Palestine has been the recipient of unparalleled amounts of funding
by international donors. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA)
has received the lion's share of this external funding, but
significant amounts have also been earmarked towards civil society
promotion in the last fifteen years. The purpose of this article is
to briefly assess the impact of donors over civil society
promotion, and the lessons that could be learnt from past
experience to improve the interaction between donors and local
organizations.
Assessing the Development of Civil Society in the
1990s
The 1990s has seen a major and well-studied revival on a global
scale of the concept of civil society, as international concerns
began to focus on the democratic transformation of many polities.
In Palestine, the trajectory this concept took is highly
interesting because it reveals the influence of international
donors over Palestinian sociopolitical life in the last fifteen
years. The notion of "civil society" in the Palestinian context
first emerged in academic writings around 1990, and was
incorporated into the parlance of non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) actors around 1994,(1) namely, the period marked by the Oslo
Accords and the creation of the PNA. Expectations were high then
both in Palestine and elsewhere, about the positive role civil
society should play during these transitional stages.
Rema Hammami was the first to spot the tensions and the potential
risks behind widespread discourses about civil society in the
Palestinian context. The overuse of "civil society" by certain
actors (mostly from NGOs of the secular left factions) was hiding a
phenomenon of "professionalization of politics," whereby NGOs
gradually shifted from popular self-organization into a form of
elite work funded by foreign donors.(2) Put differently, many of
these popular grass-roots committees that were so essential to
political factionalism turned into professional client-oriented and
elitist development institutions during the Oslo years, thus
drifting away from playing a more direct political role.
It became a commonplace to say that there was a mushrooming of NGOs
during the Oslo years and that this proliferation corresponded with
the arising need for a vibrant civil society. Nevertheless, one
should examine the facts that lie behind some of the celebratory
statements regarding the triumph of NGOs and, in this respect, four
qualifications can be made about the overstated positive role of
NGOs and the expectations regarding civil society.
First, NGOs are not the equivalent of civil society, but only a
tiny portion of it - besides trade unions, youth clubs, religious
associations, charitable organizations and, for some, political
parties. Surely NGOs have become a very active sector of civil
society in the Palestinian territories but they only represent the
tip of the iceberg. (The same is also true of many "south"
countries.) Therefore, the substance of civil society, which
basically encompasses such elements as a venue for sociopolitical
participation or collective action, a privileged sphere independent
of direct state control, a bottom-up participation as opposed to
top-down imposition, etc., is common to many other types of
organizations.
Second, the most active NGOs are the ones that have the capacity to
address and adapt to the jargon and complex reporting techniques
required by most international donors. These more successful NGOs -
in terms of fund-raising - ran and do run the risk of gradually
losing touch with their own people, because they tend to adjust
more to the agendas of their donors, to whom they are accountable
for funding, rather than to focus on the population's real needs,
despite claims by NGOs to be grass-roots organizations.
Third, if many new civil society organizations were created during
the Oslo years, many also closed down or became inactive. It is
usually estimated that around 1,400 NGOs existed around 1993, but a
recent survey counted a little less than 1,000, with more than a
third of the organizations established after the coming of the
PNA.(3) This means there was a very significant turnover in the
composition of civil society organizations. Some of the older
organizations were either subsumed into the PNA (as in the case of
some of the NGOs closer to Fateh), while some others simply
disappeared. Again the ones able to emerge or to survive were most
likely the ones that had the possibility of access either to some
form of external funding, or to domestic political
sponsorship.
Fourth, the term "civil society" has become an identity marker of
Palestinian political life, and thereby expresses a different
content than the widely described effort to resist the state's sole
control over its population. This can be exemplified simply by the
fact that the denomination "civil society" - the Arabic "al-mujtama
al-madani"- is not used by all the sociopolitical actors. Many
prefer "al-mujtama' al-ahli" (civic society), while others have
recently suggested a new entry to the political vocabulary in the
occupied territories by juxtaposing "madani" (civil) to "jihad,"
understood broadly as "struggle" or "effort."(4) This rhetorical
diversity illustrates how various political factions differentiate
themselves around the concept of civil society: secular leftist
prefer the first version, while the mainstream nationalists and
relatively conservative charitable organizations stick to mujtama
al- ahli (this is, for example, the denomination chosen by the PNA
for its Ministry for NGO Affairs). Finally, some Islamic militants
prefer al-jihad al-madani (or civil struggle) to stress the fact
that hegemony over civil society's action should not be limited to
the secular leftists and mainstream nationalists. Therefore it can
be maintained that both the term "civil society" and its rhetoric
have become deeply entangled with the issue of political
factionalism inside the territories.
