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Obstacles to progress

Distortions

In 2006, 45% of the aid program or $1.35 billion was available for tender to private
companies.GRM International Pty Ltd is an Australian company, until recently owned by

the Packer family, which received more than $1 billion in AUSAID contracts between
2001 and 2010.”
"Corporatisation" 389
AidWatch (November 2008)

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“ Today's multinational NGOs own investments, stocks, and real estate worth millions of

dollars. The largest of them employ thousands of workers and have branches across the
world. By the time WWF turned 50 in 2011, it was paying some 5,000 staff across more

than a hundred countries. Annual budgets reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars
– and each year expenses and revenues seem to rise. Amnesty International's 2010

global income exceeded US$260 million. That year the revenue of Save the Children USA
was more than US$540 million; even the small American branch of Greenpeace had a
budget of nearly US$28 million

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Increasingly, NGOs are dividing advocacy into projects with concrete and easily-

measurable outcomes in order to demonstrate 'returns on donations'. Needing to pay
salaries, rent and electricity bills, NGOs have centralized their management structures

and moved away from tactics that might threaten firms or governments or donors.”
"Not Just about the Money: Corporatization Is Weakening Activism and
Empowering Big Business." 390
Open Democracy (March 2014)

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Prolonging Conflict

“ In Sierra Leone, I realized that the rebel soldiers who had been hacking off people's
hands and feet, they actually could explain to me how to manipulate the aid

system....They explained to me that for 10 years, all those years they were fighting and
the West didn't want to hear about their war. It was only after they started to amputate
people, more people and more people, that the international community was taking

notice of their war.
Those simple rebel soldiers in Africa could explain to me how that aid system works.”

"The World's Humnitarian Aid Organizations May Do More Harm than Good, 391
Argues Linda Polman “ The Boston Globe.(September 2010)

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