Prafu Bidwai

Human rights groups are understandably reluctant to use “results-based management”, but embracing this approach can boost their impact. Human rights organisations are often uncomfortable with the notion of results-based management (RBM), a management strategy that uses feedback loops to achieve its goals. RBM helps organisations map out processes and services to show how they contribute to outcomes, but rarely is this implemented effectively in the human rights world.

If Israeli human rights groups are labeled fronts for foreign interests due to their funding, what does that make Israel itself? A few weeks ago, Israelis across the political spectrum found rare unity in fury against a macabre cartoon posted on YouTube. The cartoon ticked all the boxes of viciously anti-Semitic propaganda, featuring a hook-nosed, avaricious Jew hungrily pocketing gold coins from a foreign paymaster and manipulating the media to besmirch his country’s patriots.

Is “Do-It-Yourself-Aid” the answer to funding rights work? Anne-Meike Fechter describes this model, its funding and related implications As Nora Lester Murad has recently argued, alternative models to international aid are much needed. Alongside debates on how things can be done differently within the NGO sector, and presenting models of good practice, there is a whole set of funding streams that tend to go unnoticed in both academic and policy debates.