New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs

New NGOs and the Global Network for ESC Rights

But the defenders approach, corporate work, and the ESC decision are all part of a decade-long strategic adaptation. In the preface to the 2001 annual report, secretary-general Pierre Sane summarized the challenges AI had faced in the decade before its fortieth anniversary. In a world where globalization is undermining many nationstates and bringing poverty to the forefront of the human rights agenda, the challenge for AI is to remain relevant . . . broadening our aim from the protection of civil and political rights to embrace all human rights. The indivisibility of human rights is not an abstraction: the context which gives rise to human rights violations is invariably complex and cannot be divorced from issues of wealth and status, injustice and impunity. The significance of this mission change cannot be overstated. Smaller NGOs have worked on ESC rights long before this decision, but AI’s endorsement profoundly increases the visibility and legitimacy of ESC approaches to economic globalization. Coupled with new rights-based approaches to development, a common front for applying human rights standards to economic and social policy and poverty issues is emerging. New NGOs and the Global Network for ESC Rights As the major international NGOs have moved slowly to develop substantial ESC rights agendas, new organizations and networks have been formed explicitly with an ESC framework. Dynamic and sometimes innovative approaches by networks of NGOs show the potential of ESC rights in fields such as corporate behavior in extractive industries and the rights to water, food, and agrarian reform. Increasingly , ESC rights organizations are applying international human rights standards to national budgets, creating new methods of analyzing and monitoring government policy and actions.4 ESC-specific organizations have emerged as national advocacy organizations in Nigeria (SERAC, the Social and Economic Rights 70 Transforming the Human Rights Movement Action Center), Senegal (Association pour le Developpement Economique ), Ecuador (Centro de Derechos Economicos y Sociales), New Zealand (The New Zealand Council of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), Canada (Social Rights Advocacy Center), Korea (Korean Research and Consulting Institute on Poverty), Kenya (Kenya Land Alliance), Brazil (Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econ ômicas), Portugal (International Centre on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), and many others. In the past decade, there has been a proliferation of new organizations formed to promote women’s and indigenous peoples’ rights and development. These organizations are not exclusively ESC-based groups, and many include civil and political rights seamlessly with their focus on poverty alleviation and sustainable development. In addition, many of the organizations established to promote civil and political rights in countries in the global South also began to incorporate ESC rights into their work, often far earlier than the international human rights NGOs. In the United States, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (host to the Poor People’s Economic Rights Campaign), National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, the National Center for Human Rights Education, the Women’s Institute of Leadership and Development (WILD), and the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights are just a few of the organizations that have emerged in the past decade focused on the human rights of marginalized groups in the United States. A new U.S. Network for Human Rights has been founded to link grassroots social justice movements and organizations to the international human rights framework. Here we will focus on the emergence of international ESC human rights organizations, using case studies of two NGOs and the new international network to link local, national, and international organizations promoting ESC rights. But the real explosion of activity is occurring at the national and community levels in countries throughout the world. These new ESC rights–oriented organizations in the poor countries, together with those operating internationally, are redefining the human rights field. 71 New NGOs and the Global Network for ESC Rights Among the major centers for developing and testing new strategies are the Food Information and Action Network (FIAN), the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), and the International Human Rights Council (IHRC). Other international NGOs that are building their missions to self-consciously address ESC rights as part of a larger human rights framework, such as Dignity International or EarthRights International, will be detailed in chapter 4. THE CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RIGHTS A project on the human rights impact of economic sanctions against Iraq, launched in 1993 by three law and public health students, evolved into what is now...