Kendra Pierre-Louis is a Justmeans staff writer with an interest in creating healthier, more sustainable society. She's particularly interested in the intersection of business, sustainability and economics. How can we structure an economic system that allows business to behave better? She has a M.A. in Sustainable Development from the SIT Graduate Institute and a B.A. in Economics from Cornell Uni...
Spoiling the Soup: The Limits of NGOs in Sustainable Development
Nestled squarely in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Cambodia is best known as a haven for backpackers, the beauty of Angkor Wat, and the brutal totalitarian regime of the Khmer Rouge which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. But, as a friend, who recently spent time working with organizations in Cambodia, jokes, as a nation Cambodia should be better known for NGO's. This relatively small country with a population of roughly 15 million people has over 200 International NGO's, 400 local NGOs and nearly 600 associations registered with the government of Cambodia working to make Cambodia 'better'. Many of these organizations have overlapping interests and goals which actually work towards inhibiting sustainable development instead of benefitting it.
The presence of NGO's, especially the number of international NGO's, exploded in the beginning of the 1990's after the Paris Peace Accord Agreement, signed by the Cambodian leaders in 1991NGO's flooded to fill the void left behind by decades of war and bad governance.
The problem?
Nearly twenty years after their introduction, Cambodia is as dependent, if not more so, on NGO support and it's the sort of dependency that is self-perpetuating. Their presence has resulted in the absence of a collective voice, fragmentation and duplication of NGO projects, as well as inhibiting an NGO's own ability to assess the efficacy of their own projects. As my friend pointed out, if my NGO gives a farmer a chicken, and another NGO gives a farmer a cow it's hard to determine if their improvement in well-being is due to my chicken, the other NGO's cow, or the fact that their child is now being fed two meals a day at the local NGO funded school.
In addition, because NGO's are taking on the role of many government functions - from road building to education - there's little push to hold the government accountable. It is, in essence, the dilemma of too many cooks in the kitchen.
This isn't to say that NGO's shouldn't operate in Cambodia. But that it's important to check to make sure that as workers we're doing more good than harm.
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