Meryem Barhdadi

Globalization Impact on Civil Society Activism:

Are NGOs true progressive tools promoting sustainable development or neo-liberal instruments co-opted by the global system?

MSc International Business SKEMA Business School Suzhou Campus Lecturer: Catherine Taupiac

Table of Contents
I- Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 03

II- NGOs progressive organs for sustainable development .......................................................04 1. Programs for street and working children in South America ...................................04 ENDA - Bolivia:........................................................................................................04 The CEDRO Project- Peru .....................................................................................04 2. Girl's and women's education in Africa ......................................................................04 AfricAid - Tanzania ................................................................................................05 FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists) , Rwanda ........................05 3. NGOs influence on environmental issues: ................................................................05 Greenpeace ..............................................................................................................05 Sierra club ...............................................................................................................06 III- Globalization compromised NGOs ability to narrow unequal development disparities:..................................................................................................................................... 06 1. Governments neo-liberal policies promote massive privatizations feeding NGOs expansion: ............................................................................................06 2. NGO act like contractors for their funders compromising their progressive potential? ....................................................................................................06 3. NGOs promote fake goals to hide dubious policies: ..................................................07 4. NGO acts like states advocates implementing governmental programs .................07 IV- Conclusions: ...........................................................................................................................08 V- List of references: ................................................................................................................. 09

Meryem Barhdadi - MSc IB -

Globalization impact on civil society activism:

Are NGOs true progressive tools promoting sustainable development or neo-liberal instruments co-opted by the globalized system?

I.

Introduction:

Since the last decade, the world experiences major changes geniwully refereeing to a phenomena

collectively labeled globalization. Globalization has become a sort of clich. Like most clichs, the term describes so much that it defines nothing at all. Still, the idea is no longer to give a proper definition of globalization. The critical reality lies in the impacts of this globalization on peoples everyday life, in their homes, communities, natural and cultural environment.... Unfortunately, the more globalized the system is the more isolated and marginalized are individuals. Globalization benefits in fact, to a very small minority of people at the expense of the vast majority of population. Paradoxically, globalization does not make the world a bigger place, but a smaller one. It becomes a wild jungle where people are more isolated than ever. Individuals focus on their own interest, and have a strict local vision of their proper evolution. Hence, As the process of globalization intensifies, so will the process of localization and somehow peoples selfishness and egocentricity. As a response to these dramatic impacts, the increasing prominence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has been seen by many as a potentially transformative force in promoting more equal, participative, and sustainable development. At the same time, NGOs have also been seen as co-opted by neo-liberalism, functioning in ways that maintain systemic inequality. The aim of this paper is to give a personal reflection and propose an evaluation of the civil society response to the impacts of such a phenomenon. Still, it is very hard to make a proper evaluation of NGOs work and commitment ignoring their particular patterns. Many distinctions could be and should be made to deliver a trustworthy analysis of the current situation and therefore to have a comprehensive understanding of NGOs functioning and involvement. The NGO literature makes a variety of distinctions among NGOs and aims to capture some significant differences in their functioning. For instance, national vs. international, communitybased, religious-based, grassroots organizations...However, since I am given a short period of time to hand this work, I will somehow manage to put aside those accurate distinctions, and voluntary put the focus on lessons that can be learned from looking at the NGO phenomenon as a whole. The aim is to analyze the potential impacts of globalization on international cooperation and social justice activism. Are NGOs today true progressive forces or simple neo-liberal tools?

Meryem Barhdadi - MSc IB -

II. NGOs progressive organs for sustainable development:

Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) are spread across countries, focused primarily in larger cities, with a single motto providing health and nutrition components, non-formal education, vocational training and recreational facilities to all human beings. Some NGOs offer counseling and saving schemes when it comes to make urgent interventions after some natural catastrophes (Earthquake, tsunami...) Among NGOs teams, work some of the worlds most committed social activists. Thanks to their strong experience, they consistently run efficient and innovative social programs with a commitment to grassroots participation and social justice. I am not making here an assessment that all NGOs are progressive .It is not either a way to reduce other activists work within governments or any other structure that can also- with no doubt- provide a quality work with a similar commitment and drive. The idea here is to acknowledge that despite the fact that NGOs functioning is not flawless, some of their promises are clearly being fulfilled.

