Linda Kim: Essay 3

The other side of the NGOs

Linda Sinah Kim

NGO (Non-Government Organization) seems to be a perfect place for the work, but just like all the other things, nothing can be perfect. If there is a good news, that can be a bad news, and if there is a bad news, it can also be a good news. And it is applied just into the NGOs. There is many advantages of the NGO, but this advantages can also turn into disadvantages.

 In NGO, unlike the things that’s shown, real situation is sometimes not going well. Because of the “pure” trait of the NGO, there are some things that we cannot understand. Sometimes, workers in the NGO even say they feel stuffiness of the system. Because I wanted to know more about the other part of the NGO, I had an imaginary interview with Mr.Shin who works at one NGO.

“Hello Mr. Shin, I am a high school student from Saemmul High school. Today, I want to talk about the irrationality of the NGO.” We talked about the reasons why the NGOs cannot be smooth all the time, and why they cannot say what’s right and what’s wrong.

NGOs don’t have a government, so they don’t have to care about the government. So it has an advantage that they can act just as they want, but it also has a disadvantage by this trait. They don’t have a government that takes care of the organization and keep them safe. But actually this trait also helps them to be safe sometimes.

For example, if one visits Somalia, maybe it might be even impossible to visit Somalia but any way, he/she will be gunned down by a pirate or kidnapped. But since the pirates know that the only people who can help them are the NGOs, they would rather protect the organizations.

It also become another problem. In our eyes, pirates are just villain! But helping this villain? And even being protected by villain? It might seem to be really weird to the others. Sometimes, there are even some news saying one NGO is the same side with the pirates.

Maybe some enthusiastic person might want to say the right thing to the villains. Some might not want to take care of the bad people who harassed many people. But it’s not something NGOs can do. They are the organization who cannot say there will be a terror even if they knew it before.

I was really shocked by this truth that some NGO’s keep the neutrality, so they cannot prevent the terror even if they know that the terror will happen. Actually, it is a real contradiction that the people who help the people by some terrors or wars cannot prevent it even if they know it.

 Nevertheless, I still want to go into the MSF (one of the NGOs) since even if I cannot protect the war, I can still help even if it is just a small hand. If the war or terror is something that’s keep happening in the world, I want to be a small help for the ones who get hurt from it.