Countless Ways The NGOs May Be Counterproductive

Since the emergence of a large amount of organizations that are mainly focused on the interests of capitalist enterprises in the 20th century, the number of non-governmental organizations (hereafter referred to as NGOs) has equally increased in order to counterbalance this trend. More specifically, NGOs are organizations that are not founded by the state and therefore are independent of it. Typically, goals of NGOs are primarily non-commercial and focus on social, cultural, legal, and environmental aspects. Most often, their work emphasizes on humanitarian issues, developmental aid, and sustainable development. An important and progressively more researched question is whether NGOs are providing effective help, and how this help may be improved. The question is complex, and research has revealed that a large amount of NGOs fail to provide help, and in some cases their actions even turn out to be counterproductive. In order to find solutions to this problem, it is important to pinpoint where exactly NGOs encounter issues in their processes of providing help. Thus, in the present essay I will investigate in what areas NGOs often fail to achieve their goals and why. In doing so, I will focus on two different processes during which difficulties may be encountered: The process of raising funds, and the implementation of the program that is designed to help. Due to the broad scope of possible problems and situations, I will exclusively focus on NGOs founded in Western countries providing help to countries in the global South and/or minority groups.

The present paragraph will be focused on possible issues faced whilst raising funds. The major reason of why issues may arise is that any potential source of funding must be convinced that the cause is worth giving money for. When an NGO aims to help humans, this typically then means that the target group must be depicted as in extreme need of help. However, the very action of representing any human group as needy necessarily means that the segregation between that group from the rest of the world is increased, in the way that the giver of money is perceived as the rich saviour, whilst the target group is perceived as an inferior, needy victim. This, in turn, may then increase the issues that the target group was initially facing.

How this issue becomes a problem in practice can be seen in a case study by Timmer (2010). The study addresses the focus of several European NGOs since the 2004 and 2007 expansions of the European Union (EU) regarding the "Roma problem", which concerns the Roma (or Gypsy) population in Hungary. The Roma are a minority group and are known to live in relatively bad conditions. The common public opinion in Hungary, and even throughout Europe, regarding the Roma is mostly negative; there are high rates of racism and discrimination against this group. Because of this, the Roma were labelled as "Europe's most disadvantage minority", and have received a lot of attention from several European NGOs. The aim of their projects was to decrease racism and discrimination toward the Roma by incorporating them into the Hungarian culture. This was to be done by reducing poverty amongst the Roma on one hand, and by educating the Hungarian population about their ways of living on the other hand. In order to set the programs into practice, large funds were needed, and issues were encountered in the problem of raising these funds because of the commonly negative view upon the Roma. In their attempts to raise funds, they therefore typically depicted the Roma as being extremely poor and suffering from untenable circumstances. In most cases, the NGOs over-emphasized the poverty of the Roma by using the poorest examples that could be found in Hungary. As a consequence, the image that was finally presented of the Roma represented them as being far poorer than most of them are in reality.

The idea behind this over-emphasis was that only the poorest examples of the Roma would elicit pity in the public eye. It was decided that the richer, or less poor Roma should not be shown in the campaigns as they are typically blamed for their own situation and seen as antisocial outcasts, rather than eliciting pity and the will to help. At the same time, the campaigns also over-emphasized the amount of violence and discrimination that the Roma suffer through, again representing them as a group of helpless and dependent victims. The campaigns have been and still are going on since 2004, and yet the initial aim of integrating the Roma into the Hungarian culture has not been reached. Instead, the campaigns have in many ways contributed to an even greater perceived segregation between the Roma and the non-Roma. What is most striking about this failure is that individuals tend to need to perceive a group as extremely needy in order to be convinced to help them. This is not a new idea and can be drawn back to colonialism, during which the idea of needing to help underdeveloped countries to become more educated was used as reason or an excuse for invading them. Indeed, this can still be seen nowadays in the ways in which some NGOs decide to provide help. There are two ways in which the help provided is most likely to be counterproductive.

Firstly, hidden agendas can be present, and providing help to another country is used as an excuse to get own profit out of the situation. Secondly, many NGOs have pre-determined plans on how to provide help, and fail to involve the target group in developing and implementing the plan. In both cases, the situation may be either exploited, not improved, or even made worse. The following sections will present examples of both cases of counterproductive actions that large NGOs have taken after funds have been received.

