Non-Governmental Organizations and Development in Brazil under Dictatorship and Democracy

Abstract

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have, over the past two decades, come to be recognized as a significant force for development, not simply in terms of alleviating material poverty but also for promoting social justice and human rights. This is true all over the developing world, and nowhere more so than in Latin America, including Brazil. The term NGOs (or PVOs — Private Voluntary Organizations — in US terminology) embraces a wide variety of organizational forms, ranging from small grassroots community associations to intermediary bodies working with client groups, the Church, trade unions and comparable lobby organizations as well as large, international funding agencies. In the industrialized countries there are over 2000 NGOs involved with Third World development, concentrated overwhelmingly in Western Europe and North America. In the developing world NGOs are most concentrated in Asia (India has over 7000, for example) and in Latin America where they number several thousand, while in Africa NGOs are a more recent phenomenon (Schneider 1988). Brazil currently has well over a thousand (Landim 1987); in addition and most crucially, many European, US and some other overseas funding bodies are active in Brazil, sometimes operationally (implementing projects) but more commonly providing the bulk of financial resources necessary for NGOs there to carry on their work.