Christopher Harris
Open Democracy -14 November 2013
The next generation of foundations in the Global South
will likely be the vanguard of experimentation and learning. A look across the
current funding landscape for human rights and justice in the Global South
suggests reason for both disappointment and for optimism. For the sake of this
review, I put aside official government aid—there is plenty there to
discuss—and only look at the smaller world of private philanthropic giving.
Most past criticisms of
foundation support for human rights and justice are still relevant. These
critiques—apart from the very real problem of simply not enough money—include concern
over weak funder strategies, timidity, short attention span, evaluation fetish,
poor or no accountability and the absence of centres of research and learning
committed to funding rights and justice.
Most funders who express concern about poverty,
injustice and the abuse of human rights still employ strategies that that can
be described as ‘charity’—funding the provision of services to reduce suffering
or an immediate injustice. Although these are important if you are the victim,
these strategies are silent on the causes
of injustice, and leave them untouched. As a result, charitable approaches
rarely deal with the frequently invisible structural sources of injustice, be
they legal, economic, political or cultural.
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