While meeting friends in Colombo during a recent visit to Sri Lanka, I overheard a telephone conversation that left me feeling distinctly uneasy. A few minutes earlier, our friend’s husband - Programme Manager for a leading Christian NGO and a Western National - had been complaining bitterly about the difficulties his organisation was having in gaining access to the Eastern Province. After taking the telephone call, his mood visibly changed - he rubbed his hands with barely concealed glee while declaring triumphantly that it "looks like we’re back in business". Apparently, the phone call had conveyed news of an upsurge in civil unrest in Mannar, a district his organisation had hitherto not been involved in. Facing the prospect of not being able to travel to the East, he clearly relished the news of a potentially new theatre in which to work.

Having taken a close interest in the ongoing debate relating to the role of NGOs in Sri Lanka (and more generally, in the global South), this incident reflected the obvious conflict of interests that lies at the heart of the matter – NGOs require conditions of human misery, whether induced by conflict or natural disaster, to justify their very existence. In the absence of such human suffering, such organisations would be redundant and their staff without employment. Although most INGOs and their apologists point to a self-professed desire to help others and a ‘not-for-profit’ culture as somehow setting them apart from everybody else, the INGO industry (for that is what it is) has clear parallels with many other industries. There is a well defined career path, stiff competition for the most lucrative jobs (always in developing countries) and the need for slick PR campaigns to tap into fiercely contested aid budgets. Universities in the West struggle to keep up with the demand for courses in Development studies, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. Armed with these degrees, a broadening pool of INGO workers flit from conflict zone to conflict zone, and in the process, hope to build an ever more impressive resume, with which to land a more lucrative post.

Sri Lanka must surely rate as the ultimate destination for the aspiring career INGO type. In addition to the professional kudos that comes with a stint in the ‘war-torn’ island, many INGO workers in Sri Lanka enjoy a lifestyle they could not dream of back in their home countries. Driving around in the latest editions of SUVs, provided with spacious accommodation in Colombo 7, and frequenting the swanky eateries that have mushroomed around the city in recent years, many are clearly living the high life. For those that actually leave their air-conditioned Colombo offices, it is true that conditions in the island’s North and East are challenging. But they are hardly Afghanistan or the Sudan. And unlike these other countries, the IDP camps and frontlines of the conflict in Sri Lanka are never more than a few hours’ drive away (at most) from some of Asia’s finest boutique hotels and resorts. It is no surprise that many of these luxury resorts are frequent haunts for INGO workers looking to relieve themselves of their US dollars and chill out on ‘weekend breaks.’

In the face of recent government-imposed restrictions on their work, it is remarkable how candidly foreign INGO workers in Sri Lanka speak about feeling ‘morally obliged’ to work in the island. Like the missionaries that preceded them, these do-gooders (and brown-skinned sahibs among them) clearly still carry a sense of the ‘white man’s burden’ in believing that the natives need to be saved from themselves. Such individuals should take closer note of the island’s history. Five centuries ago, the first Europeans arrived on the island with similar sentiments, and proceeded to wreak irreparable damage on Sri Lanka’s social fabric.

Sri Lanka is not some sub-Saharan basket case. It boasts of an educated, highly literate population, enjoying some of the best indices of human development per capita in the world. In many regards, its progressive health and social programmes continue to be studied as a model for much of the developing world. INGOs could come to Sri Lanka to learn from its achievements. Instead, these organizations take continual delight in castigating governments for their many alleged failings, all the while continuing to preach the neo-liberal mantra and hailing its underlying holy trinity of human rights, democracy and free markets.

It is ironic that many of these same international organizations continue to call for accountability and transparency in government and the public service. By constant insinuation, various reports and highly publicized declarations, the government is frequently decried to be inept, corrupt and not having the interests of its people at heart. The INGOs, on the other hand, are none of these. It is crucial to debunk such fanciful thinking. In fact, it is the INGOs that need to be held to account. Generally unelected, usually based in London, Seattle or New York, and totally unanswerable to the people on the ground they claim to be working for, these organizations have until recently enjoyed unparalleled autonomy to do as they please in Sri Lanka with scant oversight. Most receive funding from foreign governments and vested interest groups intent on promoting their own particular social, economic or political agendas. Unlike the INGOs, however, the Sri Lankan government is regularly held to account by the citizens of Sri Lanka via democratic elections that take place at national, provincial and local levels. Perhaps unfamiliar with the workings of parliamentary democracy, many INGOs issue absurd demands on a government that enjoys widespread popular support and must act in accordance with the mandate it has received from the electorate. Many INGOs are also clearly oblivious of the constraints of coalition politics, the product of an electoral system based on proportional representation, a system widely acknowledged as the most democratic and representative of minority interest groups.

