Re: Neutrality in NGOs

[zinov@xxxxxxxxxx]

jrmu wrote:

> If an NGO is operating under a repressive government, it has two choices:
>
> 1) stay silent and comply with local law, in order to be able to better
> help victims, or
>
> 2) adopt a confrontational attitude towards the government, criticize it
> in media, and get kicked out;
>
> I think 1) is superior to 2), since 2) seems to benefit no one at all.

You are assuming that by 'stay[ing] silent and comply[ing] with local law',
you can better help the victims. You also seem to be assuming that there is no
significant chance that by protesting the government anything can be
accomplished.
 
Besides that, those might not be the only two options. Perhaps one could
criticise the government without being 'confrontational' or breaking any laws.
I suppose that if the government is so repressive that any criticism or
perhaps even any speech that makes the government look bad even if it is not
presented as a criticism is banned, then the only option is to stay silent or
risk being persecuted by the government.

Opposing the government could encourage others to do so, such that eventually
there is enough opposition that the government must be replaced or reformed,
even if nothing directly results from your opposition. You might also simply
bring attention to certain abuses that otherwise would have been less
well-known, and this attention could lead to pressure or force from more
powerful people (like foreign leaders).

Also, in some cases, compliance might require the organisation to do things
that outright undermine the mission.

There are certain contexts where being overly critical might make things
worse, but there might be other contexts where being critical makes things
better. I think that we would need to look at a more specific case to
determine whether neutrality is appropriate.

NGOs should in many cases stay officially neutral on topics that are outside
of the scope of the NGO, because their positions on one topic can hinder their
primary work. For example, someone might refuse to donate to an organisation
whose work the person supports because of some position that the organisation
took on some unrelated topic. However, that is a different sort of neutrality
than what you were talking about in the message.