
CHAPTER IV
Southern NGOs
This then, is our real job
people.
Saul Alinsky, 1946.
UNTIL ABOUT 1980, the most prominent non-governmental organizations operating in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, were
foreign, rather than local - clearly operating outside their own communities and stretching the historical rationale for voluntary association to new dimensions. This is not to deny the importance of their
contribution to education, health care, rural development and welfare. International NGOs were, through the 1960s and 1970s, at the
forefront of developments in primary health care, credit for the assetless, participatory approaches to development, the environment and
the advancement of women. American foundations played a critical
role in the reduction of malaria, yellow fever, cholera and hookworm,
and in the development of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice.
CARE, Mdecins sans Frontires, Oxfam and many others have acted
as the world's conscience on human disaster, and have shouldered
much of the responsibility for international relief activities.
There is a difference, however, between emergency assistance and
development assistance. The need for the former is obvious, and if
well handled, it will be finite in scope and time. Development assistance, however, when it is designed and managed by outsiders, often
comes uninvited and, like The Man Who Came to Dinner, may not go
home. It is arguable, in fact, that voluntarism does not travel well.
International NGOs are an extension of the most basic elements of
their society's altruism. But originating in a foreign country, they can
hardly be described as an expression of local concern, either collective or individual. The strengths of international NGOs are legion.
They have their handicaps as well: they must work in cultures and
sometimes in languages other than their own. In addition to dealings
with their own government, they must work with the governments of
host countries. Communications, attitudes and working conditions
vary greatly. Legitimacy may be a problem. Even those organizations
as well. The wellspring of the American international NGO community is very different from that in Scandinavia. In Japan, many
struggling modern NGOs emerge from a tradition of anti-government
activity, while in Catholic countries such as Italy, voluntary activity has
grown almost entirely out of the church, and from an alternative, anti-
a wide variety of local organizations sprang up. The Buddhist Theosophical Society was established in 1880, and the Mahabodi (Buddhist) Society ten years later. The Muslim Education Society was
formed in 1880, the Young Men's Buddhist Association in 1897, and
the Hindu Ramakrishna Mission in 1899.2
government and the private sector - lose their meaning and their
lustre. Many governments in Africa and Asia are in a full state of rout,
and throughout the South, the legitimacy of much government action
is in question. The first sector's ability to provide basic social services
with the Social Welfare Department and there are a further 21000
registered co-operative societies. In 1992 there were 642 registered
NGOs in Zimbabwe, and 110 in the Dominican Republic. A 1994
study found 4327 NGOs in Latin America and a further 5860 non-profit
groups, the majority established after 1975. In Lebanon there are 1300
NGOs, and in Egypt 13000. In Thailand there are over 12000 regis-
has had a profound and positive influence on bilateral and multilateral donor agencies supporting government education projects in
Bangladesh. In 1994, two BRAG staff were deputed to UNICEF in
Kenya to help with planning, and the Government of Vietnam
engaged BRAG to examine the feasibility of replicating some of its
work there.
Similar comments on quality, quantity and impact could be made
about scores of organizations throughout Asia and Latin America, and
increasingly in Africa and the Caribbean. For each of them, there are
at least two or three new NGOs coming up that show every sign of
being able to reach similar levels of coverage and effectiveness. In
it has operated completely unlike most banks and that it derives its values, its
methodologies and its legitimacy from the same welisprings as the NGO community.
63
residual, the third sector in the South is one of the most vibrant areas
of activity, experimentation and even of service delivery.
of ten million people across the borders into India. Perhaps he was
thinking of an earlier disaster. 'When I was a boy', he recalls, 'there
was a terrible earthquake in Morocco. I responded to an Oxfam appeal, sending the equivalent of perhaps a pound. In due course I
received an acknowledgement and a brochure. But I was surprised to
see that although Oxfam worked in many countries around the world,
they did not work in mine. I wrote to ask why, and they said it was
because there were no local organizations with which they could
form a partnership.'4 Not waiting for outsiders in 1972, Abed and his
friends formed the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, and
established a reconstruction programme in a remote part of Sylhet
District, where one out of five people had become refugees.
Gradually turning their efforts from reconstruction to long-term development, the BRAC workers soon attracted the attention of Northern NGOs that had also come to assist. One of their first major grants
was received from the organization to which the young Abed had
made his donation years before, Oxfam. If one good turn deserves
another, Oxfam proved it: the fledgling BRAG received an initial grant
of 161 000. There were perhaps four reasons for Oxfam making such
a significant early contribution. One was that BRAG was doing effec-
tive and important work, and was doing so at a fraction of the costs
usually incurred by external agencies. A second was that Oxfam had
virtually no knowledge of Bangladesh. Off the beaten development
track at that time, and largely ignored by development agencies before 1970, Bangladesh was both a new country and - for development agencies - an almost completely unknown part of the world. A
third reason was that Oxfam, like so many other organizations, had
raised vast sums for the relief of Bangladesh. Now the emergency was
ending, and there seemed to be few ways to spend money effectively
on reconstruction and human development. The new government
had its hands full with bilateral donors. The church network that
Oxfam worked with in many countries was tiny, and largely urban-
to the Indian Red Gross had sparked the kind of debate that would
rage within some hands-on Northern NGOs for the next three decades. Control, trust and fear of corruption would always be at the
centre of the debate. In 1964, an Oxfam manager criticized the Red
Gross decision, saying, 'The reputation of the Indian Red Gross is not
very good and among foreign-based agencies there is much suspicion
of the integrity of its distribution agents. For Oxfam to be using such a
channel on such a scale at a time when the Indian papers are full of
corruption stories scarcely enhances our reputation.'6
The policy was maintained, however, and one of the first real partnerships with a Southern development organization was formed in 1967
with the Sarva Seva Sangh, a Gandhian organization working with banjans (untouchables) in the rural areas of Bihar. In the same year, Oxfam
made a small contribution in Tanzania to the Community Development
Trust Fund, for well digging. This was followed the next year by a larger
commitment of 31 000 for 233 more wells. In Brazil, Oxfam supported
one of the first purely Brazilian NGOs working in community development. FASE (Federation of Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance) was a 1970 offshoot of Catholic Relief Services.
Although these first efforts did not always work smoothly, by the
time Oxfam made its first grant to BRAG, the die had been cast.
Throughout the 1970s, more and more Northern NGOs would reduce
their own direct programming operations, seeking out and creating
opportunities for the Southern NGOs that would now take up the
development mantle. Like Sarva Seva Sangh, some were older organizations that became 'eligible' for support as the policies of Northern
NGOs changed. Sarvodaya, founded in Sri Lanka in 1958, remained a
largely volunteer-based organization until the need and the opportunities for expansion persuaded the leadership to begin a formalization process. Sarvodaya gained official charitable status in 1966, and
in 1969 its founder, A.T. Ariyaratne, was awarded the Magsaysay
Peace Award. This award, along with its first sizeable external grant,
made in 1972 by the Dutch NGO, NOVIB, allowed the organization to
Some, like FASE, had their origins in the work of an external organization. Proshika in Bangladesh, for example, began as a CUSO
project, without ambitions of autonomy, and without expecting to
become a role model for others. Some have grown out of a national
trauma. The civil war which gave birth to Bangladesh produced hundreds of informal village organizations where before only a handful
existed. In the Philippines, the anti-Marcos movement legitimized the
NGOs that were in its vanguard, and sparked the creation of hundreds
more under the Aquino government. The same was true in Zimbabwe
immediately after independence.
Organization is not a simple matter, however. It involves determination, money and risk. The passivity and social conflict among
those who live on poor land in remote areas, are powerful deterrents
to change. Poverty is not only a physical and economic condition. It
weakens self-confidence and saps self-respect, leaving its victims fearful of authority and suspicious of outsiders. Organizing is therefore
more difficult for the poor than it is for those who are better off. But
Sithembiso Nyoni, founder of the Zimbabwean NGO, ORAP (Organization of Rural Associations for Progress), observes that rural people
are not at the dawn of their history. 'They have memories of development failures, domination and manipulation from outside.'7 Outsiders, with outside interests and complicated objectives, may present
an opportunity, but they also represent both risk and threat for people
living on the edge of economic desperation. Listening to people and
working with them on their priorities is therefore an essential ingredient of successful change. This is not new, nor does it seem very
radical, although one of its first and best proponents, Saul Alinsky,
clearly saw the building of 'people's organizations' as a radical endeavour when he wrote about it half a century ago.
'Throughout the organizational period,' he wrote, 'many people
and organizations will revert to avarice, individualistic opportunism,
personal exploitation, and lack of faith.' Presaging Nyoni, he went on,
'It is not the people who must be judged but the circumstances that
made them that way.'8 Taking a leaf from Alinsky's teachings about
organizing in the United States, or perhaps re-inventing his ideas from
the ground up, ORAP was able to gain the confidence of villagers
throughout Matabeleland, pulling more than five hundred groups into
a loose federation in its first five years of operation. For ORAP, the key
was the ability of its organizers to involve people not only in the
planning and management of their own development efforts, but in
the management of ORAP itself.
ber tappers' own organization, and the Instituto de Estudos Amaznicos e Ambientais, which seeks and maintains both national and
international alliances.
The Brazilian rubber tappers and their mentors may have taken a
lesson from the Chipko experience. The Chipko movement, which
has spread from one end of the Indian Himalayas to the other, began
rather unremarkably with the organization in 1960 of a workers' cooperative for skilled and semi-skilled construction workers in Chamoli
District of Uttar Pradesh.1 The co-operative, Dasholi Gram Swarajya
Mandal (DGSM), bought forest rights from government to supply a
small workshop that produced farm tools for local use. In the late
1960s, it also started an enterprise based on roots and herbs from the
forest, in which turpentine was the main product. But for eight
months in 1971-2, the DGSM factory was closed because the government would not give it allocations for wood or pine sap. As it turned
out, however, there was a different policy for a sporting goods manufacturer. This company had no difficulty in purchasing the rights to cut
300 ash trees in the area for its tennis racquet business.
When company loggers arrived to cut the trees, they found people
- mainly women - forming themselves into a human barrier between the trees and the saws. The women were employing Gandhi's
strategy of satyagraha, or non violence. 'Chipko', which means 'hugging' in Hindi, had given birth to both an expression and a movement.
Later in the year, villagers again prevented the company from cutting
in another part of the district, and over the next five years they were
responsible for ensuring that the state government banned tree-felling
67
Chipko spawned dozens, if not hundreds of new self-help cooperatives and non-governmental organizations. Although some of
these would lend themselves to international support, many did not,
International NGOs
International NGOs - those without a strong national identity and with
independent chapters in several countries - are a growing phenomenon. They are also the expression of a desire to reduce the North-
South gap, particularly where communication, learning and development education are concerned. They include older organizations
like the Catholic Church, the Red Cross and the Boy Scouts, but there
are newer bodies which, though modest, have at their heart an international ideal which has eluded many larger organizations for generations. El Taller in Tunisia brings NGOs from the North, the South, the
Arab World and Eastern Europe together, and serves as both a place
and a platform for joint reflection, advocacy and research. Women's
68
Established in 1979, it builds banking services that by 1992 were supporting small entrepreneurs through 47 affiliates on five continents.
There is another kind of hybrid. A small number of NGOs have one
foot in the North and one in the South. The Aga Khan Foundation,
established in 1966, was originally an effort to draw together the
different strands of an Ismaili support network of schools, clinics and
hospitals in Asia and East Africa. By the early 1980s, however, it had
expanded beyond its Ismaili confines, with a Head Office in Geneva
and autonomous affiliates in Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, India,
Pakistan, Canada, Britain, the United States and Portugal. While
money flows in the traditional southerly direction, members of the
Foundation meet together as equals, debating, arguing, and moving
easily between postings in both the North and the South. In addition
to the support it now provides to a wide variety of Asian and African
NGOs, the Aga Khan Foundation has established two additional independent members of the network, the Aga Khan Rural Support Programmes in India and Pakistan.
A variation on the AKF theme, the African Medical and Research
Foundation was established in 1957 in Kenya by three expatriate
doctors. Originally (and still) a flying doctor service, it became more,
working in several countries of the region in training, environmental
health, and research on malaria, trachoma and hydatid disease, a
serious ailment produced by tapeworms. Because the needs AMREF
sought to address were great, and because traditional support mechanisms were slow to respond, the organization's first Director General,
Michael Wood, fell into the habit of making long fundraising trips to
Europe. The cost in time and effort was high, and AMREF gradually
developed a new approach in the 1960s and 1970s. It reversed the
Northern NGO model, establishing branches in the North rather than
the South: independent Northern support agencies in Britain, Canada,
Norway (nine countries in all) whose main purpose was to raise
money for AMREF's work in Africa.
for centuries, but the development of formally organized and registered non-governmental organizations is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before 1920, only one NGO was officially registered with the
Ministry of Social Welfare and Community Development, in sharp
contrast with India, for example, where the formal registration of
NGOs began more than 130 years ago.
By 1960, the number of registered Ghanaian NGOs had grown to
10, and through the 1970s and 1980s the number expanded rapidly,
rising to 350 by 1993. Of these, 20 were foreign, 120 operated in more
than one community, and over 200 were community based. This is
probably a vast understatement of village-based efforts, most of which
are not registered. Like single-community NGOs anywhere, the
Ghanaian variety may be welfare or development oriented; they may
be registered or not; they may be well organized or loosely managed;
they may have affiliations with larger groups or they may operate
exclusively on their own. Most have no full-time paid workers. The
Kalijiisa Multipurpose Co-operative is an example. Kalijiisa 'village' is
actually a rural area of farmers and traditional blacksmiths in Ghana's
far north. The villagers created an informal co-operative in 1972 and
services are open to all in the community and beyond. Unlike most
Ghanaian co-ops, Kalijllsa survived Ghana's horrific economic traumas
in the 1970s and 1980s, probably because of its blacksmithing, which has
been the mainstay of the community for generations. The Chairman of
the society says, 'We want to make a better life here so that our young
people will not have to leave for the city.'
managerial and other forms of support. With very small grants from
four European NGOs, and working entirely on a part-time voluntary
basis, the group established a library and organized a series of seminars on women in development, co-operatives, evaluation, problem
solving and project development. CEDEP produces a regular news-
Ghanaian NGOs exhibit many of the same strengths and weaknesses as NGOs in other countries. On the plus side, they are innovative, and flexible; they work in difficult, hard-to-reach areas with the
The reasons for Ghana's late start are complex, but some are obvious. The first, perhaps, was the strong centralization of welfare
services, health, education and rural development within government
have been through an educational system which does not lay emphasis on training us to manage our time and finances. To add to that,
we are operating in an unstructured atmosphere, unlike our colleagues in the North, and there are no blueprints for what we are
doing.'
Ghanaian institutions specializing in the necessary skills training personnel, finance, estate management, monitoring, evaluation and negotiation - 'hardly consider NGOs as organizations'.
Southern goveriTiments
Thompson also deals with the problems of working with government.
The relationship between any government and its NGO community is
likely to be complex and changeable.13 It may depend on the level of
responsibility that government itself takes for a particular area of welfare or social development. It may depend on the evolving nature and
financial base of the NGO community, and on the level of comfort a
government has with independent or semi-independent players entering traditional government territory. In the North, despite obvious
weaknesses, competitive scrambles and the annoyance they can
cause government, NGOs are generally regarded as a positive good.
In some countries they are increasingly recognized as a necessity, as
the state backs away from traditional responsibilities.
73
In many countries of the South, the state is not only backing away
from these 'traditional' responsibilities, it has failed. Responsibility,
however, is one thing, power is another. And few governments shed
power enthusiastically. NGOs, therefore, increasingly competent, and
increasingly expected to 'do more', are also encountering new levels
of control and interference, just when the opposite should in theory
be happening. Some governments and donor agencies even accuse
NGOs of trying to 'crowd out' government.'4
The climate for NGOs can be influenced by government in a variety
of formal and informal ways. On the informal side, governments can
foster what has become known as an 'enabling environment' through
collaboration, consultation, assistance in co-ordination, and by sending positive messages to the media and to the public that NGOs have
a beneficial and welcome role to play in development. On the formal
side, the legal, regulatory and fiscal framework in which NGOs function will play a large part in their evolution or otherwise. Are registration and reporting requirements clear and simple? What tax and
import concessions are provided? Are regulations applied in a fair and
consistent manner? Is there a right of appeal? Governments can also
go beyond the creation of a positive legal framework, assisting NGOs
with money, or goods and services, and by making them eligible to
carry out government contracts.
Unfortunately, these rather basic ideals sound facile when juxtaposed with reality. Professions of support for civil society, democracy
and the right of association notwithstanding, the record in much of the
South is dismal. Indonesia, for example, is a country caught between
tradition and modernity, between poverty and affluence, between the
demands of a complex ethnic heritage and the need for social stability
and the rule of law. If the government finds itself between Scylla and
Charybdis, Indonesian NGOs are surely caught between a rock and
hard place. In addition to detailed but disorganized regulations which
have long permitted the government to control NGOs one way or
another, an omnibus 1985 Law on Social organizations gave government the authority to seize and close any organization threatening to
upset domestic security. Tax exemptions for all NGOs were summarily abolished in 1994, and because registration procedures remain
open, but complex legal framework into which NGOs must fit. In
order to register, and registration is essential for an organization seek-
by those it does not, CAPART can be very political, and has the
capacity to be both creative and selectively destructive.
In Bangladesh, the return to parliamentary democracy at the end of
1990 did not bring with it new space for NGOs. The NGO Affairs
Bureau, set up under the previous military government, appeared to
be the instigator of a well-organized anti-NGO campaign which, at its
height in the summer of 1992, saw 53 anti-NGO newspaper articles
and editorials, and the rigid enforcement of draconian foreign contributions regulations. These regulations required annual government
approval for every project, and were effectively forcing many of the
country's NGOs to a standstill. In the press, NGOs were attacked for
mismanagement, corruption, foreign domination and anti-Islamic behaviour. Led by the Association of Development Agencies of Bangladesh (ADAB), NGOs solicited moral support from donors, Northern
were called off when a new President took office, Sarvodaya had
been seriously destabilized, and a vivid lesson in the pervasiveness of
state power had been delivered.
These Asian nightmares are familiar territory for NGOs in much of
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. A prescient 1988 report on
governmentNGO relations in Mexico foretold the Chiapas uprising
that began in 1994: The work of NGOs in Mexico in the rural sector
and in particular with indigenous communities or refugee groups, for
76
should not make things worse for the poor than they already are. By
making procedures impossible to follow and difficult to implement,
however, by scattering regulations through a rainbow of laws and
codes, and by giving regulatory responsibility to a combination of
different and often incompetent agencies, it can be argued that governments not only make life hell for the good, they defeat their own
purpose in rooting out the bad.
If the suppression and harassment of NGOs in the late 1980s and
early 1990s looks like a trend, there are signs of change. In Kenya,
the government passed an NGO Co-ordination Act in 1990, recognizing the importance of NGOs in national development, but imposing what NGOs felt were severe and excessive restraints on their
relationships, but they also show that where an NGO community can
come together to act with a united, concerted voice, it can achieve
policy changes that will create more space and a more enabling environment for voluntary action.18
78
PART TWO
NGOs today
CHAPTER V
THIS CHAPTER IS about women, and what NGOs have learned about
tion can mean different things to the people who are supposed to
benefit from its application.
However, first a diversion: when Sharon Capeling-Alakija was Director of the United Nations Fund for Women, UNIFEM, she used to
carry a piece of what would you call it? - cloth in her purse. It was
a small rectangle of dull white fabric, badly hemmed, to which had
been sewn a crude pink elephant. This 'handicraft' had been produced by Liberian refugees in Ghana, in a 'training centre' where
women, young and old, were hunched over sewing machines in the
hope, probably the desperate hope, of finding some way out of their
harsh lives and their dreadful poverty.
Capeling-Alakija carried the rather pathetic memento, not as a reminder of what women could do, but as a reminder and a demonstration to managers in aid agencies of what women were still being
elephant, not in the early 1970s, before the term 'Women in Development' (WID) had been coined; not in the early 1980s when a
distinction, 'Women and Development', had been produced; not
even in the late 1980s, when 'Gender and Development' (GAD) began
to analyse the problems of poor women in a broader and more political way. She picked up the elephant in the 1990s, after three World
wide cross-section of economists, UN agencies and NGOs.5 In response, the World Bank asks two pertinent questions about structural
adjustment. First, 'Would the poor have benefited from less adjustment? And to the extent that adjustment benefited the poor, could
policy reforms have been designed differently to have benefited them
more?'6 The Bank's own answers, in a lengthy 1994 review of adjustment policies in Africa, basically ignore women, lumping all 'the poor'
into a single category. This forgetfulness, this continuing unwillingness or inability to differentiate between the work of men and
women, paid and unpaid, simply strengthens the hand of Bankbashers who see it as a reconfirmation of the 'invisibility' of women in
the macro-economic policy bazaar. Certainly, the answer to the sec-
ond question is yes, policy reforms could have been designed differently, and some changes, probably too little, too late, have been
made. But for women, the first question - would they have benefited
from less adjustment - should perhaps be re-worded: have they
benefited in any way from adjustment?
in Bangladesh in the early 1980s, men simply took over what had
hitherto been viable income-generating work for women. Tractors,
84
Types of intervention
The first, oldest and still most popular approach to programming for
and by women is the welfare approach. 'Its purpose,' according to
gender specialist Caroline Moser, 'is to bring women into development as better mothers. Women are seen as passive beneficiaries of
Characterized by project interventions such as credit, the antipoverty approach has been popular with NGOs and Northern donors
85
Women need to be healthy to fulfil their roles as mothers and household managers. They have specific health needs, including protection
against violence."0
The different approaches - WID, WAD, GAD, equity, anti-poverty,
efficiency - evolved mainly during the UN Decade for Women, during which three major global meetings were held: the first in 1975 in
Mexico, the second in 1980 in Copenhagen, and the third in Nairobi in
1985. Each conference was attended by women's organizations from
around the world, and each acted as a catalyst for the creation of new
organizations. One of these was DAWN: Development Alternatives
with Women for a New Era. An informal group of 22 women, many
with NGO backgrounds and most from the South, DAWN held its first
meeting in Bangalore in 1984. One of its first decisions was to produce a 'platform document' for circulation in the year before Nairobi,
a document that would question the impact of development on the
poor, and especially on women; one that would voice the urgent
need for alternative development processes focusing on the basic
survival needs of the poorest.
