Civil society, autonomy and donors: international aid to Palestinian NGOs (original) (raw)
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Governing Through Patronage: The Rise of NGOs and the Fall of Civil Society in Palestine and Morocco
This article examines foreign aid and government funding to NGOs as forms of patronage and explores the impact of such funding on the nature and role of civil society. Using qualitative research from Palestine and Morocco, we argue that patronage transforms NGOs into apparatuses of governing. NGOs become key sites for the exercise of productive power through the technologies of professionalization, bureaucratization, and upward accountability. The article explores how this transformation of NGOs depoliticizes their work while undermining their role as change agents within civil society. The findings have implications for understanding the transformation of NGOs, the relationship between patrons and their grantees, and, finally, for exploring the limitations of NGOs as vehicles for social change in sensitive political environments.
The emergence of a Palestinian globalized elite: donors, international organizations and local NGO's
… -Palestinian Institute for the Study of …
The process of Intifada is an attempt to overturn the existing order and to create a new order, but because this process cannot be completely controlled it therefore reflects both crisis and potential as complex forces and inherent contradictions come into play (De Certeau, 1998: 4). 2 There are more than 230 foreign donors actively assisting Palestinian NGOs today; the majority do so through established local contacts in Palestine. Most donors represent Western governments and Northern and international organizations. However, there are a few Arab and Islamic donor organizations that are very active. 14 agenda. This raises further questions: how does one conceptualize and explain the relationship between NGOs, INGOs and donors, what are the overriding structural relations between them, and how have they been shaped by historically contingent factors? This study looks at the paradoxes illuminated during the uprising as well as during the transition period that began with the Oslo Accords. Based on empirical research and interviews conducted prior to and after the outbreak of the second Intifada, the study analyzes the relationship between Palestinian NGOs (PNGOs), INGOs and donors, as determined by the processes within Palestinian society, as well as by mechanisms and structural relations within the aid community. This introduction presents our understanding of the multifaceted dynamics that frame NGO, donor, and international NGO relations within the context of recent Palestinian history. The first section analyzes the uprising in order to unravel and define the problematic of NGOs in Palestine. The introduction then goes on to describe the conceptual framework of the book, and content of the chapters. Realizing Independence: All Efforts for Supporting the Popular Intifada for the Independence," was circulated for signature among NGOs and political parties. The petition, however, requested the endorsement of individual leaders rather than organizations. This reinforces the argument that these leaders do not view the NGOs as institutions which should have a leadership role in national issues. An additional example elucidates further contradictions. On June 19, 2002, a petition was published in al-Quds, a daily Palestinian newspaper, signed by academics, public figures and many prominent NGO leaders. The signatories launched a critique of suicide bombings and called for a reconsideration of operations that target civilians: "We think that these bombings do not contribute towards achieving our national project which calls for freedom and independence. On the contrary, they strengthen the enemies of peace on the Israeli side and give Israel's aggressive government under Sharon the excuse to continue harsh war against our people." Released in the direct aftermath of the Israeli invasion in April, during which Israeli forces reoccupied the West Bank, the petition was intended to spark an internal debate on Palestinian resistance regarding whether there were inconsistencies between the means and aims of the Intifada. However, the debate quickly subsided. The credibility of the petition was questioned and the initiative was critiqued on a number of counts, but in general it was read as an affront to those who have sacrificed for the resistance. In this regard, the petition met with reproaches and disapprobation (Allen, 2002). One of the reasons for this, as Azmi Bishara, an Arab nationalist member of the Israeli parliament, has argued, is that in a moment of intense national crisis, as the one in which Palestinians now find themselves, it is not enough to merely critique resistance practices but it is incumbent upon activists, intellectuals and political forces to also promote alternatives (2002). By criticizing armed resistance without a sustained critique or strategic analysis of the occupation upon which to firmly advance a viable practical and theoretical alternative mode of resistance, the NGO activists and intellectuals who signed the petition left themselves open to counteraction and delegitimation. In contrast to the first Intifada, when activists, intellectuals and community leaders were embedded within the popular struggle and bound up in a mass-based national movement, the incident of the petition reveals much about the location of Palestinian NGOs today within the social and political fields. The petition reveals these actors as spectators in the Intifada, unable to make the necessary linkages and articulate between their own aspirations for Palestinian freedom and independence, the objectives of their organizations that promote democracy and social justice, and the overarching national agenda and strategies of the Intifada. As such, it also reveals the NGOs as isolated and lacking an organic base in society. This isolation is not necessarily