Hijacking human rights - Part 3

Michael Barker

Critical examinations of groups like the NED and the USIP have demonstrated that the discourse of democracy and peace serves as a brilliant rhetorical cover for promoting elite democracy - that is, low intensity democracy or polyarchy. Thus although HRW may be promoting some form of human rights, it appears that like the NED and the USIP, their work may be undermining the efforts of other more progressive groups struggling to promote a more egalitarian and participatory world order.

Critically, Julie Mertus (2004) in her important study, Bait and Switch: Human Rights and US Foreign Policy, illustrates that in spite of all the work of human rights groups:

Ethical principles

“The United States is in fact still leading the world on human rights, but in the wrong direction, promoting short-term instrumentalism over long-term ethical principles, double standards instead of fair dealing, and a fearful view of human nature over a more open one... Human rights talk has not been accompanied by human rights behaviors.”

Here it is instructive to turn to James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer’s (2005) incisive analysis regarding the mechanics of social change. In an attempt to understand why many NGOs may actually be exacerbating the very problems that they are aiming to fix, Petras and Veltmeyer explain that:

“In Latin America... the main concern [of the US government] in the 1960s and 1970s was to stave off pressures for revolutionary change - to prevent another Cuba. To this end, USAID promoted state-led reforms and the public provision of credit and technical assistance to the mass of small and peasant producers in the region. A good part of ODA [Overseas Development Aid] took a bilateral form, but increasingly USAID turned to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as their executing arm, bypassing governments in the region and channelling funds more directly to the local communities.

‘Innocently’

The NGOs provided collateral ‘services’ or benefits to the donors, including strengthening local organizations opting for development and weakening class-based organizations with an anti-systemic orientation.

In this context, the NGOs were also used, almost incidentally - and somewhat ‘innocently’ from the perspective of many of their personnel - not only to promote economic and social development (rather than social change and revolution) but to promote the values of democratic forms of organization as well as capitalism (the use of the electoral mechanism in their politics and the market in their economics).”

Not being ones to mince their words, Petras and Veltmeyer go on to describe such NGOs as the “executing agents of US imperialism” which “helped turn local communities away from organizations seeking to mobilize for direct action against the system and instead promoted a reformist approach to social change.”

Likewise Joan Roelofs (2003) also suggests that many “[c]ivil society organizations are convenient instruments for imperialism” which are effectively “controlled by elites via funding, integration into coalitions, and overlapping personnel.”

As Ian Smillie (1995) observes, the irony of this situation is that “[d]espite frequently repeated reassurance that NGO independence is reasonably intact, the fact is that [since the 1960s] Northern NGOs have stumbled into a contracting era without appearing to have noticed it.”

Clearly HRW would rank among those NGOs that Petras, Veltmeyer and Roelofs would describe as a working in the service of imperialism, a diagnosis which I for one would agree with.

But even if one were not inclined to go this far, it can be argued with certainty that (at the very least) by working so closely with the ‘democracy promoting’ community HRW is actively legitimizing the promotion of polyarchy, and thus undermining efforts to promote participatory democracy. Indeed, the presence of such extensive ‘democratic’ ties among HRW’s Americas advisory board alone should be irreconcilable for a group which aims to promote human rights, unless of course HRW sincerely believes that neoliberal economics coupled with political disengagement will provide the best protection for global human rights.

Indirectly linked

However, given the evidence presented in this article, it seems more likely that rather than just being indirectly linked to the ‘democracy’ elites, HRW is in actual fact an integral member of the ‘democracy promoting’ community - albeit a liberally orientated member.

Unfortunately, the hegemonic position that HRW’s work has attained over the global promotion of human rights has negative consequences for democratic governance which are not immediately obvious. David Chandler (2006) observes that:

“While mainstream commentators conflate human rights with empowerment, self-determination and democracy, there are few critics who draw attention to the fact that the human rights discourse of moral and ethical policies is essentially an attack on the public political sphere and democratic practices.”

Illegal wars

Indeed with the end of the Cold War ‘humanitarian’ interventions have grown to become a central pillar for justifying what should in a more honest world be called illegal wars of aggression. Problematically, for anyone interested in challenging such humanitarian doublespeak, Chandler points out that “it is perhaps even more concerning that many commentators argue that critical discussion of the human rights framework itself is unproductive and dangerous.”

This reasoning perhaps helps to explain why few commentators in even the alternative media have undertaken sustained criticisms of HRW and its ‘democratic’ affiliates. Talking about the rise of NGOs more generally, Petras and Voltmeyer (2001) suggest that:

“It is symptomatic of the pervasiveness of the NGOs and their economic and political power over the so-called ‘progressive world’ that there have been few systematic Left critiques of their negative impact. In a large part this failure is due to the success of the NGOs in displacing and destroying the organized leftist movements and co-opting their intellectual strategists and organizational leaders.”

