Ver Angola

Society

NGOs apprehensive about dwindling international financial support

The program officer of the Angolan Institute of Electoral Systems and Democracy (IASED) said this Thursday that international financial support to national civil society organizations has been decreasing since 2008, jeopardizing their survival.

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"Financial spaces closed and civil society began to have many difficulties", said Onésimo Setucula, when participating this Thursday in a roundtable promoted by the Action for Rural Development and Environment (ADRA) on "Lessons from the General Elections of the 24th of August".

Speaking to the Lusa agency, Onésimo Setucula said that the lack of funding for civil society "neutral, organized, defender of human rights, good governance, democracy and free, fair and transparent elections" constitutes a global situation.

Onésimo Setucula stressed that it is in electoral years that organizations feel the greatest lack of this support due to the logistical burden with technical support material and deployment of observers and technical training for electoral civic education of citizens.

"The financing crisis of civil society is generic in all its programs and activities. Since 2009, there has been a gradual withdrawal of international organizations that supported civil society for issues of deepening democracy in Angola, especially civic organizations that had nothing to do with the label of political parties", he stressed.

According to the IASED official, between 2006 and 2008, organizations such as the National Democratic Institute for International Affair (NDI) of the United States of America substantially supported civic education and electoral information programs, trained organizations and took to the civil society leaders abroad, as international observers, both in Africa and in America, having ended their aid and programs in 2009 in Angola.

The Southern Africa Electoral Institute (IESA), based in Pretoria, South Africa, between 2005 and 2008, the year in which it ended its representation in Angola, also provided substantial support to non-governmental organizations in terms of training and institutionalization of civil society organizations in the sense of improving citizenship, elections, human rights and democracy.

"Only the Open Society, aka OSISA, continued to give its support, from 2002 to 2020/21, when it closed its offices in Angola", stressed Onésimo Setucula.

For the last elections, highlighted the IASED official, the organizations expected to receive support from the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), with the support of the US Government, "but unfortunately, the administrative bureaucracy of power in Angola did not this US aid to Angolan civil society is feasible".

"Having also succumbed to the systematic support of the International Republican Institute [IRI], which sought to provide all technical and financial support to civil society organizations, which was also vetoed to open an office in Luanda, having opened in South Africa, from where would give limited technical support to Angolan civil society," he said.

According to Onésimo Setucula, without government support, without State policy to ensure the role of Angolan civil society in deepening democracy in Angola, it is difficult for civil society to survive in the present scenario.

The official stressed that there is no program in Angola "conceived, discussed and approved by the State" to support civil society organizations, with "unclear criteria on access to funds made available to public utility organizations", whose access "still obeys the political-party nature".

"However, some good Samaritans appear here and there, from time to time, giving a few crumbs to the specific activities of civil society in the form of civic education, human rights, good governance and the deepening of democracy in Angola", highlighted Onésimo Setucula, referring to the help of some embassies present in Angola.

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