1. Program for street and working children in South America:

ENDA - Bolivia: In 1987, Michel Grgoire discovered the plight of El Alto, Bolivias street children. He took then the bright initiative to create a non-government organization known as: ENDABolivia with a well-defined plan. He had two main objectives in mind, helping street children to escape from drug abuse and creating a favorable environment to facilitate their re-integration into community life. The results were very positive. Today, the program is more focused on a very specific target: Children and teenagers: street vendors, shoeshine boys or employees in small stores.... They work more than twelve hours a day for an average wage of $2.The idea is to help those kids to escape from the streets and its dangerous temptation: drug abuse...and to soften their re-entry into the educational system. The program has been a huge success, and has been therefore re-conducted in other countries. The CEDRO Project- Peru The CEDRO Project in Lima (Peru), fight drug abuse among children of the street. This program is strictly intended to children with no family ties, no economic activity, and formal or informal (as street vendors...), but who survive only by illegal means (robbery, assaults...) They take drugs, and live in gangs by night. This project involve a strong cooperation of street educators who manage to create nor only shelter, but descent homes for these children under certain conditions: that they do not bring sex, theft and drugs into the houses. Rather, they teach them how to participate in community activities, and respect social values. The project inspired similar interventions in other Third Word countries. For instance the JUCONI project in Puebla, Mexico who also aimed to offer young people working or living in the streets, better life conditions.

2. Girl's and women's education in Africa

Since 1948, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights articulated Education for all children as a primary right and main goal to be reached in all nations worldwide. Still, the task is
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hard. The difficulty in achieving the goal was officially admitted in Thailand, in 1990, during the World Conference on Education for All. The Jomtien conference highlighted the international attention on key point: girls enrollment and persistence in primary school is lower than boys in many developing countries. Therefore, education is commonly acknowledged as a primary field attracting many social activists in NGOs. Hence, the large majority of actions related to girls persistence in school are carried out by NGOs. The statistics are quite relevant: NGOs in Guatemala, Peru, Morocco, and Guinea carried out respectively 46%, 56%, 58%, and 88% of the actions promoting girls education. AfricAid - Tanzania: Ashley Shuyler is a young American woman, fully committed to social work. She founded AfricaAid, a Colorado-based NGO focused on providing sustainable educational opportunities for girls in Tanzania, to transform their lives and the future of their communities. AfricAid provides funding for scholarships, school supplies... It sponsors school building projects, teacher trainings and cooperate on initiatives of Tanzanians and other African leaders committed to education. Ashley is currently working on the Kisa Project, to share the stories of African girls through digital storytelling. FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists), Rwanda FAWE is an NGO involving in the education field in Rwanda. Its president Dr. Kathy Kantengwa is a committed women, fully dedicated to its cause: addressing gender disparity when it comes to education. She works very hard on changing peoples mindsets and creating awareness among parents who still think that school is a male priority, especially in rural areas. The NGO cooperates with many African activists, Ministers of Education, officials in charge of education, and other decision makers in the education field to promote a stronger advocacy to boost girls education in Rwanda. Currently FAWE sponsored more than 6,555 students in 62 schools across the country. Very aware of the declining number of girls who have access to institutions of higher education, FAWE is conducting a research project to evaluate the current contribution of all the actors to girls education in universities and the impact of the Nine Year Basic Education policy on girls education.

3. NGOs influence on environmental issues:

Greenpeace: Greenpeace is a NGO referring to itself as an independent global campaigning organization to highlight the fact that it refuses any governmental donations in order to maintain its valued independency. Greenpeace main aim is to educate individuals to adopt responsible attitudes, which protect the environment and promote peace through non-violent direct actions, fighting environmental threats. Greenpeace policy relies on very peaceful actions to insure the success of its interventions. For instance, the NGO sent a ship of volunteers and journalists to witness the environmental degradation in the north of Alaska due to the US nuclear tests held in Amchitka. The idea here is to promote peace and protect the environment through non-violet, respectful actions. Greenpeace is hence very careful when it comes to respecting the values it defenses. Its main financings come from individual contributions and foundation funds from over 40 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific.
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 Sierra club: Founded in 1892 by John Muir, the Sierra Club is the largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. The organization put the focus on ensuring the safety and sanity of the environment through the use of new green energies to combat global warming and therefore preserve the planets wild places. The grassroots leader lawful actions succeeded in many campaigns such as preserving the North Grove Calaveras Big Trees or creating the National Park Service.

