Benin’s
Songhai team is training 240 farmers in organic agriculture: “the North arrives with
ready-made projects.”
A paramedic on duty in a Bangladeshi village.
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Songhaï*:
the North looks for an echo of its own song
Does partnership
mean equality? At Songhai, we don’t think so. Here, it means complementarity, a shared
approach towards a mission, mutual respect and transparency at all costs. It’s a
question of not letting one side trample over the other.
Unfortunately, the world is far from this ideal. In the South, NGOs are too often
born in a burst of enthusiasm or as a reaction to a problem, without any long-term
strategy. After that, their sole concern is survival. All too often, there’s a frenetic
race to win the attention of Northern “partners,” gleefully described as “donors.”
NGOs in the South live on a drip: they’re ready to take all the aid they can find.
In a perpetual state of dependency, they don’t try to mobilize local resources in
the field that might help make their projects sustainable. “White elephants”—abandoned
edifices that have cost a fortune—are the sad result.
The weaknesses on the other side are just as flagrant. Our “partners” from the North
arrive with ready-made projects devised in offices in London, Paris, Washington and
Brussels, with preset conditions and eligibility criteria. Then they go off searching
for people and institutions to back them up, looking for an echo of their own song
as it were. And they have no problem finding one. Even though their priorities change
all the time—one day it’s environment or gender equality, the next capacity-building—their
Southern “partners” are ready to change strategy and even their identity simply to
satisfy the Northern “partners.”
Sometimes, though, the latter come across institutions like Songhai, who have their
own ideas and want to preserve their dignity through mutual respect. This leaves
them rather confused. In the past, we’ve had to return funding already paid into
our account, notably to two religious groups (one Protestant and the other Catholic),
and to a multilateral aid agency. The reason: their goals and conditions were no
longer in line with the vision and strategies that we’d tried in vain to share with
them.
Not all donors have this one-track attitude. Songhai is currently working with a
public international aid organization which, after seeing how we operated, agreed
to give us some leeway in the use of their funding. All Songhai’s activities and
programmes aim to boost our own resources in order to reduce the amount of aid we
receive from NGOs or aid agencies. We think self-sufficiency is the only way to sustainable
development. n
* The
Beninese NGO Songhai—named after an empire that existed in the bend of the Niger
river in the 15th century—was set up in 1985 by a Catholic priest, Brother Njamuno.
It is currently training 240 apprentice farmers at three centres in integrated organic
farming based on making the best use possible of local resources.
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Riding
on their new-found influence, NGOs in the developing world are increasingly critical
of the stringent conditions imposed on them by richer counterparts. Partnership,
they argue, has to become more than a buzz-word
Over the last decade,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in richer countries have tried out audacious
and sometimes far-fetched methods to check how their aid is being spent by recipients
in developing ones.
“We lent a video camera to a Ghanaian partner running a fair-trade project,” says
Chris Roche, programme director at the British NGO Oxfam, which funds more than $130
million worth of development projects each year. The Ghanaians did their own assessment,
video camera in hand. The footage revealed a project agent embezzling craft workers’
money. “We call this a participatory self-assessment, because it allows our partner
to get more involved with the beneficiaries at the grassroots.”
Other NGOs use peer reviews, crossed assessments (when partners in the developing
world assess projects in the North) or consultations via a kind of travelling parliament.
Last spring, Marc Berger, programme director at the French Catholic Committee against
Hunger and for Development (CCFD), visited three continents to meet “partners” in
developing countries. During a series of seminars he spoke about the organization,
with a budget of $26 million per annum, and how it goes about selecting projects.
“Our openness empowered them and made the terms of our relationship more equal,”
he says.
These various methods, which are still in the pilot stages, aim to rectify the lopsided
relationship between donor NGOs in the North and their beneficiaries in the South.
But invariably, “the hand that gives is above the one that receives,” as an African
proverb goes. Even after such consultations, CCFD is still the one which chooses
the projects to fund and the rules to be imposed. “They’re consulted but in the end
we decide, even though their opinion can carry weight,” admits Berger.
Mounting
dissatisfaction
World
Bank figures show that NGOs have “grown exponentially” over the past ten years, especially
in developing countries. In India, more than a million community-based groups are
involved in local development. In Bangladesh, 5,000 organizations are involved in
literacy efforts—so many that a child there is more likely to learn to read with
their help than via the state education system. In the former communist countries
of Eastern Europe, 100,000 NGOs sprung up between 1988 and 1995.
