February 10, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute
Non-profit organizations that work closely with the United Nations and governments to provide war and famine relief and other charitable services are growing rapidly throughout the world, but they aren’t always forces for good, says The Economist (January 29).
Many so-called nongovernmental organizations, or NGO’s, “achieve great things,” the British publication says, but some “under-scrutinized” groups “can get into bad ways because they are not accountable to anyone.”
Critics believe that some nongovernmental organizations inappropriately seek to spread Western values, such as the use of birth control, in poor parts of the world, and that some non-profit groups challenge the sovereignty of local governments, the magazine says.
Nearly 29,000 non-profit groups that work in multiple countries existed in 1995, according to a United Nations report cited by The Economist, and thousands of domestic groups have sprung up in Russia and other nations in recent years, the magazine says.
Despite their label as “nongovernmental,” however, many NGOs do not operate independently of government, the magazine says.
The proportion of European Union relief aid channeled through nongovernmental organizations rose from 47 percent to 67 percent between 1990 and 1994, The Economist says. “The Red Cross reckons that NGO’s now disburse more money than the World Bank,” it adds.
“Many ‘nongovernmental’ groups are becoming contractors for governments. Governments prefer to pass aid through NGO’s because it is cheaper, more efficient — and more at arm’s length — than direct official aid.”
The article is available online at http://www.economist.com.
