Open World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
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From:
International Liaison
Committee for a Workers International
Friday, January 28, 2000 12:28 PM
Document Number 12
The NGO system accompanying the dismantling of public services, economic destruction and wars;NGOs proliferation and action on the continent is closely linked to the implementation of structural adjustment plans.
A study published by the Institute of Development Studies (Discussion Paper 368) explains:
"Since the mid-1990, particularly with the appointment of a new president, James Wolfensohn, the World Bank has increasingly embraced the non-governmental sector, perceiving it as a potential ally rather than as a threat. As Wolfensohn told the Bank's annual general meeting in September 1997: 'We must listen to stockholders. Our partnerships must be inclusive - involving ... labour organisations, NGOs, foundations and the private sector.' Within this context, the South African office of the World Bank invited the NGO community to form a World Bank-NGO Forum in June 1997. When the former director of the World Bank, Robert Mc Namara, visited Uganda on an anti-corruption tour in 1997, a meeting with representatives from civil society was part of his schedule. There are three new mechanism through which the bank promotes the involvement of liberal civil society. These are its Country Assistance Strategy, the appointment of NGO liaison officers, and an international, participatory review of its adjustment policies. What is interesting about these initiatives is the extent to which the World Bank has incorporated the term 'civil society" into both its work and the discourse that comes with it. Although it is most familiar with service provision development NGOs, as a sub-category of civil society, having worked with them particularly since the early 1990s on the execution of development projects, it applies the broader (and arguably, more overtly political) term 'civil society' to its new initiatives.
The first mechanism by the World Bank, its Country Assistance Strategies, used to be internal processes in consultation with the borrowing government. Since the mid-1990s, consultation has broadened out to include 'representatives of civil society'. This was the case with the 1997 Assistance Strategies in Uganda and Ghana. However, how substantial this consultation is, is highly questionable. It appears to be more a case of including civil society in order to add legitimacy to the strategy which remains fundamentally intact. According to one participant in the Ugandan consultation, the meeting was called at very short notice, with no time for preparation, and had an air of 'rubber-stamping' about it. This is the second mechanism through which the World Bank's eighty local offices that now have staff responsible for liaisons with civil society; this compares with only one office in 1995. However, the initiative that best represents the World Bank's newly found interests in civil society is its international Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI), launched in Washington, DC in July 1997. The review aims to examine the impact of specific adjustment measures from the point of view of those affected in seven borrowing countries, including four in Africa: Uganda, Ghana, Mail and Zimbabwe (DGAP 1997). Each country exercise involves many of the most prominent national CSOs, the majority of whom are donor-funded."
This "collaboration" is far from "volunteer" graces. It is and must be paid for. Another document of the World Bank explains:
"23. Financial issues. The Bank may make grants to NGOs, for example, through the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest, the Special Grants Program, the Small Grants Program, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Borrowers and beneficiaries/executing agencies may finance NGO involvement in operations through such sources as loan and credit proceeds; the Project Preparation Facility; the GEF; and the Policy and Human Resources Development Fund and other trust funds. In some case, NGO activities are funded by co-financing from other multilateral or bilateral donors or international NGOs.
24. It is often cost-effective to use NGOs. They should not, however, be viewed as a "low-cost alternative" to other type of implementing entities. The fact that some NGOs co-finance projects or contribute advice of services free of charge has led to some ambiguity about NGOs' status and about how much they should be paid. All parties should understand the exact nature of NGO involvement (e.g., informal unpaid adviser, paid consultant to the Bank or the government) from the outset and, as appropriate, establish mutually acceptable fees and overhead costs. NGOs should not be expected to provide contractual services free of charge or to accept fees below market rates."
(Operational Manual World Bank)
NGO financing therefore helps to inflate the foreign debt.
Far from being the "spontaneous" phenomenon which they would like to make us believe, NGO role is structurally linked to the aims of the Bretton Woods institutions in particular.
This is a corrupt and corrupting system. As shown by the article published by a German review concerning NGOs in Africa:
"When they began co-operating with the North NGOs received only a few thousands Deutsch marks. A few years later, they can easily get subsidies of several millions of DM a year. For some of the local NGO officers who had their first trips to the capital or from the capital to the country side paid by the modest funds of their group, this not only meant taking their distance from the grass roots people, but being deprived of the freedom to choose without taking into account financial support. Moreover, this feeds the belief that money can solve all problems, and therefore leads to a lack of motivation to search for political solution to these issues. If one considers the considerable amounts invested by some sponsors in offices, vehicles, wages and so on of some NGOs, this may be considered as a way to "make peace" at a time when structural adjustment plans are strongly criticised.
"NGOs generally get mass support at a time when budget cuts in public services. For instance some NGO managers drive in cars which are of course four wheels cars with air conditioning, while members of government don't have enough money to pay the petrol for their service car. This is by the way an occasion for them to pay service to members of government by giving them a ride. With the help of their contacts with foreign sponsors in the country and many trips to foreign countries, some NGO managers succeed in entering the political arena or enter a career of international "person of resource" for self promotion, women promotion, protection of environment, human rights. This is besides a good opportunity to make new contacts in the prospect of future financing."
(International Entwikleung, D+C N¡1 January 1994)
NGOs are considered to be instruments of "good governance" and are therefore part of a corrupt and corrupting regime, such as the one which is rotting in the European Union institutions:
"Two private consulting offices (one from Belgium and the other from Spain) are examining meticulously the Office accounts. Their aim is to determine whether the 1,200 million ecus distributed between January 1st 1991 and June 30th, 1996, 400 million of which to French NGOs alone, were given in completely clear operations.
"The conclusions of this technical expert's evaluation, undertaken under the presidency of the French, will be given to the European Council next May. Several incomplete reports will be published before, the first in July.
