 |
| Protesters demonstrate in May against plans by the Cambodian government to introduce a law requiring NGOs to register. Photograph: LICADHO |
A new fund set up by a coalition of NGOs recognises that civil society activists need back-up to help others fight for their rights
Thursday 7 July 2011
Jonathan Glennie
guardian.co.uk
There are a few truths in development that I hold to be self-evident and this is one of them: no matter what the problem, stronger civil society is always part of the answer. Unfortunately, as my colleague David Booth has pointed out to me, I don’t have much evidence for this assertion, and on the face of it, it appears weak (don’t you hate it when people insist on evidence?).
If we define development as rapidly rising living standards, some of the fastest growing countries in recent decades (such as China and the East Asian tigers) have been authoritarian regimes with little independent civil society. If we define development as the provision of public goods, like health and education, then a country like Cuba does very well, despite clamping down on dissent.
However, while growth in the last decade has been fairly spectacular in many parts of the world, the fruits of that growth have been shared very unevenly, with inequality generally growing. Strengthening civil society, in my view, will lend political power to those parts of society that need to argue for their needs and rights.
Furthermore, if we allow a broader definition of development, one that covers political and civil rights, not just “MDG-style” improvements in health, education and income, then one of the central aims of development is to enable (“empower”) poor people to hold the powerful accountable. That, surely, is what civil society does at its best.
So it is good to see that a new coalition of international NGOs including Frontline Defenders (with whom I have collaborated in the past), Civicus, Freedom House and the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, has set up what they are calling the Embattled NGO Assistance Fund. The aim of this fund is to “help civil society activists withstand crackdowns and pressure, enabling them to continue their work to defend citizens’ rights and freedoms”.
Many people now agree that gradually direct aid to governments needs to be replaced by support to non-governmental activities, including the strengthening of those necessary parts of an effective and democratic state that are not centralised in the government.
There is, however, one major problem – the same one as ever. Aid is a form of soft power used by rich countries to gain influence abroad. Andrew Mitchell, the British development minister, made this memorably clear recently by calling for Britain to be an “aid superpower”. That influence has often been used benignly, but equally often it has been used to shore up the interests of those powerful countries. This is a complex paradox at the heart of the development agenda, and it is often most apparent in work on political freedoms.
One of the founding members of the coalition is Freedom House, a US NGO set up 70 years ago to work at home and abroad on embedding political and civil rights. The work it does is commendable, and its ranking of countries as “free”, “partially free”, “unfree” is used widely. Nevertheless, concerns have been expressed about its strong alignment to US foreign policy interests. You would have to be slightly naive not to notice that 80% of the organisation’s funding comes from the US government, and it is hard to understand how such arch-enemies of human rights as Otto Reich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz have made it onto the board in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment