Development Aid: A Comment on the Role of Non-Governmental OrganisationsAuthor(s): Mary SuttonSource: Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1987), pp. 47-50Published by: Royal Irish AcademyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30002012 .

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Development Aid: A Comment on the Role

of Non-Governmental Organisations*

Mary Sutton

Tr6caire, Catholic Agency for World Development

Critics of official development assistance come not only from the extremes of the political spectrum, commercial interests and non-official commentators. Officials and practitioners also on occasion find it wanting. Some years ago Edgard Pisani as Commissioner for Development Cooperation in Brussels was moved to describe some Community-funded projects in Africa as 'cathedrals in the desert'. The EC's Court of Auditors has been forthright in criticising projects for 'poor results', 'money ... being poured down the drain', food aid arriving 'late or at the wrong time'. ' Frank assessments of other major donors such as the World Bank or the United Nations agencies, or of bilateral programmes, would also have their share of references to 'white elephants' and inefficiency.

Why does aid often fail? Sometimes it fails because of mistakes in the planning and execution of projects and programmes, but often it fails because what it is trying to achieve is so difficult. Development is indeed, as the 1985 Development Assistance Committee report put it, a long, slow, arduous and complex process where the realistic objective is an acceptable level of failure.2 It is partly because of the perceived failures of official development assistance that it has become fashionable to advocate channelling more official aid through non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and it is the role of NGOs that I propose to examine. How do NGOs compare with official donors in terms of methodology and objectives? Do they perform any better than the official donors in promoting development? What distinguishes NGO aid from official development assistance?

Four features of NGOs distinguish them from official donors. First, they by- pass governments. By and large NGOs do not deal with Third World governments

1. Court of Auditors' report on the EC's development cooperation policy in 1983, quoted in European Report, no.1095, 5 January 1985.

2. OECD, Twenty-five years of development cooperation-a review -efforts and policies ofthe members of the Development Assistance Committee (Paris, November 1985), p. 251.

* Paper presented at the Ninth Annual Conference of the Irish National Committee for the Study of International Affairs, 10 November 1986.

Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol.2, no.3 (1987).

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but work directly with local partners and community groups. One advantage of by- passing governments is that Third World governments do not always represent the interests of their people - distaste for authoritarian forms of government in many Third World countries led the late Dudley Seers, formerly a senior official in the UK's Overseas Development Ministry, to call for a reduction in ODA to 0.1% of donor GNP by the year 2000! 3 Another advantage is that, even if the government is relatively representative, there is a perceived need for a more people-orientated, participatory approach to development. This is the result of 25 years of experience with aid, which has shown that capital transfers from governments are not sufficient to lead to economic and social development. The NGOs' strength is that they support self-help projects and community development programmes and work directly with local groups, rather than via bureaucracies.

Secondly, NGOs work with the poorest groups in developing countries, the sector that official programmes have found it most difficult to reach. The projects tend to be small-scale, local initiatives that take as their starting point the people's own perception of their problems. They may be primary health care projects, small- scale irrigation projects, leadership training programmes, legal-aid schemes, small industries and cooperatives, programmes for the advancement of women, or emergency relief and rehabilitation. The types of projects supported will reflect the nature of the social, economic and political impediments to full human develop- ment as articulated by the local project holders.

Thirdly, NGOs can act in areas that are too sensitive politically for governments. Examples are Vietnam and Kampuchea, two war-ravaged and desperately poor countries who, for political reasons, do not receive Western official aid. Because of the dearth of official aid the NGOs operating there find themselves funding large- scale, infrastructural projects that would normally be financed by official develop- ment assistance. For example, a grouping of European Roman Catholic agencies know as CIDSE (Coop6ration Intemationale pour le D6veloppement et la Soli- darit6) are currently spending substantial sums on a water supply scheme for the city of Hai Phong in Vietnam. Since 1985, on foot of a European Parliament resolution calling for humanitarian aid for women and children to be made available via the NGOs, the EC has co-financed a small number of projects in Vietnam and Kampu- chea. The Irish govemment has also co-financed some projects there. However, there is still no direct official development assistance from the United States or the EC to these countries. Another example is Eritrea and Tigre where, during the famine of 1984-5, there was no channel for official development assistance since these areas are largely outside the control of the Ethiopian government. However, many NGOs are involved in primary health care projects, agricultural rehabilitation projects and village water supply programmes, as well as emergency relief for drought and resettlement of drought victims.

3. Dudley Seers, 'Time for a second look at the Third World', Development Policy Review, SAGE Publications Ltd., London. Vol. 1 (1983), pp 35-46.

