NGOs and the Rural Poverty

Non-Governmental Organisations have become the new hope of development cooperation. Criticism of official and multi-lateral development assistance is mounting. After more than four decades of international cooperation, there is more poverty in the Third World (with the exception of a few countries) than ever before. It has become clear that existing instruments cannot bring about change. Even the large donor organisations doubt their own ability to solve problems and find their doubts confirmed by internal evaluations. What led to this state of affairs, and is there reason to hope that the NGOs can do a better job? Development assistance started in 1949 with U.S. President Harry Truman’s famous point four program (named after point 4 of his inaugural speech in Congress on January 20, 1949) as a continuation of the Marshall Plan. The policy of containment of communism, which was originally restricted to Europe, thus became a global strategy. This origin was the reason that development assistance was geared from the beginning exclusively to governments, and not to social groups in the developing countries. The accusation that the U.S.A. as well as the other western donors were willing to provide development assistance to any government, even the most under democratic and corrupt one, as long as it was an ally against communism, was never dropped.