Reporters Without Borders seems to have a geopolitical agenda

The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]

9. Allen Weinstein, quoted in David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September 1991, pp. 24-25.

Ignatius, David. "Openness Is the Secret to Democracy." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 Sep.-6 Oct. 1991, 24-25.

"[I]ntelligence collection ... needs to be strengthened, not cut. What may need abolishing is the covert action role that was awkwardly grafted onto the CIA's basic spying mission when the agency was created.... 'A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,' agrees [Allen] Weinstein [of the Center for Democracy]. The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection.... The sugar daddy of overt operations has been the National Endowment for Democracy.... Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspeakably covert -- dispensing money to anti-Communist forces behind the Iron Curtain.... Covert funding for these groups would have been the kiss of death, if discovered. Overt funding, it would seem, has been a kiss of life."
[CA/90s; Reform/CIA]