Freedom from Poverty: NGOs and Human Rights Praxis

Chapter 6. Using a Social Theory to Interpret NGO Efforts

6 Using a Social Theory to Interpret NGO Efforts This book seeks to explain the recent increase in Western NGOs’ work to achieve freedom from poverty, and to understand its meaning for human rights politics more broadly. Subsistence rights, as a subset of economic and social rights, had been delegitimized, opposed, or ignored within the West for decades, in large part due to a particular understanding of human rights that defined them as legal instruments protecting individuals against government interference. Within this framework, civil and political rights were perceived as valid legal rights outlining negative duties on the state, while economic and social rights were regarded as positive entitlements and thus—for geopolitical and ideological reasons—were deemed to be an inappropriate object for human rights activity. The recent emergence of subsistence rights work, and the range of strategic approaches to this work, has important implications for how we understand human rights and how we use them as tools for social transformation. In this chapter, I review what led to the rise of subsistence rights, and argue that a social theory of human rights helps us understand its meaning for human rights politics. The Mutual Interplay of Interests and Principles An increasing number of human rights, social justice, and humanitarian NGOs in the past decade have used the human rights framework to work for solutions to extreme poverty. Traditional human rights organizations are adding subsistence rights, along with other economic and social rights, to their portfolio. New human rights organizations devoted specifically to the realization of economic and social rights are appearing. Social justice groups 12771-Freedom from Poverty.indd 131 12771-Freedom from Poverty.indd 131 3/11/10 10:52:14 AM 3/11/10 10:52:14 AM 132 Chapter 6 are using human rights language to frame their arguments about extreme poverty in a way that resonates with their constituencies and wider audiences. Humanitarian organizations are adopting rights-based approaches to analyze the environments in which they work and guide the implementation of their projects among the poor. Although these organizations approach rights in different ways, they all have one thing in common: they are advocating for freedom from poverty—the claim that nutrition, housing, health care, and other basic necessities be socially guaranteed. All of these NGOs have adopted subsistence rights for both principled and strategic reasons, which have been largely harmonious rather than conflicting . Normative entrepreneurs within these organizations responded to what they perceived as opportunities within their strategic environments— for example, the end of the Cold War, the intractability of global poverty, and the legitimacy of rights language—by promoting subsistence rights as a way to respond effectively to these demands. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, many of whose members had always believed in the importance and validity of subsistence rights, began to perceive that their future effectiveness required an expansion into economic and social rights. They understood that their relevance, legitimacy, and survival as human rights organizations increasingly depended on promoting these rights, which were being taken up throughout the global South and by young activists in wealthy countries. Yet human rights organizations’ expansion into subsistence rights has been limited by ongoing principled and strategic concerns that they do not have the internal capacity or appropriate methodology to advance these rights effectively. Likewise, most social justice organizations believe in the principled ideas flowing from the human rights framework about the inherent dignity and equality of all people. They have responded to the prevalent rights psychology in the West, the increasing willingness of donors to fund work that bridges human rights and social justice, and increasing support from human rights organizations, by framing some of their organizing and advocacy efforts in terms of human rights. Their use of human rights rhetoric is variable, depending on their organizational identity and the strategic contexts in which they work. Humanitarian organizations have always been mandated to lift people out of extreme poverty through delivering goods and services. In the 1990s, however, the goals of development and human rights became increasingly linked conceptually; both were defined as improving disadvantaged people’s 12771-Freedom from Poverty.indd 132 12771-Freedom from Poverty.indd 132 3/11/10 10:52:14 AM 3/11/10 10:52:14 AM 133 Using a Social Theory to Interpret NGO Efforts basic capabilities and freedoms. This conceptual linkage was enhanced by the growing belief among humanitarian organizations that...