Pakistan, Aug. 26 -- In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Sarah Bush and Jennifer Hadden announce "the end of the NGO age," arguing that civil society has lost the influence it gained in the post-Cold-War-era. According to them, the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Trump administration marked the symbolic end of this period. NGOs, they argue, have become superfluous-politically irrelevant-as "states have clawed back the power" they once ceded.
For states in the Global North, NGOs are no longer favourable, as many have become critical of the global system that produces poverty, climate catastrophe and inequality in various forms. In reality, the Trump administration promoted a more aggressiv...