NGO Monitor Analysis (Vol. 1 No. 3) 11 February 2003

Advocacy Project and Grassroots International

Introduction and Mission Statement of the Advocacy Project

Their directors are professionals with experience in international NGOs and governmental organizations. Kevin Murray, for example, worked with Oxfam America before becoming Executive Director of Grassroots International (GRI). Jock Covey served on the Middle East desk in the US State Department and as deputy High Representative in Bosnia with the UN. Lucy Nusseibeh founded and directs MEND (the Middle East Center for Non Violence and Democracy). Since 1998, they have worked directly with over twenty campaigns around the world and developed positive reputations on US campuses and in the not-for-profit sector.

This organization is active in many different areas, but in this analysis, we will restrict the focus to Advocacy Net's activities in what they label their "Palestine under Occupation" section.

In explaining their goals, the leaders of this organization declare;

we try to help our partners use information... by visiting our website, reading our newsletter, or hearing about us from others... the AP website has been designed to serve as a general clearing house for information on the campaigns we work with

• Working in a country that is recovering from war or gross human rights violations
• Working for human rights or social justice
• An organization strongly recommended by a respected NGO, donor or friend of the Advocacy Project
• Advocating an issue of universal significance. We will only support a campaign that has an impact that goes beyond its immediate community, or at least lessons to teach other advocates in other countries. This is common to all of the campaigns we have supported: trafficking of women, impunity, refugee return in Bosnia, the role of civil society in peace-building etc.
• Campaigns largely bypassed or ignored by aid donors

Introduction and Mission statement of Grassroots International

Its mission statement reads;

Grassroots International promotes global justice through partnerships with social change organizations. We work to advance political, economic and social rights and support development alternatives through grantmaking, education and advocacy… In addition to direct grantmaking, we do advocacy and public education on behalf of our partners.

The Hidden Political Agenda

Over the past year, the Advocacy Project has profiled civil society in several countries that have either emerged from wars or are still in crisis. They have included Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia, and Guatemala. In each country we found community activists who were rising to the challenge and providing essential support for a fearful, damaged population.

Nothing prepared us for what we saw in Palestine

An article published on AP's web site, http://advocacynet.autoupdate.com/news_view/news_162.html, reveals even more of their political agenda.

But from the first day of this uprising, when Israelis killed four unarmed Palestinian protesters, the Israeli response has been completely disproportionate to whatever threat exists. The strategy of closure - cutting off Palestinian communities - is by definition indiscriminate. It is a vengeful act, aimed at crushing the spirit of the Palestinian people. It is also guaranteed to provoke desperate acts of retaliation.

If there is terrorism, it certainly comes from both sides.

The AP website goes on to explain how;

The delegation tried to visit all of the Palestinian projects that receive support from Grassroots International

Moreover, the website makes use of references and quotes from known anti-Israel academics, describing 'Bantusian areas', with no attempt to balance these claims or place them in their political and ideological perspective. One example is the article 'Palestinian Civil Society under siege, the Challenge of Agricultural Development', found at http://advocacynet.autoupdate.com/news_view/news_173.html. A footnote 'explains' why 8% of the Palestinian population is dependent on economic aid;

economic enclavization describes a process of growing economic separation or partition or bifurcation that strikingly parallels its political counterpart, Bantustanization.

To the organization's credit, they also sharply criticize the Palestine Authority, in OTR Palestine, Volume 15, Issue 2, http://advocacynet.autoupdate.com/news_view/news_163.html. (Ironically, in this piece, they quote Edward Said questioning whether NGOs had become a goal in themselves, as opposed to engaging in what their mission statements advocate.) Their 'Palestine' homepage, http://www.grassrootsonline.org/pal_main.html, states;

Community and non-governmental organizations in Palestine face a Herculean task -- to build a civil and democratic society within a population that is on the one hand besieged by an occupier and on the other governed by a regime that is authoritarian and often corrupt.

Funding

These organizations may be surprised at the political advocacy of their beneficiaries and the extent to which the funders themselves have strayed from their own mission statements by providing this support for tendentious demonization of Israel. The International Coalition of Voluntary Agencies, for example, seeks to;

ensure involved and informed NGO networks and facilitates a real 'policy to implementation' partnership between NGOs and international agencies. ICVA facilitates NGO advocacy in the main international body for humanitarian coordination, the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee, and UNHCR's Standing and Executive Committees.

ICVA's main objectives are as follows: To act as a catalyst and tool for the accurate, timely, and effective exchange of information

The Ministry of Development Cooperation of the Dutch Government, UNICEF and Amnesty International also have similar objectives. The Arigatou Foundation describes its purpose "to spread the charity and mercy of our Great Leader, the late Mitsu Miyamoto, all over the world, and to pray for the safe and sound development of children--for those suffering, and for the souls of those who have died." The Arigatou Foundation, which means "thank you' in English, and exists to pursue utopian aims, would no doubt be concerned if it knew that AP and Grassroots International were engaging in political issues beyond their mission statement.

Conclusion

Where the daily attacks against Israeli civilians and the suicide bombings that have killed or maimed thousands, Jews and Arabs, over the past two years are mentioned, Israel's pre-emptive and defensive measures are categorized as "vengeful acts, inviting retaliation." The issues are far more complex , and if members of these organizations and their sources of funding wish to avoid being dismissed as political and ideological factors, they must ensure that such behavior is halted. This is the only way that the NGO sector itself can become more accountable and truer to its aims.