Question: Do international human rights NGOs help or hinder the fulfilment of human rights in developing countries?
The essay is to explain how certain factors can impact the effectiveness of human rights NGO in making a change, and decide whether their pressure may, conversely, hinder the fulfilment of human rights.
Introduction
Body Paragraph 1: International human rights NGOs tend to be more successful in helping the fulfilment of human rights in developing countries where there is political support for, or at least openness to, the dominating international political agenda. Example of this could be Singapore.
Body Paragraph 2: In contrast, shaming of human rights breaches by international human rights NGOs can push ceritain authoritarian regimes to adopt more strict practices and lead to further government terror/repression. This is particularly evident in countries which compete with the Western liberal system, where the advocacy of liberal values by Western NGOs is viewed as a threat to their own security and sovereignty. For example, Russian president Putin uses a thing like gay rights and democracy to criticize the enemy. Many human rights NGO’s have tried to promote acceptance of gay rights in Russia, but in contrast Russia has recently tightened their laws against gay propaganda. Another example such culture wars is similarly evident in African countries, where LGBT activists are cautious to use Western NGO support, since that may increase negative public and political attitudes toward LGBT people (Kretz, 2012; Ndashe, 2013). For instance, when Western countries threatened to withdraw aid from Malawi, LGBT activists were held responsible for that (Currier, 2014).
Body Paragraph 3: In order to investigate the effectiveness of countries in adopting human rights shaming from NGOs, some scholars have divided countries’ political systems into consolidated and unconsolidated governments, arguing that centralized structures are typically more effective at enforcing decisions. (Börzel & Risse, 2013, p.69) An example of a country that doesn’t lack willingness but does lack full statehood to upkeep human rights is India, the world’s largest democracy. Here, issues mainly occur because the state is not in full control of parts of its territory or with regard to parts of the police force or the military. In other words, the compliance problem is a capacity issue in these cases. Complementing the argument of structural differences leading to a more or less successful mobilization of transnational human rights networks is that even between authoritarian regimes with imperfect statehood, these can still differ in their respective degrees of political liberalization and statehood. In their comparative studies of the Arab spring in various countries, van Hüllen (2013) finds that that “the combination of political liberalization and statehood was much more favorable to the regime’s engagement in tactical concessions in Morocco than in Tunisia. Society and politics in modern Morocco had always been more pluralist than in Tunisia, making the monarchy more adept in reconciling regime survival with limited participation and competition than the republican (de facto) one-party system. At the same time, Tunisia was by far the most consolidated state in the region, providing the regime with the resources for repression and making it a stable and reliable partner in international relations. This was certainly one of the reasons why the Tunisian regime was remarkably successful in establishing a counter-narrative on human rights that ef ectively protected the country against external pressure” (pages 191-192).
It should be noted that some developing countries are so unconsolidated that the plurality of power can be a disadvantage, contributing to chaos, rather than a benefit presenting an opportunity for political opposition to authoritarianism. For example militant/terrorist separatist groups are more prevalent in less developed countries. An example of this is that in the Russian Federation, the most intense crimes against gay people are committed in the Republic of Chechnya, which due to high political instability in the 1990s today experiences more autonomy than other republics. In his special arrangement with Putin, Chechnyan leader Kadyrov is able to appoint members of his family and wider clan to local senior positions, which allows him to consolidate a tight grip on power, and this manifests itself in violent persecution of gay people to a higher extent than in the rest of the country. Furthermore, general insurgent terrorist acts occur in the Republic. Even though it is not in the favour of the Russian government to practise human rights breaches and violence to such an extent, the state simply ends up not having the capacity to control everything that goes on. These informalities make it harder for international human rights NGOs to 1) communicate with the local leaders actually responsible for the most extreme human rights breaches and 2) address specific legislation when it does not apply.
Body Paragraph 4: Some scholars have also found that naming and shaming is likely to be effective when countries have strong economic ties to other countries and that effectiveness in improving human rights is conditional on foreign capital dependence. (see source “Shame on You: The Impact of Human Rights Criticism on Political Repression in Latin America” by Franklin, 2008). Particularly evident in Latin America, which are very dependent on the US, Canada and NAFTA. “Countries that combine human rights criticism from NGOs with the highest observed levels of capital dependence are 33 percent less likely to use repression than countries with no criticism or no dependence, controlling for all the other factors in the model” (Franklin, 2008, page 204). Going back to the example of Morocco vs. Tunisia, van Hüllen also highlights that “the lower level of socio-economic development, the ongoing conflict in the Western Sahara, and its strive for modernity made Morocco much more vulnerable to international demands” (page 192).
Body Paragraph 5: Even in cases where international human rights NGOs are successful in helping the fulfilment of human rights, some forms of helping are more feasible than others. It is generally easier for an international human rights NGO to provide assistance on a smaller scale rather than changing entire public attitudes in a foreign country, let alone change its legislature. Example from source by Buyantueva (2022): “An interviewee from Moscow (N16) claimed that knowledge exchange with Western NGOs has helped to learn that “specific goals and tasks are more useful in uniting the community than some general formulas, general events, like, against homophobia”. Thus, Western partners introduced Russian LGBT activists to useful examples of tactics and strategies that could be employed in their work” (Buyantueva, 2022, page 154). The effects of human rights advocacy in Georgia has also shown that while state institutions have adopted more liberal laws, such as liberalising the economy and being the only post-Soviet country to explicitly prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in legislation, labor-related or otherwise, it has been harder to prevent violations committed by decentralised authorities, particularly in the two separatist regions, and the local community. This has been evident in several of the past Pride events in the city’s capital, Tbilisi, where despite being legal, LGBT marches have led to a homophobic counter-rally, where in 2021 over a dozen of journalists were attacked, and one was even killed. Hence, it can be argued that even in countries where there is political consensus to comply with international human rights and enforce legislation, the population might not be culturally ready to accept these norms. Therefore, international human rights NGOs must take the individual situation of each developing country into account when operating there.
Conclusion
Attached Sources (please use all):
Forsythe, D. (2017). Non-governmental organizations and human rights. In Human Rights in International Relations (Themes in International Relations, pp. 256-294). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316874929.009
Zhou et al. (2022). New evidence that naming and shaming influences state human rights practices. https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2022.2122785
Specifically for paragraphs 1 and 2: Hafner-Burton, E. M. (2008). Sticks and stones: Naming and shaming the human rights enforcement problem. International Organization, 62(4), 689–716. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818308080247
Specifically for paragraph 2 and 5: Buyanuteva, 2022, Cultural and geopolitical conflicts between the West and Russia: Western NGOs and LGBT activism.
Specifically for Malawi example in paragraph 2: Currier, A. 2014. “Arrested Solidarity: Obstacles to Intermovement Support for LGBT Rights in Malawi.” Women’s Quarterly, 42(3-4), 146–63.
Specifically for Paragraph 3: Börzel & Risse, Human rights in areas of limited statehood : the new agenda. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139237161.007
Specifically for Paragraph 3 on Arab Spring: Van Hüllen, 2013. The “Arab Spring” and the spiral model
Specifically for paragraph 4: Franklin, J. (2008). Shame on You: The Impact of Human Rights Criticism on Political Repression in Latin America. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2007.00496.x
