What Is The Role of NGOs In Society?
By Jon Kofas
01 September, 2015
Countercurrents.org
In the last three decades,a number of books and articles have been published about
Non-GovernmentalOrganizations (NGOs). Some focus on the marginal impact the NGOs
have becausethey work within an existing institutional framework responsible for
theabsence of social justice. While some works praise the kind of unique servicesof
NGOs to people in need, others are critical, stressing that NGOs’ goal isintegration
into an international political economy and institutional structurerooted in
inequality and injustice. While it is beyond doubt that there areNGOs serving worthy
humanitarian causes and acting as instruments ofalleviating misery among the poor,
refugees, and others in need, there are manymore such organizations acting as
instruments of globalization, and in somecases aggressive neo-imperialism.
Are all NGOs trulynon-governmental and politically neutral, voluntary non-profit and
humanitarianinterested only in the poor, the refugees, the minorities, those
unprotected bythe institutional mainstream? Do NGOs serve society’s various needs at
thegrassroots level with the ultimate goals of promoting humanitarian needs,
humanrights, environmental protection, and social justice as they claim? Is
thedefinition of NGO a grassroots non-profit local, national or
internationalorganization performing voluntary services for humanitarian purposes,
or has itexpanded to include what are in essence stealthy lobbying, media
andcommunications, intelligence gathering, and business promotion groups?
Are all NGOs trulyindependent and practice transparency as they want the public to
believe, or dothey serve very sinister policy goals of big business and governments
to thedetriment of different countries and different segments in any given
society,while preaching humanitarianism? How trusting should the public be when so
manyNGOs around the world have been caught in fraud and corruption, used as
frontsfor money laundering and other illegal activities, ranging from narcotics
toarms facilitations or transfers?
Do NGO’s emerge at the grassrootslevel to serve emergency needs, and do they all
have a progressive orientationas they want people to believe? Why did NGOs expand so
rapidly after the fallof Communist regimes in the early 1990s, and how do they
reflect the era ofglobalization under neoliberal policies of the past three decades?
What role doNGOs play in molding public opinion and why do mainstream media present
them asnon-partisan when most collaborate with government and business to shape
publicopinion into accepting globalization, Western-style institutions and
thoroughintegration into the Western spheres of influence?
In this very brief essay,my focus is on the top-down structure of many NGOs that
have been establishedto serve the interests of specific political and business
interests, thusplaying a counterrevolutionary instead of a progressive role in
society.Through the manipulation of mass public opinion in the age of social media
andhigh tech communications, many NGOs are nothing more than agents of
promotingglobalization.
NGOs - Humanitarians or covertagents of government and big business?
Generally speaking, theaverage person reading or hearing about NGOs assumes that
these are all abouthelping starving children in sub-Sahara Africa, providing clean
water for theimpoverished masses in rural areas of developing nations, setting up
medicalfacilities to help the very poor in Central America and Caribbean,
helpingrefugees out of Iraq and Syria, etc. It is true that there are many
suchorganizations, including OXFAM, Danish Refugee Council, “Doctors
withoutBorders”, and others across the world that are devoted to helping those in
direneed, that are truly humanitarian and deserve the name non-governmental.
These NGOs deserve supportof all people because they are delivering small miracles
every day, miraclesthat governments and United Nations agencies cannot or would not
deliver. Theseprototypes were the honest NGOs before the proliferation after the
collapse ofCommunism that along with it created the massive wave of corrupt and
sinisterorganizations hiding behind the NGO name.
Large segments of thepublic in many countries have little faith in government
because it servesnarrow socioeconomic interests. There is equal skepticism toward
big businessesand the media that caters to the political and socioeconomic elites.
This isthe case as much in smaller countries as it is in the US where the poor
andminorities do not feel that government represents them, while media is
nothingmore than a propaganda machine.
To fill the credibility gapthat exists among the masses and to mold mass public
opinion, NGOs have becomea great way for government and business to promote their
agendas. There areNGOs that governments and businesses set up, or fund in order to
promote apolitical, military or economic agenda at home or abroad. With the advent
ofwhat the US in the early 1990s called the “New World Order”, namely a
singleintegrated world market under the preeminent economic, political and
militaryleadership of the US, there was an NGO explosion to help achieve those
goals.The goals included spreading Western-style political institutions and
ideology,preventing socialist or nationalist policies from taking hold to
obstructAmerican-led globalization and neoliberalism, removing all obstacles
toglobalization by making use of the media and social organizations, including
socialnetworks in social media in recent years.
