NGOs and Implementation of Human Rights - Essay Example

NGOs and Implementation of Human Rights Introduction: In modern times human rights and organizations which are involved in proper implementation of those rights are playing a key role in the world. Organizations, whether it is a government or non-government- all have key role to play in the proper and systematic implementation of human rights laws in the world. Almost Fifty years ago, the United Nations General Assembly after consultation with all the member nations proposed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a protection against domination and unfairness in the world. During the time of World War I and World War II, the entire world had observed few of the most dangerous crimes in the human history, and as a result the Universal Declaration in their observation make it very clear that the fundamental human rights, civil rights and freedoms of any individual have to be protected and it is the responsibility of the government of any particular nation. The changing world environment also established the fact that both human rights and fundamental freedoms are basic rights of every individual all around the globe and government must ensure that each individual get same opportunity. In this circumstance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a major development in modern society. Tilldate, this declaration continues to affect peoples lives and encouraged all human rights activist all over the world1. As the times moves on alongside the government organization various non-government organization in almost every parts of the globe started to grow rapidly which are involved in protection of human rights of the people. The role of all these various non-governmental organization have also increased in recent time when the United Nations has replaced the Commission of Human rights with Human Rights Council in order to ensure more effective and prompt action against any kind of human rights violation in any parts of the world. At present alongside the government organization, various non-government organization also have equal importance in implementing all recommendations of the Human Rights Council. In this paper the discussion is about the role played by the various non-governmental organizations in protecting human rights of the common people all over the world2. The paper also discuss about the basic implementation of Human Rights council, development of various rules and principles of Human Rights Commission to protect the rights of the common people and also focus on various countries to discuss how the non-governmental organization plays a key role in protecting human rights of the common men. Need and Development of Human Rights: In the past, that too before the horrific World War I and II was happen, the human rights issues were considered by almost all the leading and politically powerful nations as a part of nation-states in-house affairs. As a result, there was no common or basic international agreement of human rights was formed. After the completion of Second World War, a new order was developed and it was mainly after observing the horrific condition of the common men during that World War.  Therefore protection of Human Rights was among the top priority of all the political leaders. Different NGOs have played an important role in creation of Universal Human Rights Declaration, which was during that time was most comprehensive document on human rights. As the time moves on, involvementof NGOs in the development of new and stronger human rights rules has gradually increased3. From 1970 onwards, a number of international treaties regarding human rights started to immerge in the scene. During this phase the number of NGOs all started to rise significantly as people started to give major importance to the proper. Implementation of the Human Rights: It is a proven fact that NGOs have played an important role in influencing various ruling government to transform their behaviors against any individual. There are numerous examples in the every corner of the world to support this fact. But one must also consider the fact that this impact or change in the attitude of the government or the ruling party towards the common people was absolutely temporary and it does not stop states to get involved in the violations of human rights in the near future. In Mungles (2012) opinion, this kind of influence was not so effective and not even has greater influence of problem solving input in it. Need of international contract with tougher provisions on protection of human rights need to be developed? In his opinion when there is a legal binding treaty and as soon as central authority power was able to ensure states positive response to the treaty, violations of human rights by the states or any group or any organization can be monitored. Then it becomes easy to take actions against such states or organization or group of individual. In his opinion, when there will be such situation all over the globe in all country irrespective of who/which party is in power, then, we can acknowledge the significant role that the NGOs have played in the protection of human rights4. Concept and Emergence of Human Rights: From various analyses one can easily understand the fact that the concept of implementing one common human right guideline was first discussed in the western countries. In the western countries only, various treaties of the common human rights council were drafted and conventions of human rights were held. According to the analysis of Mungle, the initial focus of the western countries about common human rights was more of a individual based. “Hobbes &Locke in seventeenth century were first to introduce the idea that every individual has some kind of other natural rights, and they have those rights simply because they are human beings.This idea