Should INGOs Work in Many Different Countries?
Posted on 05 August 2010
By Jennifer Rubenstein
INGOs do not have enough aid resources (money and/or trained personnel) to do everything that they want to do. They must therefore make difficult decisions about how to allocate their limited resources. These decisions are shaped to some extent by more or less practical considerations, such as concerns about aid workers’ safety and the need to raise funds. But INGOs also take moral and ethical considerations into account. What sorts of moral and ethical considerations should INGOs deem relevant when making distributive decisions?
One consideration that INGOs seem to treat as morally relevant—at least in their public self-presentations— is the number of countries in which they work. For example:
• “We work in nearly 100 countries to overcome poverty and injustice.”
Some INGOs argue that working in many different countries is a means to other valuable ends. For example, Oxfam states (on page 5 of this report) that “with a programme spread across the world, Oxfam has a greater understanding of the many causes of poverty, and we can achieve greater impact.” The foregoing statements imply that working in many countries has intrinsic moral value. I am inclined to think that it does not.
An INGO might argue that working in many different countries symbolizes its commitment to the idea that all people are of equal moral worth, regardless of their citizenship, race, nationality, etc. I see two difficulties with this argument.
First, providing aid in many different countries can conflict with other important goals that also convey the idea that all people are of equal moral worth, such as alleviating as much severe poverty or acute suffering as possible, providing aid to the worst-off groups, or focusing on victims of intentional injustice.
Second, the symbolism of working in many different countries is complex. While an INGO might intend to convey impartiality, it might instead telegraph a desire for power or even domination, by inadvertently invoking colonial patterns.
What do you think: is it is intrinsically important that emergency and development INGOs work in many different countries? Why or why not?
Jennifer Rubenstein is Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and a regular contributor to this blog.
3 responses to Should INGOs Work in Many Different Countries?
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Very good question and a tough one at that. I think one can make the argument for emergency or humanitarian NGOs to operate in many different countries since the basic premise is after all to relieve the suffering caused by humanitarian disasters and countries. Besides if organisations only focused on specific countries, it would be immensely inefficient as you would have available resources in countries where there is no crisis at a particular time that could have been employed elsewhere in the case of a disaster or emergency. This, I do not think would go down well with anyone.
In the case of development NGOs on the other hand, one could think of it as a “too many cooks spoil the broth” scenario. Does diversifying operations to such an extent as to cover (in some cases) nearly a 100 countries really lead to efficient outcomes in poverty alleviation or development otherwise? How often have you heard of overworked aid workers or project/program staff because the country office is understaffed?
Perhaps if there was more specialisation per NGO per partner country, country specific dynamics could be even better understood and the impact of the organisation would be deeper in terms of reaching out to policy makers and donors.
To use another idiom: to have your finger in too many pies implies for INGOs that having operations in too many countries might just make those organisations less effective in some of those countries and that is no good to anyone, least of all to those whom the organisation aims to help the most.
From my perception, there are various reasons that advocate for multinational activity. For one, as mentioned by Anelda above, there are pooling effects and economies of scale in some of the functions performed by NGO’s (and efficiency is key when resources are scarce).
Second, it is often argued (and empirical evidence supports this, not only from humanitarian settings, but specially from industry) that there is potential for cross-learning throughout the different locations where the organization is active. The extent to which this potential is developed depends largely on each NGO’s efficiency to share and deploy relevant information, knowledge and other resources between its members.
And thirdly, an argument that maybe shouldn’t be, but still is, relevant is that of attracting funding. Much has been argued about how sometimes NGO’s seem to have a large focus on being the first to plant their flag (respond) when an emergency situation arises, in order to get the attention and obtain the funds for most of the actual response (or building a reputation for future events). In my opinion, NGO’s are sometimes seen under the “larger is better” lens by some donors, which contributes to this tendency to expand geographically.
While I agree with Anelda’s metaphor about the possibility of an optimal number of countries where an NGO operates, or of NGO’s working in each place, I also believe that the current system tends to provide incentives for geographical expansion. As a result, changing NGO’s modus operandi needs to be coupled with a change in the system that is aligned with the desired path.
Anelda, Gerardo:
Thanks for your thoughtful responses to my post! I’m curious what you (or anyone else) thinks about the following scenario:
Imagine that you have come up with a list of distributive criteria that you think humanitarian INGOs should use in allocating their resources: maybe your list includes need, effectiveness, efficiency, not substituting for the state, prior ties, etc. (It doesn’t matter, for the purposes of my question.) Now, imagine that all of the major INGOs have offered to allocate resources according to your list. But it turns out that if they did this, they would end up working only in China and India. (I know that this is exceedingly unlikely, but humor me for three more sentences.) My question is: would this be acceptable to you? Or would you want them to comply less with your other criteria in order to allocate aid across a larger number of countries or regions? I’m curious what you think!