Senior fellow Owen Barder is quoted in the Guardian about NGOs and the future of development.
John Hilary, executive director of War on Want, the anti-poverty group, is highly critical of this focus. "Far too many NGOs have lost sight of the long-term, transformative goals of international development, and are instead following a donor-led agenda of aid and service delivery," he said. "British NGOs are especially guilty of this – often highly professional and efficient, but lacking the political drive that should be the lifeblood of the sector. If we are to play our proper role in civil society, NGOs need to learn from grassroots movements and embrace a far more radical vision of change."
Hilary belongs to a group called the progressive development forum, which seeks to reframe the debate away from aid, charity and philanthropy towards one of global justice and shifting the discourse towards structural causes of poverty. At a meeting of the forum in July, attended by 50 senior figures from a wide range of NGOs – among them the World Development Movement and Jubilee Debt Campaign – and trade unions, many of the concerns raised were similar to those voiced by Banks and Hulme.
The meeting laid bare a faultline among NGOs on the state of the development debate. Several participants said they did not want to be involved in further alliances with the larger aid agencies that are mounting their own campaign on food, aid and hunger, linked with the UK government, in the runup to next year's G8.
"There was a strong feeling that we should cease to be so British and 'polite', and instead be more willing to enter into open criticism of NGOs and to challenge those that are beyond the pale in their distortion of the agenda, particularly agencies such as Save the Children that are now reviving unacceptable imagery of the south in their communications," said a report by the forum from the July meeting.
The UK hunger summit at Downing Street at the weekend, attended by NGOs, politicians and the private sector, crystallised the difference of approach. On one side of the divide are Save the Children and the advocacy group One, which pushed hard for the summit. They urged target commitments to reduce hunger and malnutrition and would argue the summit was a success.
But those demanding a more fundamental rethink on development would say the summit tinkered around the edges. Owen Barder, senior fellow and director for Europe at the Centre for Global Development, wrote: "The discussion in 2013 should be much more about the responsibility of G8 countries to improve their own policies – and this summit on malnutrition unfortunately did not start that conversation as it needs to continue. The risk is that the G8 will think that they can address these issues by earmarking some of their aid programmes and they will not feel under pressure to make the systemic changes which only they can make."
With the focus on the UK as it takes over the G8 next year from the US, and the discussions on hunger and nutrition set to continue, this faultline among British NGOs can be expected to deepen.