HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE NGOs
By Avi Davis

On a fairly regular basis these days I receive solicitations from Amnesty International, a human rights group based in London. Although I have never been a member of Amnesty International, it is my belief that my address is retained in their records after a scalding documentary I made about the human rights groups’ involvement in fostering the myth of a Jenin Massacre in 2003. At that time I had flown to London to interview the head of Amnesty International to determine what had driven the organization to accept ludicrous reports about supposed Israeli atrocities and to publicize them worldwide. What I uncovered at that time, opened my eyes to the politics of human rights in the world today and the twisted ways many of the organizations struggle to maintain attention, retain funding and exercise influence.

Since 1948 and the passage of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR), the human rights industry, as I will kindly refer it, has grown enormously. In 1948, sixty-nine NGO (non-governmental organizations) had consultative status at the United Nations; by 2000, that number was over two thousand, many of which claimed to promote “universal human rights” in their mission statements. For example, Amnesty International explicitly states that it “does not support or oppose any government or political system...it is concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights.” Similarly, HRW pledges to uphold objectivity a nd condemn human rights abuses on all sides.

The impact of the larger Human Rights NGOs has been staggering. The World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and UN Human Rights Commission must all take into account the attitudes and policies of non-governmental organizations when deliberating on matters of global concern. The Seattle Riots of 1999 , the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol and the establishment of the International Criminal Court were all decisively affected by the political positions and lobbying activities of some of the major NGOs.

Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Global Exchange, Christian Aid and Oxfam operate under a halo of respectability and inscrutability, presenting themselves as altruistic welfare organizations that promote the common good of humanity - while governmental, business and political institutions are cast as selfish and particularistic. Their leaders are international celebrities and receive the kind of treatment in many countries which is generally reserved for diplomats and visiting dignitaries. After all, who could quibble with policies that are avowedly universal , pluralistic, bipartisan and concerned for the welfare of humankind no matter color, creed, religion or politics?

Who indeed? The reality is that human rights organization today swagger around the world voicing opinions and promoting activism on a score of issues which have no absolutely no connection to their core mandates.

There are myriad examples:
Amnesty International was a signatory to a November 1, 2001 document characterizing the 9/11 attacks as a legal matter to be addressed by criminal-justice procedures rather than by military retribution. Suggesting that the hijackers were motivated chiefly by a desire to draw attention to global injustices perpetrated by the United States, this document explained that similar future calamities could be averted only if America would finally begin to "promote fundamental rights around the world."

Global Exchange recently endorsed a document called the Earth Charter, which blames capitalism for many of the world's environmental, social, and economic problems. The Charter maintains that "the dominant patterns of production and consumption are causing environmental devastation, the depletion of resources, and a massive extinction of species. The benefits of development are not shared equitably and the gap between rich and poor is widening." A notable cosigner of this petition was Global Exchange Director Medea Benjamin, who was a chief organizing force behind the November 1999 riots in Seattle, where some 50,000 protesters destroyed millions of dollars worth of property in their effort to shut down the WTO Conference in that city. Oxfam also endorsed a recent "Our World is Not for Sale" campaign similarly condemning the WTO.

Oxfam regularly issues political condemnations of Israel while remaining completely silent about Palestinian-perpetrated human rights abuses and acts of terror. The British branch of Oxfam regularly denounces Israel's security policies against terror attacks. Oxfam Belgium recently produced a poster, in both Flemish and French, calling on Belgian consumers to boycott Israeli products; the poster declared that "Israeli fruits have a bitter taste," and depicted blood dripping from an Israeli fruit.

The UK chapter of Christian Aid was a signatory to a petition of so-called "civil society" organizations that opposed globalization, big business in general, and "any effort to expand the powers of the World Trade Organization (WTO) through a new comprehensive round of trade liberalization." Members affiliated with some of the signatories actively participated in the Seattle riots In 2003, Christian Aid also endorsed an "Our World is Not for Sale" campaign condemning the WTO.

So if these organizations can command such international attention and can have such an impact on representative world bodies, who, exactly, has given them their mandate?

The answer is almost no one. Very few organizations possess the kind of individual donor base or system of accountability that would make them “ representative ” in any democratic sense. Amnesty’s donor base tops the list it 220,000 and it is all downhill after that. Most large Human Rights NGOs do not receive a majority of their funding from their donor bases at all but from very large foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation. While these foundations do have systems in place to monitor how the NGOs expend the funds they receive, that kind of reporting is slow and often lags years behind the actual disbursement of the funds. Internally, most NGOs do not have democratic structures set in place for decision making and policy is typically set by a relatively small handful of individuals at the top of the tree.

That leaves a collection of individuals with great power and relatively little accountability in areas of vital interest to world economic stability, peace and security.

The tens of thousands of NGOs around the world that have developed claims to represent civil society therefore represent barely any one but themselves – self appointed world tribunes who use their podium to counter the prevailing “selfish and particularistic interests” of states, governments (including democracies), multinational corporations and political parties.

This is of particular importance when considering the upcoming follow up to the UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance that took place in September 2001, in Durban, South Africa. Although it was completely overshadowed by the dramatic events in New York two weeks later, that conference provided a key venue for promoting Israel as “an apartheid regime,” encouraging a policy of international isolation, based on the South African model. The conference was generated and motivated by non- governmental organizations whose anti-Israel and anti-semitic pronouncements resulted in a bitter reaction from countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States who felt used. Nothing at that conference was said of real human rights abuses in neighboring Zimbabwe, the Sudan, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Iran.

The upcoming April 23-24 conference in Geneva promises to be as much a fiasco as the last one, largely because the same non-governmental organizations, who are free of accountability, will once again have open rein to transform an international conference on human rights into a cesspool of hatred and potential violence.

If there was ever a time to reconsider the efficacy and credibility of NGO activism on human rights, then this it. Those individuals and organizations concerned about true human rights should stand up and expose the radical agenda of the NGOs and help set in motion a counter movement (and counter conference) in order to present an alternative to a destructive international cause, which has lost its moral compass and whose contributions to true human dignity are growing more limited with each passing year.

The Western Word - An International Weekly Digest   8-1-2008