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

Converging Agendas, New Organizations, Shared Initiatives, Methods, and Identities

integration, and it called for a new paradigm in development that would revalue women’s contributions to national economies and societies , redistribute resources, and strengthen the legal mechanisms that ensure women’s human rights (Friedman 2003; Moghadam 2005). Throughout the conferences, and particularly at Copenhagen, human rights and development organizations encountered and became familiar with alternative analytical frameworks and rhetorical approaches to key economic and social policy issues, including structural adjustment, labor market participation, and social and political participation. Converging Agendas, New Organizations, Shared Initiatives, Methods, and Identities A flood of new initiatives and newly founded organizations on the human rights–development frontier are the most visible manifestations of the convergence that accelerated in the 1990s. Less readily observable, but equally important, are the convergence of agendas and shifting methods and identities that occurred across the international NGO world. In this section we document these trends, then profile the alliances, campaigns, and hybrid organizations that form the most dynamic element of the human rights–development nexus. COMMON AGENDAS Working in local and global arenas during the 1980s and early 1990s, international human rights and development NGOs, along with environmental , women’s, and indigenous people’s organizations, pursued agendas that were sometimes closely related. During the debates over dam projects and oil pipelines and in discussions related to the UN global conferences, NGOs in the two sectors repeatedly found they were working in parallel on common priorities, sometimes using different language and even conceptual frames. Development NGOs, for example, were promoting guidelines and practices to increase “popular participation” in projects funded by 136 Alliances and Hybrids major donors, while human rights NGOs were insisting on the “right to participation” in decisions affecting people’s lives and future choices. Development advocacy organizations placed emphasis on protecting “vulnerable populations” from the effects of infrastructure projects, from other threats related to conflict, natural disaster, or economic shocks, and from reductions in government services brought on by budgetary constraints. Human rights NGOs pursued similar objectives, invoking the principle of nondiscrimination. What development advocates referred to as fair compensation to people involuntarily resettled for major projects was addressed by human rights NGOs as remedies for human rights violations. In short, while the degree of convergence during this period was modest, and the incidence of shared initiatives and joint planning infrequent, the growing awareness of common agendas was preparing the way for more substantial forms of collaboration in the years to come. NEW ORGANIZATIONS, INITIATIVES, METHODS, AND IDENTITIES These shared agendas were not the only product to emerge from advocacy experiences in the 1980s and early 1990s. Among organizations , at the individual level and across the sectors, these interactions spawned a generation of new NGOs and campaigns, new relationships , new and more flexible identities, and new skills and methods. By the mid-1990s, the result was a global collection of human rights, development, women’s, and environmental NGOs that was more diverse , better networked, and more familiar with each others’ agendas and methods. New Organizations Theglobalconferences,particularlythoseonwomenandonsocialdevelopment , led to the creation of international NGOs that now play important roles in animating the human rights–development exchange . A striking list of new international NGOs emerged at the time of the preparation for and monitoring of the global conferences. 137 Converging Agendas, New Organizations, Initiatives, Methods, and Identities MADRE (founded in 1983), International Women’s Health Coalition (1984), Women’s Environment and Development Organization (1990), Women for Women International (1993), Social Watch (1995),andmanyotherswerefoundedduringtheperiodoftheglobal conferences or played vital roles in coordinating NGO participation. The Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), for example, was founded in 1990 to promote “a healthy and peaceful planet, economic and social justice, and human rights for all.” WEDO played a leading role in work on women’s rights in development throughout the 1990s; it was launched with the World Women’s Congress for a Healthy Planet, in preparation for the 1992 UNCED Conference, and played key roles in facilitating women’s caucuses at Cairo and succeeding conferences. WEDO’s explicit goal was to unite and strengthen the voice of women’s organizations by articulating common themes and strategies throughout the UN global conferences. WEDO trained women’s organizations, particularly NGOs based in the global South, on UN processes and on lobbying strategies needed to give prominence to women’s policy priorities. International Women’s Health Coalition, founded in the United States in 1984, established its international identity while playing...