Political risk as a concept was born in the corporate space, and mainstream characterisations still position it as principally a concern for international companies when they operate in challenging places or across jurisdictions. However, with appropriate contextualisation, the concept is just as relevant, if not more so, to NGOs, both I-NGOs and national ones based in complex environments.

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Companies go to challenging places in spite of the risks. In some ways NGOs go, or commence operations, because of the risks. Development, social justice and humanitarian needs tend to be more acute in contexts of weak governance, instability, social rivalries and conflict. NGOs are more exposed to political risk simply because risk is higher where their missions are more relevant.

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Second, unlike companies, whose main goal is legitimate profit, NGOs often need to challenge a socio-political status quo to be effective. A status quo that results in poverty, insecurity and injustice usually benefits certain powerful groups in a given socio-political system, and they have a vested interest in thwarting change and change actors. Thus, NGOs can face considerable resistance and even threats when trying to fulfil their missions.

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Finally, increasingly since the mid-2000s, governments with weak legitimacy have feared the potential political effects of civic mobilisation. There has been a global trend of clamping down on civil society space, including constraining or tightly controlling NGO formation, funding and operations. This has narrowed NGOs’ freedom to manoeuvre and has led to an increase in official interference, disinformation and even intimidation.

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Political risk, then, is highly relevant to NGOs. Harmattan Risk has worked with NGOs in the past and we hope to do so more. All of our services can be tailored to an NGO context. We understand that NGOs are non-profit organisations and hence are cost conscious. We take this into account in our fees for NGOs, and in addition we are open to discussing pro bono engagements.

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Our experience with NGOs includes threat / security risk assessments and security policy guidance, training in specific assessment methods, support for NGOs’ own assessments of fragile contexts and governance issues, and practical training in political risk intelligence and management.

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Harmattan has a one- to two-day pro bono, introductory course on political risk assessment and management for NGOs. It can be tailored for groups of representatives from different NGOs, in which case a strong element is sharing practical lessons from challenging contexts, or for one NGO, wherein the focus is more on enhancing practical assessment and planning skills in the organisation’s own context.

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Our occasional papers and articles with an NGO focus have been extracted and replicated on this page for easy reference.