Because NGOs are rarelyquestioned and people assume they are non-partisan, and above
nations andpolitics, what better way to pursue a covert agenda than through an NGO
that isabove suspicion? What better way than through an NGO, which people believe
isprogressive and humanitarian, to pursue a reactionary agenda intended to
servepolitical and socioeconomic elites? This category of NGOs has a history
ofcorruption, questionable activity with regard to moving money around
illegally,transferring it if not laundering it outright from various sources,
becominginvolved in staged uprisings and rebel movements, utilizing social media
andcommunications as part of elaborate covert operations to undermine or
overthrowgovernments, and other such activities one would never imagine as the
businessof an NGO.
There are NGOs operating asfronts for US Agency for International Development
(USAID) and major USfoundations linked to billionaires whose goal is to secure
market share aroundthe world. Many of these NGOs were causing havoc in Russia until
Putin tried tocurtail their operations. However, Russia is hardly the exception,
consideringthat NGOs with similar funding and goals operate throughout the world
from Indiato Brazil, from the Philippines to Ukraine.
Using NGOs as fronts, theUS and its allies have used anti-nuclear and environmental
NGOs to stop nuclearplants. This is partly because the contracts for products and
services are notawarded to Western corporations, but also because of
geopoliticalconsiderations. In July 2014, the Indian government announced that NGOs
werefronts for foreign interests undermining the national economic interests andthe
country’s security. It is well known that India has a record of many human
rightsviolations that the media has publicized. It is not as well known,
however,that NGOs operating in India are using human rights, environmental issues
andother very significant humanitarian matters to conceal their covert role
insubverting the national economy as the finance minister announced in July 2014.
One may argue thatpermitting NGOs to operate freely is a testament to a nation’s
democracy.However, there is the question of drawing the line between pressure
groupsacting as lobbyists, and non-profits acting as humanitarian NGOs. Would the
USpermit an al-Qaeda-funded NGO parading as a human rights group defending therights
of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo? Would the UK permit an Indian NGO undermining its
energy sector unlessUK bought more equipment from India? Would the UK permit an
Iranian NGOpromoting a national nuclear energy policy?
In October 2012, NBC newspublished a story about a New York-based NGO claiming to
oppose Iran’s nucleardevelopment program. Calling itself “United Against Nuclear
Iran” (UANI), it isstaffed by former US diplomats and intelligence officers, as well
as formerIsraeli intelligence agents. UANI presents itself to the public as
apeace-loving and a non-governmental organization opposed to Iran developingnuclear
weapons. However, UANI has no problem with the nuclear weapons ofIsrael. A
US-Israeli propaganda and psychological warfare machine, UANI’s goalis to stop
Western companies from doing business with Tehran, applying some ofthe same tactics
as human rights organizations did when they opposedmultinationals doing business
with the apartheid state of South Africa beforeMandela.
Presenting their groups ascitizen advocacy with an altruistic agenda above
governments and politics, NGOsare a very clever way to push through political,
economic, strategic and otheragendas that on the surface appear to be for “the good
of society”. Enjoyingthe cover of legitimacy as guardians of people’s rights, it is
very difficultto put an NGO on the defensive in the absence of hard evidence about
its realagenda.
Despite the aura oflegitimacy, there are NGOs that are conduits not just for
governments seekingto undermine another regime, but for money laundering from
government budgets goingto the pockets of politicians as well as non-government
individuals andorganizations. Officials in India, Philippines, Greece and other
countries haveNGO’s used for money laundering and other fraudulent operations.
Receiving NGOlaundered funds as part of elaborate schemes in clientist politics is
not nearlyas unusual as it sounds. Even bankrupt Greek government was using NGOs
ofvarious types to reward financially certain politicians and favorite clients ofthe
ruling parties.
Some of the NGOs publiclystated purpose was so ludicrous that it would be humorous
if it were not criminal.According to a Greek government report on NGOs, nine out of
ten of the 3000organizations were engaged in fraud and corruption involving
millionstransferred from government funds into NGO budgets and back into the pockets
ofcertain individuals linked to the ruling parties. The Greek foreign
ministryfunneled millions through NGOs for projects that never took place,
includingsome that never took place. Some money apparently went to bribes for
removal ofland mines supposedly carried out in Iraq, Lebanon and Serbia, while other
fundswent for the purpose of reforestation not of Greece that can use it but ofareas
already fully forested!
