Besides international law,
international organizations, or NGOs, function internationally beyond the reach
of the nation-state. From the standpoint of national sovereignty, the sheer
existence of the NGO as an institutional arrangement can be viewed as a potential
threat and thus smartly to be expunged. One strategy that a country’s
government bent on protecting national sovereignty could use to discredit NGOs is
to label them using the turbo-charged “T” word, even in the case of an NGO that
is oriented exclusively to providing humanitarian aid. By 2026, Israel had
decimated the infrastructure and buildings in its occupied Gaza strip, and
Russia had been bombing residential buildings in Kiev and other large cities in
Ukraine for four years, so it could not be said that humanitarian aid was not
needed in the world. Parts of Africa ravaged by draught and war, such as in Somalia,
were also in vital need of humanitarian aid. To discredit NGOs providing such
assistance, whether in terms of shelter, food, or medicine, meant being open to
the charge of callous disregard for the suffering of very large numbers of
people. The case of Gaza—in particular,
the position of the Trump administration on NGO’s being involved in the
reconstruction of the strip—demonstrates the harm that is involved in turning the
NGO institution-type into a controversial and even suspicious thing in order to
do the bidding of a belligerent ally while removing a potential external threat
to national sovereignty.
The full essay is at "Castigating NGO's."
