Reconceptualising International Aid and Development NGOs

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, the role and effectiveness of international aid and development non-government organisations (NGOs) has attracted a broad and at times impassioned range of views. NGOs have, at times, been seen as international donors’ ‘favoured child’ (Hulme and Edwards 1997), a ‘magic bullet’ for solving global poverty (Vivian 1994) and a critical source of new ideas and development alternatives (Edwards 1989). They have also been criticised, however, as unelected ‘Lilliputians’ (Mallaby 2004), as ‘contemporary secular, post-religious’ missionaries (Anderson and Rieff 2005: 31) and for perpetuating unjust systems and structures as part of the ‘West’s hegemonic project’ (Sassen 1999). They have been lauded for their relative effectiveness on the one hand and challenged to ‘prove they do good’ on the other (Christensen 2004). Even supporters have sometimes described them as mere ‘ladles for the global soup kitchen’ (Fowler 1994). Whatever the truth or otherwise of these descriptions, what is clear is that over this time, international aid and development NGOs have become increasingly difficult to ignore.