U.S. Conservatives Take Aim at NGOs (OneWorld.net)

[Ivo Skoric]

This also reminds us of consolidation of Milosevic's power in 
Serbia. The dislike of international NGO-s, that were perceived as 
spies, and a threat to government's power, by populist media and 
pro-Greater Serbia think-tanks - which threat the right wing think-
tanks in the West dub "the potential to undermine the sovereignty 
of constitutional democracies".

I feel better, immediately, since Bush is neither democratically 
elected, nor does he follow the Constitution. So, the US as it is - is 
safe from the attack of the international NGOs.

ivo


------- Forwarded Message Follows -------

Published on Thursday, June 12, 2003 by OneWorld.net

U.S. Conservatives Take Aim at NGOs
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - While non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Amnesty 
International, Greenpeace, and Oxfam have made significant contributions to 
human rights, the environment, and development, they are using their 
growing prominence and power to pursue a "liberal" agenda at the 
international level that threatens U.S. sovereignty and free-market 
capitalism.

That was the message delivered by a series of speakers at an all-day 
conference, "Nongovernmental Organizations: The Growing Power of an 
Unelected Few 
[http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.329,filter.foreign/event_detail.asp]," 
Wednesday sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a 
Washington think tank that has been particularly influential with the Bush 
administration.

"NGOs have created their own rules and regulations and demanded that 
governments and corporations abide by those rules," according to AEI and 
the conference co-sponsor, the rightist Institute of Public Affairs of 
Australia. "Politicians and corporate leaders are often forced to respond 
to the NGO media machine, and the resources of taxpayers and shareholders 
are used in support of ends they did not sanction."

"The extraordinary growth of advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the 
potential to undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies, as 
well as the effectiveness of credible NGOs," they warned.

To shed more light on NGOs, AEI announced the launch of a new website, 
NGOWatch.org (www.ngowatch.org), that will provide information about their 
operations, funding sources and political agendas. Brian Hook of the 
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, which is 
co-sponsoring the site, said it will cover those NGOs "with the most 
influence in international affairs."

NGOs, which have proliferated at the local level since the 
1980s--particularly in developing countries--have become major players at 
the United Nations and other multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank, 
which had traditionally dealt only with governments. Several thousand NGOs 
now enjoy "consultative status" at the UN, which entitles them to 
participate in some debates, while their image as representatives of 
"global civil society" has endowed them with a moral and political 
legitimacy, which they have used as leverage in dealing with the other 
major global actors, governments and corporations.

But, unlike corporations and governments, they are largely unregulated, and 
their internal processes often lack transparency and accountability, 
according to their critics and even to many NGOs themselves. Indeed, a UN 
commission on civil society chaired by former Brazilian President Henrique 
Cardoso is expected to recommend the adoption of guidelines or other 
mechanisms to ensure that NGOs recognized by the UN are transparent and 
accountable.

To the groups who gathered at AEI Wednesday, however, international NGOs 
raise concerns that go far beyond transparency and accountability. To them, 
the international NGOs are pursuing a leftist or "liberal" agenda that 
favors "global governance" and other notions that are also promoted by the 
United Nations and other multilateral agencies.

"This is inherently a project that is tilted to the left," according to 
Cornell University government professor Jeremy Rabkin, who argued that NGOs 
are using the multilateral system to try to regulate corporations and 
governments.

"NGOs want to be players. They want to be regulators," agreed Institute of 
Public  Affairs's Gary Johns. He cited NGO lobbying for the adoption of 
codes of conduct for multinational corporations. "Before long, you have a 
degree of regulation that no one thought was possible."

In fact, according to George Washington University political science 
professor Jarol Manheim, international NGOs are pursuing "a new and 
pervasive form of conflict" against corporations which he calls "Biz-war," 
the title of his forthcoming book. NGOs, for example, work with sympathetic 
institutional investors, such as union and church-based pension funds, to 
sponsor shareholder resolutions demanding that corporations adopt more 
environment- or human-rights-friendly policies. Such efforts, he said, 
should be seen as "part of a larger, anti-corporate campaign."

This was echoed by John Entine, an AEI adjunct fellow, who called the 
"social investing" movement, as it is called, a "wolf in sheep's clothing. 
"Anti-free market NGOs under the guise of corporate reform are extending 
their reach into the boardrooms of corporations," he said. "In many cases, 
naive corporate reformers, within corporations and in government, are 
welcoming them."

Moreover, the strategy is working. "Big shareholders are getting 
embarrassed to be associated with some companies," said Manheim, who noted 
that companies are increasingly using NGOs as consultants or even hiring 
former NGO officials to protect themselves against negative publicity or 
consumer boycotts.

On the global political front, international NGOs, which led the fight for 
the global ban on anti-personnel mines, the Kyoto Protocol to curb 
greenhouse-gas emissions, and the treaty establishing the International 
Criminal Court (ICC), are pursuing a "liberal internationalist" vision that 
is very much at odds with that of the Bush administration, according to 
American University law professor Kenneth Anderson.

These efforts are intended in part to further a world order based on 
"global governance" and the rule of international law, rather than one 
based on the sovereignty of democratic nation states. The leaders of 
international NGOs are part of a culture that "wants to constrain the 
United States" and whose ideas about world order "are not congenial to the 
ideas of this administration," according to Anderson.

Several speakers praised the work of NGOs in providing services and 
humanitarian aid to needy people in developing countries but stressed that, 
at the international policy level, much of what they did actually hurt the 
intended beneficiaries. Roger Bate, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, 
cited NGOs' opposition to the use of DDT to fight malaria and to the 
delivery of genetically-modified maize in southern Africa as examples of 
policies which amounted to "eco-imperialism" and showed a "callous 
disregard for human life."

"NGOs definitely provide benefits in the short run, but in the long run, 
their influence is almost always malign," he said.

Mike Nahan, Institute of Public Affairs's executive director, charged that 
international NGOs supported secession movements in East Timor and Aceh, 
Indonesia; put Papua New Guinea "on the road to bankruptcy" by forcing out 
the mining industry; and is "destroying civil society in many of these 
countries."

                             Copyright 2003 OneWorld.net

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