Post by: Hannah RitchieSummary
Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) play a dominant role in the humanitarian and development sectors, providing emergency relief and delivering specific programmes, such as education, improved water, sanitation and hygiene, and human rights support. NGOs were born out of the failing approach of state-led development in the 1970s and 1980s to meet the needs of the world’s poorest (3). International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) extend this concept of the NGO to an international scope, usually operating from headquarters outside of the countries in which they are working (3). We might like to think of INGOs as altruistic organisations. However, despite what anyone may tell you, can any organisation ever be truly altruistic? After all - INGOs rely on dependency to survive. As such, is the system of aid and development in which INGOs operate, along with the way they’re run, perpetuating a cycle of dependency, alongside an inherent inequality between race, location and class? In this blog, I will discuss just that, delving into the work of INGOs in an inherently unjust system that fosters corruption and weak markets, whilst safeguarding the interests of donor countries. Image from devpolicy.org Can INGOs succeed in a system designed to ensure inequality? As already mentioned, INGOs work within the system of aid. A concept dating back to the 19th century, aid flows from donor countries to those ‘in need’, and can comprise up to 1% of Gross National Income (GNI) (4). According to Dambiso Moyo (author of the novel Dead Aid), three types of aid exist: charity-based, humanitarian (both relatively small) and systematic aid (bilateral and multilateral transfers straight into the hands of governments) (5). However, aid is provided with political, economic and moral agendas (5). A controversial topic, aid is seen as many to be failing – causing more detrimental harm than good. The dependency that aid fosters and lack of trickle down to people on the ground means that poverty is still rife. This means that the system of aid as it currently stands is created with a need for INGOs. Even though aid flows to Africa peaked between 1970 and 1998, poverty increased from 11% to 66% (5). Some claim that poor governance and corruption limits the effectiveness of aid. Whilst this is undoubtedly a factor, Dambiso Moyo argues that it is aid that often fosters the corruption in the first place, with the provision of ‘free money’ incentivising and corrupting those jostling for power. With a steady flow of aid comes a lack of urgency from governments to become financially stable in the traditional sense through trade, tax and investments. This makes them less accountable to their people - reducing their commitment to provide basic services, creating weak markets. This allows poverty on the ground to continue (5,6). Pair this with the poor management of aid leading to limited development of countries and you can quickly see how the cycle of aid dependency continues (5). According to a new study, the arrival of an INGO, especially into low-income rural villages, can reduce the effectiveness of governments in additional ways. Many government workers shift to jobs within the INGO, removing workforce from local government services (7). This so called ‘crowding out’ of government services can have serious impacts on the welfare of villages if the INGO doesn’t fully grasp the needs of the community or if the projects are subpar. In Ghana for example, Baldwin et al. (2020) found that several years after the entry of the INGO into a village, the average person was worse off than they had been prior to their arrival. Villager well-being (inclusive of food security, education, health, nutrition, environment and economic livelihood) had fallen by 0.1 standard deviations. That is not to say that INGOs don’t provide life-saving work. They do. Oxfam, for example, has worked directly with 19.5 million people between 2017-2018, from building solar-powered water treatment plants in Sudan, to demanding community land rights in Peru (8). However, is it the duty of INGOs to be fulfilling this need? Whilst the demand for NGOs around the world persists, and will continue to do so for some time, this doesn’t mean that INGOs have to exist in the same capacity as is current. It doesn’t mean that international staff should fly halfway across the world to work on development projects that local staff could manage. What if local NGOs (LNGOs) were supported and uplifted to better provide for their people? Degan Ally in an interview on systematic racism promotes the value of localisation over the funding of INGOs who sometimes have little understanding of the context within which they are trying to work. Can INGOs succeed in a system of internal inequality? INGOs often work through LNGOs who have closer cultural connections with the communities in question. Donors prefer to work this way, using INGOs as an intermediary between the funding and the LNGO, in order to reduce the administrative burden of managing multiple contracts and to transfer the risk of managing local partners (9). However, according to Banks and Hulme (2012), these partnerships can often be highly unequal and balanced in favour of those with the funding and resources. For example in an article by Michelle D’arcy, several problems are outlined. These include the negative attitudes and lack of humility that INGO staff often have towards the local staff, alongside the presumption made by many INGOs that their local partners should follow a ‘Western’ model or structure. This structure, in which 85% of humanitarian funding is channelled through INGOs, with only 1% going directly to LNGOs (10), can have several impacts. Capacity and expertise at a local level are lost, the motives of donors drown out what’s important to the community, and the voices of people on the ground are often crowded out (11). Such partnerships have been criticised