The level of corruptionthat existed in Greece during the 1990s and 2000s also took
place in othercountries, including the Philippines. Receiving public funds, NGOs
would thenturn around and use them not for the publicly stated purpose but to line
the pocketsof politicians. Millions in public funds designated for
agriculturaldevelopment simply wound up in the hands of a handful of people
connected withcorrupt NGOs. The situation in thePhilippines appears similar to that
of Greece, and both are similar to that ofBrazil where the government began a crack
down to distinguish between NGOsinvolved in corruption and public distortion and
those doing an honest day’swork as they publicly stated.
The subversive use andmanipulation of NGOs by governments and corporations is a
distortion ofpublicly-proclaimed goals. For example, Israeli arms manufacturers sell
landmines used in various conflicts. At the same time, the same manufacturers
workwith NGO's to have the land mines removed. This is example illustrates
thenefarious use of NGOs, but it also reveals the unseen and unpublicized role
ofthese organizations that are more complicated than they appear on the surface.
NGOs, the former Soviet Republics, China and India
We have seen just a few examples of NGOs in several countries where their role in
society has nothingto do with the promotion of public welfare, the poor or the
environment, but in essence all to do with money laundering, fraud, political,
economic andgeopolitical goals. This raises the question about NGOs as
acounter-revolutionary force in society, rather than progressive as they claim.Is
their goal to advance social justice and national sovereignty or to minimize social
justice and national sovereignty, thus advancing the interests of large international
and domestic wealthy interests and foreign governments' geopolitical agenda? Nowhere
are these questions more significant to addressthan in the Ukraine and all the
former Soviet republics.
NGOs with questionable goals and modes of operation are in many countries from the US
to developing nations. Russia after the collapse of the USSR has at least 400,000
NGOs, and probably as many as one million – registered and non-registered - carrying
out political commercial and other activity behind the cover of a
non-governmental organization. Russian officials believe that roughly one-fourth of
these NGOs are foreign funded, using the cover of human rights, environmental
protection,and consumer advocacy to pursue their agendas unrelated to what they
declare. Utilizing the connections with government agencies and mainstream media
outlets, directly or indirectly-funded government NGOs essentially exert what some
analysts call “softpower” – “co-opting through their organizations.
When the Communist bloc fell, the US and western European NGOs played a key role in
infiltrating the newly-independent republics with the goal of helping to integrate
them in the West and preventing their dependence on the Russian Federation, and to a
lesser extent China and Iran. Western-funded NGOs were involved in
manufacturing grassroots movements in the Ukraine so that the country dependent on
Russia for energy and trade would become a Western satellite that would provide NATO
with the strangle hold it wants on Russia’s border as part of a containment
policy.Although the Western-funded NGOs actual goal is to secure Western
corporateinfiltration of the Ukraine, Georgia and other former Soviet republics,
thealleged purpose is humanitarian and human-rights-oriented democracy.
Thepublicly-stated goal used was and remains a cover to conceal the real goals
ofpromoting globalization and geopolitical influence.
The Ukrainian upheaval of2013-2014, culminating in the overthrow of president
Yanukovych in February2014, and the ensuing separatist movement by Russian
minorities in the Easternprovinces has brought the role of the NGOs to the attention
of some of the morediscriminating analysts. The two-year old rebel movement in Syria
against Assadalso involved Western NGO’s working to fund and guide rebels on the
ground,along with other players, including Saudi and Gulf States elements. The
goalhere was and remains regime change, even if it meant indirectly
assistingjihadists that would eventually turn against the West. Similarly, NGOs
areoperating everywhere from Venezuela and Cuba where the US wants to see
regimechange to parts of Africa, Middle East, and Asia where the West wants to have
apreeminent political, economic and military influence.
In March 2013, Russia decided to curtail the operations of NGOs by introducing
legislation that would have them registered as foreign agents. Backing the
legislation, Putin stated: “Whether these organizations want it or not, they become
an instrument in the hands of foreign states that use them to achieve their own
political objectives. This situation is unacceptable. This law is designed to prevent
interference inRussia’s internal political life by foreign countries and create
transparentconditions for the financing of nongovernmental organizations.”
