Added Value of NGOs
Most development NGOs are financed by public funds. After recent fund management scandals in some NGOs, we must ask ourselves what are the adequate mechanisms to assure accountability to the beneficiaries and donors. Meanwhile, development NGOs are weight down with administrative processes.
What are the good practices of the public entities, to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of aid that they assign to development NGOs? Are these good practices being applied? Are there effective self control mechanisms to ensure transparency, efficiency and the implementation of good practices? From this more strategic perspective, the role of NGOs is changing within the framework of new financing and aid provision mechanisms.
The international discourse demands that NGOs step away from the direct provision of social services, and engage more in the promotion of “good governance”, which means, reinforcing the civil society so that it is able to ensure compliance with the principles of rules of law, management of the national budget and the effectiveness of national institutions. How have NGOs reacted to these recommendations?
Backgrounder by FRIDE
There is a great driving force in the approaches based on charity understood like the sentimental conviction and of values of which no human being must undergo poverty and that Samaritan action is needed immediately. On the other hand, there is debate on the right to development in which poverty is perceived as a violation of the human, social and economic rights. This approach demands a global system of rights redistribution and often it ends up becoming bureaucratic measures in the long term, justifications and actions to reform the institutions. Where does one find "solidarity" in this contrast of the charity and rights?
Paper by Miguel Ángel Lombardo, Political analyst, International Cooperation expert, Consultant of democratic governance
“ONGs must decide between, being an instrument to execute the social policies of an extending bureaucratic State, or to be active in an independent way within the present ideological challenges related to the development of towns: identity and democracy ".