This is clearly a dangerous situation for progressive activists still wishing to promote participatory democracy, as many of the large transnational NGOs (like HRW) are unlike governments almost totally unaccountable to the public, and it can easily be argued that their presence actually works to minimise meaningful public participation in political activities. Indeed, Petras and Voltmeyer (2001) go on to note, that:

“In most cases the NGOs are not even membership organizations but a self appointed elite which, under the pretence of being “resource people” for popular movements, in fact, competes with and undermines them.

In this sense, NGOs undermine democracy by taking social programs and public debate out of the hands of the local people and their elected natural leaders and creating dependence on non-elected overseas officials and their anointed local officials.”

Chandler concludes his critique of humanitarian interventions by noting that: “[t]he destructive dynamic of human rights interventionism is not because human rights policies are not fully applied or because international institutions are following some hidden Great Power agenda, but precisely because the human rights discourse itself is deeply corrosive of the political process.”

Vital role

While Petras and Voltmeyer would certainly agree with Chandler’s description of the corrosive nature of the discourse of human rights, Chandler’s analysis falls short by failing to recognise the vital role that international liberal philanthropists have played in openly (not covertly) engineering the legalistic discourse of human rights which dominates the globe today.

That said, perhaps Chandler’s failure to address the vexing issue of liberal philanthropy should not be considered to be just a personal shortcoming, as his exclusion of any discussion of the critical role of liberal foundations is more symptomatic of academia in general.

Writing in 1993, Mary Colwell observed that private foundations - both liberal and conservative - “are largely ignored in studies of how public policy is made in the United States... [and that in] much of what is written about the nonprofit, ‘third’ or ‘independent’ sector... the critical role of private foundations and data from research about the political and economic elite is absent.”

Political power

This is certainly the case with studies concerned with human rights, even progressive ones like Chandler’s. One of the few scholars to have comprehensively investigated the anti-democratic influence of liberal foundations is Joan Roelofs, who suggests that, liberal foundations:

“...greatest threat to democracy lies in their translation of wealth into power.

They can create and disseminate an ideology justifying vast inequalities of life chances and political power; they can deflect criticism and mask (and sometimes mitigate) damaging aspects of the system; and they can hire the best brains, popular heroines, and even left-wing political leaders to do their work.”

To briefly summarize. Liberal foundations started seriously funding progressive activist organizations (like the civil rights movement) in the 1960s.

Then through a process referred to as strategic philanthropy, liberal foundations were able to successfully moderate civil society by directing the bulk of their funding towards the more conservative progressive groups, thus reducing the relative influence of more radical activists through a process either described as channelling or coopting. Unfortunately, to date, Roelofs (the leading writer/scholar critically examining such processes of cooption) has not provided a detailed analysis of the effect of liberal philanthropy on the human rights movement. But she does point out that:

“Solidarity’ groups, which relate the poverty and rebellions throughout Latin America to U.S. corporate penetration backed by overt and covert military action, are potentially challenging to the system. [Liberal f]oundations have attempted to counter this perspective by creating Americas Watch [now a part of HRW] and many other human rights organizations. These regard the troubles arising from a lack of respect for human rights throughout Latin America.

Problem exists

They hope to improve the situation by such means as bringing human rights violations to the attention of the media and international organizations and encouraging human rights groups throughout the hemisphere.

The problem with this legal approach is that abuses are regarded as ‘deviations,’ even when a regime is using terror as an instrument of policy.” Fortunately for progressive activists, the answers to the ‘democratic’ problems raised in this article are rather simple.

However, before any suitable solutions can be implemented, individuals and organizations concerned with protecting human rights and promoting a more egalitarian world order will in the first instance need to acknowledge that a problem exists.

Given the paucity of information and current commentary concerning this subject, it is likely that this will be the most difficult step for progressive activists and their organizations to make.

In fact, the issue of developing sustainable funding (in ways compatible with participatory principles) for progressive social change has not even been seriously addressed by many progressive activists either - a recent exception being INCITE!’s (2007) The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (published by South End Press).

Liberal foundations

Realistically, it is unreasonable to assume that the evidence presented in this paper will be enough to radically alter the high regard many individuals have for HRW and liberal philanthropists more generally.

Therefore, the first step that I propose needs to be taken to change this situation is to launch a vibrant public discussion of the broader role of liberal foundations and the NED in funding social change - an action that will rely for the most part upon the interest and support of grassroots activists all over the world.

Only then, once progressive activists concerned with the promotion of human rights have considered all the evidence, will it be possible for them to collectively decide upon the most appropriate way to engage in humanitarian activities that will promote not undermine participatory democracy (and human rights).

To be continued - Courtesy: Zmag