Types of organization
DAWN's platform document became a book: Development, crises,
and alternative ViSIOflS: Third World women's perspectives, written by
Gita Sen and Caren Grown. Among other things, it provided a useful
typology of Southern organizational approaches to women's issues.
The first type, consistent with both Moser and Korten, are welfare
organizations. These tend to be the larger, traditional service organizations that have existed in many countries for years. Some grew out
of social reform or independence movements, but many retreated into
a welfare approach when the primary goal was achieved. Often managed by middle- and upper-class women, they suffer from class bias, a
top-down approach, and according to DAWN, 'they often lack a clear
union of textile workers. The linkages between formal labour movements dominated by men, however, and an informal labour sector
populated by women, can be fraught with problems - as SEWA and
its leader, Ela Bhatt, discovered in the organization's early years.
SEWA's struggle for an independent voice came to a head in 1981,
when Bhatt supported 'reservations', the protection of special positions in education and jobs for harijans, the untouchable caste from
which so many poor women sprang. For SEWA, reservations symbolized empowerment rather than welfare. But for the Textile Labour
Association, fighting to end the reservation system, Bhatt's position
represented both indiscipline and grandstanding. It had been a dangerous period for the TLA, affiliated with a political faction that had
broken away from Indira Gandhi's Congress Party. Gandhi's suspension of Parliament and her self-serving state of emergency had placed
her enemies, like TLA, in peril. Time passed, however, and coincident
with the end of the emergency, the TLA expelled SEWA, seizing its
assets, severing all links and charging Bhatt with indiscipline. There
was something else, however: 'I built a wall of poor women around
TLA,' said its President, 'to protect us from Indiraji's attacks, but now
that the emergency is over, we no longer need them.'11
The TLA may not have needed them, but Indian women did. SEWA
DAWN identifies a fourth type of organization, one that mushroomed during the 1975-85 period as a result of the foreign money
and interest being showered on women. Many had no history or
resource base other than the contract work they were able to undertake. While some evolved into participatory development organizations, others remained weak and dependent, basically dancing to a
donor's tune. The cost extracted by such organizations from poor
communities can be high. Take for example the scattered, povertystricken rural community of Darsano Charno, on the edge of the Thar
Desert north-west of Karachi. At about the time DAWN was develop-
ing its typology, Darsano Charno was attempting to deal with its
increasingly serious health problems. Elders had seen how other communities had formed village associations which could attract external
assistance for tubewells and water tanks. So, deciding that the answer
to their problems was a doctor, they registered the 'Darsano Charno
Social Welfare Association' in 1984. They pooled their resources, and
constructed the building that they were told was necessary to house
an out-patient clinic and a maternal-child health centre.
and in a conservative Muslim area, this meant that women could not
be treated. Because the women looked after the children, and because the distance for most was great, children were also not being
treated.
Enter an international NGO, Pathfinder International, with a contract
to execute a USAID family planning project. After several discussions
with the village association, Pathfinder realized that the villagers were
having trouble with basic problem identification: they had now decided
that the answer to their health difficulties was an ambulance that could
take the sick to Karachi. They also seemed to have little knowledge of
development, no education or relevant training, and few of the things
that they would need, such as staff, to qualify for a grant. Nevertheless,
Pathfinder worked with them, and early in 1988, a very small project
was put in place, involving the provision of a Lady Health Visitor, and
training for teams of local men and women who would work in the
surrounding areas on family planning and motivation.
Because the USAID project had to do with family planning, however, there was no money for medicine. Only birth control supplies.
The LHV, therefore, could not treat women who came to the clinic
with health complaints, nor could she treat their children. They had to
be referred to the doctor in the adjacent room, the doctor who could
not see them because he was a man. In June that year, the place
looked like a scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (or possibly
Catch 22). Rocky, barren soil under a blazing sun. A silent clinic with
a Lady Health Visitor sitting alone in an empty room, because now
even the family planning supplies had run out, Flies are buzzing.
Outside, seven men are complaining bitterly about joblessness, and
wondering how they can get an ambulance. They show visitors the
Pathfinder project document, written in English, a language they can-
not read. It says that the project, which has no provision for selfgenerated income, is expected to become self-sufficient in three
years.'2
there is a glaring absence of substantive material on practical experiences, whether grass-roots, welfare, equity or empowermentoriented. It is almost as though concrete activity has been sidelined in
miles distant from the nearest power point - perhaps sparing the
intended beneficiaries from the pink elephant syndrome.
Writing three years later, Sally Yudelman described a similar situation with regard to NGO activities in Latin America. Foreign NGOs
'pride themselves on their sensitivity to local cultures and their ability
to work successfully at the community level. They do not want to be
accused of cultural imperialism by tampering with sex roles.'15 In
Yudelman's sample, they tended to focus on women as home makers
and to ignore their economic role. Where they did focus on income
generation, the emphasis, among both foreign and domestic NGOs,
was on traditional things like sewing and canning.
One could perhaps take cold comfort from the fact that many
income-generation projects - not just those of NGOs, and not just
those targeted towards women - suffer generically from the same
failings. But it would not be entirely true. Women's projects suffer
89
fact that people pay lip service to the rhetoric of gender does not
mean they necessarily take on the issues in practice.'16
Even if a gender policy, backed by sound analysis, is in place, there
are further roadblocks. The irony in attempting to discern alternatives
for women is that many potential options are closed off in the very
early years of a woman's life. In far too many countries girls receive
less care and attention than boys. Their food intake is lower and their
it focuses on a particular constraint which, when removed, is expected to allow beneficiaries to advance.
not exceed KSh2000 ($80) and each borrower had to have three
guarantors,
Although new and relatively small, by 1990 the CARE programme
found itself with the same sort of results as larger organizations like
SEWA and Grameen Bank. Despite the high rates of interest charged
by the groups to their members, on-time repayment rates were in the
neighbourhood of 95 per cent. Perhaps more important was the dis-
technical assistance. Moreover, it was capable of reaching large numbers of poor women.*
A superficial glance, therefore, seems to bear out minimalist claims
that the availability of credit, with limited training and technical support, can enable women to increase their incomes, and more importantly, can enable them to move into newer and more profitable lines
of work, becoming in some cases, microentrepreneurs themselves.20
A more rigorous examination reveals that this is only partially true. As
with other organizations, virtually all the CARE loans were for trading.
The women, many of whom were already petty traders, simply took
their loan down the road to the first big town where they purchased
maize, sorghum, soap or clothes. They then returned home to sell at
whatever mark-up the traffic would bear. This approach can be particularly successful in a district where village market economies are
weak and where the availability of capital is stunted. The project proved, as have many others, that poor women can be good credit risks.
They were increasing their incomes and building a savings cushion. But
there was little or no value-added in what they were doing, no increase
in productivity, no reduced dependence on external sources of supply.
And to assume that there are many opportunities where poor women
can quickly repay a loan which costs between 5 and 20 per cent per
month, and make a profit, is to live in a technicolour dreamland.
Women borrowers assuredly make the best of their loans, but without help, the value-added may be limited, and their endeavours may
well be limited to the narrow confines of the world in which they are
generally restricted. This is why so many never get beyond traditional
handicrafts, food processing and petty trade. It would be a very unusual
individual who could create a job or even a meaningful increase in
income for herself with a $100 loan. This is confirmed by statistics from
Grameen Bank, where efforts to develop new investment opportunities
have been limited and mainly unsuccessful. This may be, in part, because the Bank firmly believes that 'the borrower knows best'. Over 90
per cent of the Bank's 1992 loans were made to women, yet more than
70 per cent were for a limited number of traditional activities: mainly
milk cows, paddy husking and cattle fattening. One study found that
after ten years of borrowing, about half the members' families were no
longer living in poverty, a remarkable achievement. As for moving on
to higher value-added activities, however, success was less marked.21
Without tried investment opportunities based on sound technical information and knowledge (there is a difference), minimalist credit progranimes for women will probably result in either slow or minimal
improvements.
*By June, 1994, the total loan portfolio had grown to KSh9.9 million (US$214 000),
reaching 245 groups and about 6000 women.
92
A sectoral approach
Genuine productive and meaningful income generation for poor
women remains an extremely difficult proposition. In Bangladesh, approximately 70 per cent of landless rural women are directly or indirectly involved in poultry, each keeping, on average, two or three birds.
Most chickens survive by scavenging, and are fed on household waste
and crop residue. Each bird produces about 40 to 60 eggs a year, far
less than both demand and need. Because of the scavenging regime
and poor or non-existent veterinary services, the average mortality rate
of village birds is as high as 40 per cent.22
BRAG, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, realized that
by reducing the high death rate in birds, by improving the local breed,
and by providing a technical support package, an effective economic
programme for poor landless women was possible. An experimental
BRAG system began with the chick rearer (all poultry workers are
women) who each took 300 baby chicks for two months. Then came
the 'key rearer' who took one cock and ten hens. A 'poultry worker'
provided vaccination services and an egg collector, obviously, collected eggs. Each worker was provided with training, a loan facility and
the necessary equipment: a medical kit, for example, in the case of the
vaccinator. Each became part of a commercial chain where services or
chickens were bought and sold - from each other, not BRAG. The
vaccinator, for example, responsible for a thousand birds, earns about
two US cents per vaccination.
lished in each programme area, creating both jobs and a decentralized supply. Day-old chicks presented another problem.
Commercial hatcheries were both expensive and, ultimately, unable
to keep pace with the BRAG demand. After experimentation with a
heat-generation technique based on the use of rice husks instead of
electricity, five small hatcheries were developed, each capable of
producing a thousand chicks a month.
By 1992, there were over 65000 women involved in the programme, but that was only the beginning. By the turn of the century,
BRAG expects to have over 300 000 women involved in its poultry
operations, each in relatively simple, discrete activities, but operating
to any project, whether for men or women. But there are important
lessons that relate specifically to women. First, the targeted sector, in
this case poultry, should have large numbers of poor women already
in it. In the BRAG example, one reason for success was that chickens
were not new to women. Secondly, there should be a strong market
for the product. And third, there should be government recognition of
the sector's importance in order to promote supportive policy measures. For sustainable success, it may be necessary to build - and to
keep building - follow-up activities which recognize changing market dynamics. Above all, of course, the activity must be profitable,
with a realistic calculation of profit, including the opportunity cost of
the enterprise, and the possibility or even likelihood that some of the
income will be appropriated by a male family member.
This approach can be further subdivided. Marilyn Garr suggests
four distinctions.24 The first is increased productivity of known or
existing work through improved technologies, techniques and sup-
Empowerment revisited
So far this chapter has dealt mainly with gender theory and with
questions of economic empowerment. Despite the problems of getting it right, however, economic empowerment is not the same thing
as the social empowerment that correctly preoccupies much of the
on a woman's day, her role in the family, and her role in the
community.
Longwe breaks women's development into a hierarchy of five crite-
ria. The first and most basic has to do with welfare: the relative wel-
standing of the difference between sex roles and gender roles, and
that the latter are cultural and can be changed ... . a belief in sexual
equality'. The fourth criterion is participation. 'Equality of participation means involving women. in the same proportion in decisionmaking bodies as their proportion in the community'. And the fifth
criterion is control: 'equality of control over the distribution of benefits', a balance of control between men and women so that neither
side is in a position of dominance or subordination.
This rather liberating definition means that even a very simple project aiming to provide relief to a community in distress could well
meet all these criteria. And a credit project for women, with a 98 per
cent recovery rate, might meet the second criterion alone: access to
resources. In such a project there might be nothing in the way of
relative change between men and women in welfare; there may have
been no conscientization, no participation, and husbands may well
take all the money earned by their wives. It is an analysis which can
shine a rather different and important light on accepted wisdom, on
ways to assess project proposals, and ways to evaluate projects in
progress.
It can also liberate organizations from the idea that all projects for
women must in some way be tied to health, 'mothering' or income
generation. There is, in fact, a wide range of promising 'empowerment' projects that have little to do with economics. Sistren, a
Jamaican theatre group of working-class women has for almost two
decades helped women and men examine gender issues through the
medium of entertainment, drama, and even humour. Women's groups
in India are leading the struggle to reduce alcoholism and to stop the
sale of liquor in their villages, in order to reduce family violence and
to improve the economic position of their families. In East Africa,
'family life education' projects deal with questions of mutual respect
.
96
and conflict resolution, not only between men and women, but between generations. Legal rdorm and the simple creation of greater
protection and 'space' for women can lay the groundwork for other
kinds of empowerment. Brazilian 'women's police stations' and special Bangladesh bank branches for women are examples.
Empowerment, in both its social and its economic manifestations, is
the essential core of any activity that is serious about improving the lot
of women. Competence * including the business skills necessary for
successful income generation projects, including institutional com-
97
CHAPTER VI
Boutros Boutros-Ghali'.
What Is a disaster?
Over the past decade it has become clear - in places like Ethiopia,
the Sudan and Cambodia, that the old idea of a disaster as a disconnected event, separate from 'normal' life and distinct from the
98
halved fishing on the River Niger and reduced harvests from traditional floodplain agriculture. Between 1979 and 1985, 40 World Bank-
financed projects for agriculture and hydro-electric power development resulted in the forced resettlement of 600 000 people in 27 countries, with devastating consequences for their health and livelihoods.3
will put a lake on top of two cities, 140 towns, 4500 villages and
30000 hectares of farmland. Resettlement, not a great humanitarian
success in other Chinese projects, will be required of more than a
million people.5
The examples given here also demonstrate that the distinction between 'sudden', 'creeping' and 'chronic' disasters is one filled with
ambiguity and broad areas of greyness. Were the 1984 Union Carbide
disaster in Bhopal or the Chernobyl meltdown man-made or natural?
In their immediate confines, they were obviously man-made; but it
was wind that put them into the league of mega-disasters. The Ethiopian drought of 1984 6 was natural, but what turned it into a disaster
was a witches' brew of bad economic policies and a slow, inadequate
response when the problem was recognized. Although the Ethiopian
disaster may have seemed rather 'sudden' to the world's press, it had
been creeping up for ten years. And looking at Ethiopia a decade after
Bob Geldof and the popular music industry became involved, the
disaster would appear to have become rather chronic.
Democracy has a good deal to do with preventing disasters like the
one that has afflicted Ethiopia for two decades. India, which has a free
effort in the South has been relief oriented, resulting in the creation of
other large NGOs: the Adventist Development and Relief Agency,
Catholic Relief Services, the Lutheran World Federation.
When the initial disaster these agencies sought to address was over,
each faced a choice: to disband or to continue. Many had started their
efforts in Europe, and with the independence movement, they logically turned their attention south. Most also moved away from disaster relief into development programming. While they retained a
capacity to deal with emergencies, the logic was, and remains, that it
is better and cheaper to deal with the underlying causes of the poverty
and vulnerability that contribute to disaster, than it is to wait until a
situation is out of control.
and financially independent of the League of Red Cross Societies, and from
national Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Lion and Sun Societies. UNICEF is not a
relief agency, but it does have a unique mandate to operate in countries that are
not recognized by the United Nations.
102
The airlift and the broader relief effort was also something else. It
was an act of unfortunate and profound folly. It prolonged the war
for 18 months, because the relief agencies believed, incorrectly as it
turned out, that an unrestrained Nigerian Government would unleash a final genocidal bloodbath against Ibos, should Biafra collapse. This was a willing suspension of disbelief. By mid-1968, half
of the Eastern Region, along with a large number of Ibos, had been
liberated. Large areas of the Midwest State, liberated in the early days
of the war, were also Ibo-speaking. There had been no massacres in
any of these areas.
A great deal of post-war effort went into refuting the charge that the
churches and NGOs prolonged the war. Because if it is true, they must
leled again until the last days of the war. The food situation was
terrible and the military predicament was worse. Onitsha, Port Harcourt, Calabar and the capital, Enugu, had all fallen to rapidly advanc-
ing Nigerian forces. Little stood between Biafra and total defeat.
Explaining how Biafra survived this period, Odumegwu Ojukwu later
cited three factors: Biafra's logistical advantage, operating in a small
104
enclave with a good network of paved roads; the long supply lines
faced by the advancing Nigerians; and the financial assistance he was
receiving from the relief agencies. 'The only source of income available to Biafra was the hard currency spent by the churches for yams
and gari. That's all. At this stage we had no loans or anything else. It
wasn't much, but it was enough to sustain us.'13
Ojukwu was referring to the massive doses of hard currency he
needed for weapons, the hard currency made available by relief agen-
this was spent inside Biafra, it would have provided the regime with
as much foreign exchange as was spent by Nigeria on arms through-
out the war.'8 Such a figure does not take into account the hard
currency with which Biafra started the war, nor does it include the
direct provision of money and arms supplied by France, Portugal and
other countries with a stake in seeing Nigeria collapse.
While the rapid escalation of relief activities helped Biafra to survive
the late summer and early autumn of 1968, it essentially transformed
a potential country into little more than an object of pity. Interpreted largely through the eyes of relief agencies, Biafra became a
105
moved in and had started to pick up some of the pieces when the
Pakistan army began its murderous crackdown on Bengali nationalists. This fomented a full-fledged revolt, retaliatory military action
against civilians, starvation, a massive exodus of refugees and finally,
a war with India, Because NGOs were already there when the fighting
broke out, dealing with the havoc created by the cyclone, they were
well placed to assist victims of the civil strife. More importantly, they
carried the story of Pakistani military atrocities to the outside world.
lion, crops had not been planted, and the infrastructure of a badly
underdeveloped country was virtually destroyed. More than a hundred
106
too many outsiders provided too much relief, too uncritically. But it
was a time of great need and tremendous energy, and after Biafra,
where many of these same relief workers had cut their teeth, questioning motives and techniques was not the fashionable thing that it
became in later years.2
Bangladesh was perhaps the beginning of a recognition that major
emergencies were likely to he a continuing phenomenon. As the war in
Vietnam began to wind down, many foresaw the need for massive relief
and reconstruction efforts throughout Indochina. Although their timing
was off, they were not wrong. In the interim, UNICEF established an
emergency operations unit in 1971, and a year later a United Nations
Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO) was created. During the 1970s, emergency units were created throughout the UN system: in FAQ, UNHCR,
WHO, the World Food Programme and the Pan-American Health Organization. But the lacklustre performance of many of these institutions,
especially of the World Food Programme during the Sahelian drought of
1974, served only to strengthen the reputation of NGOs.
UN agencies suffered from the sluggish bureaucracy that can accompany any large organization. Worse, however, their mandates were often
uncertain and they were entirely dependent upon the goodwill and
largesse of their members. These members are national governments,
and if they want to delay, block or otherwise hamper a United Nations
operation, there are dozens of arrows in their quiver that can do it. A
simple lack of money, imposed almost entirely by governments, has
fuelled a thousand media attacks on UN 'incompetence'.
Take, for example, Angola, where the civil war which began in
1974 was still raging two decades later. Six UN agencies along with 45
international and 41 local NGOs, heavily supported financially by UN
been allowed to occupy the Cambodian seat at the UN, only two
multilateral agencies had access to the country: ICRC and UNICEF. As
in Biafra, however, these two organizations had to please a government that had understandable political concerns, not least of which
was the fact that much of the Khmer Rouge army had fled to refugee
camps in Thailand, where ICRC and UNICEF, among others, were
already providing assistance.*
*This concern was not diminished by a meeting between Kurt Waldheim and leng
Sary, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, who thanked the Secretary General for the assistance ICRC and UNICEF were providing to his people on the ThaiCambodia border.
108
Ten years earlier, Oxfam had been diverted from direct action in
Biafra by ICRC and UNICEF, and so it was no longer willing to be put
off by their promises that they could and would act. Following its own
chartered a barge, filled it with food, seeds and agricultural equipment, and, standing on the bridge of an appropriately named tug,
Asiatic Success, had it towed 640 nautical miles to the port of Kompong Som.22 It was a spectacular start to an odd arrangement, in
which a consortium of NGOs, led by Oxfam, filled an aid vacuum
created by the Cold War. More than that, however, Oxfam and other
NGOs continued to speak out about the on-going neglect of Cambodia and the preposterous seating of the Khmer Rouge at the United
Nations.* In 1982, Oxfam published a booklet on the subject, The
poverty of diplomacy, and in 1986, 20 NGOs formed a consortium to
campaign for an end to the aid embargo, publishing another critique,
Punishin,g the poor.