The Role of International Donors
The above-mentioned limitations demonstrate the gradual erosion
that has occurred in the meaning or the substance of civil society
in the occupied territories since the early 1990s. It is the
contention of this article that international donors have probably
played a catalytic role by accelerating or reinforcing some of the
trends described earlier, and that international civil society
promotion has not always acted in favor of the emergence of a
democratic polity. Let us now see how these donors have influenced
each of the processes described above.
1. NGOs are not equivalent to civil society. One can notice that
the global enthusiasm about and the over-expectation placed upon
civil society -in particular the NGOs - have often led to
disillusionment in the long term. It is not enough to promote
professional advocacy or development NGOs in order to foster civil
society, and even less to automatically achieve a democratic
system. International donors also need to work on profound and
long-lasting changes in political institutions and structures to
assure that a diversity of civil society actors are enabled to play
a potentially positive role towards the stability of democratic
governance.(5) In the Palestinian setting, this is manifested in
the abundance of advocacy institutions and programs funded by
donors. Though advocacy can be important at some point and for a
variety of reasons, there are also basic issues, like education,
access to health, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, etc.,
that must be covered and guaranteed for the majority of the
population. Priorities might have been misplaced by some
donors.
2. Accountability to external donors. International donors are
almost exclusively present in the central zones around Jerusalem
and Ramallah and, to a lesser extent, in Gaza City. The result is
that the local civil society organizations that are furthest
removed from these central zones encounter tremendous difficulty to
access donor funding, and this jeopardizes their survival.(6) The
consequence is a sort of internal hierarchy among local
organizations whereby the ones based in the central zones have
direct access to important funding and work, in turn, with smaller
local organizations. Even when serious efforts are made to reach
the peripheral and deprived zones, this is done through a form of
centralization, which generates a sort of clientelism between
larger professional NGOs and smaller organizations. Such an
approach favors a top-down interaction between donors and local
organizations at the expense of accountability to the local
population and bottom-up political participation.
3. High turnover and many new NGOs. Many donors ride the fashion
waves, like empowerment, awareness-raising, children's rights,
mobile clinics, or mental health, etc. This translates into the
emergence of a large number of new civil society organizations,
often with overlapping or similar activities, with the ensuing risk
of a good deal of duplication in project funding. A corollary of
the risk of fashion-oriented funding is that it goes to short-term
projects, making it difficult to obtain a long-lasting impact on
society. Therefore what donors promote is more a plurality in terms
of numbers rather than in terms of quality of work and a healthy
competition amongst civil society actors. Moreover, the creation of
many new professional NGOs, as a result of the large amounts of
money made available by donors, has contributed to the loss of the
voluntary spirit that was so characteristic of the mass-movement
organizations that arose around the late 1970s. Many NGOs are now
guided much more by market principles than by voluntary
participation in their activities.
4. "Civil society" as a political identity marker. Donors have
actively contributed to the promotion of a very limited version of
civil society. Such a version entails a more managerial
functionalist vision of civil society where NGOs are expected to
deliver services, to function as procedural support to complement
the role of the PNA, rather than being a creative venue to define
in a bottom-up manner initiatives that really respond to the needs
of the local constituencies.(7) As a consequence, organizations
that did not share the priorities or modalities requested by most
donors (e.g., success of the peace process, imposition of
normalization programs, fashionable topics, etc.) have distanced
themselves from the term "civil society," further highlighting its
function as an identity marker,8 instead of it being a substantive
concept that would federate collective efforts towards a more
democratic polity.
The Second Intifada as a Watershed
The second intifada has probably functioned as a cathartic moment
for civil society organizations. Intense criticism was being
leveled at the beginning of the second intifada against larger and
more successful NGOs for their failure to relate to the needs of
the population, and for responding instead to the shifting
priorities of international donors. Because of the hardship created
by the massive Israeli military reoccupation of the territories and
the destruction of the most vital Palestinian infrastructures, the
various NGO sectors reacted to the situation in different
fashions.
For the large professional and elite NGOs (largely those that were
historically linked with the leftist parties or the independent
ones), the second intifada was an opportunity to re-create more
direct links with the grass-root constituencies whom they had come
to consider over the Oslo years more as clients or, in some cases,
as a political réservoire, rather than as direct participants
in a mass movement. This is manifested in open calls by some NGO
leaders to repoliticize the work of these larger NGOs, and in the
advocation for a return to a message that speaks directly to the
Palestinian population instead of addressing donors'
agendas.(9)
For charitable organizations (very present in smaller communities,
refugee camps and rural areas), there was a sort of nahdhah or
renaissance of their activities. Because of the severe closures
imposed on the territories, Palestinians had to increasingly tap on
local resources. The privileged access and more popular legitimacy
that charitable organizations have with remote communities was a
good opportunity to offer the services and the support needed by
the local populations.
