The Self-appointed Altruists - Part Ii
By Sam Vaknin, Fri Dec 9th

NGO's in places like Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Bangladesh,Pakistan, Albania, and Zimbabwe have become the preferred venuefor Western aid - both humanitarian and financial - developmentfinancing, and emergency relief. According to the Red Cross,more money goes through NGO's than through the World Bank. Theiriron grip on food, medicine, and funds rendered them analternative government - sometimes as venal and graft-strickenas the one they replace.

Local businessmen, politicians, academics, and even journalistsform NGO's to plug into the avalanche of Western largesse. Inthe process, they award themselves and their relatives withsalaries, perks, and preferred access to Western goods andcredits. NGO's have evolved into vast networks of patronage inAfrica, Latin America, and Asia.

NGO's chase disasters with a relish. More than 200 of themopened shop in the aftermath of the Kosovo refugee crisis in1999-2000. Another 50 supplanted them during the civil unrest inMacedonia a year later. Floods, elections, earthquakes, wars -constitute the cornucopia that feed the NGO's.

NGO's are proponents of Western values - women's lib, humanrights, civil rights, the protection of minorities, freedom,equality. Not everyone finds this liberal menu palatable. Thearrival of NGO's often provokes social polarization and culturalclashes. Traditionalists in Bangladesh, nationalists inMacedonia, religious zealots in Israel, security forceseverywhere, and almost all politicians find NGO's irritating andbothersome.

The British government ploughs well over $30 million a year into"Proshika", a Bangladeshi NGO. It started as a women's educationoutfit and ended up as a restive and aggressive womenempowerment political lobby group with budgets to rival manyministries in this impoverished, Moslem and patriarchal country.

Other NGO's - fuelled by $300 million of annual foreign infusion- evolved from humble origins to become mighty coalitions offull-time activists. NGO's like the Bangladesh Rural AdvancementCommittee (BRAC) and the Association for Social Advancementmushroomed even as their agendas have been fully implemented andtheir goals exceeded. It now owns and operates 30,000 schools.

This mission creep is not unique to developing countries. AsParkinson discerned, organizations tend to self-perpetuateregardless of their proclaimed charter. Remember NATO? Humanrights organizations, like Amnesty, are now attempting toincorporate in their ever-expanding remit "economic and socialrights" - such as the rights to food, housing, fair wages,potable water, sanitation, and health provision. How insolventcountries are supposed to provide such munificence isconveniently overlooked.

"The Economist" reviewed a few of the more egregious cases ofNGO imperialism.

Human Rights Watch lately offered this tortured argument infavor of expanding the role of human rights NGO's: "The best wayto prevent famine today is to secure the right to freeexpression - so that misguided government policies can bebrought to public attention and corrected before food shortagesbecome acute." It blatantly ignored the fact that respect forhuman and political rights does not fend off natural disastersand disease. The two countries with the highest incidence ofAIDS are Africa's only two true democracies - Botswana and SouthAfrica.

The Centre for Economic and Social Rights, an American outfit,"challenges economic injustice as a violation of internationalhuman rights law". Oxfam pledges to support the "rights to asustainable livelihood, and the rights and capacities toparticipate in societies and make positive changes to people'slives". In a poor attempt at emulation, the WHO published aninanely titled document - "A Human Rights Approach

toTuberculosis".

NGO's are becoming not only all-pervasive but more aggressive.In their capacity as "shareholder activists", they disruptshareholders meetings and act to actively tarnish corporate andindividual reputations. Friends of the Earth worked hard lastyear to instigate a consumer boycott against Exxon Mobil - fornot investing in renewable energy resources and for ignoringglobal warming. No one - including other shareholders -understood their demands. But it went down well with the media,with a few celebrities, and with contributors.

As "think tanks", NGO's issue partisan and biased reports. TheInternational Crisis Group published a rabid attack on the thenincumbent government of Macedonia, days before an election,relegating the rampant corruption of its predecessors - whom itseemed to be tacitly supporting - to a few footnotes. On atleast two occasions - in its reports regarding Bosnia andZimbabwe - ICG has recommended confrontation, the imposition ofsanctions, and, if all else fails, the use of force. Though themost vocal and visible, it is far from being the only NGO thatadvocates "just" wars.

The ICG is a repository of former heads of state and has-beenpoliticians and is renowned (and notorious) for its prescriptive- some say meddlesome - philosophy and tactics. "The Economist"remarked sardonically: "To say (that ICG) is 'solving worldcrises' is to risk underestimating its ambitions, ifoverestimating its achievements."

NGO's have orchestrated the violent showdown during the tradetalks in Seattle in 1999 and its repeat performances throughoutthe world. The World Bank was so intimidated by the riotousinvasion of its premises in the NGO-choreographed "Fifty Yearsis Enough" campaign of 1994, that it now employs dozens of NGOactivists and let NGO's determine many of its policies.

NGO activists have joined the armed - though mostly peaceful -rebels of the Chiapas region in Mexico. Norwegian NGO's sentmembers to forcibly board whaling ships. In the USA,anti-abortion activists have murdered doctors. In Britain,animal rights zealots have both assassinated experimentalscientists and wrecked property.

Birth control NGO's carry out mass sterilizations in poorcountries, financed by rich country governments in a bid to stemimmigration. NGO's buy slaves in Sudan thus encouraging thepractice of slave hunting throughout sub-Saharan Africa. OtherNGO's actively collaborate with "rebel" armies - a euphemism forterrorists.

NGO's lack a synoptic view and their work often underminesefforts by international organizations such as the UNHCR and bygovernments. Poorly-paid local officials have to contend withcrumbling budgets as the funds are diverted to rich expatriatesdoing the same job for a multiple of the cost and withinexhaustible hubris.

This is not conducive to happy co-existence between foreigndo-gooders and indigenous governments. Sometimes NGO's seem tobe an ingenious ploy to solve Western unemployment at theexpense of down-trodden natives. This is a misperception drivenby envy and avarice.

But it is still powerful enough to foster resentment and worse.NGO's are on the verge of provoking a ruinous backlash againstthem in their countries of destination. That would be a pity.Some of them are doing indispensable work. If only they were awee more sensitive and somewhat less ostentatious. But then theywouldn't be NGO's, would they?

About the author:Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - NarcissismRevisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He isa columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior BusinessCorrespondent, and the editor of mental health and Central EastEurope categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, andSuite101 .

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com