In terms of human development—health care, education, help in finding work, social
services and emergency aid—“the role of NGOs in the South has become key,” says Guillaume
d’Andlau, a lecturer at Strasbourg’s Political Studies Institute and author of a
book on humanitarian action. “Even governments in the North call upon them for their
overseas development programmes.”
Their influence may be indisputable, but NGOs in the developing world are increasingly
dissatisfied with the unequal terms of the relationship. Since the early 1970s, NGOs
based in the richer nations have used the impressive term “partnership” to describe
their links with colleagues in the South. The word “has been part of approved rhetoric
in the ‘development community’ for a very long time,” according to Gerry Helleiner,1
an economics professor at the University of Toronto. “It has rarely been effectively
practised. Some practitioners have long doubted whether it was possible.”
Delivering
results
Far
from ebbing away, Northern NGOs are putting increasing pressure on those in developing
countries. According to Oxfam’s Roche, the idea is “to get them to increase their
involvement and provide tangible proof of their effectiveness.”
Novib, a Dutch NGO with a $120-million annual budget, requires aid recipients to
supply accounts every year, as well as twice-yearly financial statements and a final
report on the project. “When there’s a problem with the spending of funds, the local
partner might get a visit from an expert,” says Jan Ruyssenaars from Novib’s project
department. The organization, which defines itself as a donor at the service of Southern
NGOs, is far from the fussiest in the field.
Not all NGOs make the same demands, but there are fewer and fewer who make none at
all and advocate a hands-off approach, according to Rick Davies, a social development
consultant based in the UK, who has studied how donors in general operate. The most
“laissez faire” tend to be Christian organizations. At the other end of the spectrum
are the hard-liners, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),
which requires extensive information and the meeting of set targets akin to a business
contract.
Between the two camps are the minimalists, who think producing reports diverts the
energy of Southern NGOs from their most important work. You also have the “apologetic
realists,” such as Novib and Oxfam. Though aware that the reports are a burden, they
need them for their own donors. “Without being neo-colonialist,” says Roche, “every
time money is disbursed, we need to know exactly where it goes out of respect for
the British citizens who give us donations.”
Sending
back the money
The
bottom-line is that demands made by richer NGOs are meeting with increasing resistance.
Some NGOs in the developing world even return money to donors who become too “domineering.”
More often, in countries where several sources of funding are available, they shun
donors who are too bureaucratic or finicky.
“Everyone wants a donor who will listen, take time to learn and allow room for local
initiatives,” says Lisa Bornstein, a researcher at Natal University’s School of Development
Study, in South Africa. Certain NGOs in the South which accept a more contractual
relationship insist that funding arrives on time, and that the donor does not change
priorities or monitoring procedures in the middle of a project, as often happens.
When asked—and when they dare speak up—NGOs in the developing world usually repeat
the same lament: “the North claims to knows what’s best for us, poses as an expert
and doesn’t take the time to listen or the trouble to use local skills and resources.”
Passing
on expertise
By
the mid-1990s, donor organizations could already see the danger of stifling local
initiative by being too heavy-handed. “The principles that underpin partnership are
incompatible with the notion of conditionality imposed by donors,” said the chairman
of the OECD’s development aid committee at the time.
Conditionality has lost none of its relevance, whether it relates to gender equality,
environmental protection or other domains. But the notion is challenged by NGOs that
have several donors to choose from. “Fishermen from the Cape, who are mostly men,
didn’t understand why they had to bring women into their profession,” says Bornstein.
“They complied, but these conditionalities can lead to absurd situations, just to
please the donor. As for the environment, the deep poverty in our country still makes
it seem like a luxury.”
To escape this unequal relationship caused by money transfers, some NGOs in the South
see only one way out: strengthen their ability to fund themselves.
The CCFD’s South African, Mexican and Chilean partners have said as much. “You talk
to us about self-sufficiency,” they told Berger, “but why don’t you pass on to us
some of your expertise in fund-raising and mass-mailing?”
1. In UNDP’s
magazine Cooperation South, Number Two, 2000.
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Noel
Aguirre Ledezma: We can help the North
Our relationship
with Northern donors depends largely on the NGO we’re working with. When mutual understanding
is strong, the desire to draw up joint projects arises quite naturally. These are
based on a shared political vision and similar technical and organizational approaches.
