Committee for Conflict Transformation Support |
CCTS
|
The Role of NGOs, Local and International, in Post-war PeacebuildingImpact and influence of funding priorities on NGOsIn most post-war situations even a willing state will not be able to support many important structures and resources for peacebuilding. Resources from outside agencies can be crucial. The way those resources are offered, channelled, monitored and possibly controlled will have a huge impact on how useful they are in building peace. Some of the reasons international agencies may believe in NGOs were given earlier. There are other factors that make them attractive to international funders. NGOs are attractive to international funders because they have a local basis and can provide a relatively simple and low cost channel for distributing funds. Looking from a purely pragmatic and possibly cynical angle, NGOs provide an alternative channel to structures that have previously failed or proved untrustworthy. It is easy to encourage people to set up new NGOs, and a failed project can be blamed on NGO incompetence with minimal blame falling to a funder's staff or own systems. A funder has no long-term commitment to the NGO, and when staff in the funding organisation change, which they do frequently, there is not even a personal or emotional commitment. New staff often start by breaking old links and building new ones with new organisations. NGOs are also weak in negotiations with the international funder - unlike Governments or other international bodies - and are likely to conform to the conditions and procedures required of them by the funder. Those conditions and procedures are often extensive, demanding their own share of resources, specialist skills and effort from NGOs. One intention underlying funders' conditionalities is to reduce the influence an NGO's staff member or executive may have on what happens locally because of their ideological beliefs or subjective interpretations and preferences. The main intention I can see behind the procedures that NGOs are expected to adopt on behalf of their funding bodies is to make the situation on the ground more visible to non-local professionals in the funding agency. Funders need to account for resources to their own back funders (other bodies, or Government treasuries), and thus must show they are monitoring and controlling the use of resources allocated to NGOs. Not all NGOs will be able to work in ways that external funders and supporters approve of and there is always some element of selection. Decision-making staff probably need to justify their selection of NGOs within larger bureaucratic structures. To do so they establish what are meant to be objective criteria for selection, so as to reduce any subjective or unexpressed ideological base for decisions. One area of such criteria is likely to be whether selected NGOs will be able to work in ways that facilitate the funder's own managerial needs. For example, funders are often under pressure to act quickly, or spend funds by certain deadlines, and where there is an existing relationship with an NGO, or where a new NGO is able to meet the basic procedural requirements fastest (eg. project proposals in the correct format) they will have a head start on other funding applicants. One effect of this, recorded in many instances, is a sort of 'hoop-jumping' activity, in which NGOs successfully create the image of meeting funders' requirements and thus gain access to resources, whether or not their projected image and plans are likely to meet the promises. This is a sort of corruption. I would argue that such actions are reinforced when funders rely heavily on objective, bureaucratic and often centrally produced criteria, rather than on good old-fashioned, sustained contact between skilled and experienced staff and local partners, both NGOs and others familiar with a local situation.
|