was first come to existence during the time of American and French Revolutions. But this thought process alone was not enough to protect human rights and to pass judgment on any kind of violation. A constructive attempt to establish a global mechanism was first made just after the Second World War5. Before the Second World War, human rights were considered as an internal issue of modern nation state, and no external country or the external independent body like United Nations Human Rights council did not have any right to pass on any judgments or intervene to those matters because of the principle of sovereignty. But after the end of Second World War, top leader started to understand the importance of having a common body in order to protect human rights and the same matter started to gather importance in world politics. Some of the incidents such as horrifying activities of Nazis against the Jews and against other races during the Second World War have triggered this movement of introducing a common human rights law and a central body to protect human rights of the common people in the world6.There is a common belief all over the world that all human beings have some basic rights. But there is no clear definition of what is a right for human beings. After the second war, with the development of NGOs and other humanity activist group there were few common questions raised by them such as what the rights are and who exercises them etc. Tansey in his analysis have mentioned that some key parameters such as culture, custom, religion and lifestyle, and many other things, have affected the perception and definition of rights. Therefore, the rights and the possessors of these rights vary from one society to another. The term" rights" cannot be clearly defined. Due to this lack, political discussions concerning rights are generally made with almost no attempt to define them7. The first proposal to defend human rights on global level was the United Nations Charter. It contains many references and suggestions related to basic human rights of the common people. But the main drawback or limitation of this proposal was it does not define what the human rights accurately are, and along with that this proposal does not talk about any such mechanism to ensure close monitoring about the implementation of that proposal in the actual areas. “Therefore, the contract proved legally weak as it lacked the definition. In order to fill out this void, an attempt was made by having adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1948”8. But it did not give unambiguous resistance of human rights, since it was a declaration, and was not an agreement, therefore no nations or the ruling government were obliged or forced to obey its content9 . Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Global Politics: Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been playing a vital role in global politics. This vital role of NGOs, thus, makes it necessary to evaluate their nature, types and procedures in details.The number of NGOs has risen dramatically since the end of Second World War. The term, nongovernmental organization came into existence in 1945 as the United Nations felt the need to make distinction in the Charter between the participation procedures of intergovernmental specialized agencies and those of international private organizations10. Though there is no generally accepted definition of an NGO, lets see some of them. In one definition, NGOs are defined as "self-governing, private, not-for-profit organizations that are geared toward improving the quality of life of disadvantaged people. They are neither part of government nor controlled by a public body.”11 According to Tuijl, NGO can be considered as the foundations of civil society, which is a ground between family unit and the state which meet the expense ofpromises of rigorous action and social self-organization12. Willetts defined NGO as "an independent voluntary association of people acting together on a continuous basis, for some common purpose, other than achieving government office, making money or illegal activities"13.Welch in his analysis has mentioned that the basic functionof NGO was to develop association between the complex, unaccustomed world of government with the accustomed environment of present or emerging social and economic groups14. Despite the vagueness of the term and the difficulty to reach a common definition, it is possible to mention some of the basic features of an NGO: An NGO will not be established as a political party; it will be a not-profit making organizationmost importantly all NGOs will be non-violent.NGOs may also differ in their area of functions and mandates. Some may have very narrow focus, and some other may operate on a broad level, having more inclusive mandates. NGOs and International Organizations: NGO like Amnesty International (AI) aggressively participated in the discussions and negotiations of various human right activities alongside the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States (OAS). The first summary of the UN agreement did not make any point regarding establishing assistance with social and private bodies. However, many association and nongovernment organization who are dealing with human rights in the US and other parts of the world pressured to correct that in the conference held in San Francisco. They have succeeded to incorporate provisions, which characterize the process of collaboration with NGOs15. Article 70 is as follows: “The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) may make arrangements for representatives of the specialized agencies to participate, without vote, in its deliberations and in those of the commissions established by it, and for its representatives to participate in the deliberations of the specialized agencies”16 and article 71 states that “the economic and