News: Pakistani Government Closes 27 NGOs

(Financial Times)

Pakistan has cracked down recently on international and domestic NGOs. Some of the 27 NGOs that were shut down include Marie Stopes, one of the few organizations in Pakistan promoting family planning, as well as other disaster and famine relief NGOs. This follows after another crackdown on NGOs in 2015, where all international organizations were forced to re-register and some were shut down without explanation.

US News reports that "Talal Chaudhry, Pakistan's Minister of State for Interior Affairs, told Reuters the reason for shutting down the NGOs was because they were doing work in Pakistan "which is beyond their mandate and for which they have no legal justification". (Source) 

The situation in Pakistan, worsened by a power vacuum in the government being filled by the military, is an example of how NGOs are often at the mercy of their host nation. Some questions to consider:

What can NGOs do if they want to continue their work?
If, as Pakistan claims, some NGOs are not being responsible with their money, what effect might that have on NGOs doing real work? 
What, if any, international protections should be in place to protect organizations against chaotic or unfair governmental restrictions?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Russia's NGO Suppression

Image
The suppression of NGO activity is not a novel concept. There are multiple ways that this can occur, from requiring the NGO's funds be kept in a government bank to making the act of registering NGO's extremely difficult. Russia in particular has control of NGO funds - as the president of the country, Putin, claims, "Not a single state that respects itself [allows overseas funding of NGO's], and we won’t allow it either". There are a few possible explanations for Russia's political opposition to NGO's. First off, Russia's government has authoritarian traits, often covertly carrying out brazen attacks on unfriendly politicians (Boris Nemstov, an unlucky opposition leader and critic of Putin, died after getting shot near the Red Square, one of the Federation's largest and busiest tourist attractions - while the killers haven't been caught, the investigation is personally being handled by the Russian government. It doesn't take a genius to add
Read more

Example of a Letter to the UN

Here's an example of a letter to the UN. Link Full text below!  I write to you in my capacity as President of the Council of Ministers of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP), and submit herewith the conclusions of the ninth Special Meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Organization on the situation in Guinea-Bissau, held today in Lisbon, I must recall the special interest of the Community in this issue, as Guinea-Bissau is one of its members, and as such, CPLP maintains an inclusive approach and reiterates its total availability and interest in being part of the solution to the crisis in Guinea-Bissau, in close cooperation with the United Nations, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as you will be able to verify in the conclusions below.  The international community strongly condemned the coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau from the very beginning, demanding the restoration of the constitutional order and th
Read more

Clarifications and more!

Hello NGOs! I hope all you're doing to prepare for conference is going well. I've received a couple of similar questions over email and I wanted to answer them here so everyone will be on the same page: Power-points during individual committee presentations - While this is not required, you have the option of doing so, and it will not help or hurt any evaluation of your presentations. However, please note that they should be short; going over 5 minutes will not be possible, and you should have plenty to talk about regarding your NGO, its abilities, and its relation to   the topic. If you so choose to make a powerpoint presentation, have it ready by the first committee session and email it to me (ksingh@bmun.org) For those of you who have not turned in position papers yet, please note that the deadline to turn in papers and still be eligible for any committee award is February 12th. We look forward to reading them! If you feel strongly about wanting to present during th
Read more