Column*
| Published date | 01 June 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/092405190101900201 |
| Date | 01 June 2001 |
| Author | Claude E. Welch |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Column'
Taking Rights Seriously: Citizen Action Through NGOs
Human rights NGOs (non-governmental organisations) aspire to be the conscience
of
humanity, purveyors
of
the ideals
of
global civil society. They have ramified widely in recent
decades, resembling, in Eleanor Roosevelt's phrase, a 'curious grapevine', penetrating
international fora and conferences previously reserved for governments.
But what, more precisely, are NGOs? They can be distinguished, on the one hand, from
political parties. Rather than seeking power within political systems, NGOs look for
influence. They also differ from interest groups that seek special economic or social
advantage for their members; human rights NGOs, by contrast, advocate equal treatment for
all.IThey work, in short, for public rather than private interests. And it was during the
summer
of
1945, when national delegations gathered in San Francisco to draft the charter
of
the United Nations, that human rights NGOs made their first and perhaps most vital impact
on the new organisation.
Among the least expected parts of the Charter are references in it to human rights and to
non-governmental entities. For a world concerned with security, reeling from the impact
of
history's most massive slaughter
of
civilians and most widespread devastation
of
property,
protection
of
fundamental freedoms appeared tangential to prevention
of
war or to promotion
of
economic reconstruction. References to citizens' groups came as an afterthought, for,
despite the Charter's preambular references to
'We
the Peoples
of
the United Nations', the
United Nations was conceived
of
as an organisation
of
States. Any mention
of
human rights
and
ofNGOs
was the fortuitous result
of
the presence
of
a handful
of
them on the sidelines
of
the San Francisco conference.
Inthe half-century plus since the UN Charter was drafted and adopted, the number
of
UN
Member States has risen markedly, from less than 50 to nearly four times that number. The
UN has become a universal organisation, not a club of primarily Western Hemisphere and
European countries. Far more dramatic growth has come in the total number of NGOs,
however. They have increased exponentially, from perhaps 15 human rights NGOs that
interacted with the UN in 1948 when the Universal Declaration
of
Human Rights (UDHR)
was adopted, to 150in 1968 at the Tehran conference on the 20th anniversary
ofthe
UDHR,
to 1500 in 1993 at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights? Such an explosive rate
Views expressed in this column are
of
a strictly personal nature and are not necessarily shared by the
editors.
Claude Welch is Distinguished Service Professor in the Department
of
Political Science and Director of
the Human Rights Center, State University
of
New York at Buffalo. He served as a visiting scholar at SIM
spring 2001 while working on his book, Protecting
Human
Rights
Globally:
Roles and
Strategies
of
International
NGGs.
He is the author or editor
of
NGGs
and
Human
Rights:Promiseand
Performance
(2001),
Protecting
Human
Rights in Africa (1995), Asian Perspectives on Human Rights (1990) and
Human
Rightsand Development in Africa(1984), among other books.
Support for this research has been provided, inter alia,by SIM (Netherlands Institute for Human Rights),
the US Institute
of
Peace, and the State University
of
New York through sabbatical leave.The author is
deeply grateful to all three institutions for their financial assistance; however. responsibility for both the
factual accuracy and the interpretations presented in this article are his.
Exceptions exist, notably among human rights NOOs which argue that specific groups have been
historically disadvantaged and correspondingly require special treatment in order to achieve equality.
These figures come from Theo van Boven, and are intended toshow orders
of
magnitude rather thanserve
Netherlands
Quarterly
of
Human
Rights,
Vol.
19/2,1/9-122, 200J.
119
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