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Their birth portends rising local rates and a culture shock. Most of them live in plush apartments, or five-star hotels, drive SUV's, activity 3000 notebooks and PDA's. They make a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They're busybodies, preachers, experts, do-gooders, and professional altruists. Always self-appointed, they answer to no constituency. Although unelected and ignorant of local realities, they face the democratically chosen and people who voted them in-to office. A number of them are enmeshed in crime and corruption. They are the non-governmental organizations, or NGO's. Some NGO's - like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Amnesty - really contribute to increasing survival, to the mitigation of hunger, the furtherance of human and civil rights, or the lowering of disease. Others - frequently in the guise of think tanks and lobby groups - are occasionally ideologically partial, or religiously-committed and, often, at the company of special interests. NGO's - such as the International Crisis Group - have freely interfered with respect to the weight in the past parliamentary elections in Macedonia. Other NGO's have done so in Belarus and Ukraine, Zimbabwe and Israel, Nigeria and Thailand, Slovakia and Hungary - and also in Western, rich, countries including the USA, Canada, Germany, and Belgium. The encroachment on state sovereignty of international law - enshrined in various treaties and conventions - allows NGO's to have involved in previously strictly domestic affairs like corruption, civil rights, the arrangement of the press, the penal and civil codes, environmental guidelines, or the part of economic assets and of natural endowments, including land and water. No subject of government action is now exempt from the glare of NGO's. They serve as self-appointed witnesses, judges, jury and executioner rolled into one. Aside from their marketing or modus operandi, all NGO's are top heavy with established, well-remunerated, extravagantly-perked bureaucracies. Opacity is typical of NGO's. Amnesty's policies avoid its officials from openly discussing the inner workings of the corporation - recommendations, discussions, thoughts - until they've become officially elected in to its Mandate. Ergo, dissenting views rarely get an open hearing. Despite their lessons, the money of NGO's is often hidden and their sponsors as yet not known. The bulk of the income on most non-governmental organizations, also the largest ones, comes from - often foreign - forces. Many NGO's serve as standard technicians for governments. NGO's serve for as long arms of the sponsoring states - gathering intelligence, burnishing their picture, and promoting their interests. There's a revolving door between your staff of NGO's and government bureaucracies the world over. The British Foreign Office funds a host of NGO's - like the very 'independent' Global Witness - in troubled places, such as for instance Angola. Several host governments accuse NGO's of - unknowingly or intentionally - helping as hotbeds of espionage. Not many NGO's get some of the income from public contributions and donations. The larger NGO's spend one tenth of the budget on PR and solicitation of charity. In a desperate bid to attract international attention, so many of them lied about their projects in the Rwanda disaster in 1994, recounts 'The Economist', the Red Cross felt compelled to draw up a five point necessary NGO code of ethics. A rule of conduct was adopted in 1995. However the phenomenon recurred in Kosovo. All NGO's claim to be not for pro-fit - however, many of them get big equity portfolios and abuse their position to increase the market share of companies they own. Conflicts of interest and unethical behavior abound. Cafedirect is really a British firm devoted to 'fair-trade' coffee. Oxfam, an NGO, started, three years ago, on a strategy directed at Cafedirect's opponents, accusing them of exploiting farmers by paying them a tiny fraction of the retail price of the coffee they offer. Yet, Oxfam owns 2500-10 of Cafedirect. Big NGO's resemble multi-national firms in design and operation. They're hierarchical, maintain large media, government lobbying, and PR departments, head-hunt, invest earnings in portfolios, participate in government tenders, and own many different unrelated businesses. The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development owns the certificate for 2nd mobile-phone user in Afghanistan - among other companies. In this respect, NGO's tend to be more like cults than like social companies. Many NGO's encourage economic causes - anti-globalization, the banning of child labor, the comforting of intellectual property rights, or reasonable payment for agricultural products and services. Several causes are both worthy and sound. Alas, many NGO's lack economic knowledge and inflict injury on the alleged recipients of these beneficence. NGO's are at times controlled by - or collude with - industrial groups and political parties. It is telling that the denizens of many developing countries think the West and its NGO's of promoting an agenda of trade protectionism. Stringent - and high priced - labor and environmental provisions in international treaties may well be a ploy to fight off imports based on cheap labor and your competition they inflict on well-ensconced domestic companies and their political stooges. Get child labor - as distinct from the generally condemnable phenomena of child prostitution, child soldiering, or child slavery. Son or daughter labor, in lots of