social council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence”. The provisions for discussion with NGOs are made in harmony with UN ECOSOC Resolution and some key points are: “The organization shall be apprehensive with matters falling within the capability of the economic and social council with respect to human rights; the organization shall be of representative character and of recognized international standing;” 17(Steiner and Alston, 2008; 489). Mungle in his article discussed about the rights that NGOs have as counseling bodies which include "to receive the provisional agenda of ECOSOC or its subsidiary bodies and to propose the inclusion of new agenda items", "to attend public meetings of ECOSOC", to "submit statements and have them circulated to ECOSOC" and "to make oral statements before ECOSOC".18 In recent years, Article 71 has been discussed in greater extent and with an objective of allowing more number of NGOs to dynamically get associated with the actions of UN bodies regarding establishing human rights for the common people in number of underdeveloped and poor countries. As far as the standing of NGOs inside the European Union (EU) is concerned, the Union has recognized the importance of various NGOs in order ensure basic human rights for one and all. The third annual report of European Union clearly demonstrates its attitude toward NGOs. According to the Report, the EU commits itself to intensify the arrangement of NGOs in global organizations, where the Union supported the demand of giving NGOs more admittance rights, and in third world countries, where the European Union was continuously making efforts to improve the role of civil society and NGOs as “participants, promoters and beneficiaries in democratization and development processes. The Union is convinced that Government action greatly benefits from dialogue and cooperation with civil society. Therefore, it will continue its own valuable dialogues with NGOs and also continue to provide extensive support to NGOs and to the strengthening of civil society in different parts of the world”19 (Steiner & Alston, 2003). In accordance with the commitments spelled out in the official documents of various organizations mentioned above, the European Union made efforts to promote the involvement of NGOs in the activities concerning human rights. Those include: determinations to substitute the role played by NGOs in social dimension events of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and in the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, and the EUs monetaryfunding for the contribution of NGOs in regional preparatory conferences to the World Conference against overall discrimination, racial discernment, racial intolerance in various parts of the world.20. The Human Rights Council &U.N. Reform: The U.N Human Rights Commission was at the beginning the key policy making body for human rights all over the globe. This body was created in the year of 1946 and the body was responsible for establishing human rights standard and development of international bill of rights. During its tenure the key success of the commission was the implementation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was accepted by UN General Council in the year of 1948. But as the time moves on, the functioning and activities of Human Rights Commission came under scrutiny and more controversies were started to develop in 1990 and early 2000. To resolve the issue, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2005 proposed the idea of new smaller Human Rights Council to replace the existing Commission.21 Structure and function of Human rights Council and role of NGOs: There are 47 members in the Human rights Council with 13 each from Asia and Africa, 6 from Eastern Europe, 8 from Latin America and Caribbean and 7 from Western European and other groups. There are 2 important process developed by the council-one is Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the other one is review of mandate.22 In modern times NGOs are key part associated with the human rights council. Across the world various NGOs have few questions regarding their role in the council. Some of those questions are like role of the NGOs in the universal periodic review, how their interaction will be during separate sessions and what role NGOs have to play during the review of the Council’s special sessions etc. To ensure that NGOs play a critical role they must get involved with the key policy making activities of the council. As the NGOs were associated with the earlier Human rights commission as well, so they must insist on keeping the good and strong rules & regulations of the older commission in place and in addition must encourage introducing more advanced human rights norms for the people of the world.23 Role of Human Rights Council: The Human rights Council is mainly associated with incidents of human rights violation with the broader view of gross and systematic violation. Apart from looking after the human rights violation incident, the human rights council is also responsible for promoting and mainstreaming the human rights within the U.N system. Human Rights Council’s main responsibility is same as that of the Human Rights Commission. In addition to the existing duties, Human Rights Council is also responsible for: Encouraging human rights education, capacity development and providing technological assistance in the member countries. Must act as a common platform for discussion regarding various developing HR issues and must recommend solution or the prevention of those issues. Have to play a key role in the development of the international human rights law in collaboration of UN. Human Rights Council has to ensure total implementation of all recommendations and decision of the human rights council in all the member nations with proper collaboration with the NGOs. 