Finally, for Islamist caritative organizations (in particular Hamas
charitable organizations), the second intifada was another
important occasion to offer social services - described by many of
very good quality - to the more needy segments of society. Part of
the success of Hamas in the municipal elections of the spring of
2005 is undoubtedly linked to this service provision which goes
hand in hand with an ideological message that seems to resonate
with the local population, as well as to address their expectations
for effective changes against widespread corruption.
Conclusion: Looking Beyond the Term 'Civil Society'
In this context of continued and widespread hardship, it might seem
odd that many donors have kept pushing on the same civil society
button as in the 1990s. Although efforts were made to address the
emergency situation and to offer job-creation schemes, many donors
kept funding activities related to reform, good governance, and
empowerment. By doing so, they were working with the same
beneficiaries of the 1990s, namely a rather thin layer of
professional NGOs.
These organizations, however, are not the unique vectors and
promoters of civil society, although they are the ones that make
the most frequent use of the name and the rhetoric. It is therefore
a mistake to associate civil society only with them. Many others do
actually promote the substance of the concept of civil society, but
they achieve this using a different discourse and through different
programs. Most importantly, even if charitable organizations have
sometimes adopted a somewhat paternalistic mode of internal
governance, they can function as an important relay to convey
protests of sociopolitical nature to the PNA, and can also serve as
a cordon sanitaire against a further rise of Islamist
organizations.
Therefore donors should look beyond the pale and concentrate more
on the substance of civil society and not only on the name or the
rhetoric. It is counterproductive in the long run to work only with
professional organizations that have the capacity to adapt to the
technical requirements and finesse of big donors, because this
creates an island of elite organizations (if not personal empires
(10)) that gradually become undemocratic in their internal
functioning. An effort should be made by international donors to
consider more closely the variety and depth of Palestinian civil
society, even if they are charitable or religious associations -
religious by no means automatically signifying militant. They
should also give more serious attention to local ways of
collective-action organization, such as local self-help, different
forms of deliberation, balance between popular legitimacy and
technical expertise, rather than working quasi-exclusively with
self-proclaimed civil society champions.
Thus, donors could contribute to the fostering of a pluralism of
content rather than a mere pluralism of numbers within civil
society. By providing more long-term funding, and/or by helping to
put into place endowments for NGOs and other less visible civil
society organizations, (11) they could also play a role in
refocusing the work of civil society organizations towards
long-term programs and priorities in agreement with the most urgent
needs of the population.
(1) For a thorough analysis of the evolution of civil
society, see B. Challand (2005), The Power to Promote and to
Exclude: External Support for Palestinian Civil Society, PhD Diss.,
European University Institute, Florence.
(2) See R. Hammami (1995), "NGOs: The Professionalization of
Politics," Race & Class, 37 (2), 51-63.
(3)See e.g. MAS (2001), Ta'dâd al-munazhamât ghayr
al-hukumiah al-filasteeniah fil-dhifah al-gharbiyah wa qitta'
ghazza (Mapping of Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), MAS Report, Ramallah, p.
20.
(4) Mhd. I. Al-Madhoun (2004), "hal al-qiwa al-islamiyah 'ajizah
'an al-musharakah al-mujtama'iyah al-fa'alah?" ("Can Islamic Forces
Have an Effective Social Participation?"), al-Quads al-Arabi, July
27, 2004.
(5) This conclusion is reached not only in the Middle East. See O.
Encarnacion (2003), The Myth of Civil Society, (Palgrave
Macmillan), for similar conclusions about Spain and Brazil, or S.
Mendelson & J. Glenn (eds.), The Power and Limits of NGO: A
Critical Look at Building Democracy (Columbia University Press) for
Eastern European cases.
(6) Various interviews with smaller Palestinian NGOs based in
peripheral zones.
(7) See B. Challand (2005), Benevolent Actors? International Donors
and Civil Society Support for Palestinian NGOs. Paper presented at
the 6th Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, IUE,
Florence.
(8) An evidence of that is the fact that civil society is attacked
not only by mainstream nationalist and Islamist factions, but also
by some Palestinian radical left exponents criticizing the
conditions imposed by most donors. See, e.g., the writings of Adel
Samara.
(9) See S. Abdel Shafi (2004), Civil Society and Political Elites
in Palestine and the Role of International Donors: A Palestinian
View, EuroMeSCo Paper (33), 12ff.
(10) On that aspect, see the doctoral research of Caroline Abu-Sada
on agricultural NGOs (forthcoming, Sciences Po, Paris).
(11) Endowments would allow generating internal income and giving
more financial stability and space for autonomy to civil society
organizations.