abandoned venues, is all that separates the family from all-pervasive, existence threatening, poverty. As national income grows, daughter or son work decreases. After the outcry provoked, in 1995, by NGO's against football balls sewn by children in Pakistan, both Nike and Reebok shifted their workshops and sacked numerous women and 7000 children. The typical family income - anyhow meager - fell by 2-0 . This affair elicited these wry discourse from economists Drusilla Brown, Alan Deardorif, and Robert Stern 'While Baden Sports could very credibly claim that their soccer balls aren't made by children, the move of the production ability certainly did nothing for their former child workers and their families.' This is not even close to being an original case. Threatened with legal reprisals and 'reputation hazards' (being named-and-shamed by over-zealous NGO's) - multinationals participate in pre-emptive sacking. More than 50,000 children in Bangladesh were let go in 1993 by German clothing factories in expectation of the American never-legislated Child Labor Deterrence Act. Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, observed 'Stopping child labor without doing whatever else can keep children worse off. If they are training necessarily, as most are, stopping them can force them in to prostitution or other job with higher personal hazards. The main point is they take college and get the education to help them leave poverty.' NGO-fostered hype notwithstanding, 700-watt of children work inside their family unit, in agriculture. Less than 1 percent are used in mining and another 2 percent in construction. Again unlike NGO-proffered panaceas, education is not an answer. Millions graduate each year in developing countries - 100,000 in Morocco alone. But un-employment reaches several third of the staff in places such as Macedonia. Kids at work might be severely treated by their superiors but at least they are kept off the much more menacing roads. Some children even get a skill and are delivered employable. 'The Economist' sums up the short-sightedness, inaptitude, prejudice, and self-centeredness of NGO's neatly 'Suppose that in-the remorseless look for pro-fit, multinationals spend sweatshop earnings to their employees in developing countries. Legislation requiring them to pay higher wages is demanded... The NGOs, the multinationals and enlightened rich-country governments offer tough rules o-n third-world factory wages, supported by trade barriers to keep out imports from countries that do not comply. Shoppers in the West pay more - but willingly, since they know it is in a great cause. Another victory is declared by the NGOs. The companies, having shafted their third-world competition and protected their domestic markets, depend their greater earnings (higher wage costs notwithstanding). And the third-world workers displaced from locally owned producers explain to their children why the West's new deal for the victims of capitalism requires them to deny.' NGO's in places like Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Albania, and Zimbabwe are becoming the most well-liked place for Western aid - both humanitarian and financial - development capital, and disaster relief. According to the Red Cross, more money goes through NGO's than through the World Bank. Their iron grip o-n food, medicine, and resources made an alternative government to them - sometimes as venal and graft-stricken since the one they change. I found out about PureVolume™ We're Listening To You by searching Google Books. Local entrepreneurs, politicians, teachers, and even writers form NGO's to put into the avalanche of Western largesse. In the act, they give themselves and their family relations with salaries, benefits, and preferred use of Western goods and credits. NGO's have changed in to large networks of patronage in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. NGO's chase disasters with an experience. Over 200 of them opened store in the aftermath of the Kosovo refugee crisis in 1999-2000. Another 50 replaced them through the civil unrest in Macedonia annually later. Floods, elections, earthquakes, wars - constitute the cornucopia that feed the NGO's. NGO's are advocates of Western values - women's lib, human rights, civil rights, the defense of minorities, freedom, equality. Not everyone sees this generous menu welcome. The birth of NGO's often provokes social polarization and social issues. Traditionalists in Bangladesh, nationalists in Macedonia, religious zealots in Israel, security forces every-where, and virtually all politicians find NGO's frustrating and disturbing. The British government ploughs well over 30 million annually in-to 'Proshika', a Bangladeshi NGO. It started being a women's training clothing and wound up as a restive and ambitious women empowerment political lobby group with finances to rival many ministries in this impoverished, Moslem and patriarchal country. Other NGO's - fuelled by 300 million of annual international infusion - developed from humble origins to become grand coalitions of full-time activists. NGO's like the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and the Association for Social Advancement mushroomed even as their plans have been fully implemented and their objectives realized. It now owns and operates 30,000 schools. That mission creep is not unique to developing countries. Organizations tend to self-perpetuate aside from their proclaimed charter, as Parkinson discovered. Remember NATO? Human rights companies, like Amnesty, are now trying to combine within their ever-expanding remit 'financial and social rights' - such as the rights to food, property, honest wages, potable water, sanitation, and health provision. How insolvent countries are designed to provide such munificence is conveniently over looked. 