Attachments
No one could deny that the mushrooming
NGO sector does good work in providing on-the-ground humanitarian relief.
But Robert Glasser, Secretary General of CARE International, says that
evaluations of their effectiveness "have been patchy at best."
When disaster strikes, nongovernmental
organisations are among the first on the scene. It's a pattern that has
become increasingly familiar. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
estimates there are now more than 37,000 international NGOs following the
surge in their numbers in the 1990s when major donors started to rely on
them more and more.
Inevitably there have been problems.
Both the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami saw
chaotic competition between hundreds of NGOs as they all scrambled to help.
Yet there have also been landmark victories. More than 1,400 NGOs operating
in 90 countries were able to exert sufficient political pressure to get
123 countries to ratify the treaty banning land mines; it earned the campaign
organisers the Nobel peace prize. It's not just the number of NGOs that
is making a difference, but also the trend towards trans-national alliances
to achieve common goals collectively. But the sheer scale of this disaster
relief "industry" - plus the longerterm development efforts of NGOs
- is raising serious issues about how to measure their performance.