When that happens, the discussion is not just about sums of money or how to handle
them. It’s even less about the need to respect the goals of the project down to the
last comma. In this scenario, you’re close to the notion of a true partnership.
But with other NGOs, the relationship only repeats and underscores the South’s dependence
on the North. In these cases, you only talk about preset criteria for the project’s
aims or management. Everything is seen through Northern eyes, with the unspoken assumption
that “people in the South don’t know how to manage.”
You’ll find these trends in most NGOs in the South. Some are only interested in securing
funds and reducing North-South relations to a straight transfer of money. This has
to be changed. The first question we should ask is what we can build together. How
can we help the North in our own field of competence, whether it’s education, culture
or human values? What networks can we create so that together we don’t just build
up a poor part of the world—the South—but a different world altogether, rooted in
fairness and solidarity?
* An educator
who heads the Bolivian Centre for Educational Research and Action (CBIAE), an NGO
with Dutch, German and Spanish funding.
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Zafrullah
Chowdhury*: We choose our donors
For the first
two years of our existence as an NGO, we didn’t ask anyone for money. We lived in
tents pitched around a clinic and the peasants would bring us rice. Then Abbé
Pierre, from France, gave us some funding so we could build a house. That was the
first money we received from abroad.
When I went to Europe in the winter of 1972, he told me: “I’d like to give you more
because you’ve done good work. But I have one condition...” I cut him off at once:
“I don’t want your conditions, nor your money!”
He replied: “I’ll show you Paris.” And one freezing cold night, he showed me “his”
Paris—places where the poor were being given soup and sheds where the Companions
of Emmaüs were restoring abandoned furniture to raise money. I realized that
he and I belonged to the same world despite our language differences.
Then he said: “Here’s the condition. Never forget that I’m giving you the money of
the poor to help the poor of Bangladesh. Always make sure they’re the ones who truly
benefit.”
Thirty years later, we still ask ourselves that question: “Will it help the poorest
people?” This is what Abbé Pierre taught us and I still remember that. Conditionality
is not a bad thing, as long as it’s founded on an ethic and favours human development.
The problem comes when Western donors set poor conditions.
An example: child labour in the Bangladeshi textile industry is indefensible and
I’m against it. But should it be simply banned, with its abolition made a condition
of foreign aid? I don’t think so. This is how the question should be looked at: what
will happen to all the girls between 10 and 14 when they no longer work in the textile
industry? They may become prostitutes or end up as slaves in a rich person’s house.
They certainly won’t go to school, because the prices you pay in the North for the
clothes made in these factories don’t allow their mothers to earn a decent wage.
It would be better for the child to keep on working and go to classes in the evening,
paid for by the mill-owner or a foreign NGO.
At our People’s Health Centre, we choose our foreign donors. The first thing we tell
them is that we prepare our programmes and budgets. Then we tell them we have two
“conditions.” The first is that donors have to recognize that they know nothing about
Bangladesh, and that I know the country better than they do. Then they have to be
patient, because development is a slow process. That’s why I ask them for long-term
funding, of at least five years.
In the first year, the donor listens to us and learns. The second year, we discuss
and negotiate. And because we know they’re accountable to the body that provided
the money—a worthy concern—the third year is given over to checking that every cent
of the aid is used well. In the fourth year, disputes will most likely arise. But
by the fifth year, we’ll understand each other better. We’ll even begin to see where
we’ve succeeded, and where we haven’t.
Five years is the time it takes to build a relationship of mutual understanding and
friendship. But that’s not enough. We also have to get out of this “secrecy illness”
that donors bring with them (the World Bank and the Northern NGOs alike) and which
has poisoned NGOs in the South. Who knows how much money has been handed over, to
whom and for what? Secrecy breeds corruption. We’re the only NGO in Bangladesh that
posts details of our wages and financial statements in our local health centres.
Because we are accountable to the people we serve before anyone else.
Transparency starts there. After that, with the Northern NGOs, it’s a matter of mutual
respect and trust. If we’re dealing with a donor who understands us and believes
in human development, I’ve no objection to him or her examining our accounts. But
that person has to recognize my right to examine theirs.
* A Bangladeshi
doctor who founded Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK), the People’s Health Centre, whose 2,000
employees, mostly women, promote primary health care, education and female empowerment
in Bangladesh. The NGO s its own paramedics (primary health workers) and manufactures
antibiotics and generic medicines. It provides two-thirds of its own funding.
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