'The Economist' reviewed a number of the more egregious cases of NGO imperialism. Human Rights Watch lately offered this tortured argument in favor of increasing the role of human rights NGO's 'The best way to avoid starvation today is to secure the to free expression - so that misguided government policies may be taken to public attention and fixed before food shortages become acute.' I-t blatantly ignored the fact that regard for human and political rights doesn't fight off natural disasters and disease. The two nations with the greatest incidence of AIDS are Africa's only two true democracies - Botswana and South Africa. The Centre for Economic and Social Rights, an American ensemble, 'challenges economic injustice as a breach of international human rights law.' Oxfam promises to support the 'rights to a sustainable livelihood, and the rights and capacities to be involved in groups and make beneficial changes to people's lives.' In a poor try at emulation, the WHO published an inanely named record - 'A Human Rights Approach to Tuberculosis.' NGO's are getting to be not just all-pervasive but more ambitious. In their capacity as 'shareholder activists', they interrupt shareholders meetings and work to actively tarnish corporate and personal reputations. Friends of the Planet Earth worked tough four years back to start a consumer boycott against Exxon Mobil - for not investing in renewable energy sources and for ignoring global warming. No one - including other investors - recognized their needs. However it went down well with the media, with a few superstars, and with members. As 'believe tanks', NGO's situation partisan and biased reports. The International Crisis Group released a huge attack on the then incumbent government of Macedonia, times before an election, relegating the widespread corruption of its predecessors - whom it appeared to be tacitly encouraging - to several footnotes. O-n at least two instances - in its reports regarding Bosnia and Zimbabwe - ICG has encouraged confrontation, the imposition of sanctions, and , if everything else fails, using power. Though the most vocal and visible, it's not even close to being the only real NGO that supporters 'just' battles. The ICG is a repository of former heads of state and has-been politicians and is distinguished (and notorious) for its prescriptive - some say meddlesome - philosophy and techniques. 'The Economist' remarked sardonically 'To mention (that ICG) is 'solving world crises' is to risk underestimating its desires, if overestimating its achievements.' NGO's have orchestrated the violent series during the trade talks in Seattle in 1999 and its repeat performances across the world. The World Bank was so discouraged by the riotous invasion of its premises in the NGO-choreographed 'Fifty Years is Enough' campaign of 1994, that it now employs dozens of NGO activists and allow NGO's establish a lot of its plans. NGO activists have joined the armed - though mostly peaceful - rebels of the Chiapas region in Mexico. Norwegian NGO's sent members to intentionally board whaling vessels. In america, anti-abortion activists have killed health practitioners. In Britain, dog rights zealots have both assassinated experimental scientists and damaged property. Contraception NGO's perform large sterilizations in poor countries, financed by rich country governments in a bid to stem immigration. NGO's buy slaves in Sudan thus encouraging the practice of slave hunting all through sub-Saharan Africa. Other NGO's earnestly collaborate with 'rebel' armies - an euphemism for terrorists. NGO's absence a synoptic view and their work usually undermines efforts by international companies such as the UNHCR and by authorities. Poorly-paid local officials have to contend with crumbling finances since the resources are diverted to rich expatriates doing exactly the same job for a multiple of the price and with limitless hubris. This is not conducive to content co-existence between foreign do-gooders and local governments. Sometimes NGO's be seemingly an ingenious trick to resolve Western unemployment at the trouble of down-trodden locals. It is a misperception influenced by jealousy and avarice. However it continues to be powerful enough to foster resentment and worse. Be taught more about article by going to our fine portfolio. NGO's are o-n the verge of provoking a ruinous backlash against them within their places of destination. That could be a pity. Many of them are doing indispensable work. If only these were a wee more sensitive and somewhat less ostentatious. But they'd not be NGO's, would they? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- September 2005, interview given to Revista Terra, Bra-zil Q. NGOs are developing quickly in Brazil due to the politicians and governmental institutions experience after years of corruption, elitism and so forth. The young adults feel they can do something concrete as activists in a NGOs working. Isn't that a positive thing? What type of dangers somebody must be aware before as an advocate of a NGO hiring himself? A. One should obviously distinguish between NGOs in-the sated, wealthy, industrialized West - and (the far more numerous) NGOs in the developing and less-developed countries. Western NGOs are the heirs to the Victorian tradition of 'White Man's Burden.' They are missionary and charity-orientated. They are made to spread both assistance (food, treatments, contraceptives, etc.) and Western values. They closely collaborate with institutions and Western governments against institutions and local governments. They are effective, prosperous, and care less about the survival of the indigenous citizenry than about 'general' axioms of ethical conduct. Their counter-parts in less developed and in developing countries serve as substitutes to unsuccessful or structural state institutions and ser-vices. They're rarely concerned with the furthering of any plan and more preoccupied with the well-being of their constituents, individuals. Q. Why do you consider several NGO activists are narcissists and not altruists? What're the signs you recognize on them? A. In both kinds of businesses - Western NGOs and NGOs elsewhere - there is a lot of corruption and waste, double-dealing, self-interested promotion, and, sometimes undoubtedly, collusion with unsavory aspects of culture. Both organizations entice as spots of upward social mobility and self-enrichment narcissistic opportunists who regards NGOs. Several NGOs serve as sinecures, 'effort sinks', or 'work agencies' - they supply work to people that, normally, are unemployable. Some NGOs are involved in political networks of patronage, nepotism, and cronyism. Narcissists are attracted to power, money, and glamour. NGOs offer all three. The officers of several NGOs bring excessive incomes (compared to the average income where in fact the NGO works) and have a panoply of work-related perks. Some NGOs exert lots of political influence and hold power over the lives of millions of aid recipients. NGOs and their workers are, for that reason, often in the focus and many NGO activists have become minor a-listers and regular visitors in such and talk shows. Even critics of NGOs tend to be interviewed by the media (laughing). Eventually, a minority of employees and NGO officials are simply corrupt. They collude with venal officers to enrich them-selves. For instance during the Kosovo crisis in 1999, NGO workers sold in-the open market food, blankets, and medical supplies intended for the refugees. Q. How can one choose from good and bad NGOs? A. There are certainly a few basic tests 1. What part of the NGO's budget is allocated to salaries and perks for the NGO's officers and employees? The less the better. 2. Which area of the budget is spent on furthering the goals of the NGO and on applying its promulgated plans? The more the better. 3. What part of the NGOs resources is allotted to public relations and advertising? The less the better. 4. What part of the budget is brought by governments, directly or indirectly? The less the better. 5. What do the alleged heirs of the NGO's activities think of the NGO? When the NGO is resented, feared, and hated by the area denizens, then some thing is wrong 6. Just how many of the NGO's operatives come in the area, catering to the requirements of the NGO's ostensible components? The more the better. 7. Does the NGO own or run industrial enterprises? If it does, it is a corrupt and compromised NGO involved with conflicts of interest. Q. The manner in which you explain, many NGO are already stronger and politically important than many authorities. What sort of dangers this elicits? You think they are a pest that require control? What type of control would that be? A. The voluntary sector has become a cancerous trend. NGOs intervene in domestic politics and simply take sides in election campaigns. They affect regional economies to the detriment of the impoverished population. They demand unfamiliar spiritual or Western values. Military interventions are justified by them. They maintain industrial interests which take on indigenous companies. They provoke unrest in several a spot. And it is a partial list. The trouble is that, rather than most authorities on earth, NGOs are authoritarian. They are perhaps not elected institutions. They can not be voted down. Individuals have no power over them. Most NGOs are tellingly and ominously secretive about their activities and funds. Light disinfects. The solution is to drive NGOs to become both democratic and responsible. All nations and multinational companies (such as the UN) should pass laws and sign international conventions to modify the development and function of NGOs. NGOs should be forced to democratize. Elections must be introduced on every level. All NGOs should hold 'annual stakeholder conferences' and include in these events representatives of the target populations of the NGOs. NGO funds must be made publicly available and completely transparent. New accounting standards must be introduced and designed to cope with the present pecuniary opacity and functional double-speak of NGOs. Q. It seems that many values taken by NGO are typically modern and Western. What sort of difficulties this creates in more old-fashioned and culturally different countries? A. Big dilemmas. The belief that the West gets the monopoly on ethical values is undisguised national chauvinism. This arrogance is the 21st century equivalent of the racism and colonialism of the 19th and 20th century. This elegant superbahis article directory has endless elegant tips for the purpose of it. Local populations around the world resent this haughty assumption and imposition bitterly. When you said, NGOs are supporters of contemporary Western values - democracy, women's lib, human rights, civil rights, the defense of minorities, independence, equality. Maybe not everyone sees this generous selection palatable. The arrival of NGOs usually provokes social polarization and cultural clashes..