The ICRC and UNICEF were eventually able to start operations, and
NGOs operating in the border area, and a year later there were nearly
60. The need to help the refugees could not be denied, but there were
more cynical motives behind some of the money that became available. The United States and Thailand had a particular interest in destabilizing the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and half a million
or so refugees helped to do this. Some of the refugees were Khmer
Rouge cadres, housed in special camps where, with international care
and feeding, they lived to fight another day.
However, this was perhaps not the worst of it. The border operation revealed all the imbalances and weaknesses of international
relief efforts. The border operation was significantly better financed
than most refugee operations, receiving three times per capita what
later went to Afghan refugees and eight times what went to refugees
in western Somalia.25 Despite the level of effort, inappropriate types
of assistance were rampant. Any relief operation is bound to have its
share of junk and stupidity: Go-Slim Soup to Somalia; outdated baby
partly because in some countries they have been suppressed, or because in others they are a relatively recent phenomenon. In Cambodia, for example, the first national development NGO, Khmera, was
not formed until 1991. But it is also because many of the resources, at
least until the 1980s, were controlled by Northern NGOs who, although perhaps working through a local institution, tended to control
both events and publicity. Publicity notwithstanding, the European
churches certainly could not have worked in Biafra without local
counterparts. The same was true in Ethiopia and in Eritrea and Tigray,
the foreigners simply gave up and walked away, and left the damned
stuff there for people to fight over,'
As Director of CUSO's Asia programme, Cournoyer and his colleagues had good contacts with Thai NGOs. And because CUSO had
no emergency experience, it could lOok at the camps from a slightly
different perspective. After discussions with UNHCR, which was desperate for assistance from any organization with a management capacity, CUSO agreed to take responsibility for the 45-acre Kab Cherng
cases worse off than the refugees, so camp health facilities were
opened to them as well.
In Kab Cherng, the work was done almost exclusively by Thais,
working for Thai organizations. The Community-Based Emergency
Relief Services handled food distribution, camp maintenance and sanitation. Education was handled by two NGOs, under-five activities
were managed by Friends For All Children Foundation, and Mahidol
University administered medical and nutritional programmes.
Teachers to run the schools were found among the refugees, Cambo-
ation in the general scheme of things. The most lasting impact was
probably felt by the Thai NGOs, who not only worked together for the
first time, but who developed the confidence to institutionalize their
relationship in a larger project outside the camps when the emergency was over. Over the next decade, the North-east Thailand Project became a demonstration of how Thais, when given the challenge
and the opportunity, could band together to work effectively in a poor
area largely ignored by the international development establishment.
Eventually a new Thai NGO was established, the NET Foundation,
institutionalizing a development approach that had started as an ad
hoc relief programme.
priorities. Such a dispute arose over rice seed and what became
known as the 'land bridge' between Thailand and Cambodia. In 1979,
only a quarter of Cambodia's rice fields were planted, resulting in the
food crisis of 1980. It was clear that if rice was not planted in 1980, the
situation would become much worse in 1981. Seeing a rather simple
solution, CARE made a proposal to UNICEF: instead of providing only
113
packaging, and the need for care in handling seeds that had been
treated with pesticide. Frustrated and angry, and seeing only the need
rice seed programme took the western part of Cambodia a long way
it was a logical way to make good use of the skills and expertise
CARE people had built up over many years.'35 Three years later in
Ethiopia, NGOs (including the ICRC) were directly involved in the
distribution of 60 to 70 per cent of all emergency food aid, the bulk
of it derived from western governments and UN agencies. And in
Eritrea and Tigray, NGOs were probably involved in handling more
than 90 per cent of the relief assistance.6
the Biafran War, and its covert but eager supply of arms to the
Nigerian Government is mirrored almost precisely a quarter century
later by the French supply of arms, aid, diplomatic succour and troops
to the genocidal Hutu regime in Rwanda. President Nixon's deliberate
primarily the United States - led to the exodus of between five and
six million people into Iran and Pakistan, almost 40 per cent of the
country's entire population. Between 1978 and 1989, an estimated 1.3
million people died, of whom 60 per cent were civilians.37
Repeated requests from the Government of Ethiopia in 1983 for
emergency food aid were largely ignored by Western governments,
inured to what they believed, or chose to believe was exaggeration by
a brutal, pro-Soviet regime. The US and Britain had stopped their own
bilateral assistance and managed to spike various forms of multilateral
assistance as well, ignoring the pleas for assistance until their noses
were rubbed in a disaster that eventually drove a million people from
their homes. It also took the lives of something between five hundred
thousand and a million Ethiopians. The Cold War had left Somalia
fractured and destabilized when a drought occurred only a few years
later. The first appeal from the Government of Somalia to USAID for
emergency drought assistance was made in February, 1987, The appeal, which the Somalian Government costed at $750 000 for aid to an
estimated 880 000 people, was dismissed as alarmist.38 Stonewalling,
bickering over numbers, and the active deterrence of other donors by
USAID marked the following months, and set the stage for Somalia's
long downward slide into anarchy and death. Between 1989 and
1992, Canada alone spent more than 1300 times in Somalia what the
Somalian Government had requested of USAID in 1987: more than
Canada spent in a year in all the rest of Africa. And when Canada
finally scurried away with the others, there was little to show for the
effort.39
new. But as the years passed, with the advent of more and more
NGOs, with a growing need for development money and an increasing number of disasters, and with a prolonged recession in the early
1990s, competition has increased. There are certainly admirable examples of efforts to co-ordinate fundraising appeals. A joint Disaster
Relief Agency was created by Dutch NGOs in 1993. Similar arrangements, usually of an ad hoc nature, have been tried in other countries.
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) in Britain has seven participating organizations,* and between 1966 and 1993 they ran 35 joint
appeals. But getting into the DEC is extremely difficult, and other
organizations with legitimate field operations are unable to benefit.
*Red Cross, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children, ActionAid and Help
the Aged.
116
Zealand, World Vision raises more money than all other NGOs in
those countries combined, and it has established a good foothold in
Britain and mainland Europe. Like World Vision, Mdecins sans Frontires, another fast-growing swashbuckler, has been accused of using
self-coordination. There have been other examples: in Somalia, Ethiopia, Angola, and in the Oxfam Cambodia consortium of 1979-80.
There are, however, horror stories about inept and costly competition.
In 1980 there were 37 foreign agencies working in the Kao I Dang
refugee camp in Thailand, one frequently visited by foreign journalists
eral donors are often the worst instigators of competition and miscoordination, and there are 16 different UN agencies with a mandate
to work in relief and emergency situations. Until a smaller number are
effectively mandated and adequately funded to co-ordinate relief op-
than lists of what was provided. The same mistakes are therefore
made over and over again: the same scrambles, the same problems of
inadequate or inappropriate supplies, the same sort of highly dedicated but often inexperienced relief workers trying to figure out what
to do.
creased by 150 per cent between 1990 and 1992, and the Foreign
Ministry says that 'Dutch NGOs, which have a relatively limited operational capacity at present, have a duty to strengthen this capacity'.43
British refugee and disaster relief, programmed mainly through UN
agencies and the Red Cross in the early 1980s, is increasingly channelled through British NGOs, and by the early 1990s, 75 per cent of
British food aid was going the same way. Over 40 per cent of SIDA
code of conduct for implementing disaster relief.* The Code says that
the humanitarian imperative comes first, that aid should not be used
to further a particular political or religious standpoint, and that signatories should not act as instruments of government. It also calls for
greater involvement of, and respect for beneficiaries, especially in the
way they are represented in fundraising and media campaigns.
However, more money and a code of conduct are only part of the
sea change that is taking place for NGOs. The rapid growth in emergency budgets has altered thinking about the relationship between
relief and development. There is a great deal of important new writing
o Both relief and development programmes should be more concerned with increasing local capacities and reducing vulnerabilities
than with providing goods, services or technical assistance. In fact,
o The way that such resources are transferred must be held to the
same test.
butchery began, it chose the latter option, cutting the force to 270
personnel. The murder rate skyrocketed. In May, UN Secretary Gen-
nalist (of whom there were plenty). Once again, the UN took the
blame for the knots and procrastination imposed on it by its member
governments; the same members paying for pious research into disaster preparedness, mapping, human rights and conflict resolution. During the last half of 1994, the Rwandan crisis cost the international
community $700 million, roughly double what Rwanda had received
portant word. That something cannot he seen does not negate its
existence. International and local NGOs, along with hundreds of
community-based organizations, played an important role in the
peaceful conclusion to decades of South African strife. External politi-
America's civil wars during the 1980s.49 Unsung, NGOs and UN agen-
Lesson 4: Politics
There are other lessons to be drawn from NGO emergency work.
Despite great efforts on the part of most NGOs to appear neutral or
'apolitical' during the Cold War, the record reveals something different. In most of the major disasters of the past two decades, NGOs
have repeatedly provided relief, succour, foreign exchange and legit-
paid protection money to warlords, encouraged and mostly applauded massive foreign military intervention, and then many of them
ran away with the armies of the world when the guinea-pig died.5
At the time, and in retrospect, much of this was understandable. But
the British organization, African Rights, questions the new, expansive
humanitarian role that NGOs have taken on. It believes that whenever
there is a clash between the charitable imperative on one hand, and
on the other, principles of justice, rights, conflict resolution and advocacy, fundraising NGOs will always go with the charitable impera-
122
short-term financial benefit, between powerful competing institutional and political demands. They are unclear on how to balance
delivery and advocacy. There is a very good possibility that they may
simply be a convenient way for the international system to let itself off
the hook of responsibility. The overall impact of these changes on the
scope, direction and purpose of voluntary action for development has
already been enormous, and it is not likely to diminish.
Today, war is a thing that takes place mainly in the Third World.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute calculates that
40 million people died between 1945 and 1992, in 165 major armed
conflicts.52 During this entire period, not a single person was ever
charged or tried by an international body for war crimes. (This may be
said, 'I have seen the future, and it works'. It didn't, actually. And it
still doesn't.
123
CHAPTER VII
public
God down, Devil up In French survey
PARIS (Reuter) - Belief in God is declining, but belief in the devil is
rising in France, an opinion poll on religious attitudes showed Wednesday. The GSA Institute poll for Le Monde newspaper found 61 per cent
of French people believed more or less in God, compared with 66 per
cent eight years ago. Thirty-four per cent said they believe in the devil,
up from 24 per cent in 1986.1
ALTHOUGH 'STRAW POLLS' began almost two centuries ago, public opin-
ion polling has become very big business in the past three decades.
Most widely used by political parties and private sector firms to test
opinion poll in the United States found that American support for
124
Sweden, the decline that began in 1988 reversed itself three years
later, and the 25-34 age group that had registered only 56 per cent
positive in 1991, had become 72 per cent positive by 1994. While
Canadian polls show that support has fluctuated over the years, the
1993 level was almost precisely what it was in 1979.
The 1993 US poll is particularly interesting, because there were, in
fact, two polls conducted at almost the same time by different firms,
.'. Further,
improvement over 1984; while in Japan the trend moved the other
way by 2 per cent between 1991 and 1992, but remained over 80 per
cent, In Australia, 73 per cent approve of aid, and only 11 per cent
disapprove.8
cans were asked whether the country is now spending 'too little', 'too
much' or 'the right amount' on 'assistance to the poor', there was a ten
to one view that too little was being spent. When the same question
was asked about 'welfare' spending, 42 per cent said spending was
too high.9
Manipulation notwithstanding, can it be concluded from the evidence that we have reached 'the point of crisis' in public support that
Pearson described in 1969? Despite fairly good evidence to the con-
the crisis, and the climate that is heavy with disillusion and distrust
actually lies within aid agencies, and does not extend as far into
public opinion as is thought. Examples of the crisis within the aid
establishment can be found in the United States, where a wide variety
of respected pro-aid NGO and advocacy groups began calling in the
late 1980s and early 1990s for a fundamental overhaul, and in some
cases, the complete abolition of USAID because of the subversion of
its aims and objectives to political and commercial interests.'0 A
126
detailed 1993 interview-study of senior Canadian development executives found the community 'marked by pessimism and despair' over
budget cuts, politicization and the rise of commercial priorities.11
Speaking at the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in
Copenhagen, Richard Jolly, Acting Director of UNICEF said, 'We
should cut through the cynicism and despair which at times seems to
entangle the corridors of this conference'.12 Rather than public aid
fatigue, there is strong evidence of an 'aid administration fatigue'. The
Reality of Aid 94, a joint NGO review of development assistance, says
that 'among politicians and commentators, there appears to be a lack
of confidence in aid, which translates itself into nervousness about
and North America that national governments are not the most
useful or effective means of channelling development assistance to
the Third World (this is discussed further, below);
o the 'greying' of aid management. The phenomenal growth through
the 1960s and early 1970s of bilateral, multilateral and nongovernmental organizations slowed in the 1980s, and the 1990s
have been marked in many by severe 'down-sizing'. Individuals
who entered the field in the 1960s and 1970s have reached the top,
and will not move on until they retire, which for most will be well
into the next century. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for
127
spread in the rate of growth: between 1990 and 1993, bilateral disbursements grew barely 4 per cent, while NGO disbursements rose by
almost 24 per cent. 14 The general trend, therefore, was one of continuous and relative growth over a decade.
Some of the largest Northern NGOs are actually growing both consistently and rapidly. The private Canadian cash income of World Vision
Canada rose 25 per cent between 1991 and 1994. Christian Children's
Fund grew 43 per cent in New Zealand between 1994 and 1995. In
Japan, Foster Parents Plan grew by 25 per cent between 1991 and 1992,
and in the Netherlands, between 1986 and 1991, the same organization
grew by 104 per cent. In Britain, ActionAid had a 15 per cent increase
between 1992 and 1993; Christian Aid grew 46 per cent between 1991
and 1992. Plan International grew from a worldwide income of $144
million in 1990, to $207 million in 1994, a 44 per cent increase. Although its income for emergencies tends to fluctuate wildly, Save the
Children grew from 56 million in 1991 to 100 million in 1992, a 79 per
cent increase.15 In fact among all British charities, the biggest gain 20
per cent after adjustment for inflation - was registered by the international agencies. Religious missionary work was next (at 7 per cent),
while arts, environment and animal protection lagged far behind. 16
In the United States, the first six NGOs (listed alphabetically) in the
1993 InterAction Directory recorded average growth rates in private
donor income of 28.9 per cent between 1990 and 1991.* Some of the
larger NGOs such as SCF(US), World Vision and Childreach were
relatively flat, but CARE donations rose 27 per cent between 1991 and
1993, and Oxfam America had an increase of 15.6 per cent between
1990 and 1991.17
*These were ACCION, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, the AfricanAmerican Institute, AMREF, Africare and the Aga Khan Foundation.
128
It is not difficult to find holes in such statistics. Many of the organizations mentioned are heavily engaged in emergency relief work,
and there were, during the years cited, a wide variety of major disaster
appeals. This does not in any way validate the 'aid fatigue' argument,
however. Quite the opposite, in fact, it demonstrates that humanitarian appeals, at least, have not lost ground. The same is not true for
those many NGOs not involved with relief work that have experienced falling income in recent years. This may be for reasons that
have nothing to do with 'aid fatigue':
o the genuine impact of recession. This may have some effect on
donor giving, but not necessarily on attitudes;
o government cutbacks and the growing need for welfare assistance
at home. Again, this may affect donor giving, but not necessarily
attitudes. As noted above, it is certainly not the case in Britain;
o the ever-increasing number of NGOs has made fundraising more
difficult. Growth of the 'pie' may be outpacing inflation, but it must
be divided among more organizations: 1600 NGOs in OECD Member countries in 1980, and well over 3000 in 1993.18 If donors are
would he obvious. In the few cases where they do, the results are
depressing. A 1993 Lou Harris poll discovered that Americans know
sent to poor countries never gets to the people who most need jt.24
(This sort of contradiction occurs in virtually every poll.) While beliefs
about the positive effects of aid are relatively strong in the United
States, only 18 per cent believe that the US Government does the best
job in delivering it. In 1993, a remarkable 47 per cent favoured the
130
The first stage is one of 'consciousness-raising'. Consciousnessraising, he says, is more than simple awareness, it is a blend of increased awareness with concern and readiness for action, as can be
seen in the women's movement, the environmental movement, or
responses to the danger of AIDS. There are usually a number of
serious obstacles to genuine consciousness-raising. One highly variable factor is time: some things take longer than others. The modern
women's movement has taken more than a century to get to its present position, while consciousness-raising on AIDS took less than a
decade. Another factor is the 'cogency of events'. Nothing advances
consciousness-raising as forcefully as events that dramatize the issue.
Other factors include the perceived applicability of the issue to one's
self, the concreteness and clarity of the issue, the credibility of information sources, and the quantity of information the issue receives.
Yankelovich calls his second stage, 'working through'. Sometimes
this is relatively easy, often it is not. And the result may depend upon
how the consciousness-raising was carried out. 'Working through'
means, essentially, that attitudes must change along with overt behaviour. An issue will be poorly launched into stage two if:
o people do not understand what the possibilities for action are;
o if they are given insufficient and inadequate choice;
o if they do not grasp what the consequences of the various choices
would be;
131
follow. There is an obvious opportunity here for development cooperation, because all opinion polls from all countries show a very
strong public desire to help when people elsewhere are in trouble.
The media
A commonly asked question in many opinion polls has to do with a
person's source of information. Not surprisingly, in most countries
television is the most important source of information on the Third
132
flickering only dimly on the media radar by the end of the year,
despite a continuing human disaster.
A ten-year study of foreign news coverage on US network television
concluded that between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, when television basically replaced radio and the print media as the primary source
of public information, and when the technology became available to
access international stories faster and cheaper, there was no marked
increase in foreign news coverage.3' A ten-year study of Third World
coverage in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune found that
conflicts dominated the news and that there was a stereotyped bias
against the South which fostered 'images of Third World nations as
political systems rife with conflict'.32 A two-month 1992 analysis of ten
French newspapers and journals, and the 8 p.m. news bulletins of the
two major television stations, found the same thing. Although there
were obviously differences between outlets, the image of the South
was, globally, negative: it was portrayed as a largely abstract and almost
singular society, prone to war, famine, disease and natural disaster. The
most common stories, derived almost exclusively from Northern observers, dealt with 'the incompetence of [the South's] governments, the
the news back, with little fuss and no more money than we are
already spending. But we have to decide to do it. Readers must say
what they want. Correspondents must provide it. And then, if editors
open the gates, the rest will follow.'35 No one will open a bureau in
Utopia, he warns, but concerted audience influence can work.
Today, added to the problems identified by journalists themselves,
there are two new trends: a major blurring of the line between news
and entertainment, and the populism of television news. Along with
many others, communications specialist Daniel Hallin decries the fact
that news in North America and elsewhere is increasingly reduced to
tiny 'soundbites', and to what is becoming known as 'trash television':
tabloid 'news programmes' and talk shows, such as Oprab! or Larry
King Live, which may feature transvestites and diets one night, and the
orous democracy' (as the saying goes) . . [but] the problem with
American news media [lies] with the fact that the major relation of
.
134
and trade; between charity, as some NGOs say quite clearly, and
justice.
some large, some small, working in the formal education system, with
churches, organized labour, with media and cultural institutions, tak-
ing development messages into the school, the workplace and the
home. Development education began in most places with basic information about the South, and about development assistance. Gradu-
ally, in the 1970s and 1980s, it grew into a more mature form of
pedagogy, encouraging critical analysis, reflection and action on the
information that was being provided, not unlike what Yankelovich
calls 'working through'. From the beginning, some NGOs took development education a step further, moving into campaigning and
advocacy on issues related to the scale and focus of official development assistance, and into more political issues such as the independence struggles in Southern Africa, human rights, racism, immigration
and the environment.
Increasingly, Southern NGOs have urged their Northern partners to
devote greater energies to an activist style of development education,
to reorient their activities and to attack, for example, the 'policies of
ment education budgets, and for undue timidity. On the other hand,
some NGOs have come under serious fire from the media, politicians
and the public for being anti-government, anti-capitalist, even prorevolutionary. The Charity Commissioners for England and Wales are
notorious throughout the international NGO world for their policing
of British NGO campaigns and development education. Some governments, in particular the United States, are expressly forbidden from
supporting activities which might he considered propaganda or lobbying, even in support of government positions. Under such circumstances, an NGO would therefore he unable to lobby in favour, for
example, of an aid budget increase (or against a decrease). While not
forbidden in other countries, lobbying, campaigning and advocacy
are often only barely tolerated. And because many NGOs today are
heavily reliant on their government for a high proportion of their
income, there is inevitably a measure of self-censorship, even where
Most individuals writing about development education and campaigning list the more notable successes:
o a code of conduct for the marketing of baby milk;
o the drafting of an international essential drugs list;
o the removal of certain trade restrictions;
o the creation of an emergency EC food reserve;
o the imposition of sanctions against Rhodesia and South Africa.48
British NGOs have campaigned successfully, twice in the past decade, to prevent cuts to the aid budget. NGO-run alternative trading
organizations like Tearfund, Oxfam Trading and the Max Havelaar
NGO programme found that 'audience members for DevEd programmes learn, believe and do things they didn't before. And,
compared with the general American public, DevEd audiences have
much stronger support for foreign assistance and understanding of
There is, nevertheless, a paucity - almost a fear in the development education community - of serious evaluation. One examination of the subject says that 'Grassroots development education in
activities are based upon the
Europe is healthy and vigorous
premise that people are concerned about global issues, have imbibed
information
The general standard of planning, target-setting and
evaluation is increasing.' But, it asks, 'How far are we going to he
pushed down this [evaluation] road? How many NGDOs are asking
.
questions of how effective their work is, not with a view to improving
it but, perhaps, with a view to cutting back on
This not uncommon defensiveness has to do with a constant refrain from government agencies: has public opinion improved?* A
more appropriate question might be this: How can deeply ingrained
public attitudes be expected to change when they are reinforced
every day in a variety of ways by television, the print media, and by
*Like Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man, torturing Dustin Hoffman in order to get
an answer to the question, 'Is it safe?'
