Ngos And Human Rights

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted 50 years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt, its principal architect, predicted that a 'curious grapevine' would carry its message behind barbed wire and stone walls. This book tells the extraordinary story of how NGOs became the 'grapevine' she anticipated - sharpening our awareness about the violations of human rights, 'shaming' its most notorious abusers and creating the international mechanisms to bring about implementation of the Declaration. Korey traces how NGO's laid the groundwork for the destruction of the Soviet empire, as well as of the apartheid system in South Africa, and established the principle of accountability for crimes against humanity. The notion of human rights has progressed from being a marginal part of international relations a half century ago to stand today as a critical element in diplomatic discourse and this book shows that it is the NGOs that have placed human rights at the centre of humankind's present and future agenda.

Since 9/11 and the onset of the "war on terror," the principal challenge confronting liberal democracies has been to balance freedom with security and individual with collective rights. This book sheds new light on the evolution of human rights norms in liberal democracies by charting the activism of four Canadian NGOs on issues of refugee rights, hate speech, and the death penalty, including their use of difficult, often controversial legal cases as platforms to assert human rights principles and shape judicial policy-making. The struggles of these NGOs reveal not only the fragility but also the resilience of ideas about rights in liberal democracies.

Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) have become important, although sometimes overlooked, actors in international human rights law. Although NGOs are not generally provided for in the hard law of treaties, they use the UN human rights system to hold Governments to account. A key way in which they do so is using State reporting mechanisms, initially the UN treaty bodies, but more recently supplemented by the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review. In doing so, NGOs provide information and contribute to developing recommendations. NGOs also lobby for new treaties, contribute to the drafting of these treaties, and bring individual’s complaints to the UN human rights bodies. This book charts the historical development of the NGO role in the UN. It examines the UN regulation of NGOs but the largely informal nature of the role, and an exploration of the various types of NGOs, including some less benign actors such as GONGOs (Governmental NGOs). It also draws on empirical data to illustrate NGO influence on UN human rights bodies and gives voice to stakeholders both inside and outside the UN. The book concludes that the current UN human rights system is heavily reliant on NGOs and that they play an essential fact-finding role and contribute to global democratisation and governance.

This study examines and compares the important work on global human rights advocacy done by religious NGOs and by secular NGOs. By studying the similarities in how such organizations understand their work, we can better consider not only how religious and secular NGOs might complement each other but also how they might collaborate and cooperate in the advancement of human rights. However, little research has attempted to compare these types of NGOs and their approaches. NGOs and Human Rights explores this comparison and identifies the key areas of overlap and divergence. In so doing, it lays the groundwork for better understanding how to capitalize on the strengths of religious groups, especially in addressing the world’s many human rights challenges. This book uses a new dataset of more than three hundred organizations affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council to compare the extent to which religious and secular NGOs differ in their framing, discussion, and operationalization of human rights work. Using both quantitative analysis of the extensive data collected by the authors and forty-seven in depth interviews conducted with members of human rights organizations in the sample, Charity Butcher and Maia Carter Hallward analyze these organizations’ approaches to questions of culture, development, women’s rights, children’s rights, and issues of peace and conflict.