where local NGOs may be treated as sub-contractors, with a lower regard for staff health and wellbeing. In addition to these often one sided partnerships, stark inequalities have also been shown to exist within the fabric of the organisations themselves. It is important to examine how the good intentions of INGOs translate into practices within organisations. For example, how can INGOs successfully tackle issues relating to inequality if their internal organisations model the very same types of patriarchal, inequitable behaviours (12)? White middle-class men from western countries are disproportionately represented on the boards of INGOs. No doubt most of these leaders are pro-equality. The issue is less to do with individual attitudes, but a reflection of the systematic discrimination that persists. For example, only 3% of charity CEOs are BAME (Black Asian and Minority Ethnic) (13), whilst less than 26% of the most senior roles in the UK’s top 100 INGOs are held by women (14). An interesting reader opinion article in The New Humanitarian was a strong reminder of the stark prejudices seen in many INGOs. The article expressed how whilst ‘international’, often white staff, typically manage projects and live apart from project areas, ‘national’ staff are largely kept in-country and are rarely rewarded with the same progression and benefits afforded by international staff. Further, the influx of INGO staff makes organisations very top heavy, leading to high overheads, when many of these jobs could be performed by well qualified local NGO staff. With so many injustices needing to be addressed, the implications of such a system cannot be taken lightly. How can a system built on such a racist hierarchical structure rooted in colonialism ever be fair? The whole system of international aid and development needs to be reconsidered. Listening to the recent conversation titled ‘The West’s humanitarian reckoning’ led by The New Humanitarian opened my eyes further to the systemic racism and structural inequalities in aid and development. According to Patrick Gathara, humanitarian organisations risk becoming part of a system that perpetuates situations of precariousness. He indicates that ultimately “we shouldn’t be building resilience – we should be removing the reason why we say they need resilience’. Furthermore, whilst individual staff may not be at fault, that’s not to say that individuals cannot stand up against racism within their organisations. Change often comes from within. Image from etatu.org.uk/how-you-can-help/. Are there solutions? Looking into the future, I like to hope that the need for INGOs in their traditional sense will no longer be there, whether that’s due to work shifting to LNGOs or by re-structuring the system and removing the barriers to development which Patrick Gathara motions for. This includes aid dependency, corruption, weak governance and markets, and exploitation by other countries. However, while INGOs are still heavily relied on, Heba Aly, director of The New Humanitarian, has suggested ways in which they might be reimagined. In a recent webinar, she suggested that whilst structural upheaval can often feel daunting, there are simple steps that organisations themselves can take right now:
To combat the inequalities seen in current partnerships, Leila Billing advocates for a feminist approach to such partnerships, proposing that they “must be the pursuit of social justice and the transformation of unequal power relations in society.” Practically, this should include:
Many believe that the system of aid within which INGOs work is broken, but for conditions to improve, ultimately systemic change has to be forthcoming. This might necessitate:
INGOs do, in many situations, aid poverty alleviation - reaching vulnerable communities whilst raising the profile of issues faced around the world. However, despite the good that is done, this broken model is not the best way forward for sustainable development. In a world where inequalities are as stark as ever, policy makers and practitioners at a global, national and local level must face these challenges head on. With recent events, racism and inequalities have become a widely discussed topic, but these conversations have to translate into practice and momentum if we are ever truly to end the injustices we see across the world. 1. Etatu. Who we are [Internet]. 2020 [cited 2020 Sep 21]. Available from: https://www.etatu.org.uk/how-you-can-help/
2. Konvigilante. What is a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)? [Internet]. 2013. Available from: https://konvigilante.com/2013/02/06/what-is-a-non-governmental-organization-ngo/ 3. Banks N, Hulme D. The role of NGOs and civil society in development and poverty reduction. 2012. 1–40 p. 4. Centre for Global Development. The commitment to development index 2018. 2018. 5. Moyo D. Dead Aid. 2010. 6. Swanson A. Does foreign aid always help the poor? [Internet]. 2015. Available from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/ 7. Deserranno E, Nansamba A, Qian N. Aid-Crowd-Out: The Effect of NGOs on Government-Provided Public Services. 2020. 8. Oxfam. How we fight inequality to beat poverty. 2020. 9. Tomlinson B. Working with civil society in foreign aid: Possibilities for South-South Cooperation? 2013; 10. Walton OE, Davies T, Thrandardottir E, Keating VC. Understanding Contemporary Challenges to INGO Legitimacy: Integrating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Perspectives. Voluntas. 2016;27(6):2764–86. 11. Longhurst R. The Future of Funding. Bond. 2016. 12. Billing L. What’s the problem with partnerships in internationsl development? We need a feminist approach. Medium. 2020; 13. ACEVO. Pay and Equalities Survey. 2018. 14. Mayvin. Women’s Leadership in International Development NGOs. 2015. 15. Ismail Z. Advantages and Value of Funding NGOs in the Global South. Knowledge, evidence and learning for development. 2019.
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