139
A handful of governments have given serious attention to cofinancing NGO development education: Austria, the Netherlands and
Canada devote about 0.5 per cent of their official development assis-
tance to this purpose. Denmark and Finland devote about 0.2 per
cent, while Germany, Australia and Switzerland spend roughly 0.1 per
Prologue to a tragedy?
James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, said after his
time in office that 'a popular government without popular informa-
deal with the biggest, and most integrated global challenge of the
coming century - poverty and its increasingly terrible manifestations
- they are bound to deal with them badly.
141
way of dealing with the problems of public support, some recommend much more spending on information and development education. The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report, for example,
recommends that two per cent of official development assistance about $1 billion per annum - should he earmarked for communication and development education, for greater work in the formal education system and with the media, 'not to mislead or manipulate
public opinion, but to fulfil the duty of accountability'.56 This would
probably help, because there is almost nowhere to go but up.
Some place their faith in the coming information superhighway',
the 'infohahn'. They believe that the disintegration of mass audiences and mass media will encourage like-minded people to seek
out unfiltered news. The puhlic will he better informed because
there will he 150 television channels to choose from instead of three
or four. There may well he one or two or even six channels dealing
143
This may well be true. But there is also the spectre of an Elvis
Channel and an Oprah Channel. This solution suggests that television
In truth, the answers lie well beyond the scope of this book. They
also lie well beyond the scope and mandate of government aid agen-
that could have worked in less paternalistic ways than it did with
Southern NGOs, and which might have had a broader impact on
public thinking in the North,58
NGO representatives, it divides its budget ($9 million in 1994) between support for the educational activities of Dutch NGOs and programmes of its own. Another kind of potential can perhaps be found
in the 'alternative funds' and community foundations that began in the
United States in the 1970s. These are amalgams which consolidate the
giving of family foundations, bequests, corporate and individual
donors around specific themes. Sometimes they are small and cornmunity based, as with the Community Foundation of Ottawa-Carleton
144
which, by the end of its first seven years had created an endowment of
C$5 million, and was supporting local causes to the tune of about
C$300 000 annually. Others, such as the Bread and Roses Community
Fund in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Vanguard Foundation or the
bolster an argument. Public opinion,' he said, 'is not that important'.59 But what if it won't bolster an argument? What if a potential
decision is unpopular? What about 'the chronic ailment of democracy: the craving for short-term popularity'?60 If Gearan is correct, or even if he is only partly correct, it places a great deal of the
onus for dealing with the pressing issues of international development squarely on the shoulders of governments and their leaders.
Gaibraith agrees: 'What is needed to save and to protect, to ensure
against suffering and further unpleasant consequence, is not in any
way obscure. Nor would the resulting action be unpleasant. There
would be a challenge to the present mood of contentment with its
angry resentment of any intrusion, but, in the longer run, the general
No one should be
feeling of well-being would be deepened
misled. The central requirement cannot be escaped: almost every
action that would remedy and reassure involves the relationship
.
146
CHAPTER VIII
private sector firm. Criticized by governments for lack of professionalism, NGOs are then accused of bureaucratization when they do
professionalize.
decades. None has proved very satisfactory, perhaps because development works to a certain extent in a political economy, rather
than a market economy. In addition, much development work, like
some industries, is highly 'emergent', requiring flexibility and constant
adjustment. A company producing only one thing may be well suited
for blueprint planning, but companies with changing products, operating in volatile markets, are not.
Careful and 'professional' planning has not been a panacea for the
private sector any more than it has for NGOs, Henry Mintzberg, an
iconoclastic management expert, has examined planning and strategy
formation in a wide range of private and public sector firms:
We found strategy making to be a complex, interactive and evolutionary process, best described as one of adaptive learning. Strategic
change was found to be uneven and unpredictable, with major strategies often remaining relatively stable for long periods of time, sometimes decades, and then suddenly undergoing massive change. The
process was often significantly emergent, especially when the organization faced unpredicted shifts in the environment . . . Indeed, strat-
programmes for NGO management: the London School of Economics, the Asian Institute of Management, the Manitoba Institute of
Management. In Britain, a group of former NGO managers
established the International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC) in 1991, to deal specifically with organizations working in
international relief and development. In the 1970s, specialized books
began to dot the expanding management rack in bookstores: Philip
Kotler's Marketing for nonprofit organizations (1975), Richard Cyert's
pays at least nominal lip service to the notion that its primary
149
accountability is to 'the beneficiary'. But most behave very differently. Most Northern NGOs tailor their appearance and their pub-
lic messages entirely to suit the donor. Comparing the direct mail
messages of Oxfam, Save the Children and a dozen others, it would
seem, in fact, that their fundraisers all went to the same school.*
Accountability to larger donors, especially government, has led
NGOs to other hoops, mainly in an effort to get, and to demonstrate
good management and efficiency. The result has been a degree of
useful 'professionalization': mission statements, personnel policies
and procedures, budget and performance reviews, computerized accounting, external audits. This is true of both Northern and Southern
NGOs.
should be made to the remarkable things that can be done for a pittance. The
Executive Director or a celebrity should appear to 'sign' the letter, so the signature
must be printed in blue ink. A post script should always be added, possibly in
blue-ink handwriting, to further 'personalize' the letter.
150
is a worse example of what the guru syndrome can do: the Dutch
NGO, NOVIB, discovered in 1994 that one of its major Indian partners
had been keeping two sets of accounts, audited by different account-
and Save the Children came second and third, with 11.8 and 17.9 per
cent respectively.3
Overheads of 15 per cent are the most the average NGO will admit
to, although the general reality is probably higher. But true overheads
for most NGOs are almost impossible to determine for a variety of
reasons. One is that many costs which might in the private sector be
charged to overhead - the Executive Director's salary, for example
This point is not raised to suggest that there are no costs associated with obtaining and managing in-kind donations. It does raise
questions about how they are valued, however. The question is particularly pertinent where in-kind costs are a significant proportion of
an organization's income. In the United States, USAID commodities
are usually valued according to government guidelines, but beyond
that, there are few norms. In 1991, non-government in-kind income
represented 90 per cent of the 'spending' of the AmeriCares Foundation. It was 73 per cent for Christian Relief Services, and 79 per
cent for Feed the Children.5 The following year, however, state and
federal regulators began to examine in-kind donations more care-
when a product is impaired or nearing its expiry date. The guidelines, however, developed to forestall greater government regulation, worked in this case only when government action became
imminent.
More dramatic subterfuge was used by World Vision Germany to
give the appearance of low overheads in the late 1980s. Although it
was stated that more than 80 per cent of money raised in Germany
went overseas, this was not the complete picture. Money was indeed
transferred overseas, either to a World Vision account in Singapore, or
to World Vision International Headquarters in California for onward
transmission. 'Onward transmission' usually meant that money went
Bank of Scotland affinity cards, generated 15000 dedicated cardholders in the mid-1990s. A Leeds Building Society affinity card supports the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, the British Heart
Foundation and MENCAP, an organization working with the mentally
handicapped. In 1994, this card, then six years old, entered the Gum-
'Direct mail' is the professional term for what most people know as
'junk mail'. Names are usually 'rented' from the subscription lists of
magazines, or from other commercial mail registers. Some charitable
organizations rent their lists to others, although always through a
professional third-party firm that will ensure no more than one-time
access to a name and address. The efforts to find out whether subscribers to National Geographic are better givers than those who
subscribe to Architectural Digest, Soldier of Fortune, or The National
Lampoon are the stuff of brain surgery, So complex is the business,
because lists must be prepared, special equipment rented or purchased, computers set up to log the data, and callers paid. The phenomenon, maddening for the person who picks up the phone, appears -
While some buy and resell products, others simply offer a label to
manufacturers with good labour or environmental practices. The
'Rugmark' label, for example, identifies Indian rugs that are not manufactured by indentured children.
In Britain, there are an estimated 5000 'charity shops' selling used
clothing, books, handicrafts and selected commodities like coffee and
tea from the South. At the end of 1993, about 840 of these were Oxfam
302 - far less than the average retailer would need to stay in business. One reason for survival, however, is lower costs. Run mainly by
volunteers, the net profit margin for Oxfam is about 32 per cent, and
for Save the Children it is 43 per cent. In 1993, Oxfam turned a
handsome profit of17 million on income of.,52 million, and Save the
Children showed a profit of 1.8 million on a turnover of only 6
million.'4
look for another job. It is, to use another useful clich, penny-wise
and pound-foolish. NGOs should not be on the leading edge of salary
norms, but if they fall too far behind, the resulting amateurism and
inexperience may well lead to even greater long-term administrative
costs, or to reduced effectiveness.
There is another important aspect to the general question of money
and overheads, one that any private sector producer understands
intimately: overheads vary. The overheads in an insurance company
are very different from overheads in a glass factory. The overheads of
an airline are likely to be different from the overheads in a bank. They
the right thing - an effectiveness issue - is another question entirely. Without industry standards, without benchmarks, comparisons,
transparency, and a regulatory framework that helps donors to make
educated choices, unscrupulous NGOs can flourish. And scrupulous
NGOs are likely to continue to face irrational pressures which do little
to advance effectiveness, efficiency or professionalism.
poor people who have few assets and who live on marginal land,
NGOs know that effectiveness and efficiency in human development
efficient they are. So in the absence of acceptable NGO selfevaluation, governments have increasingly insisted on external evaluations of their own devising. There are three basic problems with
these evaluations, The first is that most are designed by the donor
agency as control and justification mechanisms, rather than as tools
for learning or for disseminating findings. The second is that in the
absence of baseline data and comparative benchmarks, many are
highly subjective, relying heavily on the intuition and experience of
the evaluator, rather than on performance in relation to objectives. A
third is that increasingly, the entire NGO is becoming subject to evaluation, rather than the project or the component being supported by
the logical framework and other blueprint-based management approaches must be addressed.15 The standard LFA and most project
proposals are based almost exclusively on inputs or activities, and on
outputs, rather than results. Teacher training may be given, but it may
not be used in the classroom. A well may be dug and a pump installed,
but the buckets used to carry the water home may be dirty. The results
in these cases will differ markedly from what was intended.
Results have always been important to NGOs, but their planning
mechanisms and those of bilateral agencies have always been somewhat vague on the question of ultimate results, and more particularly
o Results related to capacity-building, empowerment and sustainability (e.g. the improved capacity of farmers to produce food; the
increased capacity of women to add to family income; the increased capacity of a partner organization to act independently of
its sponsoring agency).
o Efficiency results (e.g. doing more with the same inputs; reduced
costs; economies of scale; experiments with user fees; selffinancing credit programmes).
o Effectiveness results (e.g. can reduced child mortality be measured
and correlated with a training programme? How many job trainees
actually have jobs? How many small enterprises have improved
productivity or income levels?)
Using LFA-type language, a results-based education project in Ecuador might look like this:
o Goals: broad statements of intent; the basic result the project aims
to achieve (e.g. an improved education system in Ecuador).
o Objectives: specific statements of purpose, expressing a desired end
(e.g. to upgrade teacher education; to improve school textbooks).
example, that results-based indicators will or should form the basis for
ter pass rates may not be measurable until a year or so after the
training has been completed and the textbooks printed. In some projects, the most important results may not be visible for two, five or
even more years. Standard donor-oriented mid-term reviews and endof-project evaluations, therefore, have to take this into consideration if
project implementors are expected to work towards long-term results
in short-term financial arrangements.
The second issue has to do with risk. Risks are traditionally characterized in LFAs as vague 'assumptions', such as 'the inputs are available as planned'. But there are usually other, unforeseen risks: the
partner organization collapses; inflation wrecks the budget; the government unilaterally alters all teacher education.
Given increasing levels of uncertainty, complexity and risk in all
development work, management writer Dennis Rondinelli believes
that it has become more difficult and complex to state goals and
objectives precisely, because development problems are not well defined or understood. 'Solutions' are not always clear or easily transferable, the impacts of interventions cannot always be predicted, and the
objectives of multiple participants and stakeholders in a project are
not always consistent.17 It has also become more difficult to assess the
feasibility of an intervention because the understanding of the problem is rarely complete at the outset. Under conditions of complexity
Institutional results
Achieving results in projects is one thing, but institutional performance is often a very different matter. The whole can sometimes be
considerably less than the sum of the parts, as those worried about
NGO contracting often proclaim. Some of the best American cars of
the 1930s, Cord, Deusenberg, Pierce-Arrow, were made by companies that failed. Conversely, some of the most efficient governments
of this century have wreaked untold havoc on their citizens.
Staff, trustees, donors and volunteers all want to know how well an
organization is doing in relation to its values, its mission, and its broad
objectives. A serious problem in answering such questions, the attempt to narrow the gap between vision and reality, is that an organiztion's vision is often stated in vague and unassailably virtuous terms,
terms that do not lend themselves to measurement and evaluation. In
fact the mission statement is often vague because there are so many
different stakeholders in an organization that specifics appropriate to
one would not suit another. Trustees, for example, are most likely to
be concerned that the organization is engaged in activities that give it
legitimacy, that create pride in its work. Managers, on the other hand,
will be judged on the basis of their efficiencies, their capacity to solve
ment education departments. Beneficiaries, however, (and institutional donors), are most likely to be interested in standards of performance in programme delivery, which may emphasize the short run,
rather than the long run that is of most concern to trustees.
A number of tools have been developed in recent years to help
NGOs deal with the institutional tradeoffs between legitimacy and
management, between the competing demands of funders and beneficiaries. One is The Drucker Foundation's Self-Assessment Tool,
which borrows from Peter Drucker's work in the private sector, and
places heavy emphasis on an organization's 'product' and 'customer'.
Customers include beneficiaries as well as 'supporting customers':
volunteers, donors, trustees and staff. The Self-Assessment Tool uses
multi-stakeholder exercises to make organizations confront and resolve competing customer demands.18
Another tool is the 'social audit', pioneered in Britain three decades
ago, and currently enjoying a revival in both the private and the non-
164
PART THREE
CHAPTER IX
reasonably intact, the fact is that Northern NGOs have stumbled into a
contracting era without appearing to have noticed it.1 It began rather
innocuously in 1962, when Germany introduced a programme of finan-
cial support for its NGOs. In the decade after that, 'matching grant'
programmes were developed throughout OECD member countries.
Some remained relatively simple, as in Britain and New Zealand,
matching the cash provided by an NGO on a dollar-for-dollar and on a
project-by-project basis. These arrangements were essentially respon-
and 'institutional funding' became more common, with three-, fourand five-year time horizons. Today, the size of these responsive programmes varies from minuscule (about 0.1 per cent of official development assistance in Japan; 0.2 per cent in the US) to small (1 per cent in
Australia, 1.5 per cent in Britain). Some are more generous (about 4.5
per cent in Canada; 5.3 per cent in Norway), while others are relatively
large (7 per cent in the Netherlands; over 10 per cent in Germany).2
Governments provide financial support to NGOs in other ways. Tax
relief is one, and the authority to issue receipts to donors for income
The word 'subsidy' is perhaps more apt than 'entitlement' in describing 'responsive' support programmes. An entitlement is a right; a
subsidy is a privilege. Subsidies too, seldom occur without reciprocal
obligations, sometimes called 'strings'. During the 1970s, many responsive government programmes prohibited the use of their money
in places like Cuba or South Africa (including support for liberation
movements). During the 1980s, Cambodia and Vietnam were on several banned lists. The British Overseas Development Administration
says that 70 per cent of its support to block-grant agencies must be
emergencies and refugees, while other money was set aside for
women, AIDS and other government priorities.5 The danger for NGOs
can be seen in the Canadian situation, where in the 1980s and 1990s
well managed, efficient, and probably quite large, hence its attractiveness to a donor. Going beyond Korten, it could be said that the PSC
o the belief that contracting will bring greater funding and make it
possible for the organization to do more of those things it feels are
truly important; and,
o the pressure from donors to 'professionalize'.
These are all very real problems that senior NGO managers face on
a daily basis, problems that inevitably require judicious and not infrequent compromise. In his writing, Korten was perhaps most exercised
some way fall into line behind the aims and objectives of official
American development assistance. Those handling food aid often do
so in a big way. Food and freight represented 62 per cent of the
income of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency in 1991, and
the figure for Catholic Relief Services was 57 per cent, For Lutheran
World Service it was 43 per cent, and for CARE, 41 per cent.9 Contracting of this type and magnitude is uncommon in Scandinavia, Britain
and Germany. But it is a growing phenomenon in Canada and Italy,
and it has created a dependency in Switzerland that far outstrips the
American scene. Swiss NGOs raise only 14 per cent of their income
from the Swiss public. The balance - all from government - has a
171
contracts, but what an NGO agrees to do under the terms of a contract. In an ideal world, there would be considerable congruence
between the objectives of NGOs and government development agencies. Where there is no threat to an NGO's values or direction, where
it understands the terms and conditions and where, ideally, it has
been involved in developing the terms of reference, the 'danger' in
taking a contract should be low. In fact, contracting offers several
advantages to both the NGO and the aid agency that are often glossed
over in the rush to warn of falling sky.
For the donor agency there are several possible advantages. Because many have limited capacities of their own, contracting an NGO
can expand a donor's poverty-oriented programming. The private
sector does not have the capacity to do this. Further, the donor does
not have to expend great time and energy administering such projects
because the executing agency - the NGO - is a development institution with its own infrastructure at home and overseas. If it is so
inclined, a donor can learn from the NGO experience. And by cultivating an NGO, the donor is also building a broader support base for
itself through the NGO's public support base. This is not often the
case with private sector firms.
The contract mechanism provides certain disciplines that are absent
in a grant situation. These can be a mixed blessing, but many NGOs
welcome the clarity of expectations and the finite time frame that a
contract offers. For the donor, a contract does the same. It can also
instill the 'professionalism' and accountability that many believe is
lacking, or at least is not clearly visible in standard NGO activities.
JTF, but damage was also done. Caught between unprincipled Sri
Lankan politicians and micro-managers in Washington, the JTF some-
both, but it is a fine point which avoids the bigger question. If the
contract prevents an NGO from speaking out about what it sees as the
cause of the wound, then one of the principle raisons d'tre behind
the creation of independent associations will have been lost.
There is no longer any doubt that the contracting ethos has weakened domestic non-profit organizations in many countries. In Britain it
has damaged the advocacy work of NGOs in two ways. The money
available for advocacy has been reduced because of what one NGO
worker calls the overwhelming pressures 'on management and other
staff time of meeting the demands of the contract culture'. But there is
another problem which strikes at the essence of what nongovernmental organizations are all about: 'NGOs cannot afford to campaign as before if, in doing so, they now place at risk their capacity to
win contracts for services or to have their grant-aid renewed,'13
In Nonprojits for hire.' the welfare state in the age of contracting,
Smith and Lipsky deal with the declining independence and voice of
domestic American organizations. Like ancient Greek mariners, a high
proportion have been lured by the siren's song of government money
onto the rocky shoals of compliance, homogenization and bureaucratization. While there may be a degree of reciprocity between government and NGO in a contracting regime, this is not at all the same as
'partnership'. Smith and Lipsky point out that most contracting structures are sponsored and directed by a relatively powerful agent. 'Just
ernments, it may seem odd to reverse the debate, and to raise the
concern that NGOs may be 'crowding out the state' in some parts of
the developing world. Odd, maybe, but there is a strong feeling that
the increased bilateral and multilateral financing of NGOs poses a
threat to Southern governments. John Clark says that some governments see it as 'the erosion of their sovereignty; the increasing execution of state functions by staff who are answerable not to them but to
NGOs, for example, supply a third or more of all clinical health care in
Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia. They provide more
than 10 per cent in Indonesia and India, and they own a quarter of the
health facilities in Bolivia's three largest cities. In Brazil, a single NGO
cerned, NGOs often get more mileage from their investments than
governments. A doctor in a Ugandan mission hospital treats five times
universally valid for all time and place, and they forget that these
rights, in their own countries, were products of intense struggle. '20
If he attacked the cloying paternalism and righteousness with which
some NGOs coat these issues, Tandon might have a more valid argu-
ment. But Europeans are not alone in having struggled for rights.
Africans have had rather more intense struggles in recent years, and
many of these struggles were, and still are being supported by NGOs,
both African and foreign. And by individuals within these organizations who take very great personal risks.
In the late 1970s, a Liberian NGO, Susuku, was 'filling gaps' in the
do for themselves what foreign NGOs and aid agencies had been
doing up to then. One of the Susuku leaders, Siapha Kamara, taught
adult literacy programmes in the evening. Like many NGOs with an
agenda based on social justice, Susuku leaders talked about other
things in their literacy classes. Such as social justice. One of Kamara's
pupils was a young army sergeant named Samuel Doe. Later, after
Doe had shot his way into the Presidential mansion and established
himself as Head of State, he called Kamara in for a private discussion
about social justice. When the discussion was over, Kamara lay bleed-
ther, accusing NGOs of trying to replace the state entirely. A frequently stated view is that 'NGOs cannot replace the state, for they
have no legitimacy, authority or sovereignty, and crucially, are selfselected and thus not accountable'.24
176
It is hard to know where to start with all this. True, NGOs may be
weak in the areas of legitimacy, authority, sovereignty and accountability. But it is perhaps worth noting that the private sector has these
exact same problems. In fact many governments, both historically and
currently, are also weak in the areas of 'legitimacy, authority and
sovereignty'. Far too many are 'self-selected and are thus not accountable'. Even the state has lost its sanctity - in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Ethiopia for example - not because of
NGO intrusion, but because of government failure.
The salary question: yes, in many cases, NGOs probably do pay
more than government. In several countries this would not be hard to
do. Some governments have trouble paying any salaries: Zaire is a
frequently cited case, The Government of Jamaica found itself unable
to pay agreed retroactive salary raises in 1994. Structural adjustment
had eaten so deeply into the exchequer that payment was postponed
until 1995. But the question of high NGO costs and high NGO lifestyles remains. It had become such an issue in Bangladesh by 1990,
that a senior government official was asked to uncover the facts. He
discovered that individuals in the upper echelons of the civil service
received substantially higher salaries than their NGO counterparts,
while in the field, NGO workers were slightly better off. Unlike government personnel, however, NGO staff worked long hours and had
virtually no job security.25
For NGOs there is often a different problem associated with salaries.
Despite the UNDP worry that NGOs might 'crowd out government', it is
UN agencies that are the most generically guilty, worldwide, of luring
trained personnel away from NGOs, and from Southern governments.
support from religious and business leaders, and from the armed
forces. Despite their significant endeavours in Ethiopia, Somalia or
pre-Sandinista Nicaragua, NGOs can hardly be said to have weakened
177
civil society, the government or the state. This was done almost
single-handedly and with great effectiveness by the governments of
the day themselves, with a blend of brutality and official foreign assistance: Soviet, Western, multilateral; whatever came to hand.*
In addition to the charge of weakening government structures by
what they do, NGOs are sometimes accused of weakening government
structures by ignoring them. Mozambique is a case in point, 'a classic
case study,' said one observer writing in 1993, 'of the reluctance of
many international NGOs to support government services rather than
running their own programmes in an un-coordinated way in different
parts of the country.'26 True, perhaps. But it is also a classic case of
once burned, twice shy. The Government of Mozambique banned
NGO health activities in 1975, believing itself to be the most appropriate and capable delivery mechanism. It was wrong. Uganda provides
another example of the same thing. Idi Amin's brutal 1973 expulsion of
the Asian community, which included teachers and doctors working in
non-governmental institutions, was quietly reversed by the Museveni
Government in the early 1990s when the Aga Khan Education Service
was invited to return and resuscitate its (ruined) schools.
about NGOs 'crowding out the state' and the creation of parallel
delivery systems are in fact legitimate worries about the collapse of
basic government administrative systems, and concern for their revival rather than the creation of substitutes.
Reacting to growing transfers of bilateral and multilateral support to
NGOs, Southern governments ask valid questions about NGO accountability. NGOs, not unlike private business and government, are
notoriously opaque in their decision-making, funding and evaluation.
Because they can apparently 'deliver the goods', they have become
attractive to the official development community. But contracts and
greater financial support have resulted in 'reciprocal obligations'. In
the process, Northern NGOs have lost a great deal of the independence and autonomy they once had. By failing to develop their own
178
cannot, ought not, or will not do: supporting human rights, for example, or working in politically 'difficult' areas . or asking questions
about the impact of large-scale projects on the environment. But the
will to do so derives not from some formalistic assertion of autonomy,
.
CHAPTER X
Partners
If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house with the
conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my lfe.
Henry Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
founded on common values and goals, and on principles of selfreliant, people-centred development.
been our long-held belief that it is our project partners who are best
placed to determine the needs of the people they represent. War on
Want, therefore, works with a wide range of organizations: NGOs,
trade unions, popular organizations, women's groups. . The type of
.
181
work War on Want supports is diverse, but always the long-term aim of
our project partners is to find ways to remove the obstructions to social
and economic development of the communities and groups they work
with. Most of the work that War on Want supports is looking at the
long-term, towards finding paths of development which will provide a
basis for change.1
income had risen one hundred fold, to KSh163 million, almost $10
182
106 grants for some 50 projects. Among Southern NGOs, this was
probably a record, something that would have been beyond AMREF's
wildest dreams even a decade earlier. But over the years, the dream
had become a reality. And then the reality became a nightmare.
Co-ordination and reporting alone required a staff of dozens, filling
out applications, tailoring each to particular donor interests, dealing
when they arrived, as they always did every year, if not more frequently. As with Sarvodaya, donors often refused to pay for administrative costs, and few were interested in anything that looked like a
recurrent expenditure. 'Recurrent cost is the money required to maintain an investment facility, such as the Family Health Unit at AMREF,
and to operate its annual activities,' said a USAID evaluation. 'This is
the cost donors are most reluctant to fund because there is no specific
time when its funding will end. If USAID decides to fund the CSD
project in South Nyanza. USAID and AMREF should work closely
to ensure that the recurrent cost problem will not arise at the end of
.
the project.'3
How? 'Self-sufficiency' is a term that was replaced in the late 1980s
by 'sustainable'. When it refers to money, as it often does, this expression usually flies straight into Never-Neverland. Northern NGOs have
no self-sustaining income except the goodwill of donors and the occasional small endowment. Southern NGOs are even more strapped for
cash. A number have invested in money-earning schemes. AMREF's
Aviation Department was at the time self-financing, and the organiza-
tion earned an additional $1.3 million from a printing and book distribution unit. Sarvodaya too had a handful of income-earning units.
But if one could assume a return of 15 per cent on investment (a big
assumption for a non-profit organization), Sarvodaya would have required a capital fund of $35 million in 1984, and a lot of business
acumen, in order to earn what the donors were giving. When faced
with this sort of calculation, the average donor will stop talking about
self-financing. But the idea lurks, and the vocabulary of sustainability
waits in the shallows, playing crocodile to the recipient's springbok.
Most Southern NGOs deal with this problem in one of three ways.
The first is to dream along with the donor. In 1977, A.T. Ariyaratne,
the founder of Sarvodaya, said he expected the organization to be
financially self-reliant by 1985. Given the level of investment required, this was (and, many years later, remains) a dream. The second
way is to find a new donor when the old one runs out of money and
interest. This is problematic, because Northern NGOs tend not to
favour second-hand projects. They want to be 'catalysts', 'innovators',
183
'ground-breakers'. The Southern NGO, therefore, has to find ingenious ways to redraft or remix its project portfolio, proposing newer
lessons to be learned and newer ground to be broken. A third technique is to simply damn the torpedoes and hope for the best. Although it knew that its overheads on a large CIDA-financed project in
1983 were 26 per cent, AIvIREF accepted 20 per cent and wound up
subsidizing the project to the tune of $300 000 - money that had to
be squeezed out of other income that it did not have.
Like Sarvodaya, AMREF never knew from one day to the next what
its cash-flow situation would be. It took grave chances, pre-financing
projects or second phases before receiving donor approval. All donors, and all Southern NGOs know that this is wrong. But in the real
world, where future success may depend on a decision to do some-
thing today - to hire someone who is available now, for example action is required. Life does not work on a donor project cycle; clinics
and schools cannot close because the critical fax has not arrived from
Rugby, Zeist, or Norwalk Connecticut. Crops must be planted on time,
not later: for poor farmers there is no later. So the NGO goes ahead
and pre-finances the project, using money sent by another donor for
something else. If and when the grant is approved, there is usually a
caveat: despite a delay which may have been caused entirely by the
South, seeking the most innovative-looking, poverty-alleviating activities possible: micro-credit, the environment, population. They
want segregated projects, with clear aims and objectives, time frames
a timely fashion: (1) raise the money, (2) write the cheque, and (3) post it. A
surprising number fail at more than one.
185
time. project implementation has been the main thrust, and funding
the main link. And with one partner giving funds and another receiving
them, all the inequalities enter the relationship.'5 Honor Ford-Smith,
writing about the experience of a Jamaican NGO, says that Northern
donors 'have an enormous amount of power. They are able to shape
the lives of the organizations they support, not simply because they
fund them, but also because of the processes and disciplines they
require the organizations to become involved in. The term "partner"
only obscures what remains a very real power relation. The egalitarian
label does not change reality.'6 And in Zimbabwe, Yash Tandon says
that 'foreign NGOs are a secretive lot. We do not know much about
them
We know little about how their heart beats in Europe or
America or Canada. they work with such secrecy and opaqueness
.
much less happy with arrangements than Northern NGOs had made
out. The definition of 'mutual' goals tended to be a one-way thing.
Their articulation, often tortuously developed in the North, was frequently accepted without demur in the South 'for fear of losing funds'.
Few Southern NGOs 'would openly express ideological difference
with Northern donors'.8 Communication revolved almost exclusively
around project administration and execution, and most important decisions were made by project selection committees and boards far
away in the North. Questions relating to money and accountability
remained uni-directional, with enormous amounts of time spent in the
South dealing with demands from the North for reports and evaluations. At a conference in Bulawayo, Southern NGOs concluded that
'in effect, more time is spent in accounting to Northern partners than
in actually applying one's mind, judgement and energies to the work
at hand.'9
a number of other attractions: Southern NGOs were more costeffective and were usually easier to deal with than Southern govern-
ments, not least because the gap between rhetoric and action was
smaller. When the idea of 'strengthening civil society' came into
vogue in the early 1990s, direct funding fitted neatly into that slot, and
it also coincided nicely with the idea that the Southern state should,
like the Northern state, retrench, downsize and privatize.
There are, of course, problems. By the late 1980s, 'direct funding'
had become a regular practice for USAID and the bilateral agencies of
Canada, Norway and Sweden. Britain, France, Switzerland and Japan
had dabbled, but remained ambivalent. In some countries, Northern
While this may seem a rather selfish concern, there are reasons
for taking it seriously. Northern NGOs are an important interface between the citizens of industrialized countries, the problems of development, and the people of the South. NGOs build a
Northern constituency for development assistance, and they can
187
They are also likely to attract and to support organizations that fit
their ideal of good management. In the end, quality may lose out to
size and polish.
Some writers suggest that direct funding can contribute to the
weakening of civil society.1 This can happen in two ways. First,
making NGOs in one country beholden and answerable to governments in another cannot be terribly healthy, no matter how benign the
relationship. Secondly, by making NGOs part of a bilateral aid pro-
gramme, a donor automatically involves them in a government-togovernment relationship. This may well open the Southern NGO to
the scrutiny of its own government: not necessarily bad in theory, but
in practice, risky. And it does something more insidious. By redirecting money from a government programme towards an NGO, a bilateral agency makes a value judgement about effectiveness and
efficiency. Unless the host government agrees with the decision and this would take a fair degree of understanding and generosity the donor may well place the object of its affection into direct competition with its own government.
The result, very evident in countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
Pakistan and Indonesia, where direct funding has been growing for a
decade, is increasing government angst about NGOs. This manifests
itself in the imposition of draconian rules and regulations, political
invective and government-inspired media attacks on the probity, legitimacy and accountability of organizations which, in other countries, would be seen as champions of development. In the long run,
this may not be an entirely bad thing. While the process can be very
difficult for NGOs, it may be an essential and inevitable stage for any
country working through the roles and potentials of both government
and non-governmental organizations.
*This is not always true. Bilateral and multilateral organizations can and do hire
knowledgeable and experienced local staff, many with good NGO backgrounds.
A 1994 study (Lewis, Sobhan and Jonsson, p.44) found that the SIDA mission in
Bangladesh was more knowledgeable and had a far more subtle understanding of
Bangladeshi NGOs than many Swedish NGOs.
188
Damage limitation
Larger Southern NGOs have dealt with some of the problems inherent
in managing a variety of donors by forming consortia. The consortium
approach to financial assistance is not new to bilateral and multilateral
organizations, but until the mid-1980s, it had rarely been applied to a
Southern NGO. In 1986 in Sri Lanka, four of Sarvodaya's larger donors
(NOVIB, CIDA, NORAD, and ITDG acting on behalf of the British
Overseas Development Administration) agreed to work together on a
The greatest risk for any NGO in forming a donor consortium had
come to pass for Sarvodaya. It had become transparent, and when it
did, the donors did not like everything they saw. They made suggestions. When the suggestions were ignored, they became recom-
istrative weakness would perhaps suffice in a project of a few thousand dollars, but between 1986 and 1994 when these words were
written, Sarvodaya received more than $20 million from the consortium. In Jamaica there is a saying: 'Play with puppy, puppy lick your
face'. Sarvodaya had played, and the puppy licked.*
vodaya was better or worse than would have been the case had it
been provided through NGOs, In fact there were NGOs involved in
both consortia. Would Northern NGOs alone have done better? The
question does not really arise, as both consortia were formed precisely because Northern NGOs could no longer keep up with Sarvodaya and BRAG. And in any case, the Northern NGO modus
operandi had helped to push both BRAG and Sarvodaya towards
larger donors and simpler procedures. Problems of the sort faced by
AMREF over recurrent costs were solved. Working together, donors
*perhaps it was more a case of lying down with dogs and getting badly mauled.
192
were able to modify their individual, often rigid rules, and they were
able to accept that building an institution is a long-term prospect. In
both cases, donors were prepared to invest money in activities that
could help build long-term financial sustainability. For Sarvodaya,
they provided assistance for direct, income-earning ventures: metal
workshops, furniture manufacture, a printing press. BRAG's large revolving loan fund, capitalized by donors in the form of grants, became
the basis for a self-financing approach which should see donor dependency drop significantly by the turn of the century.
The accountabilities of Southern NGOs are much more complex than
those of Northern NGOs. Northern NGOs deal primarily with trustees,
government agencies, the media and a myriad of uncritical individuals
making small gifts. Southern NGOs must also deal with public percep-
that can provide protection and, more importantly, create inducements for better and more responsible practices. Like their Northern
counterparts, Southern NGOs are competitive. Despite the many
coalitions and shared activities, at their core they too are a secretive
lot. It is not always clear how their hearts beat. They too work with
secrecy and opaqueness. And like Northern NGOs, they too have
institutional interests to protect, conflicting internal views to reconcile,
and the difficult task of building organizational coherence while remaining responsive to a multitude of needs and pressures.
For those serious about helping the poor to help themselves, and
about building the institutions that are required as intermediaries, a
message: this is not a place for amateurs. Large government agencies
World Vision - have done this for years, and despite the risk of
paternalism, have made it work. NOVIB's 'Guest at Your Table' programme is essentially a joint fundraising effort, with Southern partner
organizations meeting donor groups in the Netherlands, and contributing material for newsletters. Katalysis, a small American NGO, has
used virtually all of these techniques with its five partner organizations in Central America. Not only are its programming results positive, the relationship between Katalysis and its partners is excellent:
when a single place as a Katalysis partner became available in Guatemala, 20 Guatemalan NGOs applied. 17
Moving from a project relationship to long-term programme support
can also make a difference. The Swiss NGO, Helvetas, makes a general
commitment to a Southern partner for ten years, and provides assurance that at least one or two years' notice will be given before a
pullout, regardless of how emotional a debate might become. This is
extremely helpful to recipients in managing their finances responsibly.
In Latin America, a consortium of Southern NGOs has created a
different kind of mechanism that moves the locus of decision-making
about money away from the North entirely. Based in Costa Rica,
FOLADE (the Latin American Development Fund) was created in 1993
by 16 NGOs in 14 countries to systematize and protect a financial base
for economic development. Supported financially by its own member
and Practice. In time, if endorsed by NGO communities and governments, this document could become a useful and important international code of conduct.
Ultimately, partnership means investing in the capacity of Southern
NGOs, and in their independence: not just the jargon of independence, but the concrete reality of independence. This means
coming to serious grips with ideas about self-generating income, endowments, the development of local philanthropy and the building of
regulatory environments that are conducive to these things. It also
means a reapportioning between those seriously committed to partnership of decision-making, evaluation and, perhaps most importantly, responsibility.
196
CHAPTER XI
transnational NGO
A Company for carrying on an undertaking of Great Advantage, but
no one [is] to know what it is.
The South Sea Company Prospectus, 1711.
post-war relief efforts. Gradually they grew beyond the crisis they
were created to deal with, becoming large, multifaceted organizations
with programmes in scores of countries on every continent. Save the
Children began in Britain after the First World War; Foster Parents
Plan (now Plan International) began as a response to the Spanish Civil
War, The Christian Children's Fund began in China in 1938. Oxfam
197
quite different from what has generally been thought of as an international NGO.*
The term 'transnational' has connotations. A transnational corporation (TNC) is one which is registered, and which operates in several
countries at once. By providing a package of resources - investment
funds, managerial, technical and entrepreneurial skills - TNCs have
contributed to both the visible and the invisible growth of world trade
through increased income flows in profits, interest and dividends. For
stimulation of inappropriate consumption patterns and the production, through capital-intensive technologies, of inappropriate products, TNCs exert considerable political and economic leverage over
Southern labour and Southern governments, often damaging or suppressing local entrepreneurship with their superior knowledge, global
contacts, support services and, through transfer pricing, their ability to
raise and lower costs to suit local tax situations.
Aid Abroad, the Australian Oxfam affiliate, did the same thing, invest-
Similar CARE investments were made in the early 1980s in Germany, Norway, Italy and France, and later Austria, Denmark and
Japan. Not all performed as well, but in the late 1980s, the British
effort stood out. By 1992, CARE Britain was raising 17.6 million,
11.6 million of it derived from government sources.4 A 1987 start-up
investment from CARE International proved hugely successful in Aus-
tralia. By 1992, the new affiliate was reporting income in cash and
kind of A$ 17.3 million, and had already become the third largest NGO
recipient of Australian Government assistance.5 A relative newcomer,
the French NGO Mdecins sans Frontires, had more than half a
dozen national affiliates within a decade of its start-up in 1979.
World Vision, with 3670 field staff, and 1700 staff in 20 offices in
Europe, North America and elsewhere, demonstrates even more spectacular growth, spending US$261 million worldwide in 1993.6 In Canada alone, between 1987 and 1992, its total revenue from individuals,
corporations and government rose by 121 per cent to a total of C$81.3
million: all in Canadian cash contributions. By 1994 the figure had
reached C$95.7 million.7 In Australia, World Vision raised A$66.9 million in 1991, an increase of almost 20 per cent over the previous year.
others are not. With the exception of Plan International, most transnationals devote a significant part of their fundraising effort and their
Vision, Plan International) and has been the key to their expansion
into new countries. In Japan, for example, where the tradition of
charitable giving is weak, 'Foster Plan Japan' became in ten years one
of the biggest and fastest-growing fundraisers in the country, supporting 62000 foster children and families in 1994, as many as the UK and
'Transfer pricing'
The term 'transfer pricing' is used here for dramatic effect rather than
precise accuracy. NGO variations, however, are not entirely dissimilar
from what prevails in the corporate sector. One of the most glaring
examples, described in Chapter VIII, was the international manipulation of money by World Vision Germany in the 1980s in order to
make overheads seem lower than they were. A more common variation might be called 'transfer programming'. An established British,
French or American NGO opening a fundraising office in a new country can demonstrate very quickly that it is a viable, going concern,
because it already has field operations that can be 'transferred' into
new brochures and fundraising programmes. This, and hiring Danes,
say, can make a French organization like Mdecins sans Frontires
look very Danish, very quickly. Japan has been viewed as a potential
gold mine in this regard. Starting in the mid-1980s, affiliates of CARE,
*Sometimes the different branches of a transnational NGO do act very independently, however, adding to the plethora of agencies. In the early 1990s there were
four Oxfams in Mozambique (UK, US, Australia and Canada), three SCFs (Norway,
UK and US) and three MSFs (Belgium, France, Holland).
202
Nicaragua during the 1980s. Rather than closing down the programmes initiated and managed by CARE USA, the organization was
able to call on CARE Canada to step in and take over.
Like transnational corporations, transnational NGOs can support
each other with 'transfer financial assistance'. When a transnational
affiliate has financial difficulties, the others (or headquarters) are able to
provide assistance of a type that is completely unavailable to most other
NGOs. Popular legend in CARE USA has it that the HQ loaned CARE
Canada $200 000 in the mid-1970s, to underwrite new fundraising campaigns and to achieve greater autonomy.12 In fact, after 30 years of
sending Canadian dollars (millions of them) across the world's longest
undefended border, the newly independent CARE Canada found that
the price of liberty was a bank account stripped of all but $80 000, and a
paper liability of $120000 attached to an undepreciated computer and
other used equipment. Two years later, when CARE USA faced a liquidity problem, it was CARE Canada that came to the rescue with a
genuine cash loan. When CARE Britain faced a major cash-flow crisis in
1994, it was the turn of CARE USA to provide a financial rescue package, estimated at a million dollars. In a variation on this theme, and a
possible sign of things to come, World Vision Hong Kong raises money
Managing globally
In addition to the webs and connections that have helped make them
large, transnationals share a number of other common features. Some
have shallow programming roots overseas. Once the confident purveyors of development projects which they designed, managed and
however, of the major transnational NGOs, only the Oxfam group and
some Save the Children affiliates work closely with Southern NGOs.
Most transnational NGOs have by and large moved to full devolution in the North, while in the South the model remains one of decon-
The original idea of an 'Oxfam International', with shared programmes and field staff, was all but dead by 1974, with a completely
*The other Oxfam affiliates are Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec (merged in 1993
with the Organisation Canadienne pour Ia Solidarit et le Dveloppement), Oxfam
Belgique, Oxfam America, Community Aid Abroad (Australia), Oxfam Hong Kong
and Oxfam New Zealand.
205
domestic organization, Oxfam India would lose some of the credibility and clout that are necessary in advocacy programmes. This
seemingly important institutional debate, in an agency which
pioneered support to Southern NGOs, warranted only five lines on
the second to last page of the 1992 official 50th anniversary history of
the organization.16 CARE too, busy creating chapters throughout the
North, has no place yet for Southern affiliates. Stated concerns include
nia, World Vision has probably devolved more than other transnationals. Head office staff numbers fell dramatically, from almost 500 in
1989 to fewer than 150 in 1994. The organization is responsible to an
86-person council, elected from advisory councils and boards elsewhere, and is more or less equally divided in make-up between North
and South. The Board is made up of representatives from World Vision
operations worldwide. Roughly half of the Southern operations, including Thailand, India, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, have been recog-
income was valued at $97 million, of which roughly $40m was related to food
donated by the US government. SCF UK 1992 income was lOOm (of which
15.5m in kind), up from 56m in 1991.
206
are Southern organizations, with Southern Boards, staff and programmes. SCF, in fact, is one of the few transnationals to have encour-
Trust and control are the central issues, often disguised in euphemisms about such things as protection of the name, or an aversion to the
creation of dependency. In the case of ISCA, the entire combined
budgets of all nine Southern affiliates in 1991 was US$3.12 million,
only 3 per cent of SCF US expenditure that year, and 1 per cent of the
combined income of the SCF Alliance. The overall burden of the
Southern affiliates on the Alliance was rather small, therefore. With
regard to dependency, the Southern affiliates have reduced their initial heavy reliance upon SCF US, but dependence clearly remains: if
not on SCF US, then on other Northern agencies. This is hardly surprising. All NGOs are dependent upon others for most, if not all of
their income. SCF US, for example, received over 47 per cent of its
1991 income from the US Government, in cash, food and freight
reimbursements.17
*Southern affiliates now exist in the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Lesotho, Malawi,
Mauritius, Mexico, Korea, Tunisia and Guatemala.
207
tralian first. SCF UK is proud of the fact that its several thousand
overseas employees are largely citizens of the countries in which they
work. But most of the top management positions continue to be held
by expatriates, mainly British. This, the organization feels, is a matter
of responsibility and accountability to the small donors who provide
the bulk of the organization's income.
A 1992 study of CARE staffing patterns found that although the
organization had internationalized, 'international' had a visibly pale
face. At that time CARE certainly had thousands of Asian, African and
Latin American staff. But the most critical decision-making posts,
those of country director, assistant country director and field representative, were held mainly by what Africans refer to politely as 'Europeans'. Of 165 such positions, all but 22 were held by Northerners. Of
the individuals filling the remaining positions, only two or three had
actually risen above the temporary field representative status to which
CARE had assigned them, usually in the most difficult of disaster
situations.18 After about six decades in the business, Save the Children
US had moved a bit further than CARE towards internationalizing its
upper ranks overseas, with three out of 27 country directors in 1993
holding Southern passports.
Plan International is the corporate body which co-ordinates money
collected by nine Northern Foster Parent Plan member organizations.
In the mid-1980s, the International Board of Directors decided that the
preponderance of Americans with international staffing status (68 per
cent in 1983 4) had to be changed. Plan went beyond the original
intent of the Board, which was aimed largely at a greater reflection of
their own national diversity. By mid-1993, there were 175 individuals
*As with shareholders in transnational corporations, however, the individual
donor exercises virtually no influence over a transnational NGO apart from the
actual donation. Donors are rarely, if ever, canvassed on their attitudes towards or
ideas about development, programming, staffing, evaluation or anything else.
208
in the category, of whom only 47 per cent were from the North.
Bringing more Southerners into senior international ranks was part of
a major reorganization and decentralization effort. By the mid-1990s,
international salaries and benefits were all on the same scale. It was
an expensive proposition, but in Plan's view, the changes led to more
responsive programming, better staff management, and better incountry contacts and government relations, especially in times of
political difficulty, when local directors become invaluable. Other
changes were afoot as well: reflecting the fact that more than half its
global income was European in origin, Plan moved its headquarters
from Rhode Island to London in 1994, and expanded fundraising
operations into France.
is one. It is certainly the case in emergencies and refugee situations. Transnationals can move quickly; they have decades of relevant experience; they have a core of professionals who are willing
to take serious personal risks and who know what to do in an
emergency. Some are carving out particular niches. CARE has developed a well-deserved reputation in logistics; Oxfam has built
considerable expertise in the provision of water supplies in emergency situations. Mdecins sans Frontires has obvious expertise in
the health field.
In development work, however, the transnationals have considerably less, and probably declining, impact. The most innovative and
influential work on participatory development today, on job creation,
on the environment, on rural banking, on women in development, on
human rights, on matters of sustainability is being done by Southern
NGOs, not by fully operational Northern agencies. In 1993, the Overseas Development Institute published a four-volume study of the impact of NGOs on agricultural development. It examined 70 projects in
18 countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. Although several
Northern NGOs working in consort with Southern counterparts were
discussed, most of the successful projects were designed and carried
out by Southern NGOs. The only transnational to find its way into the
study was CARE.19 The 1994 UNICEF State of the world's children
Report provides another indicator: of 137 references in the report, the
only source material from a transnational NGO was a single document
produced by Oxfam UK. Although NGOs were obviously the subject
of some discussion in the World Bank's 1990 World development
209
the fault of NGOs. And in truth, very few other NGOs are cited in
these studies. The broader point is that transnational NGOs have the
staff, the history, the experience and the mandate for considerably
greater direct impact than others, on general development theory,
policy and practice. Some Oxfam members have made a pointed
effort to do this, through campaigns and a wide variety of publications
and research documents. The first institutional expression of Oxfam
International, in fact, beyond a one-person office, was the opening of
a Washington bureau. Its purpose is not to seek World Bank contracts,
zone. In the end, neither the market nor the need can justify or
support the proliferation of tiny Northern NGOs, each trying to be
special, different, more effective, more efficient, more unique than
the rest. Few are amenable to mergers or even to shared programming and administration. Yet new lookalike agencies appear every
year. Some of the hardier ones will undoubtedly survive, either because they adopt some of the techniques of the transnationals, or
because they develop special expertise and carve out new niches in
210
the transnationals. Others will be reduced to boutique NGOs which is how many of them began - filling very particular niches
and appealing to small or specialized donor constituencies.
The impact of the transnationals on public attitudes in the North is
hard to gauge. Some, such as Oxfam UK and SCF UK have active and
internationally respected development education and campaigning
programmes, but even they have doubts about their impact. Michael
Edwards, Head of SCF UK's Information and Research Unit, sees four
problems: an overall absence of clear strategy, a failure to build strong
alliances, a failure to develop alternatives to current orthodoxies, and
the dilemma of relations with donors.2 For most of the others, however, development education is so small that it rarely warrants a line
item in the annual report. Many have thrived on the pictures they
purvey of starvation and of desperate children, a formula they are
reluctant to tamper with.
Holland in the late 1980s and, despite an apparently saturated field of five
volunteer-sending organizations in Canada, set up an operation there in 1993.
211
term child sponsorship and emergency donors; that they may have
hitched their cart to an old horse while those around them are trading
in their buggy whips. This is not to deny the very genuine commitment of their workers to development. But at a corporate level,
many actually do bear an uncanny resemblance to transnational corporations in their opportunistic (some might say human) behaviour.
Like many transnational corporations, they have maximized growth
through the successful international manipulation of pricing, marketing and product. Unlike most transnational corporations, however,
they have a serious weakness, an odd one, considering their line of
business: where policy, management and control are concerned, 'international' really means 'north'. South of the Mason-Dixon Development Line, 'international' rarely seems to apply.
Transnational NGOs have done something else, however. They
have demonstrated that there is an enormous amount of goodwill in
the North, and that even in the harsh, self-interested 1990s, the pool of
212
213
CHAPTER XII
those who are losing count), before the word 'governance' had crept
can dictatorships, and for dozens of one-party African states with life
presidents who were dependent upon military life support systems. It
can perhaps now be suggested that the lionizing of undemocratic but
ideologically friendly regimes in countries such as Kenya, Brazil and
the Philippines actually worked against human rights and helped to
damage democracy in ways that cannot yet be properly assessed. Western support, explicit or implicit, during the takeoff period in the careers
of Jean Bedel Bokassa, Anastasio Somoza and Augusto Pinochet did
nothing to further democracy and human rights in the countries which
they subsequently terrorized and defiled. On a visit to Manila, Vice
President George Bush told Ferdinand Marcos, 'We love your adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic process."
Western fear of communism's 'evil empire' permitted and sometimes encouraged monsters to flourish. An example of the myopia
which forbade mention of governance, democracy and human rights,
can be found in the World Bank's 1981 report, Accelerated development in Sub-Saharan Africa: an agenda for action. The report
214
conceded that enormous efforts had been made 'to adapt organizational and administrative arrangements' to the African setting, it acknowledged that the 'mammoth undertaking' remained unfinished.
This seminal report on the state of African development made no
mention, did not even hint that the mammoth undertaking in adapting
'administrative arrangements' would soon be urged on Africa by
donors using aid as a blunt weapon. Governments would be forced to
hold multi-party elections; basic human rights would become an aid
issue; and governments would be obliged to start transferring some of
their authority to a phenomenon that would soar on the development
agenda during the Fourth Development Decade, 'civil society'.
Within ten years of the Bank's report, everything had changed. The
cold war evaporated in the gale of popular revolutions that spread
through eastern Europe. A similar uprising had already ended the
regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and the Government
of South Africa, which had already given up Namibia, was beginning
to plan for majority rule. For the first time in decades, multi-party
elections were held in Kenya, Zambia, Benin, Cameroon and Togo,
and the military handed over to elected civilian governments in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Haiti.
However, elections, flawed and limited as many of them seemed to
be, were only a part of the change. The World Bank, emboldened by
a neo-conservative war on political correctness, now fearlessly attributed Africa's problems, inter alia, to a 'crisis in governance', and
said that a systematic effort was required 'to build a pluralistic institutional structure, a determination to respect the rule of law, and vigorous protection of the freedom of the press and human rights'.3 The
United Nations Development Program, which had rarely pronounced
on such subjects during the 1960s and 1970s - the heyday of development assistance - published a 'Human Freedom Index' in its
1991 Human development report. Asking if there was a correlation
between human freedom and human development, the report said
that although causality remained unclear, 'countries that rank high on
one indicator also tend to rank high on the other'.4 It then classified 88
countries, according to 40 'freedom indicators'.5 These included the
freedoms of travel and association, free media, independent courts,
215
the right to free, open and prompt trial, freedom from torture and the
right to religion, gender equality and citizenship. Sweden and Denmark scored highest, with 38 out of a possible 40 points. Thirty-one
other countries, including, for example, Papua New Guinea, Argentina, Senegal and Jamaica received a passing grade of 20 points or
more. The rest became contenders in an ugly contest, with 15 scoring
5 points or less. Romania and Libya tied with one point each, and Iraq,
already the bad boy of the Middle East, received zero.
International concern about these issues may have seemed novel as
the 1980s unfolded, but there were precedents. Jimmy Carter, for one,
had made respect for human rights and democracy a cornerstone of
his presidency between 1977 and 1981. Although implementation fell
short of rhetoric, Carter helped to legitimize the issues, and to pave a
ter, under which the UN was to 'promote universal respect for, and
Democracy
After 2500 years of refinement, there is surprisingly little consensus
constitutional monarchies all claim, often vigorously, to be democracies. The first of three major variants on the theme was the one
invented in ancient Greece. In direct democracy, citizens participate
individually in governance and decision making. The second variant,
representative democracy, is based on the concept of individuals elected to a legislature. There they represent their constituents within the
framework of a constitution or the rule of law. it is the rule of law and
the ability to limit arbitrary decision-making which create stability and
trust between government and the governed.
A third variant, 'one-party democracy', allows voters to choose be-
mainly for personal gain), one-party democracy does have a legitimate pedigree. Schmitz and Gillies point out that 'few theorists of
development have paid much attention to the problems of ethnic
diversity and other deep cultural cleavages which make a unifying
democratic consensus so difficult to achieve in many Third World
countries'.6 Once the heavy administrative hand of colonialism was
lifted, newly installed parliamentary democracies began to demonstrate their fragility, falling like ninepins before a rush of demagogues,
revolutionary reformers and military takeovers.
Schmitz and Gillies suggest that a more appropriate model might be
found in the 'consociational democracies' of Europe, a form of govern-
Benin and others in the late 1980s and early 1990s have not always
resulted in appreciably better 'governance', nor have they heralded a
217
Civil society
There are implications for NGOs in all of these categories. Some were
in the divine right of kings - were one set of factors. These were reinforced or
undermined by the quality of the leader's 'product', such as patronage, peace, and
a healthy economy. And a third was the threat of force, required in increasing
proportions as the quality of values and product declined.
218
societies, there is one that seems more precise and clear than all
others. If men are to remain civilized or become so, the art of associat-
ing together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the
equality of condition is increased.' He also noted the direct connection between democracy, associations and the media: 'Only a newspaper can put the same thought before a thousand readers. . hardly
any democratic association can carry on without a newspaper.'8
The importance of an association-based civil society finds supporters in unlikely places. Lenin saw the associations of civil society as
transmission lines between people and state (and therefore as instruments to be carefully designed and managed by the party). Antonio
.
Gramsci, leader of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s, saw them
as a key element in the building and maintaining of a nation's political
consensus and social mindset. While these associations were problematic for Gramsci when they supported the domination of one class
over another, they were significant in a revolutionary sense because
they could also be used to bring people together around other experiences, and around new ways of thinking.
Ironically, conservatives see the organizations of civil society in
much the same way. George Will, writing about the Russian political
crisis of March 1993, observed that 'every day brings a thickening of
civil society, those private institutions of consensual association and
empowerment that enable society to flourish independent of, and if
necessary in opposition to, the state.'9
Concern about civil society grew by leaps and bounds in the early
1990s, but mainly among donor agencies and NGOs, rather than political scientists (who mostly knew it was there all along). A conceptual
product of the Enlightenment, 'civil societies' are those governed by
the rule of law and held together not so much by blood and ethnicity
as by institutions of common interest. By the early 1990s, fuelled as
much by changes in Eastern Europe as by concern for the South, the
expression 'civil society' had found its way into major policy papers of
northern regions such as Emilia-Romagna was clearly and unambiguously responsible for good government, and was a factor in the
development of a strong economy. Its historical and present-day absence in southern regions has led to weak government and to societies
based on paternalism, exploitation, corruption and poverty.'2 The Putnam study bears out what Michael Ignatieff says about civil society:
future generations
. Without a free and robust civil society, market
capitalism must inevitably turn into mafia capitalism . . . Without civil
society, democracy remains an empty shell.13
.
220
Participation
Like many over-worked words in the development lexicon, 'participation' has been devalued by a myriad of self-serving interpretations. In
often stolen or co-opted by local elites. And most worrying for some
governments and aid agencies, community development habitually
fostered unsatisfiable demands and annoying criticism from below.
By the late 1960s, attention had turned away from participatory community development towards the siren's call of growth: green revolutions, the transfer of capital-intensive technology, heavy industry and
modernization.
for expressing caution about popular participation, because whenever participation rears its head in a Bank project, the Bank tends to
get a black eye.
Take for example, the Flood Action Plan (PAP) in Bangladesh. In an
effort to mitigate the worst flood disasters, a Bank-led, multi-donor,
multi-billion dollar plan was conceived after the very severe floods of
1988. Through a system of embankments, diversions and barrages,
the PAP was designed to put an end once and for all to the chronic
disasters that seem to plague the country. NGOs, however, were critical, and gradually they put together a familiar-looking NGO protest
network which donors dismissed in the traditional donor manner as
being little more than ill-informed, knee-jerk reaction. NGOs, however, were reflecting what they heard in the villages, where normal
flooding is essential to agriculture and fishing.
Studies of one project component, the FAP Compartmentalization
the home-spun cloth that symbolized self-reliance, and to help villages become self-contained and self-supporting.
The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in Pakistan starts with a
series of 'dialogues' between organizers and villagers. Meetings are
held outdoors so that the entire village can hear and comment on
223
what is being said: not unlike the way the Greeks did it 2500 years
ago. Thousands of primary schools operated by the Bangladesh Rural
Advancement Committee function efficiently where others have failed
because the teacher is recruited from the village and is responsible to
a parents' committee which provides land and equipment, and which
helps schedule the school day and the annual school calendar. The
Orangi Pilot Project, operating in one of Karachi's worst slums, is
centred almost entirely on self-help for the purpose of constructing
low-cost sanitation systems. In the decade following its 1980 start-up,
OPP involved 28000 families in the construction of 131 kilometres of
underground sewerage and 28000 latrines. It built schools and initiated economic programmes for women. The cost, more than a million
dollars, was almost entirely financed by those who lived in the slum.
Examples like these and a thousand smaller ones have helped dem-
The list does not address the limitations imposed on the development process by the culture of funding agencies. Participatory
224
tation process that also works against the reflection and adjustment
that are inherent aspects of real community participation. And donor
reporting requirements are usually inimical to a participatory approach as well. It is estimated that the cost of making a single application to USAID for a matching grant can be as high as $20 000. And
any NGO, American or Southern, receiving more than $25 000 from
USAID must comply with auditing requirements so complex that a 70-
0 a sense that following the rules will bring about the desired effect;
225
Human rights
Power does not corrupt men;fools, however, f they get into aposition of
power, corrupt power.
George Bernard Shaw
1935, Winston Churchill, then a political outcast, wrote an article
about the absence of human rights in Nazi Germany. The Jews, he
wrote, were being 'stripped of all power, driven from every position
In
in public and social life, expelled from the professions, silenced in the
press, and declared a foul and odious race. The twentieth century has
witnessed with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the government and the populace.' Hitler instructed the German ambassador
in London to lodge a strong protest against Churchill's 'personal attack
on the head of the German State', and when the article was about to
be reprinted two years later, the Foreign Office attempted to have it
advisable. '20
The article was reprinted, but the same sordid exercise in preemptive cowardice, in attempting to stifle independent comment on
human rights abuse, is repeated on a daily basis in a hundred ways.
Northern NGOs which advocated an end to colonialism in Portuguese
Africa and to apartheid in South Africa during the 1960s and 1970s were
attacked as agitators, fellow-travellers and sometimes as communists.
The phenomenon still exists. A 1989 example is provided by the International Freedom Foundation, whose Executive Director wrote about
the 'systematic transformation' of British NGOs, and of the emergence
'under the cloak of famine relief and development aid, of highly politicized "charitable" organizations whose traditional functions have
been relegated to a secondary role, behind a narrow political agenda.
Organizations such as Christian Aid and Oxfarn seem to have been
"captured" at their centres by small cliques of ideologically motivated
individuals. Radical socialist and Marxist campaigns are now a daily
.
leaders arrested, and outside agencies like IUEF were targeted for
destruction. The notorious South African Bureau of State Security
(BOSS) managed to place an agent inside the organization, disguised
as a left-wing anti-apartheid refugee. Incredibly, this police major rose
to the rank of deputy director within two years, gathering invaluable
and highly destructive information about the anti-apartheid movement. When the BOSS infiltration was exposed by a defecting South
African agent in 1980, donors withdrew their support from IUEF and
the organization collapsed - the ultimate BOSS objective once the
cupboard had been looted.24
Indonesia offers another variation on the NGO-human rights issue.
