Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines

DEVELOPMENT: Leading Spanish Activist Hopes There Will Be No Need for NGOs

Tito Drago

MADRID, May 7 2004 (IPS) - ”Yes I wish NGOs would someday no longer exist,” says David Alvarez Rivas, the president of CONGDE, the platform of Spanish development NGOs. ”That would mean we had no raison d’etre, and that a radical change had occurred in the world.”

But the current state of things does not give room for much hope, at least in the near future, because transnational corporations and a handful of industrialised countries do not want to see any change in the dependence of the South, ”which is misnamed ‘developing’, because little to nothing is done for it to develop,” said Alvarez Rivas in an interview with IPS.

CONGDE, an umbrella created in 1988 by seven Spanish non-governmental organisations (NGOs), now links 400 groups and forms part of the European NGO platform.

IPS: To what extent can NGOs from Spain and other countries influence and promote development in the countries of the South?

DAR: NGOs in Spain only handle eight percent of the development aid funds allocated by the Spanish government to other countries, and even if they managed all of the aid, and the same was true in other developed countries, it would still be insufficient.

IPS: Why?

DAR: In first place because Spain, whose official development aid (ODA) is equivalent to 0.25 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is still far from reaching the industrialised world’s commitment (in the United Nations) to allocate 0.7 percent to ODA.

In second place, because 80 percent of what is currently earmarked in the budgets as ODA actually goes towards promoting trade, and to financing sales of Spanish products and services to countries of the South.

For that reason we have suggested to the new government (of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) that those funds should not depend on the Economy Ministry, but on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

IPS: If that change were to occur and was extended to other countries, would the NGOs have achieved their objective?

DAR: No, not at all. There is no doubt that it would represent a major stride forward, but there is a big difference between that and achieving our objective, which is to help countries of the South develop in a sustainable, just and equitable manner. That will not happen until things change in the industrialised North.

IPS: What has to change?

DAR: Dependence exists because the North wants it to exist, and because the countries that form part of this bloc merely pay lip service to free trade, while practicing inhumane protectionism, which is favoured by the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and other international bodies.

United Nations Development Programme reports show that the gaps and inequality are growing, rather than shrinking.

It is inconceivable, with a level of planetary wealth never before seen and with the degree of technological development achieved, especially in the North, for the South to be adrift, with thousands of children dying of hunger every day and with epidemics like AIDS, the fight against which should be at the core of cooperation and aid.

IPS: Is that something the governments should fix?

DAR: The governments have a responsibility, obviously. But civil society – in the broadest sense of the term – shares the responsibility.

There must be a change in attitude in the consumer market in the North, because three times the current global population could live on what is produced in the North alone.

We advocate responsible consumption, based on the three ‘R’s’: reduce, reuse and recycle.

There are ethical questions to consider, one example of which is the fact that we signed the Kyoto Protocol (on climate change), but continue to produce more and more greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile the big corporations only think about cutting costs and increasing the profit margin by transferring production to maquilas (tax-free plants that assemble foreign-made components for re-export) in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Consumers must always take a look at where the products we consume come from, what they are made of, and what information is provided by the company, and act in consequence.

IPS: Do you see a relationship between international terrorism and underdevelopment?

DAR: The breeding ground for terrorism is also largely the responsibility of the North, because it has failed to understand that fomenting development encourages non-violence.

In Spain, which until 1980 received aid from other countries, even Latin America, we are also responsible because unemployment, poverty and marginality are breeding grounds for ideologies that are partly fed by religions and partly by bitterness and resentment.

IPS: Terrorist religions, are you saying?

DAR: No, not at all, because terrorism is not a religion, nor is there any terrorist religion. There are fundamentalists in Islam, Christianity, Buddhism or any religion, but fundamentalism cannot be attributed to religions in general or to any religion in particular.

But, I insist, people must be offered alternatives, investment is necessary in the countries of the South as well as assistance so that people are educated from childhood and are exposed to different viewpoints, to keep resentment from taking hold. Because if people grow up seeing the North prosper at the expense of other nations, they may end up being drawn into terrorist groups.

IPS: Will the recent change of government in Spain favour development aid?

DAR: It is too soon to say, we have to wait. But there are promises that we have taken very seriously. For starters, we see as positive the change of disposition, and the fact that we will now be heard more than we were before. In the past we did not form part of the Council of Cooperation, due to in-depth disagreements with the former secretary of state for cooperation, Miguel Angel Cortez.

IPS: What countries do Spain’s NGOs focus on?

DAR: We are very concerned about sub-Saharan Africa, where the situation is terrible, although due to historic and cultural ties we have stronger relations with Latin America, which is targeted by most of our projects.

But we believe it is time for Spain’s development aid policy to focus on the countries with the lowest incomes and most pressing needs.