Pakistan assures US of revising guidelines for INGOs

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has assured the United States that it is ready to revise its recently announced guidelines for governing International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) which many have been termed very restrictive.
The US maintains that these INGOs are involved in ‘important work’ and Pakistan should ‘facilitate’ their work.
Pakistan further re-assured that guidelines by the government will be ‘reviewed’ and ‘implemented’ only after consultations were held with all ‘stakeholders’.
“The prime minister’s agreement in his meeting with President Obama to revise the highly restrictive regulations governing the INGOs is wise. INGOs support democracy and are allies, not adversaries, of the elected government,” a member from this community told The News.
US President Barack Obama in his meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday at the Oval Office raised the issue of the policy guidelines of the Nawaz Sharif government where the Interior Ministry had recently issued guidelines for governing INGOs. The INGOs inside Pakistan have told the Nawaz Sharif government that they have no issue with following these guidelines as long as there was a level playing field.
Heather Macey, country coordinator at Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF), had earlier told the media that the PHF was never consulted by the government at any time when the new policy was being formulated. She said that the INGOs are organisations “independent from political, economic, military or other objectives”.
Obama specifically touched upon this policy and told the prime minister that Pakistan’s policy guidelines governing INGOs should be ‘transparent’ and ‘consistent’ with international norms so as to facilitate the ‘important work’ of these organisations.
Both Nawaz and Obama agreed that INGOs and civil society groups can contribute towards the promotion of Pakistan’s national development goals. The issue of the INGOs were included in the joint statement after the meeting of the two leaders by the Foreign Office.
The joint statement pointed out that, “Leaders recognised the importance of civil society to the fundamental health and stability of all democratic societies.
INGOs and civil society groups can contribute towards the promotion of Pakistan’s national development goals and can complement the work of the government to address the needs of the underprivileged populations, promote human rights and strengthen democratic governance.
The prime minister mentioned that recently issued policy guidelines were intended by the Government of Pakistan to facilitate the functioning of INGOs, and further stated that these guidelines will be reviewed and implemented in consultation with all stakeholders”.
Controversy first erupted in summer this year when the authorities sealed the offices in the federal capital of INGO Save the Children.
Save the Children was previously accused of being used by the CIA which hired Dr Shakeel Afridi, a Pakistani national, to track down Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
This move saw a furious reaction from the US where some reports even talked about Washington threatening to cut off all economic aid if Save the Children was not re-opened.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Finance Ministry also prevailed upon the prime minister that this was no empty threat.
The prime minister is expected to now instruct his minister for interior, who is also in Washington, to take up this matter on his return.