Source: The New Internationalist
Witness the growth spurt in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and you would be forgiven for thinking the world becomes a more caring place every day.
These legions of not-for-profit groupings that fan out across the world, intent on ‘capacity building’, ‘reducing poverty’ and ensuring that the ‘voices of the most marginalized’ are heard, surely reflect an acceptance that too many have suffered for too long, and the tide can turn with the right kind of wind behind it.
History, however, teaches us that the exact opposite may be true.
Whereas organized charities go back over 100 years, the term non-governmental organization is more recent, dating to the formation of the United Nations in 1945, when a select club of international non-state agencies were awarded observer status to some of its meetings. The common factor uniting this group, apart from the fact that they were neither government agencies nor businesses in the traditional sense, is that they would have an avowed mission to work for a social good – whether it was as torchbearers for human rights, the environment or just old-fashioned ‘development’ (a new-fangled idea back then).
Fast forward a few decades and we witness an explosion of NGOs. The spur was the rise of neoliberal ideology, eventually enshrined in the Reagan-Thatcher years. Predatory capitalism and the so-called free market were the answer; government needed to be hands-off with regard to all notions of public provision (healthcare, education, the lot).
Increasingly, governments began looking to NGOs to provide cheap services, a role that continues to grow with austerity policies. However, rarely does government funding to NGOs match the scale of the cuts. Aid to ‘developing’ nations also began increasingly to be funnelled via NGOs rather than through government organs – between 1975 and 1985 the amount of aid taking this NGO route shot up by 1,400 per cent.1
With the fragmentation of the Left under the neoliberal attack, much of the energy that could have gone into fighting the power went into forming the NGO – they became repositories of a residual idealism still reeling from the onslaught. Arundhati Roy describes the transformation achieved: ‘Armed with their billions, these NGOs have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation.’2
Today, 30 new ones are formed every day in Britain; and there are 1.5 million in the US alone.3 Fully 90 per cent of currently existing NGOs have been launched since 1975.4 Roy calls them ‘an indicator species’, saying: ‘It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs.’5
Witness the growth spurt in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and you would be forgiven for thinking the world becomes a more caring place every day.
These legions of not-for-profit groupings that fan out across the world, intent on ‘capacity building’, ‘reducing poverty’ and ensuring that the ‘voices of the most marginalized’ are heard, surely reflect an acceptance that too many have suffered for too long, and the tide can turn with the right kind of wind behind it.
History, however, teaches us that the exact opposite may be true.
Whereas organized charities go back over 100 years, the term non-governmental organization is more recent, dating to the formation of the United Nations in 1945, when a select club of international non-state agencies were awarded observer status to some of its meetings. The common factor uniting this group, apart from the fact that they were neither government agencies nor businesses in the traditional sense, is that they would have an avowed mission to work for a social good – whether it was as torchbearers for human rights, the environment or just old-fashioned ‘development’ (a new-fangled idea back then).
Fast forward a few decades and we witness an explosion of NGOs. The spur was the rise of neoliberal ideology, eventually enshrined in the Reagan-Thatcher years. Predatory capitalism and the so-called free market were the answer; government needed to be hands-off with regard to all notions of public provision (healthcare, education, the lot).
Increasingly, governments began looking to NGOs to provide cheap services, a role that continues to grow with austerity policies. However, rarely does government funding to NGOs match the scale of the cuts. Aid to ‘developing’ nations also began increasingly to be funnelled via NGOs rather than through government organs – between 1975 and 1985 the amount of aid taking this NGO route shot up by 1,400 per cent.1
With the fragmentation of the Left under the neoliberal attack, much of the energy that could have gone into fighting the power went into forming the NGO – they became repositories of a residual idealism still reeling from the onslaught. Arundhati Roy describes the transformation achieved: ‘Armed with their billions, these NGOs have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation.’2
Today, 30 new ones are formed every day in Britain; and there are 1.5 million in the US alone.3 Fully 90 per cent of currently existing NGOs have been launched since 1975.4 Roy calls them ‘an indicator species’, saying: ‘It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs.’5
– See more at: http://newint.org/features/2014/12/01/ngos-keynote/#sthash.jJ9scW3f.dpuf