Domestics Affairs

NGOs a bridge between govt and needy

By Jean Van Wetter (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-05 07:38

According to the recently released Second National Sampling Survey on Disability, there are 83 million physically challenged people in China, 75 percent of who live in rural areas.

Although the government and other organizations have made significant efforts to improve the social standing of physically challenged people, a large percentage of them, especially in rural areas, still don't have access to many of the services they need. For example, according to the survey, only one-third of those who need rehabilitation services and one-fifth of those who need devices have effective access to them. As a result, the average annual income of a physically challenged person is less than half the overall national average.

To improve this situation, the government has been working on new social policies. In fact, China was one of the first countries to ratify the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in June 2008. In the spirit of this convention, the government is considering allowing greater non-government organization (NGO) participation in policy formulation and service provisions.

The services provided by NGOs are complementary to those of government agencies. The government has the responsibility of enacting national regulations and service provision standards, and ensuring that at least the primary needs of the physically challenged are met, yet it cannot respond to the specific needs of every individual.

By working out bottom-up strategies, NGOs can provide more customized services. They can develop a higher degree of specialty for particular types of physical challenges, too, which government agencies may not be able to. NGOs can serve as a "laboratory", in which programs, strategies and approaches can be tried, tested and perfected. The government's administrative departments can then adopt the successful ones for wider implementation.

NGOs can encourage a more active participation of physically challenged people in a wider range of activities. The physically challenged are too often considered as people in need of assistance and not as active members of society.

A top-down service delivery approach neither encourages local initiatives nor empowers people to shoulder the responsibilities of changing their situation. NGOs, on the other hand, consider their beneficiaries as partners and encourage people's active participation in their own development. The beneficiaries are not mere statistics for the NGOs rather they are case studies we can learn from so we can serve others better and more effectively. This is the essence of NGO accountability.

NGO experience can help better monitor existing regulations and practices and the government should see the involvement of NGOs as directly helping its policy formulation process. In case decision-makers do not consult them, NGOs should be able to seek necessary changes in government policies.

A recurrent debate in the development sector is whether NGOs should focus on individualized services to help the most vulnerable sections of society or should they try to seek changes in government policies so that they can cover every vulnerable person.

The answer depends on the types and the capacities of NGOs. But I think NGOs should do both. Focused and specialized but small NGOs with no claim of impact on policies will always be necessary to provide services and support to the most vulnerable sections and respond to crises.

But special attention should be paid to the capacities and motivations of some of those small NGOs. After the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, we saw a multitude of good-hearted volunteers and NGOs willing to provide relief and support, but most of them had no specific skills to do so and little motivation to coordinate their efforts with others. That was somewhat counter-productive.

On the other hand, NGOs focusing almost exclusively on influencing policies do not always have the necessary credibility acquired through field experience and lose the humanitarian nature of their mandate, because the direct impact on final beneficiaries changes from being their main concern.

The author is country director of Handicap International China.