NGOs and Human Rights: Sources of Justice and Democracy.

• Author: van Tuijl, Peter

The United Nations-based system of universal human rights is one of the major achievements of this century Codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it provides a normative framework as well as a source of inspiration for achieving justice and protecting the weak and vulnerable. In this article, I define justice as treating people and populations fairly and allowing individuals to participate in society according to their abilities.

Globalization increases the sources of injustice that are beyond the scope of national systems of justice. Today, forces that are geographically and institutionally distant from the scene of the action may influence individuals and communities. Multinational corporations and the Bretton Woods institutions--the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund--have a major impact on the lives of millions, but there are few local or decentralized institutional opportunities for recourse against their actions. The political space for governments is equally affected by international forces, which may have an impact on how governments behave domestically.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have begun to fill some of these widening institutional and geographical gaps for people or communities who want to exercise their guaranteed rights. Particularly during the last 25 years, NGOs have contributed to international and national discourse on issues of global scope, such as the eradication of poverty and the promotion of gender equality, peace, sustainable development and human rights. Most NGOs no longer work alone, but rather in networks that transfer information and other resources across borders. In this article, I explore the extent to which the gradually increasing density of NGO networks and intensifying degree of NGO advocacy can be seen as a nascent organizational articulation of a global human rights enforcement mechanism. Such a response would answer the traditional critique that the U.N. human rights principles lack sufficient organized enforcement mechanisms. The question is whether this anticipates a more institutionalized role for NGOs in emerging systems of global governance.

The study of NGOs and how their networks might be organized to enforce human rights leads to a qualitative discussion of the relationships among these organizations. This article explores the distinctive relationships among NGOs--as well as the relationship between NGOs and nation-states. It examines how effective they are in promoting human rights and to what level of accountability they are subject. I argue that if they wish to aspire to a more institutionalized position within the human rights system, NGOs need to further develop the quality of their networks to become innovative sources of democracy as well as legitimate and effective sources of universal human rights and international justice.

NGOs AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE GLOBAL REALM

Nongovernmental organizations have grown remarkably in variety and number in the past 25 years. Though estimations differ, the NGOs listed in such resources as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Directory of NGOs, the United Nation Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report and research based on the Yearbook of International Associations all indicate a significant expansion of the NGO sector. The UNDP report of 1993 cites 50,000 NGOs worldwide. Between 1980 and 1990, the OECD reported an increase from 1,600 to 2,500 organizations in its 24 member countries.(1) It is safe to assume that tens of thousands of NGOs worldwide are currently covering a multitude of concerns and working either at or across the local, national or international levels. However, the distribution of these groups throughout the world is not equal.

When writing about NGOs and human rights in the global realm, one should recognize that conceptual or analytical shortcuts are sometimes needed. Conceptual difficulties emerge when one accounts for the academic and political debate surrounding terms like "NGOs" and "NGO advocacy" "civil society," "globalization" and "global governance."

In my discussion, I will use Anna Vakil's definition of NGOs as "self-governing, private, not-for-profit organizations that are geared toward improving the quality of life of disadvantaged people."(2) They are neither part of government nor controlled by a public body.(3) As such, they are elements of civil society, which is "a space or arena between households and the state which affords possibilities of concerted action and social self-organization."(4)

Globalization and global governance are equally broad notions. Globalization's impact is uneven and needs to be qualified in accordance with specific circumstances, such as the perceived erosion of the power of nation-states. Taking this as a given political reality, I endorse a definition of globalization or global governance as "efforts to bring more orderly and reliable responses to social and political issues that go beyond capacities of states to address individually."(5)

I will discuss human rights in terms of the full scope of economic, social and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights.(6) Distinguishing between the two sets of rights violates the reality of NGO work; on the operational level, NGOs are as involved in providing access to opportunities for physical and economic advancement as they are in providing opportunities for defining and exercising civil liberties. Although individual NGOs frequently have a particular mission that is more closely related to one of the two categories of rights, they have confirmed and strengthened the commitment to the indivisibility and interdependence of human rights as a matter of principle. "One set of rights cannot be used to bargain for another"(7) was a chief element in the NGO contribution to the 1993 U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF NGOs TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF HUMAN RIGHTS

NGOs have played an important historical role in establishing and expanding the U.N. human rights system. The role of NGO "consultants" in the U.S. delegation to the U.N. founding conference in San Francisco in 1945 helped achieve the inclusion of human rights in the U.N. Charter.(8) Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, NGOs have consistently continued their efforts to strengthen the U.N. human rights system and have succeeded in influencing the formulation of different U.N. treaties and conventions, such as the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Often, NGOs have led the way in proposing new institutional arrangements in order to embody U.N. responses to human rights abuses. Their influence is visible in the creation of such mechanisms as the U.N. expert body to examine disappearances, the working group on arbitrary detention, the establishment of Special Rapporteurs--there are now Special Rapporteurs for nine different categories of universal human rights(9)--to conduct expert investigations and, of course, the creation of the position of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

NGOs support of the development of the U.N. system of human rights can be summarized by three functions: standard-setting, monitoring and implementation. These functions of NGOs are currently expanding from a U.N. perception to a focus of NGOs which includes a broader range of international organisations and the transnational private sector. Perhaps most importantly, NGOs have collected the information necessary to reveal the truth about human rights conditions in

the most remote or politically oppressed corners of the world. Many cases of human rights violations fall between the cracks of local, national and international systems of governance and justice; NGOs try to compensate for these gaps by invoking international human rights standards.

In recent years NGOs have taken on similar functions with respect to other international organizations. The creation of the World Bank's Inspection Panel in September 1993 is a significant example of a new mechanism created to investigate complaints made by people affected by World Bank-financed projects who allege that the bank has violated its own policies and procedures.(10) NGOs pressured the World Bank and its political constituency to establish the panel which has monitored the Bank during its first five years in existence.(11) The panel's mandate has clear inclusive human rights connotations, allowing it for participation and recourse for people affected by the World Bank's action or inaction. Furthermore, the mandate of the panel refers to social, economic and environmental standards. While still grounding their strategies in the imperative for action as provided by U.N. human rights principles, NGOs advocate for changes in situations where local and regional realities are connected to international policy and decisionmaking processes, whether it is a World Bank loan or the involvement of a multinational corporation in a developing country like that of Shell in Nigeria.

Increased interdependence has compelled NGOs to introduce human rights standards or call for their enforcement, even where there are no immediate organizational outlets to test them. Globalization has often induced governments who are eager to safeguard a World Bank loan or a large investment by a multinational company to violate basic freedoms, encroaching upon the political space of their own civil societies.

Such conflicts cause a struggle for political space within civil society. This space is the arena in which non-state actors may undertake initiatives independently, vis-a-vis the state.(12) While NGOs are not the only ones affected, they tend to be at the forefront of globalizing civil societies, and therefore at the center of these discussions. Today, NGOs can formulate an...