Finally, the NGO Bill is now a Law: The faceless NGO should now get over it and comply (Part 2)
By Malith Alier, Juba, South Sudan
February 23, 2016 (SSB) —- It has become the habit by foreign missions to attack or interfere in the affairs of this nation using the cover of UN, NGO and covertly using other mechanisms. We all remember the march 29, 2014 when the USA and many other western missions ganged up to condemn the country for exposing UNMISS arms scandal.
It was good that the ministry of foreign affairs acted in time to remind the said diplomatic missions of the United Nations Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 particularly the communication part of it. So far that didn’t settle things there.
The NGOs are classified into International and national. You’ll often find them abbreviated NGO 1 and NNGO 2. Sometimes you’ll find INGO meaning International Nongovernmental Organisation. NPA or Norwegian People’s Aid and the famous CEPO or Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation are International and National organisations respectively.
Ironically, even CEPO cried foul against the bill. This attitude of the NGO spectrums combined contributed to unnecessary delay of the passage of the law to control them.
The contribution of the NGOs is both negative and positive defending on which side one stands. The negative side is what contributes to restriction and sometimes expulsion of certain NGOs which deviate from their core functions they came over for. In countries like Sudan the NGOs and their lobby know better that they can’t joke around with authorities.
The Bashir government expelled numerous NGOs even some UN agencies since taking reign in that country. This is in contrast with South Sudan – a country bedevilled with conflict and relief innuendo. The country’s relief environment is relaxed since operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) in the nineties. This might have contributed to abuse and exploitation in one way or another.
The NGO pretext may be a front by powerful countries to advance their interest in South Sudan. We have no illusion that the foreign intelligence agents do not intermingle in the NGO midst. Espionage is real. Therefore, this country may get profiled and destabilised in the long run.
We have enough crises and do not want to compromise farther. The NGOs have had helped millions of people then and now but this should not continue in unregulated environment. It is a fact that NGOs are instrumental in health, education, social welfare, environment and sanitation but nothing justifies operation in a vacuum.
The magnified corruption in this country is not solely concentrated in government, it is also found in NGOs. The concentrated NGO offices in Juba practice nepotism, regionalism and cronyism. This is the case with employment practices where people from certain regions dominate as if they are the only over qualified compared to other regions. They have created syndicates to control employment offers for their own good.
Even these syndicates extend to other parts of the country, their repugnant human resource practices where people are handpicked and posted to other regions outside Equatoria where Juba is located. This is mainly a problem of human resource officers in Juba in collusion with NGOs proprietors.
In the past before, CPA, NGOs brought the entire workforce from East Africa down to the cleaner and the watchman. These days South Sudanese NGO bosses employ relatives down to cleaner and watchman. This invokes the saying that the more things change the more they stay the same. We thought that change happened when the East Africans were stopped however, South Sudanese took over with the same behaviour.
Relief has both advantages and disadvantages. We know that when someone somewhere is giving something they expect something in return. Aid and donations from governments have strings attached. Even loans that are given by IMF or World Bank have strings attached. They powerful countries expect the recipients to do a b c d of their bidding.
Giving relief food is what is keeping countries from producing their own food. A culture of dependency develops. The people in UNMISS camp are comfortable with relief food and have no incentive to come out and produce their own food. UNMISS does a lot of other things but what the campers do is just eat and sleep in the green and blue tents. The claim for insecurity is false alarm in order to get free food in the camps dubbed protection of civilian sites (POCs).
There, Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) provides free medicines; World Food Programme (WFP) provides free food through another middle organisation called Help from Above (HFA). this works well to make the protection seekers lazy. Children born and grew up there will be more lazy in the future. They would have not known that man earns living from his own sweat. What will their parents tell them?
There is good news for those who worry so much about the NGO Act. Be advised that it is not thorns and rocks. They have a relief in laxity of law enforcement. This country is well known for passing laws for enforcement when Jesus comes. There are good legislations that lay dormant in the ministry of justice such as anti-corruption Act, SPLA Act and Pension Act just to cite a few.
The NGO bill was long overdue. No country in the region lacks NGO law except the young country of ours. The fact that we are in war and in dire need of relief assistance should not be obstacle for NGO to bring to light its operations. As much as the NGOs are coming to assist the country, they also need to be advised when where and how to operate in the country.
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