Human rights: Food for a not-always-virtuous thought  ‘HR and NGOs’

Human Rights Reader 540

-Too many NGOs still follow a charity approach and call it development.

1. Philanthrocapitalism is a huge business generating something of the order of 150 billion a year. These organizations love to work through NGOs. Add to this the fact that Northern ‘donor’ nations, not differently, also love NGOs, because they make them feel they can fix the problems of the world without threatening the status-quo they relish.

2. Actually, neoliberal capitalism is bent on hiding the scandalous and insulting levels of wealth by finding an outlet they call ‘social altruism’. This clever disguise allows it to penetrate and control political spaces in many countries in the South. There are literally hundreds of thousands of NGOs. (In the US alone it is said there are a million). In reality, many of these (primarily international) NGOs are important agents of the process of globalization; they are subject and object (and part-of) the process and have amassed enormous social influence (probably not always so altruistic). NGO-ism has become a placebo that does not directly appeal, but numbs or deadens social and political consciousness. (E. Luque)

Politics-as-a-process, and the-political-as-substance have remained marginal in NGO work

-If NGOs remain aloof of more progressive politics, their role in challenging the inequities and inequalities of the prevailing political system will be moot --which it is, because they are not holding duty bearers to account in real time.

3. Twenty years+ of the flat-international-NGOs-discourse have simply not managed to make ‘the political’ more central.  They have, at best, played around with the moral dilemmas of promoting some kind of non-violent civil disobedience or weak confrontation-with-the-authority to achieve the people-desired structural changes. They have also been silent about the ineffectiveness of external funding (mislabeled foreign aid) even if they have first hand appreciation of the limited and unsustainable role of outsiders and of such external funding. (Alan Fowler, Kees Biekert)

4. Take an example: Too many international NGOs (INGOs) show next to no concerns about the self-legitimation external funders make of the multistakeholder platforms they are pushing with all their undue power as exerted by the private partners in them --their conflicts of interest and their lack of accountability directly and negatively affecting human rights (HR).

5. Sorry, but having an institutional passion is not enough. It risks ending up with many words and many promises. But what about deeds that matter for HR? This is a vital debate to have with NGOs. A passion, yes, but not as ‘yes entities’ --“as long as you fund us”…

6. What is meant here is that too many NGOs have a rhetoric/action gap that needs to be bridged. They cannot use HR only implicitly in their work. To have HR projects they must a) engage in an open HR dialogue with claim holders and duty bearers, b) integrate HR principles in all sectors they work-in; and c) fully use the HR-based framework --and this will require profound institutional changes (from revisioning their role to discern if they are part of the problem to, then, remissioning themselves as needed).* It is not about adding a ‘(loose) HR perspective’, but about using a HR lens that leads to participatory HR-compatible programming and monitoring.

*: NGOs are seldom asking the right questions about their work, namely: What problems are not being given priority attention? What (different or additional) actions are needed to tackle those? Who will take the responsibility to go to the people to make these decisions collectively with them? What organizational restructuring will be needed? What will be needed to solve the underlying structural problems, and what are the risks to be prepared-for?

7. The power of a simple uncluttered purpose: An organization that honestly proclaims it stands for HR can develop effective policies and motivate its staff. Any organization that cannot articulate its purpose on this will clearly set limits on its activities and will accordingly sow no effective HR results --as said, high aspirations are not always being translated into meaningful action.

A lot has been said and done to delineate the dividing line between what an NGO and what a CSO is

8. For the People’s Health Movement (PHM), this debate is senseless. For us (I am a co-founding member), what ultimately counts is the track record of any such group. The analysis of the latter helps us to place them somewhere in a spectrum. Recognizing that there are no absolutes in this matter, we will want to be associated with those organizations that are most community supportive** and will choose not to associate-with, and will oppose, those organizations that we deem to be mostly community oppressive. Periodic reassessments will allow us to monitor the latest trends in the above track record of each organization.

**: Together with others, we actually call these Public Interest Civil Society Organizations (PICSOs).

9. Another opinion holds that, what we call civil society, is actually a cultural creation with its roots in the painful, slowly simmering labor of activists for many decades. Civil society today is more important than the philosophical and/or religious principles of any creed. The beneficial changes that humanity can bring about will, no doubt, depend on the proactive demands staked by PICSOs. (adapted from Albino Gomez)

10. [And then there are Charities: Well, this Reader has incessantly reminded you about how non-HR these are. (HRR 499: “Charity, even if commendable, is not a right and lasts only as long as the giver wants it to last or funding is available”). Charities not infrequently raise funds using images of starvation and death, only to then spend them without even consulting those they want/purport to help].

Beware: Not all NGOs are angels!

11. Are the INGOs heydays over? Does the INGO sector stand accused of complacency, self-interest and of being ineffective and HR irrelevant, as well as not intimately enough engaged with claim holders? For sure, they have their own agenda that, in a nutshell, is not nearly as HR-based as needed. (Deborah Eade)

12. In this context, what will the role of INGOs be as social actors? We know that, as long as claim holders do not de-facto challenge the powers-that-be, their condition will likely not change long term. Where ought NGOs thus position themselves in this scenario?

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

Your comments are welcome at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com