Today's lecture provides and overview of

some of the
issues and questions involving human
rights NGOs or non-governmental
organizations.
Here's a brief overview of what we'll
discuss.
We'll first review the kinds of activities
that human rights NGOs engage in.
These are quite diverse as you'll see.
We'll then talk a little bit about fact
finding and monitoring, those
are some of the most important activities
that NGOs are involved in.
We'll then turn to a number of strategic
and ethical challenges that these
organizations face, and we'll conclude
with
a discussion of accountability and
legitimacy issues.
Let me first begin with a brief overview
of
some of the key activities of human rights
NGOs.
One of the activities involves advocating
for new international human rights
protections.
So there are often are gaps in
international
law, gaps that emerge as a result of new
circumstances, new political events, new
technologies for example, and
human rights NGOs can help to address
these gaps.
One prominent example is the UN Convention
on
the Prevention of Discrimination of
Persons with Disabilities.
This was an area that was not regulated by
international law, and human rights NGOs
and in specific human rights groups that
advocated for the persons
with disabilities and that were composed
of individuals with disabilities pushed
for a new UN agreement to regulate this
topic, which was adopted in the mid 2000s.
A second activity that human rights NGOs
engage
in is expanding existing International
Human Rights Laws.
It may be that the basic framework of law
is in place,
but it's application to new or changing
circumstances is unsettled or contested.
NGO's engage in this extension activity by
drafting statements of principles soft law
instruments,
and also by, activities such as filing
amicus briefs with international courts
and tribunals.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly are

the monitoring and implementation
activities of NGOs.
And I've listed a number of them for you
on the slide.
You can see that NGOs are actively
involved in fact-finding and country
visits, in
producing shadow reports to the UN Treaty
Bodies and the universal periodic review
process.
They often act as legal advocates
for individuals whose rights have been
violated,
submitting complaints to treaty bodies or,
to
the 1503 procedure or to regional
tribunals.
They also engage in public naming and
shaming strategies.
And they have to decide whether, and if so
how,
to engage with governments, whose
officials have violated internationally
protect rights.
I'd like to focus for a moment on
human rights fact finding, and monitoring
by NGOs.
I've given you what you might think of as
a checklist of issues that an NGO
engaging in a country visit, would need to
consider, in designing the parameters of
that visit.
This would include drafting the terms of
reference, that
is the, the terms that indicate with whom,
under
what conditions, and where it can gather
evidence, for
example meeting with dissident groups,
government officials, and other
stakeholders.
Obviously the de, definition of the
mission's
objectives is really quite critical, so is
the objective to prepare a fact finding
report about information that is not
widely known.
Is it to assist with ongoing litigation?
Is is to develop press releases and other
public advocacy
strategies to name and shame a particular
government, and so forth.
The ultimate outcome of fact-finding and
country visits
is very often a detailed, and hopefully as
credible and well resourced as possible
report, which
can then be used in a variety of context.
It can be submitted to International

Organizations,
it can be an Appendix to pleadings in
court and it can be the basis for drafting
of press releases to the news media.
I'd like to turn now to a different topic
focusing on the strategic and ethical
choices, that NGOs face.
These are very big questions, and we can
only scratch
the surface of them but I think it's worth
your
thinking about some of these challenges as
you think about
the role that NGOs play in the
international legal system.
So one question is, what should the scope
of the NGO's mandate be?
For example, should it be broad, focusing
on all human rights, or
narrow, specializing on a particular human
rights topic or particular region or
country?
Next, should the NGO work with or
collaborate
with governments, and if so, in what
capacity?
Different NGOs have very different
policies with respect to this question.
And it may depend on the nature
of the violations they investigate, and
how amenable
the government and its officials are, to
working
to change human rights practices that are
harmful.
A third question is whether to defer to
local culture.
We've talked about the relationship
between
universal human rights and cultural
relativism.
Here we see that dynamic in a very
specific setting.
So, for example, if a culture is less
likely to be tolerant
of an investigative role for women, should
a country mission exclude women?
Or should it require and that they be
included
precisely to have them present as a matter
of principle?
A fourth challenge that NGOs face is
fundraising.
From which actors should NGOs get the
material and financial resources they need
to operate?
Should they take funds from governments?
Local governments, foreign governments,
private actors, corporations, obviously
funding may compromise or effect the

mandate in some way.

And this is again, a choice that NGOs have
to think
about in deciding whether the priorities
of donors or their own
priorities, are the ones that they want to
follow and whether it's possible to
decouple funding and fundraising from
their advocacy missions.
The last issue I'd like to discuss
with you concerns accountability and
legitimacy issues.
So here some of the very broad
challenges that NGOs face are, questions
of representation.
Whom do they represent?
Well, in the case of an NGO that has an
attorney-client relationship
with an individual whose rights have
been violated, then obviously their
representation
is clear, but NGOs don't always engage in
that kind of formal legal representation
for purposes of domestic litigation or
litigation before an international court.
And in that broader context, the question
of representation is somewhat unclear.
It may be that the NGO is accountable as a
formal matter to its members,
so it's certainly possible to become, a
member of an international NGO.
Or to volunteer for that organization.
Or to work for that organization.
And those stakeholders are among those to
whom NGO's are accountable.
But I would say they are also accountable
to the broader
set of individuals and communities, whose
rights they seek to uphold.
But precisely how those individuals and
communities
can have some kind of mechanism for
checking on whether the NGOs are indeed
serving their interest is a very
significant challenge.
Ways to address that challenge might
include having members of affected
communities on the governing board of the
NGO, or at a very minimum consulting with
those organizations and groups in order to
determine what their own priorities are.
A related challenge, perhaps a larger one,
goes
to whether NGOs can serve democracy
enhancing function.
It may be the case that in countries that
are repressive and whose leaders are not
accountable to their citizens NGOs can
serve as a common conduit or
an alternative pathway for individuals,

civil society
groups, and interest groups to make their
views known both to their own government
and, to other governments or international
organization.
On the other hand, no one has elected NGOs
to serve this role, and so
they're filling it as a kind of rough
proxy for what we might prefer to
be democratic institutions and the
institutions of civil society.
Independent organizations like trade
unions religious organizations,
civic organizations and so forth, that can
serve to mobilize and aggregate
the preferences of citizens, and convey
them to the
government for purposes of taking some
sort of policy action.
Finally, it's worth thinking about some of
the
ways that one might enhance legitimacy of
NGO.
Here I think greater transparency, full
disclosure, both of the mandate of
the organization, it's funding sources and
it's priorities would go
a long way toward ensuring that the
legitimacy is satisfied.
Similarly, communications with and
interactions with the communities whose
rights the NGO purports to represent is
also critical.
We'll hear more about the activities of
NGOs and
human rights advocacy in general in the
next lecture.
For now, I'll leave you with some
additional
sources to consult on these interesting
and challenging topics.