Information You Can Use: A Bi-monthly Service for the UN and Civil Society
Volume 1, Issue 3, June-July 2004
As NGOs Multiply, They Expand a New Private Sector
22 June 2004
Source: Asian
Wall Street Journal
As NGOs Multiply, They Expand a New Private Sector
22 June 2004
Source: Asian
Wall Street Journal
A rather remarkable dispute erupted in Amsterdam last week. The Dutch government
dunned Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) $900,000 for part of the cost of ransoming
a Dutch MSF employee, Arjan Erkel, held hostage for 20 months by insurgents
in Dagestan. MSF refused to pay, saying it was not a party to the negotiations
or the ransom payment.
Aside from the unusual circumstance of a government charging a private organization
for diplomatic services, there is the equally interesting point that Mr. Erkel
was doing humanitarian work in a Russian war zone as an employee of Doctors
Without Borders, the English-language name of MSF. So the Erkel affair scrambled
together emissaries of governments in Moscow and The Hague and private entities
that included MSF, the insurgents and some ex-KGB intermediaries who no doubt
wanted part of the loot.
But this sort of thing isn't especially unusual in today's complex world. States
increasingly find themselves interacting with so-called non-governmental organizations,
or NGOs. The old days of state-to- state diplomacy seem simple by comparison,
if not necessarily more peaceful. You can add to this complexity multilateral
organizations like the European Union, which has growing foreign policy ambitions.
We usually think of NGOs as relatively benign pressure groups like the World
Wildlife Federation or the Union of Concerned Scientists. Of course, they sometimes
are less than benign, as when labor unions, environmental groups, anarchists
and sundry others organize protests to try to break up International Monetary
Fund or World Trade Organization summits.
Russia's Chechen guerrillas and their colleagues in Dagestan are technically
non-governmental. So is al Qaeda, the product of the fevered hatreds of Osama
bin Laden. Governments everywhere are wrestling with the problem of how to deal
with such groups, which have sprung up like dragon's teeth. In the U.S., there
is a debate over whether their members are entitled to Geneva protections granted
to prisoners of the armies fielded by nation states.
But terrorist groups are only a tiny fraction of the burgeoning world population
of NGOs. Most see it as their mission to do good works, as opposed to spreading
mayhem. They are part of a vast non- profit (or ostensibly so) private sector
that is growing rapidly. Americans give some $240 billion a year to private
charities and a like amount in volunteer services, if you value the time they
devote based on the hourly earnings of production workers. According to a publication
called Independent Sector, the growth rate of employment in the non-profit sector
between 1997 and 2001 was significantly greater than that in private business
or government. It reported that non-profit employment has doubled in the last
25 years and now represents 9.5% of the U.S. work force.
Non-profits, like multinational corporations, are not constrained by national
borders. MSF is one such group and worthy of admiration for the willingness
of its members to risk their lives in dangerous places to supply medical care
and hunger relief. Founded in 1971 by a group of French doctors, it now has
2,500 volunteers operating in 80 countries. It not only treats the ill, wounded
and malnourished but publicizes human-rights violations where it finds them,
currently in Sudan, for example.
But while MSF is a remarkable organization, it is only part of a virtual explosion
of private mission-oriented groups. In a new book titled "How to Change
the World" (Oxford University Press) David Bornstein quotes Peter Goldmark,
a former president of the Rockefeller Foundation: "It's got to strike you
that a quarter of a century ago outside the United States, there were very few
NGOs and now there are millions of them all over the globe."
Mr. Bornstein focuses on what he describes as the "social entrepreneurship"
of individual citizens who see a problem and attempt to organize a solution,
independently of the government agencies that conduct social and developmental
projects. Often, the citizen groups, unburdened by governmental bureaucracy
and political considerations, move faster and more effectively. He attributes
the growth in such activity to the fact that "more people today have the
freedom, time, wealth, health, exposures, social mobility and confidence to
address social problems in bold new ways."
He adds later in the book that "the spread of democracy and the emergence
of a vigorous citizen sector over the past 30 years has opened up extraordinary
opportunities . . . the citizen sector is going through changes that are comparable
to those that occurred in the business sector over the past three centuries."
Political scientists have taken note as well. A study by the German Marshall
Fund to be presented at an NGO conference preceding the NATO summit in Istanbul
next weekend argues that solutions to the problems of the Middle East require
the involvement of "civil society" as well as governments. This acknowledges
that even in undemocratic states, a civil society is developing and has the
potential for promoting peace and order.
Of course some of these Mideast societies are afflicted with terrorist groups
dedicated to goals that are just the opposite, so that, too, must be acknowledged.
U.S. policy toward the Muslim world is to side with the forces of moderation
against the forces of destruction, which involves the mobilization of private
organizations as well as state power.
Predictably, the private social sector has generated its own trade organizations
and journals, such as the Association of Fundraising Professionals and Independent
Sector. Consulting groups have sprung up, such as the for-profit Geneva Global,
which advises philanthropic organizations on how to get the most bang for the
buck for the money they contribute to worthy causes. It focuses its scouting
efforts mostly on small but effective charities in some of the world's nastiest
little corners of poverty. Geneva Global has channeled funds into some 90 countries,
to groups fighting child slavery in India or sex trafficking in the Balkans,
and claims it can change a life for as little as $25.
Clearly, politics has been altered dramatically in the decades that have given
rise to so much citizen action around the globe. The question of who pays when
someone like Mr. Erkel is rescued from kidnappers is interesting, but clearly
the risks aren't curbing the rising influence of NGOs.