[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are this has aroused your interest. This Reader is about HR and the UN system, about HR and NGOs and their neglect of addressing the underlying power issues. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
The human rights movement can no longer rely on the UN system
–To carry out development advocacy work and to secure funding, human rights NGOs depend on the international system, importantly on the UN.
1. For long, the UN system relied largely on the United States that, alone, contributed 25% of the UN’s total budget. But the United States is no longer meeting its obligations, leading the UN Secretary-General to announce in January 2026 that the organization faces the risk of ‘imminent financial collapse’. Some UN offices dedicated to human rights (HR) working in Africa, for example, have already cut their budgets by 40% and halved their support operations. International and local African NGOs have already begun to disappear. At the overall international level, the consequences are even worse. Half of Special Rapporteurs’ visits scheduled for 2026 have been canceled, and UN treaty body sessions have been called off. In the coming years, there will be fewer interactions between NGOs and member states at the UN. Some NGOs in Geneva are already seeing these risks and are calling for the preservation of a crumbling multilateralism.
2. But many NGOs, especially their leaders, tend to be conservative and risk-averse, which means there is an inbuilt tendency to act as late as possible and do as little as possible on structural determinants. That is supposed to be the best survival strategy for these organizations and the staff within them. That is why I believe all these organizations should periodically be broken up and reconstituted (i.e., revisioned and remissioned). (Mukesh Kapila) …and this is why, in 1968, Ivan Illich addressed young Americans traveling to volunteer in Mexico and suggested they would be better off working among the poor in their own country. “At least they can tell you to go to hell in a language you understand”.
3. However, the current situation is by no means a dead end. Some international NGOs are going it alone to strengthen HR and the rule of law at the national level; this/they will indirectly help reduce skepticism toward international institutions. The new reality we are heading towards is unknowable, but it is clear that we will need to defend the principles of solidarity, of South-South cooperation and of democracy more vigorously than ever. To face the challenges ahead, the future will require everyone’s deep commitment to international activism. (Jean-Claude Vignoli)
Crucially, institutions built to solve yesterday’s emergencies and problems cannot be reformed by the same logic that created them (Arusha Lal et al)
—Humanitarian aid is essential following systemic violence and displacement, but it cannot build fair and durable solutions on its own. (Maung Solaiman Shah)
4. The challenge we face, is not due to a shortage of ideas, but to the absence of a shared agenda to align proposals —one that speaks to political-must-priorities as much as to technical/managerial design issues. But we are flooded with spurious influences that push us towards mere institutional solutions when what is fundamentally needed is addressing the underlying political problems. In practice, this means designing reforms that may be unpopular, but can indeed be launched even when consensus fails.
5. For too long, decision-making power has been far removed from where accountability lies, from where the geopolitical interests of those who fund them lies, from where diplomatic leverage is applied. At the national level, conservative polarization of scientific research, democratic backsliding and HR violations have weakened trust between people and their governments. The meaningful inclusion of the ‘unpopular reforms’ mentioned above is a basic obligation in the HR framework and a precondition for truly equitable reforms.
6. Ultimately, the subordination of health, education, nutrition, housing… to short-term defense and to trade and foreign policy priorities necessitates a broader forum for rethinking and acting. Only then will reforms disconnected from the geopolitical forces that shape the current situation be rendered irrelevant –as they ought-to. The true test of reforms will not be whether they satisfy those who established the current system, but whether they serve those without whom the current system was designed. (A. Lal et al)
7. Some, among HR activists, do not mourn the loss of development aid, because it never addressed the central power imbalance issue, as it is invariably tied to conditions that external financers impose and control. Unfortunately, as activists, we have been fragmented, not being able to grow in collective power. We have thus just been playing into the hands of those who want to lock–in business as usual. (Stuart Gillespie)
8. As external financers, governments in the North are not charities acting on the whims of their leaders; they have a geopolitical agenda!* They allocate taxpayer funds to foreign aid —according to their perception of national interest. If self-respecting recipient nations do not want to dance to donor tunes, they must wean themselves off foreign development financing. (M. Kapila)
*: and so do philanthropies… Ponder: The core contradiction of philanthro-capitalism is the fact that endowments have been built by investing in corporations that make profits by extracting resources and wealth from the poorest countries. (S. Gillespie)
Bottom line
9. Progress does not happen by chance, but by change –all done by people, sometimes one person at a time, usually starting small. Well, we are small and just a few people working on HR activism striving to make change! (BBC as quoted by David Zakus) The future is bright.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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Postscript/Marginalia
Intersectionality: From catchphrase to non-existence (Bargin Kulenovic)
–We have all endlessly been hearing and reading calls for intersectionality.
Intersectionality is supposed to refer to how different forms or categories of social inequalities overlap and interact, e.g., class, race, gender. Intersectionality purports it looks beyond one factor or aspect of identity at a time and combines multiple identities into one. It purports that poverty can indeed be characterized by a single descriptor of all discriminations.
Intersectionality has been criticized. It is said that it made political action harder; that it created hierarchies of oppression and of victimization; that it further created a conceptual ambiguity; that it shifted from individual evidences towards a patched-together generic identity of different discriminations of people in society. I strongly agree that this neologism (or not so new?) contributes little in our addressing issues of inequality and HR in the development field.
–Does the increasing division of the world into hostile blocs portend a regression to barbarism? Can democracy tame the financial oligarchy? Can it tackle racial and cultural conflict and invest in a way that counters growing inequality within countries, as well as tackling global warming? Is an apocalypse needed to jolt politicians out of their intellectual ruts, or can a better analysis of our development problems restore to health our sick civilization in conditions of peace and freedom? Or is a retreat of democracy, accompanied by domestic and international violence, inevitable? (Robert Skidelsky) Do not lose sleep over these questions, but do consult with your pillow.