From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERchanged. Similarly, the large chunks of government aid money onoffer can turn NGOs into mere ‘ladles in the global soup kitchen’,focused on service provision. 161 Much of the new aid money is forrelief and emergency work, which reinforces the bias toward servicedelivery, rather than social change. Some NGO insiders have gone sofar as to say that ‘We need to bury the aid paradigm in order to liberateourselves to achieve the impact we say we want’ 162 – something that isunlikely to happen while official aid budgets are on the rise.Caution and compromise: Whether through the conscious desire tocurry favour, a greater understanding of the constraints on Northerndecision-makers, or the more subtle influences exerted by regularcontact with government and the desire to be seen as ‘sensible interlocutors’,INGOs often adopt more conciliatory attitudes towardsgovernments than their grassroots partners and allies. Dependence ongovernment funding, or fear of being denied permission to operate,can lead to self-censorship and a narrowing of permissible debate. Insome cases, donor influence is stark, as with US government fundingfor HIV and AIDS that requires programmes to promote abstinencerather than condom use.Accuracy: Under pressure to keep donations flowing so as to maintainfar-flung networks of offices, staff, and in some cases warehouses ofsupplies, INGOs sometimes move too quickly to cry wolf, as occurred inSouthern Africa in 2004 when food supplies were thin and some agenciesclaimed that famine was imminent.The same pressure that tempts INGOsto overstate crises, combined with their can-do ethos, may also causethem to be less than forthright about the limits of their ability to copewith the aftermath of catastrophes, thus raising unrealistic expectations.ACCOUNTABILITYAfter quality, the second key challenge facing the international aidsystem, including INGOs, is accountability, and the two are intimatelylinked. One of aid’s most withering critics, William Easterly, whocrossed over after 16 years in the World Bank, ridicules top-down‘Planners’ as modern-day Soviet commissars, out of touch, inept, andself-serving. He contrasts them with bottom-up ‘Searchers’, who areopen to new ideas and opportunities, nimble, and driven by consumers(in this case poor people), not dogma:374