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The fourth feature - and the major shortcoming of NGO aid compared to official aid - is its small volume. In 1985 in the OECD countries the resources raised by NGOs from non-official sources were equivalent to 0.03% of the combined GNPs of those countries. Official development assistance was roughly twelve times greater. The proportion of GNP provided by NGOs was by far the highest in Ireland at 0.13%. (In absolute terms Ireland's official development assistance in 1985 was equivalent to $39m, while NGOs raised $22m.) The next highest proportion is that of Norway (0.09%). The figure for the UK is 0.04%, while Belgium, France and Japan spend only 0.01% of GNP through NGOs.4 To what extent can NGOs be used to improve ODA effectiveness? Formerly, NGOs were regarded by the official donors as well-meaning amateurs. Now no report on aid is complete without a recommendation that increased resources be channelled through NGOs. This reflects in part the difficulties experienced by official donors in getting official development assistance through to the poorest.

Since 1979 virtually all the official aid donors have adopted some system for co- financing projects designed and presented by NGOs. In most countries this is on the basis of individual project applications from the NGOs. In some countries, however, such as Holland and Sweden, block grants are given covering the official share of a number of projects. Clearly, the advantage of co-financing from the NGOs' point of view is the increased resources they acquire for their development projects, but a disadvantage is the increased workload of preparing applications, reporting on projects, etc.

There may also be an impact on NGO policy to the extent that NGOs submit the projects for co-financing that are most likely to be funded. These are not necessarily the projects the NGOs themselves regard as the highest priority projects. On the official side there may be a tendency to select from NGO applications those projects that look most similar to official projects, e.g. to favour bricks-and-mortar projects that are visible and amenable to evaluation, rather than, say, leadership training where the benefits are less tangible. However, if the aim of co-funding from the official side is to take advantage of what is best in NGOs then they should focus rather on what is most unlike official projects.

To the extent that there have been evaluations of NGO programmes they tend to confirm that NGO projects are most successful where NGOs support community self-help projects and projects where key decisions are made by small groups at local level. They are significantly less successful where there is a high degree of NGO involvement in decision making, and where the NGO is supporting a project initiated by the host government. 5 A major strength of the NGOs is their autonomy. They have to guard this to maintain their credibility with their donors and to meet their development objectives. Many NGOs therefore place a ceiling on how much official funding they will'apply for.

4. OECD, Development cooperation, 1986 Report (Paris, 1987), Tables 111-18, p. 58. 5. OECD, Development cooperation, 1985 Report (Paris, 1985), pp 151-5.

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It may seem attractive to official donors to rely on NGOs to carry out their poverty alleviation function. It would, however, be naive to assume that, while the big official donors get on with large-scale, infrastructural or socio-economic projects, the NGOs will work quietly and tirelessly on small-scale projects with the poorest of the poor, without ever coming into conflict with the political structures through which donor governments operate.

The political realities in many Third World countries can often render 'subver- sive' work among the marginalised, that is 'the rural landless and urban assetless', in Mr Sandersley's phrase in the previous paper. NGOs such as my own have often embarked hopefully on socio-economic development projects only to learn through harsh experience that the basic pre-conditions for the success of these projects do not exist. In some instances partners in these projects have been tortured or even murdered. Many of the poor and powerless in the Third World need assistance when they are driven from their land, when they try to pursue their rights in the courts, or when they try to document human rights abuses.

NGOs have to be free to articulate the conditions they find on the ground. Sometimes this involves conflict with governments. As Robert Cassen puts it:

It should not be imagined that NGOs could, without changing their character, be the channels for very large sums of aid, replacing a large share of current aid activities ... If they were to become too large, they would become politicised, and not so easily permitted by governments to operate independ- ently - or even capable of independence, if too much of their funding came from governments. 6

In conclusion, it could be argued that the amazing response to Bob Geldof's campaign for African famine victims is a warning to NGOs against becoming too institutionalised, too like official aid agencies.

In a recent survey carried out for Tr6caire on public perceptions of the African famine, 76% of respondents named Geldof/Band Aid/Live Aid as the most effective response to the famine. The three biggest Irish NGOs between them were nominated by 8% of respondents. The Irish government was named by 2% of respondents. Clearly, the urgency, energy and outspokenness of the Geldof operation and the commitment to getting every penny to where it was needed had great appeal. The challenge to the NGOs is to lead public opinion beyond looking on aid as relief, but also to answer the public desire for results by evaluating their projects and demonstrating their effectiveness.

Perhaps an even bigger challenge for the development education efforts of NGOs and official donors alike is to channel the obvious public interest in devel- opment into support for ODA.

6. Robert Cassen and Associates, Does aid work ? (Oxford, 1986), p. 61.

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