Maintaining the Impartiality of Non-Governmental Organizations

This weekend’s post isn’t going to be much of a reflection. Everything that needed to be said on the alien topic was more or less covered in class in Friday. So instead, I’ll address an interesting story I happened across today.

According to Strategypage, an Italian NGO worker in Sri Lanka has quit the organization to fight for the Tamil Tigers. This came as a surprise to me, since the worker was not a native of the region and seemed to have little stake in the battle there. Additionally, NGOs, especially those affiliated with the U.N., pride themselves on their neutrality, and specifically recruit members from neutral countries. Why would a person from a well-off Western country go off to join a third-world guerilla war? Could it be that the kind of person who is drawn to NGO work can be more susceptible to propaganda from one side? It’s not that I’m suggesting that possibility, but certainly we don’t see this kind of ideological pitfall amongst those who remain ambivalent towards this or any such situation. It is the quality of a person who would willingly leave the comfort of their home to help ease a situation abroad that could fuel their decision to take sides once they see a hint of polarity.

And yet, it is precisely a lack of that quality which explains the inability of the United States to consolidate a working hegemony in worldwide affairs. Theodore Roosevelt once lamented that the United States “lacked the stomach for an empire”. In order to gain the high ground in world affairs, you sometimes must take heavy losses in order to assert your strength. The United States has always had a problem taking heavy losses. Even during World Wars I and II, American casualty rates lagged far behind those of Russia, Germany, and China. The greatest problem with America’s military today is its inability to withstand losses. The average American is not in tune with the norms of warfare, due mainly to the fact that war has never been a norm in the region. That, along with the comfortable lifestyle afforded by being the world’s wealthiest nation, creates a very infertile ground for breeding soldiers, especially given that a good portion of the army’s current ranks have joined mainly for education and financial benefits. Without an army that can rely on the zeal of the individual soldier, the United States cannot effectively wage a protracted offensive war.

Getting back to my original topic of NGOs, I was reminded of the rescue in early July of Ingrid Betancourt and fourteen others from FARC by the Colombian military. In this instance, the symbol of the International Red Cross was used to fool the captors into allowing the hostages to be taken by them. Since this event, a number of questions have been brought up regarding the trustworthiness of those under the Red Cross banner. It is illegal under international law to falsely use the markings of such an organization for military purposes, and this breach of the law, whether it was justified or not, puts at risk the trust afforded to these groups. When the objectivity and legitimacy of NGOs is put at risk, they lose their ability to function effectively, and their own members may be put at risk.