Who does not support human rights… or dolphins?
1. NGOs need to be more honest about their long-term achievements and non-achievements. Are they advocating for (the needed) more systemic political changes?
Let us take international NGOs (INGOs)
2.The transparency of some of them has been assessed as worse than that of many a private sector company and certainly worse than the transparency of UN organizations. This calls for openly denouncing their failure to recognize the dire need (and the remaining obstacles they have not been able to surmount) to foster organization-wide human rights learning within; obviously, significant changes are needed here. A critical mass of such INGOs doing such an introspection to revision and remission themselves is indispensable. Why? Because no individual agency’s project or program on-its-own will achieve the ultimate realization of human rights (HR). Such an introspection is needed to shatter the myth of their long term contributions to development — and their alleged sense of superiority. Don’t we need to warn these INGOs against feeling great? In reality, they achieve little.* (Adapted from Transparency International)
*: One sign of ‘INGO madness’ is to, over the years, do the same thing and expect a different result. Why? Because the more things they purport to change, the more they remain… insane. (M. Fry and T. Lewis)
3. INGOs grab the moral attention of the liberal-minded in rich countries who feel compelled to support them. But, in fact, a good number of them are not-really-benevolent, detached and progressive INGOs. Their leadership tends to be oligarchic and personalized (few have elections for their leadership); Charismatic founders tend to dominate. Not all publish proper accounting statements. They are often far away from grassroots needs and preferences; they ‘impose themselves’. They continue to press for perceived-progressive normative aims, but often fail to respond to doubts about their legitimacy and accountability. In short, they suffer from a democratic deficit. They make public-good-claims, but use moralistic language. They are thus progressively becoming de-legitimized and are losing their veneer of anti-establishment appeal. They further often mirror World Bank prescriptions; for that, they can be categorized as servile. (L. D. Brown)
4. The question is: How neutral can an international organization remain in the face of gross HR abuses without running the risk of being accused of aiding and abetting these abuses? I would contend that every intervention such an organization carries out must be geared at actions that will improve the HR situation.
5. Not to be forgotten is the fact that the roles that INGOs and their local partner NGOs can play are different when they face the dichotomy between organizing (in terms of improving efficiency) and mobilizing –the latter really being the ultimate goal!**
**: Mobilizing (hardly what I’d say most large INGOs and their local partners are doing) means claim holders de-facto ending up confronting duty bearers (and/or well targeted strategic opponents) pertaining problems they have identified, with activists working directly with claim holders to take such action. Claim holders should, therefore, choose their strategic allies and enemies well. (Albino Gomez)
6. As you and I well know, a caveat is called for here: Some INGOs have adapted the human rights-based language, but have neither actually clarified what is rights-based about their efforts nor have they trained their own staff in using the HR framework.
7. Bottom line here, for the HR movement, INGOs being paralyzed or in limbo by their indecision to adopt and apply the HR framework is worse than them making the wrong decision, because then we know where to get at them.
The exceptions
8. In recent years, dozens of human rights-active NGOs across the globe have begun to proactively advocate for economic and social rights; this has led to a significant expansion of the human rights movement. Notwithstanding the advances in this movement, the Western liberal claim –that economic and social rights are inherently non-justiciable and therefore ineffective– has not completely subsided. Rather, this notion has stood as a central ideological barrier to embedding those very rights in national laws.
9. One avenue of work for NGOs –not necessarily the most important– thus is to embark in strengthening the legal enforcement of economic and social rights by going beyond national legal texts and mechanisms. The law is only the tip of a “social iceberg,” and the effectiveness of HR work depends upon a complex set of social relations and actions, as much as the formal provisions of international HR law itself.
10. NGOs embedded in social movements potentially have the power not only to promote the enactment and enforcement of international HR law, but also to influence the basic understanding of communities they work with in order to a) make particular legal instruments and judgments possible, and b) mobilize those communities to actively claim.***
***: Note here that even if economic and social rights are promoted through legal mechanisms, there is no reason to believe that they can be protected from the muddle of political, social, and cultural contention. Therein the role of these progressive NGOs. (D.P.L. Chong)
11. Finally, on another note, the role of progressive NGOs in preparing shadow (parallel) reports to international HR monitoring bodies on country progress towards the fulfillment of HR is another role not to be neglected and should certainly be taken advantage of.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org