International non-governmental organisations have been urged to move away from Eurocentric interventions and address the structural drivers of poverty and inequality, in a new report.

The research, which was commissioned on behalf of the NGO membership body Bond, says there has been “less focus and thinking around the structural drivers of poverty and inequality” among INGOs, with many having adopted a “eurocentric” view of economic development.

“Such a Eurocentric view assumes that economic development was completely due to the ‘innate’ qualities of the Global North, meaning development is understood in isolation from global structures such as colonialism, imperialism and the slave trade,” it says.

The report analyses the websites of 122 Bond members and includes data from an online survey and interviews with Bond members.

It found that the way that INGOs are structured “remains firmly cemented in a Eurocentric approach to development”.

For example, the report’s analysis of organisations’ approach to livelihoods found that there was a major focus on training and skills. 

The researchers said this showed the focus “remains methodologically centred on improving the individual in the Global South, suggesting that the lack of access to livelihoods can be resolved by addressing an assumed ‘lack’ in Global South people themselves”.

The report says: “This is a distorted understanding of what drives underdevelopment and the role of global structures in this regard, and it suggests that many INGOs align with a ‘governing the poor’ approach, rather than shifting the economic processes and power structures that limit the growth of good jobs and produce unstable labour relations to begin with.”

The report argues that the sector’s value has been “more in the service of the dominant Eurocentric development model than towards advancing an alternative understanding of development or strengthening existing efforts to push for decolonisation”.

But the report says that in order to move away from this Eurocentric approach and closer to a decolonisation process, the way that development itself is conceived would need to be “fundamentally altered”.

It says: “Supporting political mobilisation that is calling for processes aligned with decolonisation is necessary to attempt to shift the balance of power away from global capital and other actors who benefit from a Eurocentric development project.”

The report adds that this is “not achievable through charity and philanthropy” and instead can only be accomplished by creating fissures for political mobilisation and social movements to gain strength.

At a macroeconomic level, this could involve INGOs lobbying for more policy space and fiscal capacity for actors in the Global South to function under fewer constraints, the report says.

“At the microeconomic level, it is crucial that INGOs should not become a replacement for the state, and thereby legitimise its withdrawal, but rather work to strengthen the actors that can negotiate and collectively bargain with the state and international institutions,” it says.

The report says this means structuring how INGOs function to meet the demands of social movements, rather than intervening on their own terms, which the report argues are “defined by Eurocentric frameworks”.

The report urges people working in INGOs to consider how their approach towards economic development fits within the framework outlined by the researchers and think about the extent to which their INGO is structured to support actors involved in social movements that align with a decolonised approach to economic development.

It also encourages INGO staff to consider if and how their organisation challenges underlying structural processes that create uneven development, poverty, dispossession and other problems relating to the unequal global economic system.

In a blog post, Sandra Martinsone, policy manager at Bond, said: “We hope this research will inspire rich discussions and reflections, and more importantly, inspire and guide change both within UK INGOs and beyond, as well as in the broader international development community of think tanks, academia, policymakers, donors and finance institutions. 

“The time for a clear-eyed debate is long overdue,” she said.