III. Globalization compromised NGOs ability to narrow unequal development disparities:

This second part of my analysis is not an attempt to discredit all NGOs achievement mentioned above. Mostly, I aim to conduct an objective commentary on some of the points in which NGOs functioning prevents them from acting like the true progressive means they should be, to empower individuals to face the dramatic impacts of globalization. I will first make a brief comment on NGOs as an outcome of the massive current globalization, then I will analyze the evolutions NGOs interactions with all the actors in the system: funds providers, governments, local forces and authorities.... The idea is to evaluate the impact of the massive current globalization on the NGOs functioning. To what extend are they strong and independent enough to protect their policies from external influence?

1. Governments neo-liberal policies promote massive privatizations feeding NGOs expansion:

NGOs growth was fed by the huge disparities and social crisis left by the capitalist, globalized system. Indeed, the incredibly rapid expansion of NGOs has primarily been a consequence of two decades of massive focus on privatizations. Thus, the dramatic effects of the public sector distortion, affected quiet deeply the trust and confidence of aid and funding agencies in neo-liberal governments. Reagan /Thatcher politics triggered a rationale for avoiding aid to governments. In a brilliant analysis conducted by Edwards, M. and Hulme, entitled Too close for comfort?, the authors discuss the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. The analysis points out the interesting compromise faced by development funds. . When it comes to making a wise choice or at least the one that makes more sense, between financing social programs through governments and total indifference, NGOs seems to be the perfect compromise. Yet, this relationship is hardly sustainable. Somehow it ends up creating a sort of dependence with consequences that seriously compromised NGOs ability to act like the real progressive forces they should be.

2. NGO act like contractors for their funders compromising their progressive potential?
As developed above, globalization narrowed the resources available to the government to finance sustainable development in comparison with the effective needs. Therefore, NGOs compete fiercely for funding.
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Trapped in this cutthroat competition to get financings, some NGOs have lost sight of the essential and the fundamental. Indeed, winning the funding race comes with a very expensive price that some NGOs were unfortunately willing to pay. They sacrifice their freedom of action, their development programs to meet the agenda of their funders. Therefore, those that succeeded were too often those which did not dare to challenge their funders development program, taking a more compromising, apolitical stance, if not openly right-wing. This dependency resulted in a dramatic shift in the NGOs status from partners to contractors. Indeed, instead of creating balanced partnerships with funders to launch projects promoting sustainable development of the local communities, NGOs become sort of contractors implementing the funders agenda in the communities. Hence, the distinction between NGOs and private sector companies is hardly visible. NGOs activists seem to be the new temporary workers of development. NGOs brand value or image is manipulated by national and international agencies to promote delicate programs, specific tasks... Still, once the programs are implemented and the goals fixed achieved, their presence is no longer needed. Their funders or to be more accurate, their employers easily discarded them as circumstances change, and consequently limit their ability to challenge development practice.

3. NGOs promoting fake goals to hide dubious policies:

Regarding the previous point, NGOs now assimilated to private companies, are no longer able to implement programs promoting democratic governance, and sustainable development. Therefore, if NGOs are easily influenced by their funders neo-liberal vision, it seems fair to question if those goals were even considered at some point? Did NGOs ever considered fighting for an efficient economic growth? These goals might be camouflage for policies that benefit the few. Edwards and Hulme point out that the goal of "efficient" economic growth is just used as camouflage for privatization. The real goal is to develop policies that increase wealth accumulation while more sustainable growth could be achieved through expanded public sector investment. As if it is even still possible, the situation far from improving is even getting worse. This camouflage tactic is no more needed, since the most powerful NGOs do not longer try to cover for their dubious policies. The most striking example is the World Bank, which had poverty elimination as a founding mission. After some successful programs, the WB upholds its inability to fund programs to help poor nations arguing that its single added value is its capacity to provide efficient advice and counseling that will make an effective difference in the future. Poverty and inequality are integral parts of the capitalism policy package. Hence, despite their best efforts, NGOs co-optation by this systems actors prevents them from contributing to sustainable poverty alleviation.