"The expertise concerning the Echo was carried out in a more general context, which is the evaluation of the aid Europe provided to the developing countries (PED). Beside the humanitarian aid attributed by the Echo, several European departments (DG8 among them) give aids for multiple reasons, for instance "development". A juicy system: some NGOs have allegedly obtained aids several times for a single project by asking for aid at different counters ! Refunding could be asked or in the months to come."
(Problémès Economiques - Economic Issues - N¡2587, 21/10/98)
Humanitarian aid through NGOs is part and parcel of the destruction of African economies:
"In the last thirty years, emergency programmes have multiplied and food aid has become part of the media business. Some negative aspects of this type of aid have emerged: they compete with local production and forestall the development of agriculture, create a dependency upon free aid, etc... Peasant economies have been destabilised for a long time to come by such programmes (Jackson). Food aid often arrives late, sometimes a season later than necessary. While the situation is a bit better, this aid is not so necessary. Still it arrives on a massive scale and at low prices on local markets, fills warehouses and leaves peasants with their production unsold. The Sahel countries had a good experience of this situation with the big draught of 1974. Thousands of tons of food aid fell on Somalia in the second term of 1993, then in 1994, when the emergency was quite over and while peasants in the Juba and Bas-Shabelle regions were trying to sell their production.
In that sector of activity, real problems are in fact linked to the fact that stocks are often made up not from local production, but of grain imports from the North. If the second part of the equation ("lowering prices in a time of famine" can really be implemented on the basis of these imports, the first part ("help rural economies") not at all. Then peasants, who are not inclined to surplus-production, turn to autarky systems and give up production for trade. All the craftsmen who could transform these local productions to make a living are ruined in their turn (Muchnik, 1981, Altersial, 1981). The vicious circle of food shortages in towns begins, while peasants remain with their unsold stocks."
(Revue internationale de la Croix Rouge N¡822, 1996)
The UN General secretary is forced to acknowledge that humanitarian aid helps foster conflicts.
"59. Does Humanitarian aid help to foster conflicts ? Humanitarian organisations today often have to operate in a situation of instability and dangerous conditions in order to carry out their mission. They must avoid manoeuvres from both sides, either that of the government of or those who fight against it, both trying to turn aid into a means to reach their own political ends, to gain economic advantages or retain means to go on with fighting. One of the biggest problems is to avoid the abusive exploitation in the end of aid to prolong conflicts. When fighters take over the warehouses of a humanitarian aid operation - and this occurs too often - they don't only get food, but vehicle, money and other previous goods which can be turned into as much means to prolong or intensify the conflict. Thus in Liberia, United Nations and NGOs were robbed of over 8 million dollars of goods, including nearly 500 vehicles, in the course of the fights of April and May 1996. In the days and months which followed, fighters were often seen with robbed vehicles, while a flourishing black market developed with the other robbed goods."
(Report of the UN General Secretary on Africa, 1998)
In fact,
"African conflicts are at the root of a constant flow of donations to NGOs. As the two faces of an unnatural alliance, civil war and humanitarian aid are feeding each other. Arm dealers deliver sophisticated weapons and NGOs provide humanitarian aid, and therefore an endless flow of fighters able to use these weapons. Sub-Saharan Africa States defence budget reached 8,8 billion dollars in 1997, that is to say about 3,3% of the GNP of that region. Conflicts are raging in over a fourth of the 44 sub-Saharan countries, and direct purchase of military equipment has risen to over a total of 800 million dollars. In the same period, humanitarian aid, by means of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) and NGOs, reached the equivalent of 6 billion dollars. From Guinea-Bissau to Sudan, endless civil wars and permanent political instability are a source of profits for arm dealers as well as for those who propose aid and for the fighters themselves.
"In May 1998, US and British TV sets were drown in images of skeletal children in Sudan. A film was made sponsored by the British Disaster Emergency Committee, showing wild mobs fighting for bags of grain launched from troop transport aeroplanes Hercules C-130 painted in white. This was followed by the troubling show of children dying of hunger, covered with flies, with the unavoidable female representative of the NGOs wiping the haggard face covered with dust of one of them. This ended with an agonising message "Give money to save the children". This campaign obtained 13 million dollars. The central theme of this campaign was that famine in South Sudan was due to unusual climatic changes. Nowhere was it said that the civil war which has been going on for thirty years between the Popular Liberation Army of Sudan (APLS) and the Karthoum government was partly responsible for this human disaster. Just the same, TV spots made no reference to the fact that there had been no revolt because all valid men had been mobilised by the APLS while the Muslim Sudan army tactic was to leave nothing behind. Such information could have damaged the scope of donations.
"Can humanitarian aid indeed help to stop an endless cycle of violence ? This debate is taboo in Europe as in the USA.
"Humanitarian aid is confronted to another problem: they are organised in war zones. As a consequence, they need the agreement of those in war, and this has been a blessing for rebel movements as well as for government forces.
"It is a means of pressure to control the population.
"To protect the NGO employees in a risky environment and to guarantee that at least part of the aid will reach despairing people, the NGOs in South-Sudan accepted arrangements concerning "prior agreements" and "security services" with the Karthoum government and the Association for rehabilitation and help to Sudan (SRRA), the APLS branch conveniently defined as "humanitarian" .
"The conflict in Sudden is not the first "complex emergency" of that type. There had been the disaster in Rwanda in 1994, when 500 000 Hutu refugees flew to Zaire to escape the Tutsi troops after the genocide organised by the Hutu militia of president Habyarimana. By leaving over the refugee camps to the management of the militia, the UN established a precedent which is haunting the memories of all humanitarian aid organisations today."
(African Business (reproduced by Courrier International of February 17th, 1998)