NGO Forum

By Mike Sandler, Huffington Post

For environmental groups, the biggest event of the decade will be the international climate change negotiations in Paris in December called COP-21. Enviro groups have been sending out emails, asking their members to sign petitions, and tweeting up a storm (pardon the pun): #ActinParis, #RoadthroughParis, #PathwaytoParis, and so many more. The world will be watching to see if countries reach an agreement or fail again as they did in Copenhagen six years ago.

Sakhalin Environment Watch, an NGO devoted to protecting the nature of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in Russia’s Far East, will try to overturn the decision of the Justice Ministry to add it to the list of “foreign agents,” the Interfax news agency reported Monday.

The organization was declared a “foreign agent” — a label with strong espionage connotations in Russia that is applied to organizations which receive funding from abroad and are engaged in loosely defined political activity — last Friday for receiving a grant from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, according to Interfax.

By SUMAIRA JAJJA (Dawn)

NON-governmental organisations (NGOs), said to be ‘partners in development’, have been active on many a social front. However, despite an active NGO presence in the country, not much has changed for the man on the street. The situation on ground remains in vivid contrast to the success stories that are generally seen in the annual reports that are peppered with the MDG buzzword.

Talking to Dawn, an NGO Project Manager said: “No one will say that their projects failed to deliver results. Go through any development sector organisation’s report, and there will be success stories but you won’t see a vast improvement in net results. The NGOs by their very nature are too small to cater to the needs of the masses.”

By KAVITA KISHORE

The Hindu

Recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) cancelled the registration of Greenpeace under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), leading to a debate on funding of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

For many NGOs in the city, the FCRA, combined with drying up of local funding, has meant that many projects have to be cancelled.

While they say that registration for the FCRA was easy a few years ago, it has now become a lot more stringent. “Often, the larger NGOs do not face a problem when it comes to funding, but smaller ones have an issue,” says V. Nagarani from HOPE Public Charitable Trust. The organisation received their FCRA certification five years ago, but not much funding has come in from foreign sources, she adds.