[AAACE-NLA] A critical time for advocacy

[Elsa Auerbach]

This just in from the Rethinking Schools listserve;  I've edited out the sender's commentary (which had been inserted in brackets).

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&e=9&u=/oneworld/118151055432410
U.S. Conservatives Take Aim at NGOs
Thu Jun 12,11:00 AM ET
Jim Lobe, OneWorld U.S.

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 12 (OneWorld) - While non-governmental organizations 
(NGOs) such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Oxfam have made 
significant contributions to human rights, the environment, and 
development, they are using their growing prominence and power to pursue a 
"liberal" agenda at the international level that threatens U.S. sovereignty 
and free-market capitalism.

That was the message delivered by a series of speakers at an all-day 
conference, "Nongovernmental Organizations: The Growing Power of an 
Unelected Few," Wednesday sponsored by the American Enterprise (news - web 
sites) Institute (AEI), a Washington think tank that has been particularly 
influential with the Bush administration.

"NGOs have created their own rules and regulations and demanded that 
governments and corporations abide by those rules," according to AEI and 
the conference co-sponsor, the rightist Institute of Public Affairs of 
Australia. "Politicians and corporate leaders are often forced to respond 
to the NGO media machine, and the resources of taxpayers and shareholders 
are used in support of ends they did not sanction."

"The extraordinary growth of advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the 
potential to undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies, as 
well as the effectiveness of credible NGOs," they warned.
To shed more light on NGOs, AEI announced the launch of a new website, 
NGOWatch.org (www.ngowatch.org), that will provide information about their 
operations, funding sources and political agendas. Brian Hook of the 
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, which is 
co-sponsoring the site, said it will cover those NGOs "with the most 
influence in international affairs."

NGOs, which have proliferated at the local level since the 
1980s--particularly in developing countries--have become major players at 
the United Nations (news - web sites) and other multilateral agencies, such 
as the World Bank (news -web sites), which had traditionally dealt only 
with governments. Several thousand NGOs now enjoy "consultative status" at 
the UN, which entitles them to participate in some debates, while their 
image as representatives of "global civil society" has endowed them with a 
moral and political legitimacy, which they have used as leverage in dealing 
with the other major global actors, governments and corporations.

But, unlike corporations and governments, they are largely unregulated, and 
their internal processes often lack transparency and accountability, 
according to their critics and even to many NGOs themselves. Indeed, a UN 
commission on civil society chaired by former Brazilian (news -web sites) 
President Henrique Cardoso is expected to recommend the adoption of 
guidelines or other mechanisms to ensure that NGOs recognized by the UN are 
transparent and accountable.

To the groups who gathered at AEI Wednesday, however, international NGOs 
raise concerns that go far beyond transparency and accountability. To them, 
the international NGOs are pursuing a leftist or "liberal" agenda that 
favors "global governance" and other notions that are also promoted by the 
United Nations and other multilateral agencies.

"This is inherently a project that is tilted to the left," according to 
Cornell University government professor Jeremy Rabkin, who argued that NGOs 
are using the multilateral system to try to regulate corporations and 
governments.

"NGOs want to be players. They want to be regulators," agreed IPA's Gary 
Johns. He cited NGO lobbying for the adoption of codes of conduct for 
multinational corporations. "Before long, you have a degree of regulation 
that no one thought was possible."

In fact, according to George Washington University political science 
professor Jarol Manheim, international NGOs are pursuing "a new and 
pervasive form of conflict" against corporations which he calls "Biz-war," 
the title of his forthcoming book. NGOs, for example, work with sympathetic 
institutional investors, such as union and church-based pension funds, to 
sponsor shareholder resolutions demanding that corporations adopt more 
environment- or human-rights-friendly policies. Such efforts, he said, 
should be seen as "part of a larger, anti-corporate campaign."

This was echoed by John Entine, an AEI adjunct fellow, who called the 
"social investing" movement, as it is called, a "wolf in sheep's clothing. 
"Anti-free market NGOs under the guise of corporate reform are extending 
their reach into the boardrooms of corporations," he said. "In many cases, 
naive corporate reformers, within corporations and in government, are 
welcoming them."

Moreover, the strategy is working. "Big shareholders are getting 
embarrassed to be associated with some companies," said Manheim, who noted 
that companies are increasingly using NGOs as consultants or even hiring 
former NGO officials to protect themselves against negative publicity or 
consumer boycotts.

On the global political front, international NGOs, which led the fight for 
the global ban on anti-personnel mines, the Kyoto Protocol (news - web 
sites) to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, and the treaty establishing the 
International Criminal Court (ICC), are pursuing a "liberal 
internationalist" vision that is very much at odds with that of the Bush 
administration, according to American University law professor Kenneth 
Anderson.

These efforts are intended in part to further a world order based on 
"global governance" and the rule of international law, rather than one 
based on the sovereignty of democratic nation states. The leaders of 
international NGOs are part of a culture that "wants to constrain the 
United States" and whose ideas about world order "are not congenial to the 
ideas of this administration," according to Anderson.

Several speakers praised the work of NGOs in providing services and 
humanitarian aid to needy people in developing countries but stressed that, 
at the international policy level, much of what they did actually hurt the 
intended beneficiaries. Roger Bate, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, 
cited NGOs' opposition to the use of DDT to fight malaria and to the 
delivery of genetically-modified maize in southern Africa as examples of 
policies which amounted to "eco-imperialism" and showed a "callous 
disregard for human life."

"NGOs definitely provide benefits in the short run, but in the long run, 
their influence is almost always malign," he said.

Mike Nahan, IPA's executive director, charged that international NGOs 
supported secession movements in East Timor (news - web sites) and Aceh, 
Indonesia; put Papua New Guinea "on the road to bankruptcy" by forcing out 
the mining industry; and is "destroying civil society in many of these 
countries."

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> ----------
> From: 	JATDP at aol.com
> Reply To: 	National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE
> Sent: 	Thursday, June 12, 2003 7:49 AM
> To: 	aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
> Subject: 	[AAACE-NLA] A critical time for advocacy
> 
> The list seems eerily quite at a critical time for advocacy. I would like to 
> relate a concern and ask for suggestions on ways to gain allies, approach 
> policy makers, and advocate on behalf of preserving years of field knowledge. 
> 
> It seems that an important resource has gone missing from the assessment 
> special collection. Adventures in Assessment, published for years by SABES (System 
> for Adult Basic Ed Support) in Massachusetts, is a wonderful collection of 
> articles, alternative assessment tools, and teacher experience in real 
> classrooms struggling with the hard questions of how to measure success in adult 
> education. My query to the Assessment Listserv as to why this resource was now 
> missing from the special collection was not posted. 
> 
> It believe it is critical that we find allies within the broader field of 
> education, including health education, to publicize what at least appears to be 
> censorship, and strategize collectively around actions. Research, resources and 
> field knowledge (ERIC, listservs, special collections), advocacy, all seem to 
> be vulnerable. 
> 
> Suggestions?
> 
> Judy Titzel
> Providence, RI
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