Human rights and development in Africa: NGOs

In broad outline, the close of the twentieth century was a period in which global links grew stronger. Increased emphasis was placed on the interdependence of states rather than on their separate sovereignties, and on the rule of law than the will of capricious dictators. Comparing the two ends of the century, crucial differences could be noted. Human rights rest upon the rule of law; international promotion and protection of them depend upon a global community able to extend across frontiers. The current dramatically expanded role of human rights-oriented NGOs (internal and external), the groups with which this chapter is concerned, attests a major shift in perspective in a relatively short time. At the start of the century, international law was marked by stress on "domestic jurisdiction," in which states held nearly unchallenged responsibility for setting and administering policies within their borders. International norms of human rights did not change essentially until 1926, the year when a comprehensive ban on slavery was established. No global meeting place existed for states prior to the post-World War I creation of the League of Nations; and much of the world was under colonial rule. But by the end of the century, the United Nations had become firmly established; colonialism had largely disappeared, and the number of countries had multiplied; both customary and conventional international law included substantial human rights elements; and NGOs centrally concerned with human rights played increasingly important international roles. Even ifwe compress the period of time, the changes have been immense. In October 1982, I had the pleasure of convening a conference entitled "Human Rights and Development in Africa."l Revisiting this important topic nearly two decades later provides an opportunity to examine changes and continuities in Africa over a fascinating if often frustrating period. Several contrasts exist between the region early in the third millennium and the region twenty years earlier, at the time of the preceding conference on human rights and development in Africa. Take, for example, the following: Bullets rather than ballots served in the early 1980s as the primary means to change governments. In the quarter-century between 1965 and 1990, approximately 75 successful coups d'etat took place in OAU member states-but in only one of them, Mauritius, did an opposition party both win an election and successfully take office for its full term. Now, despite occasional acts of intervention, the armed forces of Africa seem actors largely on the fringes of politics, rather than at their center. State-centered models of economic development held sway in the early 1980s, although the magnitude of Africa's stagnation relative to most other parts of the Third World and the negative impact of corrupted central planning were becoming apparent (Sandbrook 1985). Disappointments of independence, the failures of state-directed economic development, the ubiquity of personal rule, and the resultant downward spiral had yet to crest, although the voices of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl offered a powerful rebuttal to then-orthodox models of planning. Analysis of corruption (a severe challenge to development and the rule of law) remained abstract, not yet an area around which international action might coalesce.2 Now, by contrast, discussions of the impetus for economic development concentrate on the private rather than public sector; corruption has become an area of active global concern; and intervention in internal policy-making by entities such as the International Monetary Fund has become commonplace. The corpus of international human rights treaty law was significantly smaller in 1982 than in 2000. Admittedly, this corpus was not inconsiderable at the earlier date. The two International Covenants (on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights) had already entered into force, following protracted periods of debate. Agreements widely touted as frontal attacks on apartheid had also been adopted-the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. On the other hand, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction were still gleams in their drafters' eyes. Even more to the point, treaty bodies that received and examined reports from states parties on their implementation of human rights agreements had barely started to come into existence. • Although the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights had been drafted by specialists and formally adopted by the heads of state and government of the Organization ofAfrican Unity (OAU) in the 1979-81 period, the Charter rested in legal limbo in 1982, awaiting formal ratification and entry into force. The major vehicle for implementation, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, could not be established until 26 states had officially ratified the Charter. This occurred by late 1986, and in October 1987 the Commission started to meet-mostly in sessions closed to public scrutiny. For its first several years, indeed, the Commission appeared mired in inefficiency, inaction, and inadequate resources (Welch 1995: 151-61). Perhaps most significant, domestic human rights NGOs barely existed less than twenty years ago in post-colonial Africa.3 Human rights NGOs active in Africa were in 1982 far more likely to be offshoots of groups headquartered in Western Europe or the United States than to be indigenous entities responding to national issues. By the mid-1990s, however, a significant number of Africa-based human rights organizations had sprung up, for reasons explored in this chapter. Human Rights, Development, and the Rule of Law in Africa thus rightfully gives far more attention to NGOs than did Human Rights and Development in Africa, the book I edited in 1984. Only one chapter of the latter discussed nongovernmental organizations in detail. References to NGOs abound throughout the current volume, by contrast. The reason is clear-NGOs now play central roles in the rule of law and contemporary human rights practice in Africa; they had been peripheral, relatively speaking, a few years earlier. According to Commissioner Vera Duarte, "NGOs are what can be called the soul of human rights" (Duarte 1999). She emphasizes their significance, in part, in terms of compassion and morality. I would go farther. What if we called NGOs the "brain" of human rights? Or their skeleton? Or their nervous system? In this chapter, I argue that in the "body" of human rights, NGOs can be envisaged as the nervous system, with states providing the skeleton and muscle. Without the rule of law, few human rights NGOs would exist in contemporary Africa. Contemporary NGOs of this type exist in the context of civil society, which is based on constitutional, legal, and attitudinal frameworks that permit the establishment and competition of organized entities advocating policies for the benefit of specific groups.4 Civil society has been broadly defined by one leading African specialist as "public political activity that occurs in the realm between the state and the family" (Bratton, 1989b: 56). Such political activities can be differentiated on the one hand from the economic activities of firms and trade unions, and on the other hand from ascriptive group-oriented activities of ethnic associations (although substantial overlap exists on each side). Organizations of civil society consciously seek the public good of relatively broad sectors. Thus, though NGOs seem to resemble the "voluntary associations" that earlier generations ofAfrican specialists described, they are in fact quite different. Voluntary associations built upon kinship and helped individuals adjust to the complexities of urban or ethnically mixed life. They were (and remain) indigenous responses to rapid cultural and economic change, directed to the personal interests of individuals defined by ethnic or regional ties. By contrast, contemporary human rights NGOs are global products of the post-World War II expansion of the United Nations and its growing framework of human rights conventions. They speak in terms of inherent liberties possessed by all persons simply from the fact of being human (Korey 1998; Lauren 1998). NGOs have filled important roles in pressing for new international standards, often through networks (an aspect to which I shall return shortly) (Keck and Sikkink 1998); in providing information to treaty bodies; in furnishing solidarity and assistance to victims of human rights abuses; and, most broadly, in serving as a "conscience of mankind" (Willetts 1996). Human rights NGOs have tended to cluster geographically in economically affluent Western states rather than in developing countries, and ideologically in support of civil and political rights far more than in support of economic, social and cultural rights. Some, such as Amnesty International, the Federation Internationale des Droits de I'Homme (FIDH), or PEN International (ScobIe 1984: 177-203), established national sections in some states after independence. A few, including Human Rights Watch (HRW) , are now cementing regular links with indigenous African human rights NGOs, as discussed below.