- NGOs became players on the political and human rights stage (HR) long ago –both at the national and the international level. As such players, in the Third World, many of the Northern NGOs have unfortunately too-often-and-for-too-long worked with authoritarian regimes. Anyone who, too-often-and-for-too-long, backs the wrong partners without criticizing them creates her/his own reputation. Only having a strong moral vision does not per-se result in having moral influence.
- Going back to their origins, many NGOs working on development issues were, from the outset, linked to economic liberalism (perhaps also to feminism and religion).
- Coming from a moral-theological perspective, these civil society organizations stand for securing ‘civilized social contracts’; they thus further tolerance and plurality in thought. Nothing wrong with that. But perhaps the time is over for this path, because, on the basis of existing socio-economic inequalities and widespread human (people’s) rights violations, much of civil society itself contributes to the reproduction of these inequalities and the persistence of these violations.
- So, the question is whether, today, the NGO concept has the potential to deliver the structural and HR changes needed under the current ‘conditions-of-Globalization’. These conditions are destroying livelihoods. Globalization is neither a natural process nor an inclusive one; it is rather a planned project, and one of exclusion. More than anything, Globalization is completing a project of re-colonization. Growth through Globalization is importantly based on the theft of people’s resources, knowledge and economies. In the Globalization paradigm, the protection of people and the protection of nature are replaced by corporate protectionism. The rules of this imposed market-competition-dogma simply transform all aspects of life into markets. (V. Shiva) Moreover, social and employment concerns are never brought to the forefront in the process of Globalization. Globalization does not create jobs; as a matter of fact, it is a hotbed of anti-union activity.
- Under Globalization, change creates both (a few) winners and (an army of) losers. It therefore behooves NGOs (now being euphemistically renamed civil society organizations by the World Bank) to work on strategies to revert this process and to find ways to work with the current losers in interventions that more proactively distribute the benefits of change more equitably.
- Because of this, there are those who now dissociate themselves from the NGO concept and opt for a more radical and militant perspective: one of social-mobilization-cum-political-consciousness-raising (a-la-Paulo-Freire).
Where in this continuum would you place yourself?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City