There are several examples in which it was discovered that famous NGOs were acting with hidden agendas, or were not providing as much help as their campaign made the sources of funds believe. For instance, a recent scandal uncovered that only 3% of any donation given to the Cancer Fund of America in their activity to alleviate cancer patients in the global South was used for the actual cause. The other 97% were used to pay the charity's staff. Further, during the 7. 0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti in 2010 in which more than 100, 000 people were killed, several donations were made to the American Red Cross (ARC), which claimed that the goal was to alleviate the situation in Haiti as far as possible. According to the ARC, 100 million out of the 488 million US dollars of donations were spent on constructing permanent homes and community development projects. Four years later, the ARC was accused of having indeed spent all the money that was donated to them; and yet, they had built exactly six houses in Haiti- and had not started any community development projects. The ARC was unable to give a satisfying or specific answer on how the money was spent instead. Nevertheless, as previously mentioned, NGOs can also act with the best of intentions and still fail to provide help. This typically occurs when the local community is not involved in the formulation or implementation of the project.

This could be seen in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to which the several officers were sent by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in 2010. The idea behind this was that the officers would assist the Congolese police in the most unstable areas, and that this greater law enforcement would lead to a more stable situation, which in turn could contribute to the reestablishment of state authority. However, the implementation of this project led to an even worse situation. The untrained UNOPS officers competed for control with the local military and remnants of rebel groups. They received no support, neither by the Kinshasa authorities nor by the local communities. UNOPS officers were viewed as strangers with no personal connection and knowledge about the customs of the specific villages, forming one more factor of insecurity in the eyes of the villagers. This was extremely problematic, as the UN maintained that the Congolese government should pay, feed, and house the UNOPS officers. As the government refused to provide this help, the officers found themselves in lack of these necessities. The consequence was that they ended up preying on the population of the villagers that they were initially asked to protect. We can see in this situation that even though the UN acted with the best of intentions, not involving local communities in the process of figuring out how help could be best provided lead to a worsened situation.

Another case study conducted by Amutabi (2006) shows the negative impacts of both exploitation and unwanted help. In the 1930es, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) started collecting blood samples of living and dead suspected yellow fever patients in Kenya, tested vaccines on them, and collected organ samples of corpses that were suspected to be affected by yellow fever. This case is an excellent example of neo-colonial violence, as the samples were collected without regards to feelings and opinions of the locals. Indeed, the Abaluyia, one of the major target groups, regards blood as sacred and an embodiment to life. For them, the RF collecting blood samples was seen as a violation of their being an essence. The consequences were trauma and fear within the Kenyan rural population. People would hide from the sample collectors, and the RF was nicknamed "masinza" (slaughterers). The RF regarded resistance by the Kenyan population as a proof of ignorance and backwardness of their culture. Also, Western agendas were involved in this case; As there was a risk of re-infection of yellow fever in the Southern US, which had already seen several episodes of that illness, the RF intervening in Kenya was in the interest of the US government as it provided new subjects to test for new remedies. We can see here that even though the Kenyan population was going to benefit from the project, the fact that they were not consulted made the actions by the RF cruel and unjustified.

The cases above provide examples of how implementing help without the opinion of the local community can be counterproductive or even cruel. An additional point to note as well is that providing help without involving the local community can also lead to dependence of countries. If projects are not implemented with the goal of helping the target community become more independent, an international NGO project can go from being a short-term fix to a long-term solution. This is because impoverished communities are unlikely to be able to sustain solutions implemented by international NGOs. A very common example for this is the installation of water pipes in impoverished countries; as the country is unlikely to be able to finance the maintenance of the pipes, these will eventually break down if the NGO does not constantly pay for its maintenance.

Throughout the essay, I have shown that NGOs may be counterproductive in countless ways. Firstly, in the attempt to raise funding, a group may be unjustly represented as inferior. This may increase the perceived gap between the giver of money as the rich and educated, and the target group receiving the funds as the needy victims. In the process of implementing help, hidden agendas or plans formulated without involving the target group itself can lead to a worsened situation or increased dependence of the target group. This raises the following question: is it responsible to donate to large international NGOs? The answer is neither yes nor no. It is important to research the ideas behind the projects of NGOs, and to make sure that one knows how the money donated is really spent. In general, it is better to donate to local charities, as their activity can be tracked more easily. The largest pitfall for both donors to and workers of international NGOs to perceive themselves as superior to the target group. Responsible help can only be provided with genuine, honest efforts and by working hand in hand with the target community.