Replies

Gee, Stacy loves the UN, too. Who woulda thunk it...

The invasion of NGOs, by Stacy Sullivan

governments as well as donors are coming to recognize NGOs as major development partners

on September 15, representatives from 2,800 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) gathered for a three-day annual meeting at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the meeting as a way to prepare a "political and economic blueprint for the 21st century." Annan talked about the need for the United Nations, NGOs, governments, and private corporations to cooperate in building that blueprint. The keynote speaker, Queen Noor of Jordan, pointed out that NGOs, private corporations, and governments have long been suspicious of each other. "Fortunately, this is changing," she said. "Governments as well as donors are coming to recognize NGOs as major development partners."

The same principle of cooperation, one that moves away from the traditional donor-recipient relationship, has been adopted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has long contracted out to NGOs. As Donald Pressley, the assistant administrator of USAID, put it recently during a Congressional hearing: "My overarching goal for our bureau," he said, "will be to establish sustainable partnerships, both between the people and organizations in the United States and the countries of the region as well as among these countries themselves."

The international testing ground for this new cooperation of NGO partnerships is the reconstruction of Kosovo.

The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has created an international civil administration that is unprecedented in its complexity and scope for any international institution. It is a conglomeration of multilateral organizations that view themselves as full partners to the UN, but are also under UN leadership. The partners, aside from the UN, are: the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which is in charge of humanitarian assistance; the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is in charge of democratization and institution-building; and the European Union (EU), which is in charge of reconstruction. But although these four international organizations are in charge of administering Kosovo, almost all of their efforts and projects are carried out by NGOs, which increasingly are working together with governments and private businesses.

When Serbian forces pulled out of Kosovo after nearly three months of NATO bombing, they left behind a charred landscape of destruction: neighborhoods of charred houses, fields of animal and human corpses, and hundreds of thousands of shattered lives. In all, an estimated 10,000 people were killed and 85,000 houses destroyed.

Already there is an enormous amount of reconstruction visible in Kosovo—the vast majority of which has been undertaken by local initiatives in conjunction with NGOs. Ironically, because Albanians were excluded for so long from Kosovo's civil administration, they formed a vibrant and industrious commercial class of shopkeepers, retail distributors, and builders who are well suited to the reconstruction undertaking. Most are concentrating on making at least one room in their house suitable to survive the approaching winter. But, as the UN's Annan puts it, "When we speak of reconstructing Kosovo, we know that bricks and mortar are not enough."

Indeed, the reconstruction of Kosovo entails not only the rebuilding of houses, but the remaking of institutions. This means educating local civil administrators, creating and training a local police force, and building a civil society. It also means establishing a new penal system, a legitimate judicial system, and a free press. The vast majority of this work will be carried out by NGOs and their governmental and private business partners.

There are some 90 NGOs, in Kosovo and even though there is no financial system—no rules, no commercial law, not even any banks—NGOs have already begun short-term reconstruction projects in cooperation with the United Nations, governments, other NGOs, local charities, local businesses, and private companies. As long-term reconstruction projects get underway, NGO involvement and collaboration with other groups is likely to increase substantially, not least because the head of the UN Mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, comes from the world of NGOs. He was the founder of Doctors Without Borders and knows how effective NGOs can be.

One of the first things the UNHCR did in Kosovo to ensure that it fully utilized the capacity of NGOs was to give each NGO an Area of Responsibility (AOR). The NGOs then made assessments of the needs of each area and began cooperating with indigenous organizations, commercial enterprises, other NGOS, and governments to begin fulfilling those needs.

Below is a sampling of the kind of collaborative projects that have already been undertaken.

Examples of NGOs working with international organizations:

1.) All NGOs working on health-related projects, including Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frantieres—MSF) and International Medical Corps (IMC), are working with The World Health Organization, which has organized an NGO/UN drugs coordination group that meets the first Monday of every month to discuss the needs and distribution of drugs and pharmaceuticals throughout Kosovo.

