Criticism
Russian criticism, Chechnya and Ingushetia Since the end of the 1990s, People in Need maintained several projects in Chechnya and Ingushetia. In 2005, the Russian Weekly Argumenty i Fakty named the organization – as well as other NGOs and the UN – supporters of Chechen separatists and terrorists PIN denied any involvement. In the same year Russia expelled the organization from working in the region. Two years later, in 2007, People in Need was allowed to come back and keep working in Chechnya and Ingushetia.
Cuban criticism, ECOSOC During a meeting of ECOSOC in 2006, the Cuban ambassador accused PIN of being financed by the US and conspiring against the government of Cuba and keeping in contact with Cuban emigrants who have a so-called terrorist past. After the vote, PIN was not recommended for consultative status with the ECOSOC.
Kosovo, South Ossetia PIN was moreover criticized by some Czech journalists for expressing too much political concern: after the Kosovo war, it supported Kosovar Albanians, but not the local Serbs. Similarly, after the South Ossetia war in 2008, relief from PIN was delivered only to Georgian civilians.
Government financing and dependence Another criticism in Czechia concerns the status of PIN as independent and non-governmental. As the revenues come mainly from governmental sources, both directly from the central government, or via communities, PIN's independence is questionable. However, this model is also common in other European NGOs such as Oxfam and Welthungerhilfe who respectively receive 40 and 60 percent of their funding from public sources.
Read more about this topic: People In Need (Czech Republic)
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he can divide.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)