By Rafia Zakaria
ON Thursday, June 11, the head office of the NGO
Save the Children received a letter from the Economic Affairs Division of the Pakistan
government, ordering it to shut down all its operations in the country.
According to news reports, the NGO had been under
scrutiny because of the alleged involvement of its employee, Shakeel Afridi, in
a CIA-mandated fake vaccination campaign in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Following receipt of the letter, Save the Children shut down its operations in
various cities. However, on June 14, the Ministry of Interior announced that
the charity was being permitted to resume its operations and reopen its
offices. No further explanation about the reversal of the decision was
provided.
The closure of Save the Children and now its
unexplained re-opening raises several crucial issues. First, if there is
evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the organisation, especially something as
egregious as being involved in espionage, then it would have made sense for the
government to release such information to the media and the public prior to
issuing an order of closure.
Second, the closure of an international NGO
jeopardises the ability of Pakistan’s
poor to benefit from the relief work provided by organisations such as Save the
Children, further isolating the country’s impoverished from the global
community.
Third, given the fact that developing countries
like Pakistan
desperately need the assistance provided by organisations like Save the
Children, what measures of accountability exist (or should exist) for
monitoring their activities?
On the first issue, it is crucial that the
Ministry of Interior, which has now rescinded the order to suspend operations,
share with the public the basis on which the order was first issued. In a
country rife with conspiracy theories, it is crucial that the operations of
NGOs not be suspended on the basis of doubts and rumours.
The frivolity implied in decisions made and then overturned is unbecoming of a government that is accountable to the citizens of the country.
In this case, if evidence against Save the
Children’s involvement is present and irrefutable enough for the government to
issue an order in the first place, then how could a decision made on its basis
be inexplicably rescinded two days later? Surely, evidence of the good work
done by Save the Children would have been available to decision-makers who
issued the letter on Thursday as it was to those who reversed it days later.
The frivolity implied in decisions made and then overturned is unbecoming of a
government that is, at least in theory, accountable to the citizens of the
country.
Second, the closure of Save the Children should
provoke some discussions of how governmental actions such as these can impact the
country’s ability to avail itself of the relief and development services
provided by such organisations. International news coverage on the issue has
underscored the hardships that international NGOs already face in working in Pakistan,
citing the similar closure of the Norwegian Refugee Council last year as
another example of a seemingly arbitrary government crackdown.
On the domestic front, the government’s inability
to crack down on the public-service arms of various militant organisations
suggest that only one kind of NGO, the international kind, appears worrisome to
those monitoring NGO service provision in the country. The rhetoric of various
conservative groups against international NGOs further propagates the
impression that it is not the actual work being done by the organisation but
the political dividends that may or may not be reaped in the event of their
closure that are important to those making decisions regarding their work and
lawful presence in the country.
Finally, and perhaps most important, is the issue
of NGO accountability at an international level. Unlike governmental aid
organisations, NGOs like Save the Children or the American Red Cross are not
accountable to any particular government. As long as donors in the Western
world continue to contribute, their coffers remain full and they remain largely
independent in terms of where and how they spend their money.
A recent report on the American Red Cross’s work
in Haiti
has revealed the dark side of this arrangement, exposing how the organisation
had claimed to build 130,000 houses when it had built only six. Even after the
exposé, the Red Cross failed to provide details regarding how $500 million
raised for earthquake relief in Haiti
was actually spent.
The example of the Red Cross debacle in Haiti is important because it illustrates how
governments of developing states like Haiti
and Pakistan
are really unable to provide any close monitoring of their expenditures.
Initially, this fact of NGO independence was imagined as a positive thing,
enabling NGOs to avoid government corruption and bureaucracy and deliver relief
and development faster and more efficiently. However, as reliance on the work
of international NGOs has grown, this lack of oversight and relative
independence has become a cause for concern.
With little oversight at the local level and few
checks at the international level, there aren’t many obstacles by way of who
these NGOs collaborate with, how they spend their money, or hire their workers.
In the case of Pakistan,
the very possibility that Save the Children could have been involved with a CIA
espionage operation reveals just how grisly things can get.
The report of Red Cross corruption in Haiti and the possibility that Save the Children
was involved in CIA espionage related to the OBL raid both underscore the need
for international mechanisms of oversight on the work of these organisations in
countries like Haiti and Pakistan.
Given the work done by Save the Children in Pakistan, it is
imperative that the Ministry of Interior release information to the public
regarding why the organisation was scrutinised and whether any substantive
proof of wrongdoing exists. Given that Save the Children relies on raising
money from individual donors, such a public exposition would enable greater
transparency regarding its workings and reveal to one and all whether or not
anything actually went wrong.
The article was published in Dawn, June 17th,
2015.
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