2.) The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) is working with the World Food Programme (WFP) to establish a way station to feed refugees returning to Kosovo from Albania.

Examples of NGOs working with governments:

1.) Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Caritas have shipped and distributed the almost 5,000 metric tons of food donated to Kosovo by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and USAID.

2.) The Brother's Brother Foundation (BBF) has undertaken a project in conjunction with the USIA Kosovo Library Revitalization Project in Pristina to reconstruct information resources in the province. BBF has sent its first shipment of books to Kosovo to address severely neglected libraries where books are outdated and in poor condition. The shipment is a mixture of books from pre-primary storybooks, preteen literature, and high school and college textbooks.

3.) Czech NGOs are working with the Czech government to bring in building supplies to Kosovo. All brick and tile factories, as well as wood mills, were destroyed forcing most NGOs to bring in their own building supplies.

Examples of NGOs working with private companies:

1.) In addition to working with the World Food Program and the local Mother Theresa Society (MTS), CARE is working with a private Zimbabwe-based firm, Mine-Tech, which de-mines the CARE's AOR. Mine-Tech's services were paid for by private U.S. donors. Mine-Tech, which has four teams of de-miners, is also training 15 Kosovars in de-mining.

2.) The Salvation Army is contracting with local manufacturers for 2,000 stoves that will be distributed to Kosovar families. The stoves are used not only for cooking, but also for heating rooms.

3.)According to David Aaron, an official from the U.S. Department of Commerce, American private companies may begin working with NGOs to rebuild roads and bridges, move into the cell phone market, and purify polluted water sources. American companies may also work with NGOs in agriculture and food processing and refurbishing Kosovo's zinc and lead mines.

4.)The American Refugee Committee has a staff of medical professionals in Kosovo who are working not only with local doctors and nurses, but also with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, which has sent a team of five doctors, two nurses, and one administrator to both Albania and Kosovo under ARC's coordination.

Examples of NGOs working with other NGOs, charities, and local groups:

1.) Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frantieres—MSF) is working directly with local medical staff, school teachers, and counselors throughout Kosovo. In Gjakova, MSF is training teachers to recognize and deal with children suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other war-related mental health problems. In Prizren, MSF is running an intensive training program for local counselors in the hope of rooting mental health facilities in Kosovo. In Pec and Pristina, MSF is working with local health workers to rebuild hospitals that were damaged during the war.

2.) International Medical Corps is working to recruit local health care providers for 80 primary health care facilities across Kosovo.

3.) American Friends Service Committee has been supporting local groups in the former Yugoslavia for several years, including Motrat Qiriazi-Kosovo, Women in Black, and the Center for Nonviolent Conflict Resolution-Belgrade.

4.) Save the Children is providing material to reconstruct and renovate 30 schools in Decan municipality and is working with the International Red Cross, the Dutch medical NGO MEMISA, and the local Mother Theresa Society to distribute medical supplies to a maternity ward in Gjakova.

5.) The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) is working in Mitrovica and Orahovac to winterize and weatherproof houses. UMCOR is also coordinating food security efforts for ACT (Action by Churches Together) through food distribution and agricultural recovery. This includes distributing family food parcels and other food items and providing seeds, agricultural equipment and training for local communities and technicians in techniques to ensure food security.

As long-term reconstruction projects in Kosovo take shape, it is NGOs that will be bear the brunt of responsibility for rebuilding, training media personnel, and guiding nascent institutions. But unlike in Bosnia, which is still wholly dependent on foreign assistance, the NGOs in Kosovo are attempting to partner with private corporations and local civic groups so their work will be more sustainable in the long run. While the results may not turn out to be as idealistic as Annan's blueprint would hope, the walls separating NGOs, governments, private enterprise, and indigenous civic groups are being broken down.

Stacy Sullivan covered the Balkans for two years for Newsweek magazine and, most recently, has written about Kosovo for The New York Times Magazine and The New Republic.