Background

The world has changed since INGOs start­ed to become a promi­nent actor on the glob­al stage and in recent years they have been chal­lenged from all sides – both exter­nal­ly and inter­nal­ly. Inter­nal­ly, issues around gen­der, race and pow­er are all in the head­lines in recent years; exter­nal­ly, the issues we face from cli­mate change to glob­al inequal­i­ty, con­flict and now a glob­al pan­dem­ic seem to have left INGOs unable to tru­ly respond with suf­fi­cient effi­ca­cy to change the sta­tus quo, in spite of the ambi­tion to do so.

Like oth­ers in civ­il soci­ety, INGOs have faced the chal­lenges of shrink­ing civic space, while also fail­ing to respond to the cri­sis. Both the cred­i­bil­i­ty and effec­tive­ness of the INGO mod­el have come into ques­tion. We need glob­al civ­il soci­ety, but the cur­rent mod­el of the INGO seems no longer fit for pur­pose.

New­er social move­ments or more mod­ern, net­worked INGOs have grown up dif­fer­ent­ly and are respond­ing in new ways to the chal­lenges. How­ev­er, the dom­i­nant INGOs in inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment, human rights and envi­ron­men­tal are­nas remain in force and in many ways, large­ly unre­con­struct­ed. And so, these insti­tu­tions have been com­ing under increas­ing lev­els of scruti­ny in recent years, from all angles.

South­ern orga­ni­za­tions, for one, ques­tion their legit­i­ma­cy, or talk about the chal­lenges of the ‘white sav­ior com­plex’; they right­ly ques­tion the high­er salaries giv­en to inter­na­tion­al work­ers, the lack of south­ern­ers and peo­ple of col­or in lead­er­ship posi­tions through­out the sec­tor, along­side the lack of resources flow­ing to the glob­al south. Ideas are often con­sid­ered to be ‘imposed’ and part­ner­ships are per­ceived to be unequal and un-col­lab­o­ra­tive.

At their heart these are ques­tions of pow­er and legit­i­ma­cy. Despite decades of debate about how to ensure that peo­ple affect­ed get to deter­mine and design the solu­tions to the prob­lems they face many INGOs have insuf­fi­cient­ly altered their prac­tice to make this a real­i­ty instead con­sol­i­dat­ing their hold on to pow­er, influ­ence and access to resources.

There is a grow­ing back­lash, as well, against inter­na­tion­al aid, as cit­i­zens, fac­ing their own issues at home, ques­tion high lev­els of aid expen­di­ture. In oth­er coun­tries, there is a back­lash against the per­ceived impo­si­tion of so-called ‘west­ern’ val­ues advo­cat­ed by INGOs. In the glob­al South there is also a grow­ing demand for NGOs to be more dri­ven by ‘South­ern agen­das’ and their own agency.

No one INGO seems immune. The human­i­tar­i­an aid scan­dals of 2018 – putting Oxfam and Save the Chil­dren under the spot­light were amongst the first of recent very pub­lic scan­dals that threat­ened INGOs direct­ly. Oxfam, for one, report­ed a 10% loss of sup­port­ers. Oth­er scan­dals have since fol­lowed – a bul­ly­ing cul­ture at Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al; alleged col­lu­sion with para­mil­i­taries by WWF, and the lat­est inter­ven­tion from the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment have brought more issues around pow­er to the fore.

At the same time, INGOs have been one of the pri­ma­ry tar­get of the trend towards ‘clos­ing space for civ­il soci­ety’ – man­i­fest­ing in both the North and South alike. In the Glob­al South, restric­tive regimes are try­ing to close them down, through freez­ing bank accounts or using neg­a­tive rhetoric, accus­ing them of under­min­ing devel­op­ment, and feel­ing threat­ened by their influ­ence. We’ve seen Green­peace and Amnesty’s bank accounts shut down in India; Action Aid in Ugan­da raid­ed and tar­get­ed; and after the recent Indone­sian tsuna­mi, human­i­tar­i­an INGOs were frozen out alto­geth­er.

