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Mande
Much has been said, but little has been written on the withdrawal of international non-governmental cooperation from Latin America and the Caribbean. What is happening? Where are they going? Are they going back home because the region has already reached the desired sustainable development? Or because the NGOs of the South now fund themselves or are funded by their new governments? Questions and more questions... and the questions continue: Are they leaving because poverty is finished? Or because the Northern governments now direct their aid through the new, allegedly democratic governments? Or perhaps the North found another poverty? What is going on? What is the answer?
I do not believe that there is one, but if there is one, then it should be the North that should give it both honestly and openly. In reality, it has already been given somehow: the North has withdrawn, is withdrawing and will continue to withdraw from the South.
The present international situation has permitted the redefinition of the cooperation policies of the developed countries. This, in turn, implies questioning of the traditional sources of funding for development that have supported the NGOs of the region. I refer to the European situation where cooperation is increasingly linked to continental security. Now they tend to give priority to those countries from which migration to Europe originates. The revival of ultra-rightwing and nationalist currents has to be added to this development. Within this context we should mention the situation of the Eastern European countries where a "new poverty" was discovered, resulting from the collapse of the former Soviet Union and reinforced by the conflict in Bosnia.
In view of facing the reduction of the percentage of aid for the European funding agencies by the European governments, the agencies themselves should reduce their development aid for the South proportionally. Nevertheless, this has not occurred. Aid has been reduced in or withdrawn from one single region: Latin America and the Caribbean. But these same agencies have increased aid for Africa.
Progressive non-governmental funding agencies face a difficult situation. On one hand, the reduction of the governmental percentage of their budgets forces them to look for more funds in public. On the other, a reduction of their personnel obliges them also to reduce the number of countries where they collaborate.
The search for money in public collections or in so-called appeals for certain countries forces the funding agencies to use publicity and marketing of the establishment in order to be able to increase their funds. Therefore they show pictures of Africa: Somalia, Rwanda... They say the European public is tired of Latin America and the Caribbean, that much money was given during the years when these countries were in war but that now in democracy, the "new governments" should take care of their poverty.
It is true that during the years of dictatorship, of war in our region, solidarity never ceased, but this was solidarity and not development aid. Once the war or the special situation was over, democracy returns everything back to normal. It is much more difficult to explain neoliberal policies and the consequences of Structural Adjustment Programmes in Chile, Argentina, the Dominican Republic or Bolivia than a famine, a war or a nature desaster. Our own new governments have taken on the task to spread the idea that the struggle against poverty will be won with economic growth supported by social policies of compensation of the adjustment measures.
A series of efforts by progressive funding agencies to revert this situation cannot be denied, e.g. campaigns against the World Bank or the IMF, campaigns in favor of equal economic exchange etc. But realistically, they mean no more than a drop in the ocean. How could we be creative enough to explain that the present economic model of growth generates also marginalized and poor people in our region?
We have felt this change in the European context for some years in our region and it marginalizes culturally and ideologically many European NGOs that are linked to Latin America and the Caribbean.
Simultaneously another tendency is emerging: the growing interest of multilateral organisms like the IDB and the World Bank in joint work with the local NGOs. This tendency shows an obvious contradiction between the valorization of the work and capacity of local NGOs by the World Bank, and its objectives. This tendency of reduction/withdrawal on one hand and the offer/training on the other affects the NGOs of the region fundamentally.
This new trend either strengthens the redefinition of the role and action of NGOs or it makes them disappear completely. This redefinition is added in some countries to the opening of a bilateral channel of cooperation, i.e. the transfer of funds to the governmental aparatus, which, as a result, brings a reduction of the non-governmental channel. This way could open good perspectives for the NGOs of the South under the condition that this channel involves NGOs as well on the level of the donor countries as on the level of the recipients. This will have to be seen.
The redefinition of our NGOs has to include also the change of the relationship between them and the cooperation organizations, which consider themselves in terms of recipients and donors of aid and funds. This change has to broaden the concept and will apparently establish relations of co-operation in the framework of more global relations which obviously imply other priorities.
The coming years will be key years because the NGOs of the region will have to make decisions and consider alternatives which are different to the traditional ones. We hope also that the more progressive European funding agencies can get involved with these alternatives and that they won´t leave the local NGOs in the arms of USAID or of the World Bank.
Mande,
sociologist, lives in Europe
Translated by Sabine Friedel