NGOs are a “far cry” from the organic, democratic organisations society needs to make the calls that anti-racist movements must, Amnesty International UK’s racial justice director told an event today.
Speaking on a pre-recorded panel entitled ‘Reclaiming Anti-racism’ which was scheduled to be streamed as part of today’s BAME Online conference, Ilyas Nagdee, who is also the co-author of the book Race to the Bottom: Reclaiming Antiracism, said that despite their best intentions, NGOs were failing at challenging racist government policies.
“NGOs are far cries from the organic, democratic organisations that we need to build up to confront the government,” he said. “They are at best a way to ameliorate the worst excesses of government policy, but not actually challenge them despite their best intentions.”
Nagdee said that NGOs were restricted in their ability to achieve impact by various limitations – “legal limitations enforced through regulatory bodies, fundraising limitations enforced by funders, reputational limitations enforced by increasingly hostile press against organisations in this sector”.
He said: “By bringing activists off the street and into advocacy roles, that ties them down within the structures of funding conditions, Charity Commission regulations, charity laws, and reproduces a division of organising work that is shaped more by the dictats of corporate management than movement development.
“By making [NGOs] accountable to funders and patrons over the communities they seek to serve, these organisations end up forming a layer of professional activists who are sealed from their popular base.”
Nagdee said that because of this, NGOs could not be left play a leading role in the anti-racism fight for too long. “NGOs should provide back-up support rather than being seen as the voice of the people,” he said.
He acknowledged that he was making his comments as “someone who works in an NGO and has worked in NGOs before”.
Martha Awojobi, chief executive of the non-profit JMB Consultancy and who chaired the session, added that one of her frustrations about the charity sector was how sector professionals had modified their language to that of “radical activism”, but carried on practising equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Awojobi has previously been reported as describing such strategies as a waste of money.
“So many organisations just say ‘we’re decolonising’ without actually understanding what that means, thinking of themselves as part of a global political struggle,” she said.