due only to the responsibility of the NGOs but also to a context characterized by the early militarization of the Intifada and the Israeli reaction to it that marginalized most people and institutions and robbed non-military action of its subversive potential. These observations are inseparable from a number of trends and the overall transformation of Palestinian non-governmental organizations beginning in the early 1990's, concomitant with their entry into the 'aid industry.' The Oslo process, which allowed for the creation of the Palestinian National Authority and the commencement of 'state-building' supported by the intervention of donor countries and their peace-building initiatives, also consolidated a space for the growth of Palestinian NGOs and civic institutions. Paradoxically, however, the consolidation of this space was accompanied by a dis-embedding of local organizations from within the society and their base in popular movements. Moreover, this ongoing consolidation process is marred by fractures and disjunctures, as the 'national' agenda has been re-conceptualized and conflated with 'politics' and hence redefined by both local and international NGOs actors as too politicized for 'civic' organizations. These are examples of the problematic of NGOs in Palestine; the complex issues touched upon here will be further explored and explained in the conceptual framework outlined below and the ensuing chapters. Defining 'Development' in the Midst of an Anti-Colonial Struggle The second major challenge facing Palestinian society today concerns the task of defining development in the midst of a national uprising. The immediate post-Oslo 'Interim period' before final status negotiations was not acknowledged by many donors and international organizations as the beginning of a process of decolonization. The situation in the Palestinian Territories was already classified by the donors and international NGOs (INGOs) as a post-conflict area rather than a conflict zone. This characterization has a tremendous impact on donor aid, at both the conceptual and procedural levels. At the first level, the vision of post-conflict assistance becomes linear, when in fact conflict is invariably cyclical. On the procedural level, donor agencies and international organizations take on the role of a 'neutral' mediator, a role which ignores the root causes of the conflict and its colonial nature. Aid invariably follows the modality of colonial control; thus within Palestine, as a new site of 'peace-building,' the international order is superimposed over the colonial order. As Brynen explains, new peace-building efforts have been devised which not only entail regularly established patterns of diplomacy and military peacekeeping, "but also a variety of social and economic objectives and instrumentalities, underpinned by substantial commitments of financial support" (Brynen, 2000: 6-7). The problem that results in practice is that the peace-building assistance, which buttresses a wide range of interventions, including supporting the start-up costs of establishing the Palestinian National Authority, infrastructure projects and a range of social and economic initiatives, is based on the assumption that the conflict is ending, when as we have witnessed in Palestine, the conflict has renewed. On the NGO level this perception shapes the nature of NGO programs and projects. These developmental projects lack any emergency plan in the event of the accentuation of the national conflict. As a result the majority of the NGOs were shown incapable of articulating the civic with the political or to separate the 'political' from the 'national.' It is quite clear that the Intifada shattered the veneer of the Oslo process and the euphoria of donor projects that portrayed Palestinian political as well as social and economic development as linear processes, while masking the transformations on the ground and the Israeli practices that have obstructed Palestinian development options and political independence. In contrast to these linear projections, during the Interim period, Israeli settlements increased by sixty-five percent (Mansour, 2001) and Israel's mechanisms of control expanded. With the outbreak of the Intifada, Palestinian governmental, nongovernmental and international development agencies have been grappling with the task of responding to the growing humanitarian crisis, the potential for economic collapse and the physical destruction caused by Israeli military operations and the siege imposed by the occupation power. According to a recent World Bank report, the GDP per capita shrank by 50% and as a result 60% of the population now lives below the poverty line. The overall losses that the Palestinian economy has endured is estimated at $5.4 million per day (World Bank Report, 3 March 2003). Confronted with a significant influx of emergency assistance, 5 Palestinian NGOs have also faced an additional challenge, the need to maintain a modicum of space from which to define Palestinian development needs and develop strategies for the medium term, while retaining a focus on the dialectic...
Understanding the Rationales of Donor-Funded NGOs in Palestine
Contemporary Arab Affairs
This article uses game theory as a conceptual approach to gain a holistic understanding of the aid policy of donors supporting Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (PNGOs). It asks how the work of donor-funded PNGOs has impacted Palestinian societal common good in general, and who are the winners and losers as a result of their work. Quantitative methods are used to capture the perceptions of the main actors in relation to the societal outcomes of PNGOs’ work and actors’ political and socio-economic payoffs in the occupied West Bank. Most of the findings align with much of the critical research on the negative societal outcomes of the aid policy to the NGO sector, and corroborate that the Palestinian public is a major loser in political terms and the least beneficiary in socio-economic terms.