East Timor, a Portuguese colony forcibly annexed by Indonesia in
aid programme was cancelled by Indonesia itself, and all Dutch NGOs
were expelled as well. It was a message from Indonesia that it would
to speak has been taken, is what to say. NGOs rarely, if ever, speak
with one voice, and NGOs certainly do not all see human rights in the
same way. The human rights activities of NGO workers in Central
America, for example, have been very mixed. Many were used, or
allowed themselves to be used, as foot soldiers in the cold war. Before
1980, the region was virtually unknown to most NGOs. With the 1979
Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, however, with a brutal civil war in
El Salvador and a cornucopia of murder and abuse in Guatemala,
1985 for declaring that the government's forced resettlement programme had cost the lives of 100 000 people. World Vision, the
Lutheran World Federation and the Action Committee for Relief of
228
Influencing policy
Both Northern and Southern NGOs can and do influence policy: aid
policy; specific development policies; the broader policy framework
not act on a report recommending the arrest and trial of people suspected of
genocide against the Tutsi minority. (Mark Hubbard, The Observer, as reported in
the Ottawa Citizen, 20 July 1994.) By early October, seven CARE workers in Katale
Camp had been placed on a Hutu death list. CARE withdrew. James Fennel,
CARE's Emergency Director, said, 'We are not willing to work with a bunch of
killers. These people should have been weeded out months ago.' (The Economist,
8 October 1994.)
229
because it had worked at high levels on policy change with an unpopular and undemocratic government. Wearing their democratic
hearts on their sleeves and conveniently ignoring the fact that many of
them had also worked with government departments, the NGO community reacted with inaction and silence when mobs (allegedly hired
by pharmaceutical firms) attacked the Gonoshasthaya Kendra offices
during the 1991 democracy movement.
NGOs make governments nervous when they become involved in
policy work. This is especially true in countries where the democratic
process is weak or ineffective. NGOs tend, in such cases, to become
World Bank and the IMF, criticism which has done little to help
beleaguered governments or people submerged in poverty.t
Kwesi Botchwey, the Ghanaian Minister of Finance who presided
with integrity over a decade of extremely difficult and modestly successful structural adjustment, believes that the NGO perspective is
narrow and selective. For example NGOs are quick to attack user fees
in the health system, saying they hit the poorest with an unaffordable
*Maybe this judgement is too harsh. Without the attacks, adjustment programmes
might never have been adjusted as they have been to take social questions into
greater concern. Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli, however, reinforce the image
of ritualistic and largely impotent NGO criticism of the Bank: 'Most NGOs are not
lobbying to make sure that EDs [Executive Directorsi responsive to poverty and
environmental concerns are named to the board, or even to make sure that their
votes are a matter of public record. With few exceptions, NGOs haven't a clue as
to who their representative on the board is anyway, nor any idea of what s/he
does all day. (George and Sabelli, (1994), p.22l)
231
tax. But Botchwey believes that the fees, which represent one-thirtieth
making useful and constructive social and economic recommendations. Supported by the Ford Foundation, CECADE (Centro de
A reckoning
It is obvious that only certain facets of development can be measured
in national statistics. For the poor, development is a process of change
that permits them to improve and manage their own lives, and to
understand and influence the larger context in which they live, This
requires confidence, skills, independent institutions and responsive,
responsible government. The official donor commitment to responsible, democratic government had never been more vocal than it was
in the early 1990s. Nor was it ever so confused and ambivalent. For
example 'democracy' is often used in the same sentence as 'human
rights', as though they are synonymous and fully compatible. One of
have also been celebrated successes. And for every one of these, there
have been a hundred more successes observed in silence, in order to
protect the innocent. There can be no question that NGOs have strengthened civil society, by educating people, by enhancing the participation
of women, minorities, the poor and the marginalized. Northern NGOs
have helped create and sustain an entire generation of Southern organizations. And these Southern NGOs have taken civil society a step further, recognizing and strengthening traditional institutions at village level.
reform and justice are concerned, The cost of speaking out can be
very high, as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Steve Biko, Chico
Mendes, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, and many
other activists have discovered.
NGOs are slow to share or co-operate with each other. Stockholm and
UNCED notwithstanding, development NGOs have for decades been
largely oblivious to environmental NGOs, and they have been equally
the East Timor issue - these tend to be the exception rather than the
rule. All this isolation and competition has obvious costs. Because policy
research is expensive, and because few donors will support it explicitly,
NGOs must squeeze the money out of general revenue - either adding
its 'own' projects and project partners are among the most serious
financial and political problems facing Southern NGOs today. There
are, however, no simple solutions. Two good-looking models are the
235
The independence of both has been seriously compromised, however, by relentless government meddling and, in the case of the latter,
inappropriate World Bank micro-management.
Donors and Northern NGOs should consider broader questions of
civil society. The focus on poverty alleviation and development projects has meant that the strongest Northern relationships have been
with relatively new development NGOs, often cast in a Northern
mould. But there are other types of organization critical to a broadbased civil society. Professional and labour groups, student organizations, religious bodies, welfare agencies, and peasant movements of the
sort found in Latin America are all deserving of consideration. Beyond
this, donors can expand on other efforts that have been initiated in
recent years: support for election observers, electoral commissions,
voter registration and training, equipment and technical assistance for
representative political institutions, support for the training of independent journalists. Fostering horizontal linkages between these organiza-
Shopping lists of what can and should be done sound good: neat
conclusions to round out the chapter. But there is a jarring note that
spoils the harmony of the apparent potential for democratic collaboration. Many Southern governments find the whole idea threatening.
And while Northern governments say they believe democracy and the
observance of human rights to be precursor of, and a catalyst for good
development, their own actions are fraught with situational ethics and
ambivalence. A trade embargo may be placed on undemocratic Haiti,
but a major trading partner such as China is treated very differently.
Despite widespread Western condemnation of the Tianenmen massacres of 1989, official development assistance to China grew by 42
per cent between 1989 and 1992.38 Aid to Ghana, which complied
during the same period in every way with World Bank and IMF ad just-
there had been military coups in Sierra Leone and the Gambia,
annulled elections in Nigeria, on-going bloody war in Liberia, and
Rwanda had rocked out of control. Except for mild expressions of
dismay from the world community, the villains largely prospered. In
the autumn of 1994, around the time of the invasion of Haiti (and the
pullout of US troops from Somalia), US Commerce Secretary Ron
Brown went to Beijing with two dozen captains of American industry.
The Canadian Prime Minister followed a month later with nine of the
country's ten provincial premiers. Eager to trade, all appeared to have
237
CHAPTER XIII
Future conditional
Many have dreamed up republics and principalities which have never
in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and
how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually
done for what should be done paves the way to self-destruction rather
than self-preservation.
NicolO Machiavelli.
FOR NGOs, the journey from the optimistic first 'Development Decade'
of the 1960s to the grim reality of the century's last years has been one
fraught with painful but important lessons, lessons about poverty, com-
It is an interchange where the value and importance of the nongovernmental movement is acknowledged, but where it is increasingly challenged by forces and temptations which conspire to undermine the very independence that distinguishes it. This book asks
questions about NGOs, but it does not have all the answers. It does
not, for example, answer Pj. O'Rourke's question about what to do
when an uncontrollable, unstoppable emergency begins to unfold.
People respond differently when faced with choices. The book does
not seek to condemn people who find themselves a little further down
the road to hell because they took the exit marked 'good intentions'.
Today, however, there is enough knowledge about how the highway
works, and where that particular exit can lead, to make some informed choices about what to do at the junction.
Building civil society. In the South, only Southern organizations can
support the effort, but they cannot do it themselves. Good development, sustainable development, cutting-edge projects are all import-
ant. But they are not as important as the creation of strong local
institutions that can help people make decisions about what to do for
themselves. Co-operation and public-spiritedness, even if it is selfinterested, does not flow from logical framework analyses or rules,
is essential to a secure future, to a muffling of the tribal and ideological drums that have sounded the destruction of so many lives in
the past century.
North-South partnerships. One of the great future challenges has to
do with relationships between the 'old' world of the North, and the
'new' world of the South; between seductive old ideas about an endless cornucopia of economic growth, and newer ideas about how to
live within the means, economic and environmental, that are available. If not today, then some time in the near future, questions about
that will illuminate and form the basis for lasting solutions. In this
there is tremendous scope for North-South NGO partnerships, between organizations with shared obligations working on common
agendas, towards common solutions to shared problems. Here Northern NGOs are faced with their greatest test: how to convert what
remains a giving-getting connection - a 'lop-sided friendship' based
'Partnership' may find expression in new forms of NGO multilateralism, with international groupings of Northern and Southern
NGOs creating foundations and financial mechanisms which can sur-
mount today's bureaucratic maze of one-off unilateral financial arrangements. If the dysfunctional aspects of organizational egos can be
are able to learn, remember and share; if they are prepared, when
they seek to influence policy, to take well-aimed rifle shots and give
up their scatter guns. From this will flow the political strength needed
islands, remotely connected (or not at all) in a vast and stormy sea.
Duplication, unproductive competition, isolation, amateurism: all characterize the second image, weakening what NGOs, singly or together, can
do for the health of their societies, There is no easy way to build professionalism, broadly defined. The inability of individual NGO communities
- in the US or Chile or Ghana to take matters of co-ordination, ethics,
standards, competence and learning in hand is a demonstration of how
much larger the problem is at the international level.
Perhaps the impetus for more and better evaluation, more and
better dissemination, more and better co-ordination can come from
the South, from organizations that have a degree of international credibility and standing: the Third World Network, El Taller, Civicus,
DAWN and others. Perhaps it will have to take place on a country-bycountry basis. Whatever the answer, the vigour and importance that
are attached to this challenge by NGOs will determine both their role
in the coming years, and history's judgement of their contribution.
Size and knowledge. Big organizations may very well be effective.
Size may help an organization to become more professional, to have
greater impact, to keep its market share of charitable giving. But big is
not likely to be the major criterion of success in the future. For North-
about how to make candles and matches - or perhaps better electricity. Knowledge, combined with heart and commitment, has
always been a key to development, and moving away from ad hoc
charitable amateurism towards lasting, longer-term solutions, and the
and share what they learn, and that are prepared to build on what
they remember.
from which all participants can learn, would be a start in the right
direction. Governments must somehow find ways to back off; to balance their new contracting enthusiasms with the need for strong,
independent social sector organizations, organizations capable of independent thought and action, organizations that are instruments of
social reform as well as competent delivery mechanisms.
Co-operation with government. To co-operate is not the same as to
obey. Nor are co-optation and co-operation synonymous. But what
be a framework in which some traditional power blocks are weakened in favour of others: women, minorities, the poor. But properly
managed, this should serve to enrich, rather than weaken society.
NGOs have everything to gain from helping government to establish
such frameworks. Governments have everything to lose by assuming
they can survive without them.
The criticism of government. Criticism of government - fair or
unfair - is the hallmark of a healthy democracy. It is exemplified in
Northern NGOs' criticism of official aid: its volume, its lack of attention to poverty, debt reduction and fair trade, its preoccupations with
politics, tied aid and the blunt instruments of structural adjustment. In
the absence of real democracy, where opposition parties, the press
and the judiciary have become muted, NGOs - sometimes domestic,
sometimes foreign - behave as an official opposition would elsewhere. This is why NGOs have, at various times in countries like
Kenya, Brazil and Bangladesh, seemed so antagonistic towards government. Until people can speak freely within the standard institutions of a functional democracy, governments should not be surprised
that NGOs behave like critics.
242
Predictions about the future are often based on little more than
obvious trends. That is why the futuristic spaceships in the Buck
of the 1940s look so much like old-fashioned V-2 rockets.
Although writers like Jules Verne, HG. Wells and George Orwell got
Rogers films
the paper, in the real news, Prime Minister P.W. Botha thundered
243
And yet
Star's
exercise in
on the unity of diverse cultures seeking an end to poverty, oppression, humiliation and collective violence.'1 Linked by E-mail,
modems and computers, networks both real and virtual will, in the
words of another writer, 'develop planetary consciousness via electronic democracy'.2
price tags. Lester Brown and Hal Kane suggest that many of the
problems ahead could be reduced or eliminated by putting $14 billion
a year into population programmes, by spending $6.5 billion annually
tive: 'must', 'should', 'have to' - 'must' develop the political will,
'should' allocate the money, 'have to' tap the untapped resources
that are there for the asking: knowledge about development, values
that foster productivity, organization and social cohesion; skills that
improve quality and productivity; social attitudes that foster selfconfidence, individual initiative and positive responses to new opportunities .
As British novelist John Fowles correctly observes, a thousand violins cloy very rapidly without percussion. How these things are to
happen in a world of Somalias and Liberias, in a world where the
nation state no longer has a monopoly on armed force, where debt
and famine - and Northern apathy towards both - are the order of
the day; how these things are to happen is not at all clear. Machiavelli
warns that neglecting what is actually done, for what should be done
is not always the safest way to get to the future. The answer cannot be
more of the same. And the answer is surely more than simply hoping
for the best, more than vague ideas about 'strengthening over time the
institutional forms and activities associated with global society'. Simplistic exhortations to 'accelerate the transfer of technology', after
decades of disastrous technology transfer, are not only counterproductive, they are (and here, the percussion) stupid.
Star Wars. It depicted a universe filled not only with humans, but
humans interacting with weird, intelligent intergalactic creatures from
a dozen universes. What depressed Baldwin was that among all these
fantastic creatures and humans, there were no black people. Hollywood, usually the first in political correctness, saw no place in the
future for black humans. The same is true of the International Commission on Peace and Food. It talks about new ways of thinking,
about 'new types of public and private organization', but with the
exception of five brief references, it has nothing to say about the form
of interaction that will be necessary between people, governments
and the global forces which influence their lives. Like the Pearson and
Brandt Commissions, which basically ignored NGOs, (Brundtland
gave them three pages to themselves), this commission sees no place
in the future worth mentioning for the associations people might
make for themselves.*
Second ending
Fowles refused to end his novel The French Lieutenant's woman with
more confused. Some fear that NGOs are 'crowding out' the state,
*Happily, for the first time in three decades of 'global commissions', this was not
the case with the 1995 Commission on Global Governance, which wove NGOs
and a broad understanding of civil society through its arguments and findings.
246
while others, disillusioned with public sector failure and bad 'governance', want the state crowded out, supporting a contraction in government services and using NGOs to pick up the pieces while the
market, biotechnology and the information superhighway come to
the longer-term rescue. Both factions place a faith in NGOs that is
probably unwarranted.
Whenever there is a detailed examination, NGOs tend to wilt under
the microscope. One of the more famous examples was a 1982 study
done by Judith Tendler for USAID, 'Turning private voluntary organizations into development agencies'. Here, and in a widely circulated
article five years later, 'Whatever happened to poverty alleviation?',8
Tendler not only sharpened the focus on the microscope, she started
pulling wings off butterflies to see what made them fly. She debunked, not always unfairly, NGO 'articles of faith'. And looking specifically at 'better performing' NGOs like SEWA, the Working Women's
Forum and Grameen Bank, she said that even these were 'riddled
with problems, mistakes and false starts'. Qualify this as she may, her
writing has become an especially bright mazurka to the ears of those
who would bash NGOs, as they have bashed others. UNDP, having
criticized donors and Southern governments in its first two Human
Development Reports, found itself under pressure to take a critical look
at NGOs. It dug out Tendler's papers and agreed that there had been
poorest 5-10 per cent' and that even Grameen Bank, impressive
though it may be, provides only 0.1 per cent of all national credit in
Bangladesh. 'NGOs are in no position to replace government or commercial markets in the provision of credit.'
Even the most hardened NGO critic should have been stunned by
these remarks, especially in a report which a few pages earlier said
that only 6.5 per cent of official development assistance was earmarked for human priority concerns, A comparison is therefore in
order. The report estimated total NGO expenditure in 1990 at $7.2
billion, most of it going to human priority concerns (if not necessarily
the poorest 5-10 per cent). Total official development assistance that
year was $40.2 billion, which means, if UNDP was right, that only $2.6
have no value. And the farther a river is from the sea, the more
important it can be. It can make the difference between life and death:
broader value of human organization - organization for selfimprovement and for community development - is worse.
This is not to say there is no failure. For every NGO success story,
there are many examples of things that have not worked. This is
equally true of government attempts to end poverty. But NGOs have
been slow to demonstrate concretely what they can do. They are
fragmented, competitive, localized and increasingly accountable to
governments rather than to their own aims, objectives, partners and
beneficiaries. So it is not hard to write a pessimistic or, let us simply
say a 'technocratic' ending to the story. This would envision greater
government acknowledgement of the NGO role and achievement.
sTo rectify this, the 1995 Commission on Global Governance suggested the creation of an annual UN Forum of Civil Society that would bring together three to six
hundred organizations to debate social and economic issues, and to make recommendations which could be brought forward to the General Assembly, and to
other national and international bodies.
248
A third ending
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
the fragment of a
4fe, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may
not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent
powers may find their long-awaited opportunity; a past error may urge
a grand retrieval.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1872.
Things change. Just as there was nothing immutable about the way
such services were organized in Lenin's brave new world, there is
nothing particularly sacrosanct about the way Western Europeans or
North Americans organized themselves to provide health and welfare
services after the Second World War.
In fact it was the notion that the government should and could do
everything that led many newly independent countries in the South
down a slippery slope, one which encouraged them to organize and
to attempt to deliver every facet of health, education and social we!fare. Foreigners helped them, providing inappropriate technologies
and costly, often wrong-headed, technical assistance. In the process,
lending institutions helped them to mortgage their future. Now, be-
cause the need is so great, there is hope for a new spirit of community, 'community' which is more than a provider of services,
'community' which is also a way of organizing, of providing the integrating power that many governments now lack, a way of restoring
active citizenship and the participation of individuals in their own
future. This is important to industrialized countries where, for example, a President Clinton could lament the 'stunning and simultaneous breakdown of community, family and work, the heart and soul
of civilized society'. It is more true perhaps, in former communist
countries, where associational life and citizenship were systematically
nullified over a series of generations. And it is especially true in much
of the South, where brief, unhappy experiments with the nation state
and modern institutions have caused people to retreat into older concepts of community. These are communities based on blood, language, tribe and religious beliefs. Many of them are ill-equipped for
survival in a world where education, health, knowledge and trade are
essential to life and living. Increasingly, these 'communities' are being
hijacked by thugs and warlords, whose own survival is inexorably
linked to machine guns and rocket-launchers.
'Communitarianism' is more than a vague concept, it is a terrible
word. But in the United States, it has developed a wide intellectual
following among those seeking refuge from a socially splintered
world. Amitai Etzioni, professor of sociology at George Washington
University, has written extensively about it in The spirit of community:
the reinvention ofAmerican society, saying that both the left and the
meet, old ideas about 'parenting' have been abandoned, and the
family has been fractured. On the left, unsustainable welfare benefits
Small groups save money and each month, in turn, one individual
'gets the pot'. This very old and almost universal form of group savings was the basis for Grameen Bank and a dozen organizations
mentioned in other chapters. People stay in the group after they have
received their share, because to pull out would damage their standing
in the community, and would limit their ability to participate in similar
schemes in the future. Comparable forms of social capital can be seen
have learned to survive as best they can - and who have a hardearned skepticism of outsiders, whatever their good intentions. The
activists who stay the course longest seem to have figured out how far
they can go in prodding others, how deep within themselves they must
look. They have a mixture of political insistence and introspective
tentativeness that allows them to be effective in spite of the everpresent frustrations.12
between goals and activities, between their dream and the reality, an
253
inward-looking, Narcissistic stage sets in. Idealistic plans and innovative, dynamic movements become cautious, unwieldy, selfperpetuating bureaucracies. Certainly, Narcissistic self-examination
has led to the paralysis of many once-dynamic Northern NGOs. They
restructure and restructure again, decentralizing, re-centralizing, finetuning mission statements and debating endlessly the finer points of
development theory. Some in the South, although younger, run the
same risk. In time, what remains of the beautiful youth is little more
than a name and some flowers beside a forest pond.
Gaibraith describes the narcissism that destroyed Robert Owen's
early-nineteenth century attempt to create utopia in New Harmony,
Indiana
Idealists did come to New Harmony, although the population was
never more than a few hundred, So did an historic collation of misfits,
misanthropes and free-loaders. Once there, they devoted themselves
The Phoenix-Faust-Narcissus metaphor is, of course, a poetic version of the youth-maturity-death cycles common to the literature of
organizational evolution.16 The phoenix is an ideal, however, not a
structure. Sometimes it is a movement that can rise anew in different
places and in different ways. For those concerned about North-South
relationships, there is a Gandhian reminder in the Phoenix analogy.
Gandhi, whose teachings and example continue to inspire new generations of NGOs, spent more than twenty years working as a lawyer in
South Africa. Once, on an overnight train journey from Johannesburg
to Durban, he read Ruskin's Unto This Last. John Ruskin, a nineteenthcentury British art critic, imparted three important ideas to Gandhi:
o 'that a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the
handicraftsman is the life worth living'.
'The first of these I knew,' Gandhi wrote. 'The second I had dimly
realized. The third had never occurred to me.' Unto This Last brought
about 'an instantaneous and practical transformation' in Gandhi's life.
254
Chiapas, and the poverty behind its uprising, disappeared from the
news, although perhaps only temporarily. The fact that half of all
Mexicans were already living in poverty - one-fifth of them in extreme poverty - did not seem to strike economists as a reason to do
anything but applaud wage reductions and tighter emigration controls. The roots of Mexican political and economic instability were
simply ignored, except that Mexican debt was increased, along with
the country's inability to repay.
The fundamental issue of Mexican poverty, as in Batista's Cuba,
Somoza's Nicaragua and all the Rwandas and Somalias of today,
became lost in IMF negotiations, stock market shifts and attempts to
rebuild investor confidence; in what Conor Cruise O'Brien calls
'wishful fantasy, unwarranted reassurance and intimations of quick
fixes'.