The trend towards decen­tral­iza­tion by INGOs has also come with unin­tend­ed con­se­quences. There is a grow­ing con­cern expressed by local NGOs who feel that INGOs are tak­ing their space and crowd­ing out their space and resource oppor­tu­ni­ties. Some are mak­ing over­tures to acquire or merge with local NGOs, fur­ther dilut­ing domes­tic civ­il soci­ety diver­si­ty.

In the North, INGOs face fur­ther de-legit­imiza­tion as many gov­ern­ments are side-step­ping INGOs in favor of pri­va­tized aid, or using large-scale con­sul­tan­cies to under­take aid relat­ed projects. While pri­vate sec­tor actors may have a role to play in devel­op­ment, the unadul­ter­at­ed use of pri­vate sec­tor instru­ments will not be suf­fi­cient to achieve the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, espe­cial­ly as INGOs face increased mar­gin­al­iza­tion.

They are often accused of hav­ing too much pow­er and being ‘over-cor­po­ra­tized’. This can result in a focus on sur­vival over impact. Yet per­verse­ly, INGOs don’t have suf­fi­cient pow­er to con­front the world’s vest­ed inter­ests that are pre­vent­ing pro­gres­sive change.

What has been done to date?

Many of the longer stand­ing INGOs – Oxfam, Amnesty or WWF, are acute­ly aware of the chal­lenges they face, and there have been a num­ber of efforts by inter­na­tion­al civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions to address the cri­tiques. Some of these include:

1. Many have sought to decen­tral­ize their orga­ni­za­tions in recent years: Amnesty, Action Aid, Oxfam, amongst oth­ers, to respond to con­cerns about North­ern led action. Some have includ­ed shift­ing head­quar­ters to the glob­al south, oth­ers have moved towards cre­at­ing more fed­er­at­ed struc­tures. While this has been wel­come, it has also result­ed in some unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, includ­ing local orga­ni­za­tions see­ing them­selves sud­den­ly in com­pe­ti­tion for fundrais­ing with ‘local’ arms of INGOs; or being direct­ly vul­ner­a­ble to more direct attacks from nation­al gov­ern­ments (such as clos­ing bank accounts).
2. There have been numer­ous ini­tia­tives pro­gress­ing, to address safe­guard­ing, such as the pro­posed ‘pass­port­ing’ sys­tem for human­i­tar­i­an work­ers, and increased train­ing of INGO work­ers.
3. The 2011 ‘Find­ing Frames’ ini­tia­tive looked at how bet­ter to engage the pub­lic in inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment and envi­ron­men­tal caus­es. It looked, in part, at the struc­ture and ways in which orga­ni­za­tions raise funds. Sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions pilot­ed new meth­ods of fram­ing, but the ground has yet to shift suf­fi­cient­ly.
4. The #Shift­the­p­ow­er move­ment has been look­ing at the issue of more direct and demo­c­ra­t­ic resourc­ing of the sec­tor, along­side impor­tant con­trib­u­tors to this move­ment such as CIVICUS or the NEAR net­work. A num­ber of inter­na­tion­al fun­ders are now respond­ing (pri­vate and pub­lic donors) adopt­ing new direct resourc­ing mod­els as well. Mean­while par­tic­i­pa­to­ry fund­ing mech­a­nisms that allow affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties to make deci­sions about how resources are allo­cat­ed are being devel­oped and uti­lized by a pro­gres­sive band of fun­ders includ­ing FRIDA, The Red Umbrel­la Fund and UHAI.

These are all laud­able efforts, but the respons­es have yet to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the inter­na­tion­al civ­il soci­ety sec­tor. Many of these have been tech­no­crat­ic respons­es to a more fun­da­men­tal and indeed polit­i­cal chal­lenge. Those with­in the #shift­the­p­ow­er move­ment, for exam­ple, often refer to INGOs as ‘block­ers’ to their efforts. Our start­ing point is that some form of inter­na­tion­al civ­il soci­ety will still be need­ed now and in the future, but that what we have now is no longer fit for pur­pose.