Civil Society Organizations and Transition to Democracy in Palestine
2001
This paper examines, through three surveys and some interview data, the dynamics of contemporary Palestinian civil society organizations (CSOs) from the angle of their role in the process of democratization. The paper analyses the emergence, nature, and structures of CSOs in Palestine, and emphasizes the role of the public in democratization. In particular it assesses both the positive and negative facets of CSOs' work from the perspective of their possible role in democratization. It is concluded that CSOs play a positive but limited role in the democratization of Palestinian society.
This article explores perceived shifts in roles for NGOs and religious actors after the creation of the Palestinian National Authority with the 1993 Oslo Accords, using original data from a survey of more than 1,000 community members in the West Bank and Gaza. The survey data show a centralisation of requests for assistance from the Palestinian National Authority, with a decrease in requests from local government, NGOs, and religious actors after the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. The support the empirical findings lend to theories of government and voluntary failure is discussed. Cet article traite de l’évolution perçue des rôles pour les ONG et les acteurs religieux après la création de l'Autorité nationale palestinienne avec les Accord d'Oslo de 1993, en utilisant des données originales tirées d'une enquête menée auprès de plus de 1 000 membres de communautés de Cisjordanie et de Gaza. Les données de cette enquête montrent une centralisation des demandes d'aide émanant de l'Autorité nationale palestinienne, et une diminution des demandes émanant des entités gouvernementales locales, des ONG et des acteurs religieux après la création de l'Autorité nationale palestinienne. Le fait que ces résultats empiriques soutiennent les théories concernant l’échec des gouvernements et des entités volontaires fait l'objet d'une discussion. Con base en información original aportada por una encuesta aplicada a más de mil habitantes de Cisjordania y de Gaza, el presente artículo examina los cambios que estos perciben en el rol desempeñado por las ong y los actores religiosos tras la creación de la anp a partir de los Acuerdos de Oslo de 1993. En este sentido, la información obtenida revela que, una vez formada la anp, las solicitudes de asistencia se centralizaron en esta, produciéndose, al mismo tiempo, el decremento de solicitudes provenientes del gobierno local, de las ong y de los actores religiosos. Al respecto, el artículo examina hasta qué punto los hallazgos empíricos apoyan las teorías de gobierno y del fracaso voluntario.
Palestinians in Lebanon and the Role of NGOs
Journal of Refugee Studies , 1997
This analysis of the role of Palestinian NGOs in Lebanon outlines the socioeconomic, political and legal framework in which they operate. Subsequent sections deal with the historical background of the NGOs, their activities, and the sectors in which they work. Their efforts to improve coordination are discussed and the article describes their interactions with other Lebanese, Palestinian, Arab and international organizations. Finally the author examines the problems and obstacles faced by Palestinian NGOs given their unique and often difficult legal and political situation. The article ends with suggestions as to how NGOs can improve the services they offer and adapt to an uncertain future
A SHIFTING POLITICAL LANDSCAPE: NGOs' CIVIC ACTIVISM AND RESPONSE IN THE GAZA STRIP, 1967–2014
Journal of Peacebuilding and Development , 2016
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are considered crucial stakeholders in the Gaza Strip, mobilising and empowering society as key drivers of politics and change processes. They deliver actions in the fields of human rights, community development, conflict resolution, sports, women’s empowerment and more. This briefing discusses Palestinian NGOs in the Gaza Strip in their historical perspective; notably their peace and development policies and practices. It examines social, economic and political factors, circumstances and notable changes that have influenced NGO responses to changing circumstances in the region. It also discusses how NGOs participate in shaping the Gaza Strip’s social power structure. The briefing examines the established interests, reactions and responses of NGOs in light of societal needs stemming from multiple consecutive crises in the region. Indeed, there are many challenges facing NGOs in the recent political environment. The briefing also provides insight into their self-accommodation policy after Gaza’s breakaway from the West Bank in 2007–2013.Finally,it hints at challenges facing Gaza-based NGOs fol- lowing the Israeli assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014, which caused enormous destruction for citizens and the environment.