The Rana Plaza disaster and the complicit behavior of elite NGOs

Abstract

We do not know what NGOs do. Whoever works for NGOs, they are becoming rich. While NGOs receive money to help many victims, they distribute such fund only to two, three or five victims. Rest of the fund go to their pocket.

Dissent in Consensusland: An Agonistic Problematization of Multi-stakeholder Governance

“…The Accord is more complex but not less problematic, it is clearly a Western-led initiative driven by global unions and Western NGOs, which for 'pragmatic reasons' excludes government and local business representatives but also unions not affiliated with the global unions; on this basis, any claim that the Accord is representative of the stakeholders would be dubious (see also Alamgir and Banerjee 2019;Chowdhury 2017). Many local unions pragmatically or grudgingly partake even though they are concerned that the technical nature of the Accord takes away resources from the real struggle, i.e., securing the rights to organize.…”

“…The two patterns that were initially most striking were the competition between soft law standards (pattern 1 below) and the pressure-response relations between civil society actors and the Roundtable (pattern 5 below). Accounts from (2013) Alamgir and Banerjee (2019), Chowdhury (2017) and Ozkazanc-Pan (2018) the adversarial civil society actors in turn helped to reach a deeper understanding of pressure-response relations within the Roundtable (pattern 2 below) and pressure-response relations between civil society actors and states through the Roundtable (pattern 3 below). Finally, examining further the relations between the Roundtable and states led to finding out that there is both collaboration and competition between the Roundtable and the state of Indonesia (pattern 4 below).…”

“…Some of the NGOs see themselves as being able to pressure Accord firms through other forums and coalitions where the NGOs are also members (Lisa) but this does not extend to critique of the Accord itself. Instead critical civil society voices have come more from local unions and local labour activists in Bangladesh (Alamgir and Banerjee 2019;Chowdhury 2017), who have expressed concern in relation to: (1) the Accord's lack of long-term capacity building for local (under-resourced) unions, as the safety-focused Accord is felt to take away energy from local organizing and union struggles over wages (Chandni); (2) the bypassing of democratic institutions and questions of dependence and sovereignty (Akter 2017); (3) the dominance of elite Western NGOs and unions; (4) the (non) representation of local Bangladeshi unions; and (5) the silencing of women workers in the multi-stakeholder initiative (Alamgir and Alakavuklar 2018). Local actors and actors most focused on Bangladeshi rights are the ones who seem most concerned with the democracy deficit in these arrangements, whereas the elite Western civil society organizations and global unions show less concern in how they contribute to legitimizing non-state governance systems.…”

From Black Pain to Rhodes Must Fall: A Rejectionist Perspective

“…Stakeholder value creation can be defined as the societal and economic gains that firms distribute among their stakeholders (who are affected by or can affect focal firms) (Freeman 1984). Normatively, stakeholder scholars suggest that powerful actors distribute such values fairly to all stakeholders with some tradeoffs (Harrison et al 2010), although CMS scholars consistently show that such tradeoffs have little significance for marginalized groups (Khan et al 2007), and even bring them further misery (Chowdhury 2017(Chowdhury , 2019. This situation is perpetuated, enabling powerful actors to become more influential and to continue to dictate how marginalized groups should live their lives, thus restricting them from expressing their grievances against injustice (e.g., Ehrnström-Fuentes 2016).…”

The Expat Gap: Are Local‐Born Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries at a Disadvantage When Seeking Grant Funding?

“…Chowdhury's () qualitative study of disaster relief in Bangladesh finds that “elite NGOs” (defined as those founded by influential individuals with strong ties to donor agencies) receive the bulk of international aid flows, with smaller organizations either relegated to being subrecipients or left out altogether. Similarly, studies in Uganda suggest that grants are often allocated to recipient country NGOs based on donor habits and levels of familiarity, rather than merit (Burger and Owens ), and to subsidiaries or network partners of foreign NGOs (Fafchamps and Owens ).…”