Having encountered a wide range of staff attached to the INGOS working in Sri Lanka, I have been horrified at the all too frequent lack of familiarity most display with even the most basic aspects of the island’s history. There is usually also a complete failure to appreciate the complex traditional social structures and customs that have conferred a much higher level of resilience among most Sri Lankans than is found in Western societies today. Parachuted into the island fresh from a posting in Africa or straight out of university, most INGO workers have at most a cursory understanding of the complexities of the island’s political, economic and social challenges. Those with a pacifist bent choose to ignore the historical reality of the conflict’s trajectory over the past 3 decades in which the LTTE has used each previous ceasefire as an interlude with which to re-arm and tighten its grip on the civilians under its control, so that successive bouts of hostilities have been ever more destructive in terms of lives lost.

Several INGOs have also contributed to the erroneous perception that the conflict in Sri Lanka is a civil war between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils. Nothing could be more damaging or further from the truth than this over-simplistic dichotomization. Such a caricature ignores the fact that over 50% of the island’s Tamils live outside the North East – alongside their Sinhalese and Muslim neighbours – in peaceful, multiethnic communities. Yet, unable to differentiate between Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils, many of these Western do-gooders are effectively blinded to the interethnic harmony that characterises everyday life across much of the island. This is not surprising. Reluctant to ever ride in a public bus or eat amongst ordinary folk at a street-level kiosk, many of these NGO-warriors are woefully out of touch with grassroots Sri Lankan society, preferring to update themselves by exchanging views with like-minded colleagues over sushi or coffee in Colombo’s upmarket cafes. More worryingly, some INGOs have sought to give the LTTE equal status to the democratically elected government of Sri Lanka. In addition to conferring legitimacy on a group which has achieved its pre-eminence through ruthlessly eliminating rival Tamil groups, such a focus has contributed to the marginalization of other Tamil and minority voices. It has also fuelled suspicions among the Sinhalese majority that the INGOs are in cahoots with the largely pro-LTTE diaspora in the West, thereby further undermining their own botched attempts at peace-making.

So what exactly have the INGOs in Sri Lanka achieved? It is clearly unfair to tar all these organizations with the same brush – many groups such as Save the Children and the ICRC have a long history of providing exemplary service to the citizens of Sri Lanka. But in recent years, the burgeoning INGO industry in Sri Lanka has had its fair share of mediocrity. While many INGOs performed commendably following the tsunami, many others did not. With regards to the many organisations involved in providing development assistance in the Wanni and those outfits ostensibly leading the charge to defend human rights, the record is even worse. Little evidence has been found of any NGO-assisted development in the former LTTE-administered regions despite the vast sums of moneys earmarked for development projects on the ground. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that a considerable amount of NGO-sourced resources and materials were diverted to the LTTE. More disturbingly, INGOs working in the Wanni completely failed to speak out against forced conscription by the LTTE for several years, until such practices affected their own locally engaged staff. It seems incredible that these very same organizations now demand so arrogantly to be allowed back into these regions. It is as though they believe that their mere presence alone can alleviate human suffering. Given their previous impotence to make an iota of difference to the plight of the hapless civilians in the dwindling area under LTTE control, this is surely a case of delusional thinking.

Contrary to what many INGOs like to assert, Sri Lanka has a thriving civil society. One of Asia’s strongest Trade Union Movements has ensured that workers in Sri Lanka have better rights than workers in many Western Countries. A strong leftist movement also forced successive post-independence governments to develop and protect free education and health systems that still deliver results far in excess of the island’s GDP. Grassroots women’s organizations have fought to empower women and build on a Buddhist tradition of gender equality with the result that today, there is greater gender parity in Sri Lanka than in the United Kingdom, Switzerland or Australia, according to the World Economic Forum. Student groups and religious organizations also have a long history of humanitarian work, advocacy and grassroots activism. Of course, many of these collectivist peoples’ movements are often in direct competition with Western INGOs that espouse neo-liberal values and promote a culture of selfish individualism and happiness through consumption.