Ongs: well-ordered
charity begins with oneself?
Annual salary of Kenneth Ross, Director of the NGO Human
Rights Watch: 610,000 dollars.
Severance pay for Irène Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty
International when she was dismissed in 2008 by the Board of the organization
after 9 years of service and one year from the end of her mandate: 850,000
francs.
Annual salary of the Director of ASPCA, the American Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: $ 852,000.
Annual salary of the Director of the American YMCA: $
786,000.
Annual salary of the Director of the Audubon Society devoted
to the protection of birds: $ 695,000.
RENUMERATIONS TO GIVE VERTIGE
If these levels of remuneration can at first glance make you
dizzy, they are only the reflection of societal evolution. Faced with a lack of
the state in the social field, individuals of good will united to undertake
charitable actions in favor of the most deprived. Originally, these
associations were essentially the prerogative of Anglo-Saxon countries with
little interventionist governments. Thus, in the 18th and 19th centuries, NGOs
played an important role in the fight against slavery and the development of
trade union action.
In 1945, as part of the creation of the United Nations, the
need was felt to create a legal framework that would identify what was to be
defined as Non-Governmental Organizations with non-profit goals dedicated
primarily to social action. This approach made it possible to differentiate
NGOs, either from UN bodies or from organizations emanating directly from
governments.
AN INCOUNTOURNABLE PRESENCE
Fifty years later, NGOs have become an essential component
of the contemporary world. It is estimated today that the number of NGOs around
the world, all causes combined, is around 10 million. In India there are some
3.3 million. In the United Kingdom, where they are qualified as “charities”,
they employ some 750,000 full-time staff and 2.2 million volunteers. In Europe,
their number is estimated at 4000. But it is the United States, where there are
1.5 million, which sets the tone with an annual disbursement of some 30 billion
dollars.
FOUR SUBSTRATES
In the galaxy of American NGOs we can distinguish four
substrates. First, there is what can be described as a screen NGO. The best
known is the National Endowment for Democracy or National Fund for Democracy.
Created in 1983 by the US Congress in the form of an NGO, its task was to take
over from the CIA in funding worldwide opinion movements favorable to
Washington's interests. With an annual budget of $ 185 million allocated by the
US Congress and a multitude of donations averaging around $ 50,000, the NED
funds groups or organizations that aim to promote "democracy" around
the world, whether among the Uighurs, Tibet, Hong Kong etc. with a strong focus
on Ukraine. On the other hand,
Then there is the great mass of NGOs with multiple vocations
that range from the protection of monkeys to research on cancer, help them
children, the promotion of national monuments, veterans associations, the
dissemination of the Bible, the rescue of lost cats, diabetes research, and
more.
NGOs WITH A HUMANITARIAN VOCATION
Finally, there are the humanitarian NGOs which operate in
the field and provide tangible aid.
The proliferation of humanitarian crises, their magnitude
and the awareness among developed countries of their responsibilities have
wiped out charity lovers. The result is that large humanitarian NGOs have
become the equivalent of multinationals.
INDISPENSABLE PROFESSIONALS
And when budgets reach billion dollars there is no
alternative to management professionals with corresponding compensation. So if
the director of the American Red Cross received an annual salary of 709,000
dollars, he manages a budget of 3,665 billion dollars and supervises 19,345
employees… which is not to say that the subject / remuneration relationship is
always constant…. example the "American Joint Distribution Committee"
which has 991 collaborators and a budget of 284 million dollars is supervised
by a board of directors of ... 172 members and grants to its director a
remuneration of 920 000 dollars per year. As for the “Secours Catholique” to
take another example, which has 1116 employees,
If the list is long, the characteristic of these NGOs is
that they work with concrete action and the help they provide, whether with
funds allocated by governments or by private donors, is real. This is not the
case with NGOs, which advertise themselves as having the mission of “promoting”
human rights.
PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS
Promoting human rights is essential in the task of
identifying violations on the one hand and denouncing them publicly on the
other. This gesture presupposes that the act of denunciation has wide
repercussions. In other words, without the sounding board represented by the
media, denouncing a violation has virtually no impact. But even if this
condition is met, it does not in any way guarantee that the one who has
committed such a violation will cease to persevere in the path he has chosen.
In reality, the more serious the violation and the more it
is the result of state policy, the less likely it is to see the person who
commits it giving in to media pressure.
WHAT EFFICIENCY?
In fact, the effectiveness of "promoters" is
inversely proportional to the seriousness of the cases denounced. Starting from
the principle that no system is perfect, no democracy is immune to a slippage.
However, when this is highlighted - for example an asylum seeker in Switzerland
or France who is unfairly refused refugee status - it is obvious that a
reaction from the media, not to say from the political class, has a good chance
of a positive result. On the other hand, all the denunciations in the world
will not change the policies of countries like Iran or North Korea one iota.
Finally, there are the gray areas. The former East Germany had to build a wall
to avoid depopulation while China - both countries being ruled by parties that
do not tolerate political dissent - allows its citizens to travel freely
abroad. The gray area also includes a cultural dimension; where some Westerners
see an interference in private life such as the proliferation of facial
recognition cameras or the obligation to carry an identity card, others like the
average Chinese see it as an instrument that ensures better security .
NO QUALITY CONTROL
Another question remains; Can the “promoters” be wrong? At
present, the media do not have the time or the means to verify the accuracy of
the statements disseminated by organizations such as Amnesty International (AI)
or Human Rights Watch (HRW) and which they reproduce.
However, for the “promoters”, operating in a climate of
competition where the donors are always the same and where the need to display
themselves as an asset is imperative, the temptation is strong to go all out to
occupy the media space. This temptation is exacerbated by the fact that there
is no impartial and independent monitoring body to verify the quality of the
work of these NGOs and it is more by chance that we discover failures.
Thus towards the end of the Vietnamese Boat People crisis,
96,000 of them who were not qualified to receive refugee status were being
repatriated under an amnesty program with assistance from UNHCR. This was an
opportunity for HRW to denounce the repatriation program and demand that it be
suspended. The UNHCR ignored it and repatriation continued as planned, ending
one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the Cold War. Not to be outdone when
a group of Vietnamese who did not want to be repatriated burned their barracks
AI denounced the UNHCR for having poorly housed the Vietnamese, without
obviously saying that it was they who had set their homes on fire.
RELATIVE CONTROL
It is up to the Boards of Directors of NGOs to set the
remuneration of their staff and whether the accounts should be audited, as long
as donors are satisfied the system proceeds normally. Thus, and regardless of
the remuneration / performance ratio within the organization, the last word
belongs to the donors. It was there that the system seized up when AI granted
its dismissed Secretary General a severance allowance of 850,000 francs. The
sum was supposed to be confidential until the day when the Daily Mail revealed
it, causing an outcry in England among thousands of small donors to the
organization, outraged by the use that was made of their contribution.
A REALITY
This parenthesis, apart from NGOs, are now part of our
world. With budgets ranging from a few hundred thousand francs to several
billion, salaries ranging from volunteering to those of multinationals,
independent or partially or totally funded by governments, espousing causes as
diverse as the creation of asylums for primates, the protection of consumers,
the defense of human rights, economic development, the restoration of
historical monuments under the promotion of a particular religion, they cover
practically the entire spectrum of human activities with all that this can
entail. … Or slippage.
