Human Rights NGOs
What is a Human Rights NGO?
Human rights NGOs devote their resources to the “promotion and protection” of universal human rights (Wiseberg 1991:529). Unlike governments, who tend to seek human rights for their own citizens, human rights NGOs fight for the security of human rights to all people. The human rights movement, which began after World War II, is a diverse movement comprised of thousands of NGOs that has spread throughout the world today (Wiseberg 1991).
History of Human Rights NGOs
In looking at the human rights movement and the role of NGOs, historians have primarily studied three periods that they see as three “waves” of activism (Cmiel 2004:12).
1940s
The first wave, the 1940s, is a decade in which the NGO human rights movement truly began. The impetus for the movement was the result of World War II—50 million deaths and the extermination of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals. Human rights activists and NGOs throughout the world called for the implementation of human rights standards that would protect people from governmental abuses to ensure that they would never again be denied life, food, shelter, and basic human rights (Flowers 1998).
In 1945, when the charter was drafted for the United Nations, NGOs played a major role. Original provisions for the charter only referenced human rights, but the international NGO community drove to redress this (Korey 1998). In the United States, the American Jewish Committee, the Federal Council of Churches, and Commission to Study the Organization of Peace were three human rights NGOs that greatly advocated the inclusion of rights into the charter. Many other international NGOs supported these three organizations, and together they petitioned to the U.S. Secretary of State to emphasize human rights in the charter. The Secretary of Sate persuaded other U.S. allies to support the idea in order to prevent the UN from following the same path as the League of Nations. The advocacy efforts of these human rights NGOs were successful, and the UN decided to establish the Commission on Human Rights (Korey 1998).
The first task of the Commission, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, was to draft a document that proclaimed universal fundamental human rights and freedoms. The result, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in December of 1948 focusing on civil, social, economic, political, and cultural rights (Flowers 1998). The document is ambitious, stating that the way a government treats its people as well as “individual human freedom[s]” are both primary international concerns (Korey 1998:2). THE UDHR has had significant influence and over 185 nations have adopted it into their constitutions (Flowers 1998).
Many leading figures in drafting the UDHR have credited NGOs with playing such an essential role. Lebanon’s Charles Malik, one of the key figures of the Commission recognized NGOs role in drafting the document stating that they “[acted as] unofficial advisers to the various delegations, supplying them with streams of ideas and suggestions” (Korey 1998:2). Frenchman Rene Cassin, one of the major figures who drafted the UDHR stated that NGOs were “‘the first to make the principles of the Declaration widely known’ through brochures, periodicals and articles, and at numerous conferences” (Korey 1998:2).
1970s
The UDHR and the beginning of the UN were really the first steps for NGOs in promoting human rights internationally. However, the vast amount of activism seen in the 1940s was later undermined by the Cold War and the disputes between first and third world nations (Cmiel 2004). Totalitarianism was the forefront of these conflicts and the UN Commission put human rights violations on the backburner (Korey 1998).
It was not until the 1970s, when a second wave of human rights activism took place. The upsurge of NGOs promoting human rights during this time came in response to the lack of action being taken by the UN. In fact, in the 1970s, there was often a tense relationship between the UN and human rights NGOs (Cmiel 2004).
This decade was more significant for NGOs in that they, rather than the UN, became the focal point of the movement. The nature of the movement also changed and took on its present day character “as a collection of independent national, regional, and international NGOs seeking to hold governments accountable to internationally defined standards of human rights” (Wiseberg 1991:529). Rather than international law, NGOs were more interested in shaming governments into change through publicizing unjust behavior. (Cmiel 2004). Two prominent human rights NGOs, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, emerged during this time, both of which are two of the most influential NGOs today.
