Contextualising the NGO issue

Save the Children, other NGOs should operate transparently but so should the formula for their accountability by state

The government is upset with NGOs and claims some work against state interests. Notwithstanding the issue of who defines state interest and according to which formula, the state-society attitude towards the non-governmental sector needs a serious rethink. Broadly, our political behaviour changed with the advent of the NGO era. We rarely stand up for causes unless there is funding for them from somewhere. Barring exceptions like Karachi or the donations that mosques and madrassas get, we don’t have a culture of serious philanthropy. But who is to blame?

I remember a chat with members of a UK government body, who were interested in initiating counter-extremism ventures in southern Punjab. My advice to them was that unless the local population was serious about the issue and wanted to save their lives by protecting their surroundings, this would really be a waste of British taxpayers’ money. They didn’t listen and many a strange character with little knowledge of the sub-region received funding from both the said body and the European Union, while the radicalism problem continues unabated.

Pakistan’s state functionaries don’t like such advice. They are happy when donors pour in money. It takes two to tango. The Punjab government’s education budget, for instance, is funded by the Department for International Development (DfID). Today, there are DfiD-funded NGOs ensuring school enrollment and literacy. Similarly, the Sindh government has subcontracted famine response to several NGOs. Where is the state and why can’t it shoulder the responsibility to provide health, education and other services to its citizens?

The proliferation of NGOs started after 9/11 with additional impetus provided by the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir and the Northern Areas. Then came the 2010 and 2011 floods — natural calamities in which Pakistan’s governments depended upon all forms of NGOs, be it the Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaatud Dawa or those funded by Western donors. The expansion in this sector was also the consequence of a systematic campaign to malign political institutions and governments. Many ‘darlings of the deep state’ media anchors ran down the government and highlighted greater credibility of the non-governmental sector in dealing with natural disasters. There were others that advised foreign government representatives to depend on civil society rather than on a corrupt state.

The NGO sector in Pakistan has a hierarchical structure. On the top are two to three big aid donors such as the USAID, the UK’s DfID and Japan’s JAICA. They finance the non-governmental sector in consultation with federal and provincial governments. This is also the level where the state bureaucracy gets engaged. The INGOs, like Save the Children, CARE and others form the second tier of the NGO sector. They raise their own funds which do not compare with the money and programmes of the USAID and DfID. The funding by these two donors surpasses even the UN’s. The USAID, which had stopped operations after the American embargo on Pakistan in October 1990, restarted its operations during the Mushrraf regime. At the bottom of the hierarchy are national NGOs registered under Pakistan’s laws that seek funding from international donors. The national NGOs seek donor funding in areas mutually agreed upon by the government and international donors.

If the NGOs are corrupt then they have a partner in crime and that is the government itself. Successive federal and provincial governments have willingly ceded initiative and failed to use their brains and tailor programmes according to their needs and environment. For instance, how would a programme aiming to make Punjab’s schools bookless and introducing e-education, enhance literacy? When I asked a consultant this question, the response was that it was easier to get assistance for anything that had an IT component. The civil bureaucracy is part of the donor-NGO cycle. Having the right information and contacts in the government, bureaucrats have become smart tools for donor agencies. The government might be surprised to find how many of its civil servants are working for donors. The Musharraf-Shaukat Aziz government started the system of allowing bureaucrats to go on leave in order to seek other employment. While many explain this as the only way to earn honest money, there is a huge issue here of conflict of interest that no one wants to look at.

Not surprisingly, the specified method for INGO accountability does not work properly. NGOs operating in Pakistan are registered with the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) of the Ministry of Finance. They need to report to the EAD to get concessions, like duty-free imports. They are also expected to periodically provide details of their activities. Unfortunately, the very few section officers responsible for scrutiny do not have the resources or specified methods to do the job. Then there are other organisations that have a specified or unspecified role in vetting INGOs. In 2012, when inquiries were made regarding the temporary closure of Save the Children office from the presidency, it was informed that it would remain shut as per instructions from certain important quarters of the state. Incidentally, the same quarters then allowed the organisation to reopen.

Save the Children and other NGOs should operate transparently but so should the formula for their accountability by the state. The possibility of incorrect assessment may be higher because state operatives may not fully understand programmes or the objectives behind them. It would certainly help if, besides strengthening NGO accountability mechanisms, the government also regularly trains and explains state operatives charged with looking into the activities of NGOs, about the objectives for which donor assistance is sought. Health, education, gender development or poverty alleviation programmes also require assessments and surveys, which may sometimes be above the understanding of an ordinary state operative.

But this is a simple technicality. The greater issue is far more political. The entire anti-NGO debate may actually be spurred by the state’s anxiety regarding international attention drawn to issues such as Balochistan, missing persons, capital punishment, as well as other issues. However, knee-jerk reactions can only end up attracting the same negative attention from abroad that the state wants to avoid. For definition of ‘knee-jerk’, see the speed with which Save the Children was shut and then reopened.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th,  2015.

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