Most
people in the world probably haven’t noticed it, but Navi Pillay, the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, raised the alarm
about an international campaign to curtail human rights and
non-government organisations. A 25 April press release from the UN News
Service quoting her worries was headlined, “Restrictions on NGOs
worldwide undermining human rights, says UN senior official”.
When
it comes to specifics, however, things seem not quite so alarming. The
alleged “restrictions” are not really “worldwide”, but, according to the
press release, involve just six countries: Algeria, Egypt, Zimbabwe,
Cambodia, Israel and Venezuela. I don’t know anything about the
situation of NGOs in Algeria, Egypt, Zimbabwe or Israel. But I do know a
little about them in Cambodia and Venezuela, and that knowledge makes
Ms. Pillay’s comments seem more than a little misleading.
I
agree with Ms. Pillay that a “dynamic and autonomous civil society” is
desirable, and that it is also desirable “that NGOs are able to function
properly”. However, that begs the question of what “proper functioning”
of NGOs consists of. Ms. Pillay and the UN News Service seem to operate
on the assumption that any NGO is whatever it says it is, and therefore
there is no need to distinguish between good NGO behaviour and bad NGO
behaviour; all NGOs are inherently necessary to a healthy civil society.
This is rather simplistic.
In
Cambodia there are something like 3000 NGOs. Some of them carry out
very worthwhile civic projects with full transparency and accounting for
funds received and expended. Others seem to focus their poverty
reduction efforts on the NGO’s officers and friends, and have financial
records that are murky at best. Still others act more like an opposition
political party, offering comments and criticisms on many different
aspects of government action and policy (at least one “human rights” NGO
later transformed itself into a political party). Some or most have
traditionally, or by regulation, been exempted from various taxes, a
fact that gives them an advantage if they engage in activities that
compete with private business. And some, regardless of whether they are
involved in commercial activities, are not really NGOs at all, because
they are directly or indirectly government-funded: their funds come from
foreign governments.
How
many of the 3000 NGOs fall into any category is anyone’s guess. There
is no way at present for anyone to know how many nominal NGOs are
actually businesses in disguise. This is one thing that would be dealt
with by the draft NGO law, on which the government has been working for
almost nine years. In its latest, fourth draft, the law says that NGOs
cannot conduct “activity to generate profits for sharing among their
members”.
The
UN press release does not inform readers that only a minority of
Cambodian NGOs have vocally opposed the idea of having any legislation
whatsoever to regulate NGOs. Ironically, these are often the same NGOs
that preach to the government and society about the importance of “the
rule of law”; their first rule is that they should be above the law.
Ms.
Pillay also did not mention that the government has done its utmost to
accommodate legitimate concerns of NGOs, which is one of the reasons the
law is now in its fourth draft. Nor did she show any awareness of the
widely reported remarks last December by Prime Minister Hun Sen, when he
said that the government is prepared to continue consulting with NGOs
until 2014 if necessary in order to work out a mutually acceptable draft
law. If this is part of an international campaign, it is an exceedingly
lackadaisical one.
In
fact, the UN press release quotes Ms. Pillay as mentioning only one
specific about the Cambodian draft law — and that remark is seriously
misleading. The release says that the draft law “would allow the
Government to close down NGOs if their activities are deemed to harm
national unity, culture and customs without giving them the right to
appeal”.
The
press release misrepresents the draft law in at least three ways.
First, Article 17, the only part of the law on which the press release
could be based, does not apply to NGOs in general, but only to
international NGOs.
Second,
the law does not allow the government to “close down NGOs”; the idea
that the Cambodian government could close down an international NGO is
absurd on the face of it. What the draft law says is that the government
may cancel its memorandum of understanding with an international NGO if
the latter’s activities “jeopardize peace, stability and public order
or harm the national security, national unity, culture, customs and
traditions” of Cambodia. Ms. Pillay ought to be familiar with this
content, since it comes from her office’s unofficial translation of the
draft law.
Third,
the law neither grants nor denies judicial appeal against cancellation
of an MoU. It could not do so because MoUs are a broad category of
agreements that can be quite varied in their legal status. Whether or
not an MoU is enforceable in national and/or international courts
depends on its subject and what the MoU itself says.
According
to the UN press release, Ms. Pillay also criticised the Venezuelan
Congress for passing a law that “imposes restrictions on foreign
funding” of NGOs. This is not directly relevant to the Cambodian draft
law, which does not contain such a restriction, but it is worth
mentioning for what it shows about Ms. Pillay’s inability to see
anything more than the label an NGO places on itself.
In
Venezuela, foreign-funded NGOs aided and participated in the April 2002
coup that overthrew the elected President Hugo Chavez, before a popular
uprising restored him to office. Moreover, after the failed coup, the
so-called National Endowment for Democracy (funded by the US government)
continued supplying funds to NGO coup supporters for their later
unsuccessful campaign to recall Chavez from office. To cite just one of
many examples from a lengthy article in the 13 August 2004 Los Angeles Times:
“The
NED also has given money to a conservative think tank known as CEDICE
to help it draft ‘a viable [opposition] agenda.’ Rocío Guijarro, the
group’s general manager, signed the coup decree that abolished
Venezuela’s Constitution, Supreme Court and National Assembly. Several
members of CEDICE’s project advisory committee attended [coup
‘president’] Carmona’s swearing-in.”
Anyone,
including NGOs, in the United States who accepted Venezuelan or other
foreign funds in order to organise a campaign to impeach the US
president (let alone to carry out a coup) would be jailed immediately
for failure to register as a “foreign agent”. Strangely, however, Ms.
Pillay does not cite this longstanding US law as an example of
“worldwide undermining” of NGOs and human rights. Could it be that the
UN human rights representative is operating on a double standard?
Allen Myers
02 May 2012