Maputo — One of Mozambique's two human rights NGOs, the Human Rights and Development Association (DHD), is on the verge of collapse, judging from a detailed report in Thursday's issue of the independent newsheet "Vertical".
The DHD phones have been cut for failure to pay the bills, the organisation's staff have not been paid since October, the last two reports it should have published have not seen the light of day, and donors are no longer willing to pour money into it.
DHD was born in 1996, and was obviously a rival to the more radical Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH). From 1999 to 2001 it was funded by Nordic countries - it received 315,000 US dollars from Denmark and 300,000 from Norway. But these donors were not impressed by DHD's work, and did not renew the funding.
According to "Vertical"'s sources, other donors would only put up money, if there were changes in the organisation's leadership. They wanted the sacking of Executive Director Artemisa Franco, and of Administrative Director Sebastiao Cossa (the two people who signed DHD cheques).
DHD is committed to producing annual reports on the human rights situation in Mozambique. But the reports on 2001 and 2002 have yet to appear.
After four months without receiving any payment from DHD, the telecommunications company, TDM, cut the lines in October.
The phone bill then stood at over 21.5 million meticais (about 900 dollars).
As for rent - DHD operates from a flat owned by Artemisa Franco herself. DHD paid her rent of 750 dollars a month (at the current rates for rented property in Maputo, it is clear that DHD could have obtained somewhere considerably cheaper).
"Vertical" says that in 2000 the donors provided 30,000 dollars for DHD to buy a four wheel drive vehicle. The car was bought, but is not yet in circulation, apparently because DHD has not yet completed all the necessary paperwork. (However, DHD officers say the car is not in use because all members of the DHD management have their own cars and so do not need it). Neither the Norwegian nor the Danish embassies wished to go into detail about the reason for not renewing their funding. A spokesman for the Norwegian embassy told the paper "the results achieved were not those expected".
The Danish embassy suggested that "Vertical" ask DHD itself for a copy of the auditors' comments on the organisation's projects. But DHD did not provide the paper with this document, despite promises from Sebastiao Cossa.
But he did provide two other reports from independent auditors. One, from December 2000, made the damning remarks "We did not receive a reply to our request for confirmation of the amounts donated by Denmark, and there is no satisfactory auditing method we could adopt to confirm whether all the funds sent were properly registered".
Cossa conformed the dire financial straits of DHD, but downplayed donor criticism. "The donors aren't financing us now", he said, "because the project was only envisaged as lasting for three years".
As for DHD not paying its staff, he said that their contracts had been terminated. "Since we have not yet arranged funds for our institutional development, we preferred the workers to stay at home", he said. "As soon as money appears, they will be called".
He said the missing reports had not appeared for lack of money to publish them. Cossa claimed "the new donor (whom he did not name) has approved publication of the first report, and also the production of the second".
But Artemisa Franco gave "Vertical" a different version of events. She accused DHD workers of bad faith, and said "The report has not been published, because there were people who were paid to work on drawing it up but who presented nothing".
So other people were drafted in to write the report, and DHD was now awaiting money to publish it.
Franco denied that there had been any ruinous mismanagement of DHD. The Danish and Norwegian financing ended in September 2001, she said, and at the end of that year the staff were informed that work would stop until new funding appeared.
Franco claimed the problems reported by "Vertical"'s sources were "a game of interests intended to divide the organisation".