24 NGOs and International Conferences: After the NGOs have gain global acceptance from the leading political powers of various countries, they have started to play an influential role in placing human rights issues on the regional and global agendas. Most NGOs started to encourage the international ideology on safeguarding of human rights. They have formed suitable conditions, in which those principles related to human rights, were developed, and came up with new thoughts and proposals for applying those rules. They have been very dominant on the expansion of international human rights laws in the course of their active role. Their first success came in the year of with the addition of human rights language in the UN contract adopted at San Francisco. The introduction to the contract of the United Nations makes a clear mention about the fundamental rights: "we the peoples of the United Nations determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” 25.Although this document was not officially obligatory over the states. And the main reason behind not making it an obligation was totally political..Apart from that, the global politics was "in the hands of a political leadership that overwhelmingly embraced a realist or Machiavellian ethos with respect to international law and morality"26 (Falk, 2000: 189). During that phase international politics greatest importance was given to tactical concerns, to make sure the safety of state. Financial and social circumstances within the state ware of less important in comparison to the security of nation-state. The realist theory also mentioned that global troubles such as human rights violations, ecological issues were the secondary issue for the leaders of various countries. From that point of view, the addition of the article on human rights into the contract was also significant as it clearly mentioned these basic rights, even though those were not listed in detail going to be enjoyed by all irrespective of their race, sex, language or religion. That was the first time when all people across the globe were considered as same in written documents. As a result, the written document and its content was a major breakthrough; because, the Charter concept of human rights is one of inclusion and it was against the old practices of excluding common people and even reducing them to the status of non-persons27. After the end of Cold War, there were several incident of human rights violations successfully pointed out by the NGOs and, and more helpful defense mechanisms than the existing ones were created. With the fall of Soviet Union and the Communist system whipped out all the barriers between the Western World and previous Soviet Union’s supporters, the situation became more favorable for collaboration between the previous poles on a variety of global issues, and most importantly including human rights. Till then for more than a few decades, Communist bloc, underneath the leadership of Soviet Union was always advocated for the economic, collective and community rights in the forums and human rights matters have been rarely discussed as the Western countries have paid most of their attention on civil, political and individual rights. Breen in his review has mentioned that as the distinction between the West and the Communist World was started to demolished, various issues related to human rights started to place center stage in various global meeting. 28 The Expansion of the Scope of Human Rights NGOs: Nelson and Dorsey (2003) in their analysis have argued that an overlapping part of human rights and expansion is obvious in the growth of the permission of human rights NGOs, usually paying attention on civil and political rights, to take account of economic, social and cultural rights. Amnesty International, for example, prolonged its mandate to a full range of human rights during the 2001 International Council Meeting (ICM). In 2002, Amnesty International USA adopted ESCR as a precedence area of the part for 2002-2004, started to develop ability and working pattern on ESCR, and started a pilot act on global AIDS. 29 The Joint Campaigns of Human Rights and Development NGOs: One of the most common areas that human rights and development NGOs meet can be observed in their pains to run combined campaigns. Two joint campaigns are considered as the yield of this plan: the campaign regarding equal access to necessary medicines of Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and the South African Treatment Action Campaign; and the other one is the campaigns for the right to water in Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Bolivia. The authors explain that the partnership has been made achievable by two processes; first, “the increase of new networks and organizations that explicitly link development issues to economic and social rights and second the expansion of traditional human rights NGOs’ mandates to include ESCR”.30 Conclusion: At present in modern world, NGOs are playing an important role in ensuring the proper implementation of human rights all across the globe. The United Nations with the help of more stringent laws is trying to make it sure that all people across the globe are not deprived of their fundamental rights and NGOs are playing an important role in fulfilling the aim taken by the UN. The human rights council has their set of laws in place so as every nation. Still the NGOs as independent organization are key for all the people specially the poor ones in the underdeveloped countries and in countries like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe where the communal riots and political turbulence often hampers the basic fundamental rights of the people. The importance of NGO is growing day by day and now they are the key part of UN’s movement to ensure equal rights for one and all. 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