Article, Neutrality Paradox and Global South

Continuing PSYDEH’s multi-year involvement in USA-based GlobalGiving’s Neutrality Paradox initiative, PSYDEH was invited to write an article on the neutrality paradox and the global south for Alliance Magazine.

The article, titled “Managing Neutrality Paradox Dilemmas by Confronting Their Sources”, authored by PSYDEH’s Mahathi Kumar, discusses the need for and ways in which philanthropic platforms can support their nonprofit partners, specifically in the global south, to prevent these organizations from becoming involved in dilemmas in the context of the Neutrality Paradox. As Mahathi writes,

“Platforms can and should proactively work with nonprofit partners to lean into and work within their realpolitik with an eye to sustainable-impact focused, capacity-building and resource sharing. For example, they can implement programs and structures that help nonprofits avoid situations inviting Neutrality Paradox dilemmas in the first place. And doing so might even help platforms rightly evolve from not just offering equal access but equitable access to resources.”

In October 2019, PSYDEH was among four non-profits from around the world, the only one from Latin America, invited by US-based GlobalGiving (GG) to convene in Washington, DC, USA, with 20 others from the philanthropy sector to explore what GG calls its “Neutrality Paradox” initiative with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Neutrality Paradox, Rachel Smith, Executive Director of GlobalGiving UK, writes in her ethics of technology essay, is where “[d]espite the unique value of technology to provide open, democratic spaces online, digital platforms are powered by organizations that need to take responsibility for how their technology is used. This means that platforms necessarily have to take a stance [on dilemmas]—departing from a position of neutrality…These platforms are [then] forced to publicly justify their responses to [these] dilemmas, often under scrutiny, whilst also trying to maintain a balance of trust and transparency with the public… [W]e are calling this problem the Neutrality Paradox.”