Leaders in both the North and the South seem to have lost their
ability to lead on such issues. Aid budgets are cut back to all-time lows
poor live, this too is a symbol, and a powerful one. Among other
things, it demonstrates a terrible paucity of leadership and good
sense. The consequence is that bigger problems, like trade, debt,
human rights, and the global environment, fall further and further
down the political agenda.
256
Here, perhaps, is where the most effective alliances can and should
be forged between NGOs in the North, in the South, and across the
great divide: alliances aimed at creating public ownership of both
problems and solutions, at finding ways to help governments make
the commitments that will be necessary for real change, through the
mobilization of informed public opinion. Compassion for those in
and supported by many more of the same, are trying to sort out a
better future for our children. It is a better future, however, which
looks, from the perspective of places like Chiapas, the Balkans, the
Brazilian rainforest, from most of Africa and much of Asia, more
distant than ever.
27
Notes
These include short references to hooks or articles that are mentioned elsewhere in the hook, and for which the full details appear in the bibliography,
as well as full references to articles or hooks that are only mentioned in this
chapter.
Introduction
Charities Aid Foundation, (1994), p.64; 'The GOP's blind faith in charity',
Business Week, 6 March, 1995.
O'Neill, Michael, (1989), The third America: The emergence qf the nonprofit sector in the United States, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, p.7.
Charities Aid Foundation (1994), pp.14, 39.
Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, (1994), p.ix.
The OECD counted 1600 such organizations in 1980, and there were well
over 3000 in 1993 (Smillie and Helmich, 1993, p.21); Lester Salamon puts
the number at 4600 (1994, p.119).
Ignatieff, pp.28 and 138.
The Bank's 1980 World development report was in fact rather cautious,
predicting two scenarios: worse and better.
Berg et al., (1994).
See, for example, UNICEF (1995), and Berg et al., (1994).
Berg etal., (1994), p.11.
World Bank, (1994h): SSA's GDI was $132.3 billion, not including the
Sudan, for which figures were not available, or South Africa, compared
with Denmark's $123.5 billion.
Meadows et al., (1972) pp.56-8.
World Resources Institute (1994), pp.338-9.
1970 figures: Meadows et al., (1972) pp.57-8; 1987 figures: World Resources Institute (1990), p.320; 1990 figures: WRI (1994), p.336.
The 1974 figure: Brown (1974), p.9; the 1993 figure: Brown and Kane,
p.76.
Bailey, (1993) pages 88, 161-2.
The Economist, (1995) 21 June.
some issue with the calculations (p.98), but does not invalidate their
basic premise.
UNDP (1994), p.54.
Kennedy, (1993) p.334.
Drucker (1993), p.178.
Rich, (1994) pp.301-3.
Steinbeck, John, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, 1951, quoted in
Klitgaard, Robert p.13
Korten, (1990), p.106.
Reich, (1991), p.279.
Kuti, (1993), p.5.
Korten, (1990), p.124.
ibid, p.2.
ibid, p.98.
Janashakthi Bank statistics derived from personal interviews in September 1994, and fromJB Progress Report 11, 31 July, 1994.
Salamon and Anheier, (1992a).
p/i8.
This section is adapted from Smillie (1991).
Willoughby, Kelvin W., (1990), Technology choice: a critique of the Appropriate Technology movement, IT, p.66.
Whiticombe, R. and M. Carr, (1982). 'Appropriate Technology institutions: a review', ITDG, London.
(1991), The machine that changed the world: the stoly of lean production, pp.146-53.
The 'Third Italy' is discussed at length in Best, Michael H., (1990) The
New Competition, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp.203-226.
culture. See also World Bank, (1985), Bangladesh: economic and social
development prospects, Vol. III, which estimated that by 1991 only 16 to
18 per cent of the additional labour force would be employed in direct
crop production.
Gwitira, Joshua C., (1990) 'Small-scale technology for agro-industrial
development', JTDG/Zimbabwe Ministry of Industry and Commerce,
Harare, October.
See Robert Chambers, (1987 and 1994), and Chambers and Conway,
(1992), for a more thorough discussion of sustainable rural livelihoods.
McCormick, John, (1989), Reclaiming paradise: The global environniental movement, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p.3.
McCormick, (1989), op cit, p.19.
Quoted in Bonner, Raymond, (1993), At the hand of man: peril and hope
Jbr Africa wild4fe, Knopff, New York, p.40.
IUCN (1948), Statutes, 5 October.
Quoted in Bonner, (1993), op cii, p.57.
261
These numbers, drawn from a wide variety of sources, are only barely
trustworthy, as definitions are widely inconsistent. Many of the 'NGOs' in
one country may actually be small, village-based organizations that are
not included in the survey of another country. The numbers serve largely
to demonstrate the global dynamism of the sector.
BRAG, (1992), 'BRAG at twenty', Dhaka.
Black, (1992), p.133.
ibid.
Ekins, (1992); and 'Standing up for trees: women's role in the Ghipko
Movement' by Shobita Jam in Sontheimer, (1991).
This section is based on an extensive study of Ghanaian NGOs undertaken by the author with Siapha Kamara and Daniel Joly in 1992.
Thompson, Judith, (1991), 'Managing NGOs: what are the critical challenges for NGOs today in Africa?' ISODEG, Accra. Thompson also includes the problems of networking, umbrella organizations, and gaining
recognition at home and abroad.
The main sources for details in this section are as follows: Malee Suwanaadth, (1991), 'The NGO sector in Thailand', SVITA Foundation, Bangkok;
PRIA, (1992), November Newsletter No. 40, PRIA, New Delhi; Perera, J.,
262
of this chapter in a fax from Croatia, she wrote, 'The academics got
carried away on theory: people are afraid to stick their neck out and call
something successful because it doesn't incorporate every principle from
every theory. Even though the theories have been valuable, they have
the same paper in Changing perceptions: u'ritings on gender and development, Oxfam, Oxford, (1991).
See, for example, Ryder, Graine (ed.), (1990), Damning the Three
Gorges.' what the dam-builders don't want you to know, Probe International, Toronto.
Committee, CARE and others (of which the author was one) would
occasionally organize a Nigerian evening in Dhaka to recall earlier
adventures.
1994 UN Revised Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal for Angola; FebruaryJuly 1994, UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, Geneva.
22, Black, (1992), p.223.
The 1992 figure, according to the 1993 and 1994 OECD DAC Reports was
8.6 per cent, and in 1993 it was 11.4 per cent. These figures are open to
interpretation.
Benson, Charlotte, (1993), The changing roles of NGOs in the provision
of relief and rehabilitation assistance: Cambodia/Thailand, Overseas
Development Institute, London, p.93.
265
See for example Mason, L. and Brown, R. Rice, Rivaliy and Politics:
Managing Cambodian Relief University of Notre Dame Press, 1983,
Shawcross, (1984) op. cit. and Benson (1993) op. cit., 29.
Smillie, (1985), p.335.
tween 1989 and 1992. Total Canadian aid expenditure to all African
countries - bilateral, multilateral, food, emergency aid and NGO support - was C$1.07 billion in 1992-3 (CIDA Annual Report, 1992-3,
Ottawa, 1994).
Quoted in Benthall, (1993), p.133.
Match International: Ottawa Citizen, 22 July 1994; AJJDC/AAI: New York
Times, 3lJuly 1994.
Shawcross, (1984), op. cit., p.243.
Quoted in Kent, R.C., (1987), Anatomy of disaster relief the international network in action, Pinter, London, p.81.
Anderson and Woodrow, (1989), p.97.
Oxfam, Oxford, (1993).
Vassall-Adams, (1994), op. cit., p.26.
Eguizbal, C., D. Lewis, L. Minear, P. Sollis, and Thomas Weiss, (1993),
Humanitarian challenges in Gentral America: learning lessons of recent
armed conflict, Thomas J. (1993), Watson Jr. Institute for International
Studies, Brown University, Providence.
Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal (1994), use the guinea-pig analogy in
'Humanitarianism unbound? Current dilemmas facing multi-mandate relief operations in political emergencies', African Rights, London, Novem-
ibid.
These included an NGO Coalition for US Support of Equitable and Sustainable Development, The Development Group for Alternative Policies,
the Advocacy Network for Development, and the Overseas Development Council. See Smillie and Helmich, (1993), pp.312-3
Decima Corporation, (1993), 'Elite study on development assistance',
IDRC, Ottawa.
'Summit debates dilute plan', Toronto Globe and Mail, 10 March 1995.
Randel and German, (1994), p.19.
OECD, (1995).
21, Harris, Lou and Associates, (1993), Harris Poll 55, New York,
November.
22. University of Maryland, op cit. Michael Kinsley criticizes the public igno-
267
Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, (1994), 'Eight nation
people and the press survey', Washington, March.
Canadian International Development Agency, (1991), Report to CIDA:
public attitudes toward international development assistance, Ottawa.
Intercultural Communications Inc., (1993), 'A new climate for foreign
aid?' Washington, May: the Belden and Russonello poll (Rockefeller
Foundation, 'Americans and Foreign Aid in the Nineties', Feb. 1993)
found support for the UN slightly lower, at 45 per cent; 61 per cent
believed multilateral aid programmes would be more effective than bilateral. A word of caution is needed on the US figures: a 1992 UNICEF
poli found that roughly the same number (19 per cent) believed US
Government support to be effective, however only 22 per cent favoured
UN agencies and UNICEF. Religious organizations came out ahead in
this poll (37 per cent), and NGOs received only 11 per cent support
(Source: InterAction 1994).
CIDA, (1988), 'Report to CIDA: Public Attitudes Towards International
Development Assistance', Ottawa.
Phillips, E. Hereward, (1969), Fund raising techniques and case histories, Business Books, London; quoted in Lissner, (1977), p.131.
Bread for the World, (1993), p.74.
Clark, (1991), p.146.
ibid, p.50.
Education in Europe (draft), NGDO-EC Liaison Committee Development Education Group, Brussels, pp.8-9.
Pinney, C. (1994), 'Building support for a new foreign policy' (draft),
CCIC, March.
For example, Canadian polis between 1987 and 1991 gave NGOs a
credibility rating of about 25 per cent: behind television (about 35 per
cent) and churches (about 32 per cent), but ahead of newspapers (20 per
cent and government (18 per cent).
UNDP, (1994), p.71.
Times Mirror Poll, op. cit., March 1994. None of the other seven countries
This story was detailed on the British television programme, Dispatches: 'In the Name of Hunger', produced and directed by Roy
Ackerman, Channel 4, London, 1990. World Vision went to great
lengths to discredit the programme, later claiming that a major retraction and apology had been elicited from Channel 4. Damage control
Rossum, Constance, (1993), 'How to assess your non-profit organization', Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
'Social Audit 1992/93', Traidcraft plc, Gateshead; 'Traidcraft Exchange:
Ideas and Action for Fair Trade,' Traidcraft, Gateshead, 1994; Zadek,
Simon and Gatward, Murdoch, 'Transforming the Transnationals,' University of Manchester Workshop on NGO Accountability, June, 1994;
Zadek, S., 'Notes on Social Audit,' New Economics Foundation, London
1994.
them, as the figures and definitions supplied for the study and to the
OECD are often inconsistent. These are, however, the most accurate
assessments available, and are based on information supplied from the
governments in question. They refer to cash grants that are not tied to
government commodities, programmes or priorities. The grants are provided to NGOs only. Universities, professional institutions and others
have been excluded.
OECD Aid Review 1992/3, Memorandum of Australia, 29 July, 1992.
See, for example, Weir, Margaret, 'Entitlements', in Krieger, p.267.
Government of Australia, (1994), 'AIDAB-NGO Cooperation Annual Report 1993-4', Canberra.
ibid p.310; the figure refers to cash only.
Korten (1990), p.102.
Chapter X Partners
'Our Values', (circa 1993), War on Want publicity material, London.
Author's work with Sarvodaya between 1984 and 1990. See Smillie,
(1987), 'Northern donors and Southern partners: arguments for an NGO
consortium approach', Commonwealth Secretariat Roundtable, University of Warwick, July.
This story is based on the author's work with AMREF. See Smillie, (1987),
'Strengthening collaboration with NGOs: the strangulation technique',
AMREF, Nairobi.
'South-North linking for international development', Conference Proceedings, November, 1990, quoted in Malena, (1992), op. cit.
See, for example, Behhington and Riddell, (1994).
Zadek, S., and S. Szabo, (1994), 'Valuing organization: the case of Sarvodaya', New Economics Foundation, London.
Perera, Jehan, (1994), 'In unequal dialogue with donors: the future direction of Sarvodaya', Manchester University Conference, June.
The numbers had a tendency to jump about, which donors found particularly frustrating. In 1978, Ariyaratne used the number 2000 villages.
In 1979 it was 3000 and by 1985 he said that 'the Movement is active in
8000 Ivillagesl' ('Development from below', A.T. Ariyaratne). Perera,
(1994) op. cit., talked of 8600 in 1994. A mid-term Review conducted in
1988 referred to only 5000, and donor funds, in fact, were targeted
specifically at 2000 villages where concrete and verifiable activity was
taking place.
Sarvodaya, (1994), 'The future directions of Sarvodaya', Moratuwa, June.
Perera, (1994), op. cit.
Pitt-Rivers, Julian, (1954), People of the Sierra, Weidenfeld and Nicho!son, London, p.40; cited in Putnam, (1993), p.174.
James, Rick, (1994), 'Strengthening the capacity of Southern NGO partners' (Draft), INTRAC, Oxford.
In 1994, Irish NGOs raised about $25 million in total. World Vision
Ireland raised only a tiny fraction of this.
Plan International, (1992 and 1994), 'Worldwide annual reports'.
Fowler, (1992).
Campbell, (1990), p.1193.
Fowler, Alan, (1992), 'Decentralization for international NGOs', Development in Practice, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.121-4, Oxfam, June. Debates about
decentralization, of course, date back at least as far as the Roman Empire. Norman Uphoff discussed decentralization and deconcentration in
Local institutional development: an analytical sourcebook with cases,
(Kumarian Press, 1986); Julie Fisher uses the same terminology as Fowler
in 'Local governments and the independent sector in the Third World' in
McCarthy et al., (1992).
Campbell, (1990), p.192.
Black, (1992), p.295.
USAID, (1993).
London, pp.274 5.
Quoted in Dolan, Chris, British development NGOs and advocacy in the
1990s', in Edwards and Hulme, (1992), p.207.
Letter from Robin Guthrie, Chief Charity Commissioner, the Times, 10
May 1991.
Travelling with Ron Brown was the President of Chrysler Motors, which
reportedly had ties with the New Face Vehicle Refit Factory, a labour
camp. Brown's visit took place in September; the Lop Nor nuclear explosion took place on 6 October. The Canadian mission, which took place
in November, signed protocols of intent under which Canada would sell
CANDU nuclear reactors to China.
275
The Report of the International Commission on Peace and Food, Uncommon Opportunities, Zed, London, 1994, p.102.
Galbraith, (1992), p.20.
O'Brien, (1994), p.163.
Tendler, Judith, 'Whatever happened to poverty alleviation', in Levitsky,
(1989).
UNDP, (1993b), p.94.
Total external assistance to the health sector was $4794 million; the
development banks provided $298 million in concessional loans, while
NGO disbursements were $1100 million. Source: World Bank, (1993),
p.l65.
The Economist, for example, ran a long essay on the subject in its 24
December, 1994 issue, arguing that 'high communitarians', with their
'neurotic fear of the future' are a threat to the very foundations of western liberalism.
Coles, (1993), p.40.
Putnam, (1993), p.182.
Buttimer, (1993), p.41.
Gaibraith, J.K., (1977), The age of uncertainty, BBC-Deutsch, p.30.
See, for example, Vincent, Fernand and Piers Campbell, (1989), Towards
financial autonomy, IRED, Geneva. Their cycle included birth, adolescent crisis, consolidation, prime, maturity, bureaucracy and death.
276
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282
Index
Abed, F.H., 64
accountability, 3, 59, 143, 149, 150, 151, 162,
163, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 186, 188,
193, 198, 206, 208, 218, 220, 235
ACFOA, viii, 136
ActionAid, x, 116, 128, 135, 155
ADAB, vii, 75
ADRA, 102, 171
affinity cards, 154
Afghanistan, 115, 177
Africa Watch, 175
African Development Foundation, vii, 20,
70
African Medical and Research Foundation,
69, 182-5, 189, 192
African Rights, 122
African Wildlife Foundation, 50, 51, 56
Aga Khan Foundation, vii, 69, 128
Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, 32, 63,
69, 223
AIDAB, vii
CCIC, vii
CEDEP, 70, 71, 73
283
China, 9, 13, 14, 18, 38, 43, 45, 63, 83, 100,
142, 236
Chipko Movement, 67, 68
Christian Aid, 39, 90, 116, 128, 149, 226
Christian Children's Fund, 197, 200, 201, 202
Churchill, Winston, 214, 226
CIDA, vii, 124, 140, 141, 169, 182, 184, 189,
191
Daly, Herman, 21
DAWN, 86, 87, 241
debt, 2, 7, 11, 12, 15, 229, 242, 243, 245, 256
de Tocqueville, Alexis, 25, 26, 28, 30, 63, 218,
225, 252, 257
development education, xii, 57, 59, 135-141,
143, 145, 211, 255
Dichter, Tom, 224, 225
Disasters Emergency Committee, vii, 116
Dominican Republic, 62, 207
Drucker, Peter, 20, 28, 148, 149, 174
Dunant, Henry, 38
Iifliot, 227, 228, 233, 234
Ecuador, 160
Egypt, 14, 61, 62, 99, 207
El Taller, 68, 198, 241
El Salvador, 16, 17, 111, 228
employment, 43-48, 89, 93-95
environment, 13, 14, 48-58, 67, 68
environmental NGO5, 48-58, 67, 68
Eritrea, 111, 115, 122, 177
Ethiopia, 10, 16, 25, 27, 98, 101, 111, 115,
118, 122, 142, 144, 179, 177, 202, 228
European Community, 126, 135, 136
evaluation, 71-73, 95, 116, 118, 122, 139, 141,
157-163, 172, 178-180, 182, 183, 186,
189-196, 208, 241, 249
I;
284
247
171
ORAP, viii, 66
Pakistan, viii, xv, 19, 25, 27, 32, 53, 624, 68,
69, 77, 106, 115, 116, 155, 188, 223, 236,
255
I'alau, 15
Pathfinder international, 8
I'eace Corps, xi, 39-42, 253
Pearson Commission, 10, 125
Peru, xiv, 13, 15, 16, 47, 99, 100, 106, 194,
231
285
237
Sistren, 96
Small is Beau9ful, 42
social audit, 162, 163
Somalia. 15, 16, 18. 110,113, 116, 118, 122,
123, 133. 142, 175, 177, 182, 202, 237, 245,
uuth Alrica, 17, 25. 30, 49, 51, 55, 100,
121,168, 177, 214, 215, 226, 227, 229, 243,
244, 254
75
YMCA,
Yodelman, Sally, 89
Zambia, 45, 175, 215, 217
Zimbabwe, 24. 45, 47, 55, 62. 66, 71, 76, 175,
Tendler, Judith, 27
Thailand, 18. 33, 62. 74, 108-113, 118, 206
186, 206
286
Written by an insider, this study of international development agencies ranges from Biafra
to Rwanda, from administrative costs to participatory development, from the bright hopes
of the 1 960s to the implications of the latest Mexican financial crisis. And it examines a
new phenomenon: the transnational mega-charity - CARE, World Vision, Plan
International.
Threats to the independence of voluntary organizations are the central focus of The
Alms Bazaar. These dangers - from governments, from UN agencies, and from charities
themselves - are interwoven with other themes; efficiency, effectiveness, accountability,
North-South relations, the impact of images used by charities for fundraising and
development education'.
The author attempts to demystify the world of the NGOs whose projects, as well as
their fundraising, research and advocacy networks stretch from Harare to Oslo, from Delhi
to Washington. This is a story about lessons of heroism and folly, of bungling and luck and
failure - and of achievements that have improved the lives of millions.
pleads for a new dynamic between the donor and the NGO, between the vast and
complex and angst-driven worlds of the NGO communities of North and South. And he
suggests by example, how such a dynamic can be achieved, It is the way of the future if
development is ever going to mean anything of value for us millions in the South.
Essential reading for those of us who are part of the Alms Bazaar.
Aban Marker Kabraji, International Union for the Conservation of Nature
a rich and realistic assessment of the non-governmental sector involved in
development' (and much more including the environment, health, rights ...). The author
believes in the voluntary' sector. He knows of its origins, North and South, of its great
variety, of its insecurities and foibles - but above all he has studied its strengths and
weaknesses in terms of results.
Richard Sandbrook, International Institute for Environment and Development
This is a remarkably well informed, wide-ranging and witty account of the NGO
phenomenon. The Alms Bazaar avoids the reckless idealism which weakens much of the
NGO literature, but retains a strong commitment to the principles of the voluntary sector.
David J Lewis, Centre for Voluntary Organisation, London School of Economics
Cover: Abstract design by students at the University of Reading illustrating a lecture on the structure of the
English Language (from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal, Cambridge
University Press 1995).
IDRC
ISBN 0-88936-781-7