'Each chapter analyses both policy areas, access to medicines and agriculture/genetic resources. These three exceptionally rich, fieldwork-based case studies constitute the meat – and the principal contribution – of this book. . . The book marks a major contribution for the empirical material alone.' – Ken Shadlen, Journal of Development Studies 'Duncan Matthews has produced a first-rate, in-depth analysis of the role of NGOs in international and national intellectual property policy. Based on extensive primary research, this book provides a smart, thoughtful perspective on the role of key developing country NGOs, NGOs' relationships with national policymakers, and with multilateral institutions. Everyone interested in the interface of intellectual property policy and human rights, development, access to medicines, farmers' rights, and biodiversity should read this compelling account. I highly recommend this excellent contribution to our understanding.' – Susan K. Sell, George Washington University, US 'One of the features of international negotiations has been the increasing participation of non-governmental organizations. In this important book, Duncan Matthews shows the nature and extent of NGO influence in the negotiations over intellectual property. Written with great clarity and drawing on interview data and case studies, the book will be valuable to both scholars and practitioners working in international negotiation.' – Peter Drahos, Australian National University 'This book reveals how non-governmental organizations helped developing countries to better understand and mitigate the impact of the new standards of intellectual property protection that those countries were forced to adopt in the context of trade negotiations. Based on comprehensive and rigorous research, the author offers an outstanding piece that will not only be important for academics, policy-makers and students working in the area of intellectual property, but also for those more broadly interested in the implementation of human rights, coalition-building scenarios and framing strategies.' – Carlos Correa, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina 'This is a valuable corrective to a debate that is too often premised on the perspective of rich and developed countries. Focussing on the network of NGOs that supports developing countries, Duncan Matthews fills a major gap in the analysis of international disputes about intellectual property. His analysis rightly demolishes the position that developing countries have remained helpless in the face of developments in the global governance of IPRs, and helps explain how the global politics of IPRs is shifting.' – Christopher May, Lancaster University, UK This insightful and important new book explores the role played by non-governmental-organizations (NGOs) in articulating concerns at the TRIPS Council, the WIPO, the WHO, the CBD-COP and the FAO that intellectual property rights can have negative consequences for developing countries. Duncan Matthews describes how coalitions of international NGOs have influenced the way that the relationship between intellectual property rights and development is understood, often framing the message as a human rights issue to emphasize these concerns and ensure that access to medicines, food security and the rights of indigenous peoples over their traditional knowledge are protected. Based on extensive research undertaken in Geneva and in developing countries, the book also reveals how NGOs and broader social movements in Brazil, India and South Africa have played a crucial role in addressing the negative impacts of intellectual property rights by using human rights law as a practical tool before national courts and when seeking to influence national legislation and government policy. Intellectual Property, Human Rights and Development will appeal to academics, practitioners, activists, international negotiators and postgraduate students in intellectual property law, human rights law, the international political economy of intellectual property rights and development studies.

Why are some international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) more politically salient than others, and why are some NGOs better able to influence the norms of human rights? Internal Affairs shows how the organizational structures of human rights NGOs and their campaigns determine their influence on policy. Drawing on data from seven major international organizations—the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins sans Frontières, Oxfam International, Anti-Slavery International, and the International League of Human Rights—Wendy H. Wong demonstrates that NGOs that choose to centralize agenda-setting and decentralize the implementation of that agenda are more successful in gaining traction in international politics.Challenging the conventional wisdom that the most successful NGOs are those that find the "right" cause or have the most resources, Wong shows that how NGOs make and implement decisions is critical to their effectiveness in influencing international norms about human rights. Building on the insights of network theory and organizational sociology, Wong traces how power works within NGOs and affects their external authority. The internal coherence of an organization, as reflected in its public statements and actions, goes a long way to assure its influence over the often tumultuous elements of the international human rights landscape.

This book explores the potential responsibilities to respect, protect and fulfill international human rights law (IHRL) of a particular class of non-state actors: non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It calls for NGOs pursuing development to respect and fulfill the human right of genocide survivors to reparative justice in Rwanda. It argues that NGOs have social and moral responsibilities to respect and fulfill IHRL, and for greater accountability for them to do so. The book focuses on those NGOs advancing development in a post genocide transitional justice context acting simultaneously in partnership with state governments, as proxies and agents for these governments, and providing essential public goods and social services as part of their development remit. It defines development as a process of expanding realization of social, economic, and cultural rights addressing food security, economic empowerment/poverty reduction, healthcare, housing, education, and other fundamental human needs while integrating these alongside the expansion of freedoms and protections afforded by civil and political rights. It uses post genocide Rwanda as a case study to illustrate how respect and fulfillment of the IHRL pertaining to reparative justice are hindered by failing to hold NGOs responsible for IHRL. Consequently, this results in discrimination against, marginalization, and the disadvantaging of survivors of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and violations of their human rights.