4. NGOs act like states advocates implementing governmental programs:

So far, I do believe, I insisted quiet enough on the enormous lack of resources when it comes to

meeting all the demands. Therefore NGOs small-scale programs, despite their excellence are far from being sufficient to respond positively to all populations requests for support and assistance. In Brazil, for example, hundreds of efficient small-scale programs offered by NGOs were launched to provide assistance, education, and a shelter for street and working children. Unfortunately less than 1% of the population concerned benefits from those programs. NGOs most committed activists acknowledge the facts that it is the governments responsibility to bring such programs to large-scale since it is commonly admitted that NGOs biggest strength is
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their ability to work hand in hand with local communities, to develop innovative programs that fit with local needs and context. Unfortunately, the neo-liberal policies run by most of the globalized world governments did not manage to bring those programs to scale. As a result, some NGOs start lobbying the State for largescale social change. They do not hesitate to give up their own development programs to become full-time policy advocates and to help in the development of social movements that press the State for policy change. Acting like substitutes to governments organs, NGOs contributed heavily to the delegitimization of the State.

IV. Conclusions:
A globalized world could somehow be compared to a giant market where actors compete to satisfy strong demands. Unfortunately, all the actors of this wild market do not benefit from the same weapons to fight competition. All the means are then allowed to beat competitors and absorb more market shares. This non-regulated system exposes the world to dramatic international threats in front of which most individuals are defenseless. The extreme poverty in Africa, South America or Asia, drops children on the street, exposing them to drugs abuse, and hence prevents them from the access to a descent education. Nuclear tests destroy the planet diversity and balance compromising the next generations future. Still those issues are far from being globalization concerns. Globalization does not factor in the concept of sustainability. It is all about making profit in the shorter period possible, whatever the cost is. Moreover, in so many Third World countries, the resources available to the government departments are inadequate when compared with the needs. Therefore, the role of these NGOs is essential. NGOs act as a progressive element in the dialectic of global and local, empowering individuals and communities to face, resist, and transform the unequal relations of neo-liberalism. Unfortunately, their ability to carry out this role effectively is seriously compromised for some reasons. First, being substitutes to the governments is not a long term solution since NGOs are more specialized in launching small-scale programs that states authorities must implement at a larger scale afterwards. NGOs limited resources do not allowed them to act at a larger scale. They are trapped in an incredibly difficult situation. The need for their services is enormous, resources are very scarce, and, when available, come with strings attached. Despite those handicapping strings many NGOs, fully dedicated to progressive social change, do often their best to stick to their own programs using diverse strategies, : not taking funds from those agencies they disagree with (Greenpeace) , diversifying funding sources .. Unfortunately, the results are far from even coping with the deadly consequences of neo- liberalism. With a minimal social welfare, states have no room for the greater participation in governance that is essential to challenge the maintenance of inequalities. The situation worsens each day as more people than ever join the ranks of the excluded and exploited. Therefore, taking in consideration all the previous factors, it becomes very hard to give a clear -cut answer to the question above: Are NGOs today true progressive forces or simple neo-liberal tools? Still, this is paper is not a call for despair. The solution lies in the NGOs ability to use the neoliberal system funds without losing their freedom of action. Somehow, they will have to manage to take advantage of the system without undergoing its flaws. To soften the task for NGOs, state authorities must improve their governance capabilities. It does not mean eliminating markets but governing them and not treating them as sacred. It means guaranteeing the rights of people to a decent living and to meaningful and fair social participation through extensive partnerships with civil society active actors such as NGOs.
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V. List of References:

Dewees, T., & Klees, S. Social movements and the transformation of national policy: Street and working children in Brazil. Comparative Education Review.

Edwards, M., & Hulme, D. Too close for comfort? The impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. World Development.

Myers, W. (Ed.). Protecting working children: UNICEF. http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Child_Protection_Information_Sheets.pdf

Stromquist, N., Klees, S. & Miske, S. Focus on girls: USAID programs and policies in education. http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/education_and_universities/documents/USAID_ED_Strategy_feb2 011.pdf

World Bank: Priorities and strategies. Washington, DC: World Bank. ttp://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/

Meryem Barhdadi - MSc IB -