“Development NGOs
operating in Africa have inadvertently become part of the neo-liberal global
agenda, serving to undermine the battle for social justice and human rights in
much the same way as their missionary predecessors, argues a paper in the July
issue of International Affairs. The paper says
that the contribution of NGOs to relieving poverty is minimal, while they play
a "significant role" in undermining the struggle of African people to
emancipate themselves from economic, social and political oppression. In this
compromised position, NGOs face a stark choice: They can move into the
political domain and support social movements that seek to challenge a social
system that benefits a few and impoverishes the majority; or they can continue
unchanged and thus become complicit in a system that leaves the majority in
misery.”
Firoze
Manji (pictured left) will be participating in the 2014 Thinking
Africa colloquium on ‘NGOs and Social Justice in Africa’ where he will be
discussing the role of NGOs in furthering (or hampering) struggles for social
justice in Africa.
The original
article is available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.00267/abstract.
The summary
which appeared in Pambazuka is available here: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/media/9672.
More
information about the upcoming colloquium can be found here: http://www.ru.ac.za/thinkingafrica/latestnews/name,104671,en.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment