By: Adel al-Salwi
Translated by: Fuad Rajih

SANA'A, Feb. 20 (Saba)- The number of non-governmental organizations working in Yemen in political, human rights, cultural and social fields increased during last three years.

According to the most recent statistics, more than 5000 civil organizations in the country rely on collecting donations to carry out charitable and anti-bad costumes activities and the projects of combating chewing qat and corruption.

Sociology Professor at Sana'a University Abdul Hakim Saeed al-Shrjabi who conducted a study on the role of the non-governmental organizations in strengthening political and economic progress, said that the activities of the 5000 non-governmental organizations officially announced during last ten years were focused only on the issuing and distributing their statements to papers as way to prove their existence in the society.

However, only 1000 of these organizations have practical activities in areas such as marketing human rights and democracy mottos and charities.

Puppet bodies

The emergence of these organizations in Yemen is considered by evaluations of observes as a healthy phenomenon for promoting the multiparty and political process and stimulating the non-governmental work for achieving public interests, but their roles restrict serving their goals, so their entities have lacked the supposed presence at the political and social scene even most of them are showing mere Puppet actions aiming at attaining some possible funds they may receive from donor states and bodies.

The Yemeni researcher Khadija al-Moayad who works for a coordination office of an International donor organizations working in Yemen said that many non-governmental organizations in the country seek to get aids from regional and international donor organizations to finance some activities that usually linked with the nature of their trends.

Al-Moayad added those organizations need to have much presence at field, pointing in most cases, their requests for getting aids are to set up personal websites or to have equipments such as office requirements and computer sets.

Due to the fact that NGOs never receive any kind of support from the government, they became nominal entities of an unusual political and social openness on the general scene in Yemen since 1990, but they don't have any real affects on identifying the directions of this openness.

Deputy Minister of Planning and International Cooperation for studies and economic predictions affairs Mohammed al-Haweri said the non-governmental organizations in Yemen don't receive official aids due to most of them suffer from chronic weakness and having no presence at field.

However, al-Haweri noted that the government intends to help those organizations to be able to play vital roles in various developmental and human rights domains, affirming that the partnership between the government and NGO is a part of the Yemen's reforms being prepared to achieve over next three years.

Conditional support of international donors

During last five years, many regional and international donor countries and funds decided to dedicate a part of their aids to Yemen for the non-governmental organizations in the country.

For example, the European Union appropriated €3 million out of its total aids to Yemen for NGOs and also Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany allocated some of their aids for NGOs. This European behavior encouraged many NGOs in Yemen to seek to connect with the donors' missions in the country for presenting various projects need the donors aids.

The academic Jamal Abdul Salam, who conducted a research on the blocks the organizations face in Yemen, said some of the organizations have already received financial support form donor bodies and states, and the support was either upon the organizations' requests or by initiatives by the donors themselves.

The US embassy in Sana'a gave about $ 12,000 for the National Organization for Defending Human Rights (Hood) to create its website and many other organizations received such support on conditions that the aids to be used for financing real activities deserve supporting.

Although the number of NGOs is increasing, but they must be under legal accountability, particularly after finding some organizations use the multiparty openness for individual purposes.

In other words, some of NGOs deceive the donors and people for getting personal financial profits in the name of charitable organizations and activities.

For example, in early 2008, the security services arrested a representative of a NGO for deceiving people in the name of charitable organizations. His money proceeds were of contributions offered willingly by a number of landmine victims after he persuaded them that an international donors would provide assistances to them.