NGOs’ Ineffectiveness!
The impact of extreme natural disasters is equivalent to a global loss of $520 billion in annual consumption, and it forces some twenty-six million people into poverty each year, a new report from the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) reveals.
President Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank Group said: “Storms, floods, and droughts have dire human and economic consequences, with poor people often paying the heaviest price. Building resilience not only makes economic sense, it is a moral imperative.”
In order to rebuild a country after a natural disaster, there must be an immediate response from governments and disaster relief programs. Those affected need access to resources like food, shelter, and medical care. Various disaster relief nonprofits are working to lessen the burden of the impacts of natural disasters around the world.
The term “NGO — nongovernmental organization” was created in Article 71 of the Charter of the newly formed United Nations in 1945. An NGO can be any kind of organization provided it is independent from government influence and is not-for-profit. Fast forward a few decades from then and we witness an explosion of NGOs. There are an estimated ten million NGOs worldwide.
Greenpeace East Asia exposed illegal logging of natural forests in the heart of the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is home to thousands of species of rare plants and animals, including the iconic giant panda, golden snub-nosed monkey, and the red panda. Greenpeace East Asia demanded that the authorities investigate and revise legal loopholes that were allowing precious natural forests to be clear-cut for profit. The Sichuan Forestry Bureau responded almost immediately by launching their own investigation, holding illegal loggers and local officials accountable for their actions and pledging to revise regulations to safeguard natural forests in Sichuan.
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders (MSF) provides emergency response medical aid to communities affected by natural disasters, epidemics, and conflict. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, MSF began treating those injured within minutes. MSF offers long-term care to affected populations and distributes medical disaster kits to countries even before they arrive on the ground.
Get Rd’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Depending on the need and context, NGOs facilitate communication upward from the people to the government about what the common audience thinks and does. They provide an opportunity for the self-organization of society and enable citizens to work together voluntarily to promote social values and civic goals. NGOs enable citizens to promote values and common goals. They also help governments by promoting much needed change at the grass roots level. They facilitate people to participate in the formulation of government policy and plans. NGOs have a guiding purpose of the greater good by sharing the responsibility of fulfilling social needs that ought to be taken by the government.
Evaluations of NGOs’ effectiveness “have been patchy at best,” said Robert Glasser, Secretary General of CARE. CARE International is a major international humanitarian agency that delivers emergency relief and long-term international development projects. In 2015, the world faced flooding in Southeast Asia, earthquakes in Central Asia, and epidemic
illnesses in parts of Africa. Together, man-made and natural disasters took more than 31,000 lives. People across the globe donated more than $19 billion in humanitarian contributions of either material goods or cash to alleviate the harm caused by these critical events. When governments send relief to disaster areas, the money they use ultimately comes from
taxpayers and all the people are collective donors.
The wake-up call for most NGOs came after the Rwandan genocide that took place between April 7, 1994 and July 15, 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. When hundreds of small organizations jostled for space and tried to set up ad-hoc operations in refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Tanzania, some camps turned into staging posts for armed factions. In the ensuing chaos, an estimated 50,000 refugees died from cholera, an infectious disease caused by eating food or drinking water that is contaminated. Many attempts to provide relief proved either redundant or ineffective.
There was also mayhem in the relief efforts that followed the Indian Ocean tsunami. At one point, more than 400 NGOs were on the ground in Aceh, Indonesia, competing for resources, personnel, and funding. Many of the lessons that had been learned during the Rwandan crisis were forgotten or simply ignored. The confusion was caused mostly by smaller NGOs with little or no experience in dealing with disasters.
Large-scale international disaster relief can have drawbacks that range from wasting resources to seriously undermining local governments. No one could question that the ever-increasing NGOs do good work in providing on-the-ground humanitarian relief. We can give the people the skills to take control and deliver change. A member of a civil society, which is a broader umbrella for NGOs, represents their own views. It is very presumptuous of anyone to claim to represent the view of another as we often see. To do that, we need to ensure that it is delivered without strings attached, with a targeted and grass roots approach that seeks to empower people to take control of their lives.
NGOs should find synergy with the private sector by viewing business as a development partner, not just through CSR philanthropy, but through direct business operations. They should develop new revenue streams such as commercializing services and products to capitalize on reinventing themselves.
In this blog series, I share excerpts and stories from my book, 4.0 For Wealth And Well-being. I hope you enjoyed this post — if you enjoyed it and want to connect with me, you can reach me here via email: rd1021@georgetown.edu or connect with me on social media: linkedin or facebook or instagram. You can also find my book on Amazon — here is the link to buy it: Amazon — 4.0 For Wealth And Well-Being!
