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Separating Real NGOs From the Travelling Kind
By Fernando Lima
The recently signed trade and development agreement between the ACP Group(Africa Caribbean and Pacific countries).and the European Union outlines an increased role for civil society in governance. However, judging from remarks at a workshop at the Social Summit here yesterday, actual experience of NGOs will be quite different in the two blocs .
The perspectives emerged as representatives of civil society discussed strategies on how to benefit from the new venture. The partnership agreement, considers civil society representatives as actors of co-operation” along with the Government bodies and the private sector .
NGO’s present in Geneva, see themselves as “complementary” to government activities but for EU Commissioner Poul Nielson, this was a difficult point to accommodate in Cotounou,, at the signing of the agreement, since many ACP governments were seeing the inclusion of civil society as partner of co-operation, as yet another conditionality imposed on them .
Many ACP governments feel uneasy with the clauses related to democracy, good governance and human rights introduced in the new agreement, since they are seen as forms of limiting sovereignty and restrictions to freedom to establish their own forms of government .
Rebeca Muna, from Tanzania says she is aware of the suspicions of governments but insists NGOs “exist to complement the work of the executive bodies, specially in places or communities that are not reachable by state initiatives” .
Nielson advises the need of “confidence building” between governments and civil society organisms, since in many countries its presence and development is a recent phenomena. There are countries where an enabling legal environment is not yet in place, resulting in additional difficulties for NGOs to operate. Sometimes Governments got the perception NGO’s are stealing their role, says Debo Akande from Gambia. In what was considered a controversial remark, commissioner Nielson praised the independence of NGOs which should fight the temptations “to become neo-government organisations” .
Rebeca Muna agrees that not all NGOs are serious and competent. “There is a type of organisation “briefcase NGOs” and “ public relations NGOs” .Their representatives talk a lot, travel a lot, but it is difficult to evaluate their work. In some “pragmatic situations”, parallel institutions are set up with the help of Government and ruling parties to counter activities perceived as hostile to established powers.
“I have seen some of those situation”, said Fatima Jawara, who recently completed an assignment in Zimbabwe .
In Geneva at the Social Summit only a street separates Government representatives and hundreds of NGO delegates trying to find a common ground for a “better world”. However, few months ago, while in Cairo European and Africa Government officials met to establish a joint platform, civil society delegates from both continents were sent to Lisbon on short notice, after a concern voiced by few Heads of State affected by “ post-Seattle syndromes”. They were not interested to watch their banners or hear their voices.
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