The spirit of the Russianlegislation is not very different from what India has tried
to do facingsomewhat similar problems with NGOs. More restrictive than India and
Russia,China had several hundred thousand NGOs operating under
differentregistrations. Like Russia and India, China has argued that the US and
othergovernments use NGOs to infiltrate institutions, manipulate and mold
publicopinion, influence policies and destabilize countries with the sole purpose
ofeconomic, political, cultural and strategic advantage.
Not just in the former Soviet republics, including troubled, Ukraine, but in China
and India NGOs have multiplied by the hundreds of thousands pushing an agenda on
everything from varieties of Christian fundamentalism to commercial products, all
under the convenient cover of freedom and democracy, and humanitarian assistance.
It is important to note that when European colonists infiltrated Africa, they sent in
the clergy to convert the natives, then the merchants and finally the military to
protect priests and merchants who enjoyed protection under a formalized colony.
NOGsare the instruments of 21st century neo-imperialist policy with asoft front and
a very hard core of commercial, political and military interestsbehind the soft face
of human rights.
An example of the NGOs role in neo-imperialism is a case of Russian national Alexei
Pankin who ran a USAID-funded media-influence program with $10.5 million coming from
billionaireGeorge Soros.
In a published interview, Pankin admitted that his NGOs included US intelligence
officers. Russian police have cracked down on numerous non-governmental organizations
receiving foreign government funding, an act that means they are in fact foreign
agents by definition even in the US. One way that the US has used to circumvent the
direct ties with NGOs is to establish funding through foundations including the
National Endowment forDemocracy, Ford, Rockefeller, Soros, etc. The money trail may
start with the foundations, but behind them are the government and the largest
multination corporations interested in the integration of former Soviet republics
into theWestern sphere of influence in every sense from cultural and political
toeconomic and strategic.
The role of U.S.-funded NGOs in trying to impose regime change in a number of Latin
American, African,Asian and Eurasian countries has been controversial because people
have one impression of NGOs when in fact that impression has nothing to do with the
reality.Although NGOs operate on a large scale in the former Soviet republics,
their role is hardly known because the Western media does not conduct
investigative reporting to expose their sources of funding, their tactics and goals.
On the contrary, the media focuses on what appears to be grass roots movements
for progressive change, without mentioning that behind the movements are NGO’s
andthat the movements often contain extreme reactionary elements. This is
exactlywhat took place in Ukraine where neo-Nazis were part of the pro-West
movement.
Besides US and EUgovernments, the IMF and World Bank as well as large corporations
funding private foundations are behind the NGOs in the former Soviet republics with
the ultimate goal of thoroughly integrating them into the Western orbit of influence –
militarily, politically, and economically. The International Center for Policy
Studies in Ukraine, an organization devoted to integrate Ukraine intothe West, takes
pride that the country had more than 40,000 NGOs involving citizensthat took place
in the Orange Revolution. Needless to say, when a revolution is top down, paid for
and manufactured, it hardly represents the grassroots and it hardly has a chance at
success, as we have seen in the last two years in civil-wartorn Ukraine. This raises
the question of how the West uses NGOs to stagerevolutions for counterrevolutionary
purposes, while all along projecting theimpression to the public that the goal is
human rights, freedom and democracy.
NGOs can play a vital rolein monitoring the abuses of governments and violations of
civil rights andhuman rights. They can also play a significant role assisting in
emergencysituations with epidemics, famine, refugees, and environmental disasters,
economic,social and scientific development, and other such causes that promote
thewelfare of people and the planet. No doubt, the people involved in NGOs come from
the professional middle class and represent a value system and perspectives of the
bourgeois society, while the people on the receiving end are invariably working
class and peasants. As long as the needs of people are met, the civil society
concept is fine. However, when the purpose is to coopt the masses into a political
system and consumerist culture, when the purpose is to prevent progressive forces
from achieving social justice instead of helping them, then civil society is nothing
but an instrument of imperialism.
The president of Liberia recently warned that although NGOs had financial and moral
integrity problems, they were challenging the state's sovereignty on the same
grounds. That so many NGOs have become everything from soft pressure or lobbying
groups for governments and business, that others are in the business of spying that
modern technology has made easier, or that they have sinister goals of undermining
the public good in order to serve narrow interests is a distortion of the historical
purpose of NGOs.
Jon Kofas is a retired university Professor from Indiana University.
Comments are moderated