1. Are NGOs and the UN natural
allies?
William Haslam
Fergus Mooney esq.
With specific reference to Human Rights NGOs

2. Introduction
• The establishment of the UN charter and it's effects upon Human Rights and Human Rights
NGOs
• The main aim of a human rights NGO is to promote greater human rights through education,
standard-setting, monitoring and enforcement; several of which can only be achieved with
international state cooperation
• The development of Human Rights NGOs since the Second World War with specific reference
to the Helsinki Final Act, and the success this represented on the international level without
the use of the UN
• The basic structure of human rights NGOs shall be looked at, with Amnesty International as
our case study and it's collaboration with the UN
• There are many methods available to, and used by, NGOs within the UN framework such as
‘Naming and shaming’, ‘insider tactics’, agenda setting, the circulation of reports and the
‘Boomerang method’ of lobbying
• The UN provides many possibilities and much assistance to NGOs but also has many
limitations to the help it gives NGOs

3. Objectives of Human Rights NGOs
Four main goals of Human Rights NGOs:
– Education: Educating people on the importance of human
rights, “education classically forms part of promotion” (Davis et
al, 2012)
– Standard-Setting: 64% of respondents to Smith’s survey had
developing international standards as a primary goal
– Monitoring: 53% put monitoring violations as a primary goal
– Enforcement: Also 53% put ‘developing mechanisms for
enforcing international standards’ as priority
(J Smith et al, 1998)

4. Development of Human Rights
NGOs
• International human rights causes have been around since the
late 18th Century with the attempts to ban slavery
• ‘Anti-Slavery Society founded in 1839 was probably the oldest
INGO’ (T Risse, 2000)
• For most part, pre WW2, campaigns were isolated in quantity
and quality
• Post-WW2 saw a rise of International NGOs (INGOs) such as
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International
Commission of Jurists

5. Establishment of UN charter
• Created in 1945- Conference of San Francisco. Culminated in creation of a
mandated charter
• NGO lobbying was crucial in the inclusion of human rights in the UN charter
• Commission of Human Rights drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
adopted in December 1948
• UN provided a new platform for lobbying of governments
• Documents, however, were non-binding declarations
• Not until 1960s and 1970s is there a growth in the number of formalised and
organised NGOs with real influence, such as Amnesty International
• ‘From the 1970s the activities of trans-national civil society in the human rights
area grew dramatically (Risse, 2000)

6. Helsinki Final Act
• Created in 1975 at the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) held at Helsinki, Finland.
CSCE an attempt to bridge the East-West divide in
Europe and improve relations on a broad range of
issues
• Involved the heads of 35 participating states and
resulted in signing of Final Act on 1st August 1975
• Final Act- Established basic norms for relations among
European States and identified opportunities for
continued cooperation
• An example of international cooperation without the
need or involvement of the UN.

7. Helsinki Final Act cont.
• 10 basic norms established, such as committing the CSCE to practice non-intervention in
internal affairs of other states, whilst another committed them to ensure respect for human
rights and fundamental freedoms within their borders. Represented a turning point in East-
West relations over human rights. References to Human rights represented a clear departure
from several decades of diplomatic rhetoric and political practice on both sides of the East-
West divide
• Final Act was a way of creating a NGO network, referred to as the Helsinki Network
• Network allowed NGOs operating in Eastern Bloc to refer violations of human rights to NGOs
operating in America in an attempt to highlight the US government’s failure to press for
compliance with the Final Acts talk of human rights
• ‘The Helsinki Effect led to substantial human rights mobilisation in Eastern Europe and this
mobilisation contributed significantly to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold
War in 1989’ (Risse, 2000)
• Whole process shows the power of international lobbying and of cooperation between NGOs
on state institutions

8. Structure of human rights NGOs
• Mostly member based NGOs, ‘roughly one-fourth of all the NGOs
surveyed indicate that they do not have formal members’ (Smith,
1998)
– ‘1999 Amnesty International, alone, had more than a million
members in more than 160 states even though half of it’s
membership is concentrated in three countries, the United
Kingdom, the United States and Germany’ (Risse, 2000)
• Tend to be consensus driven organisations
• Half rely upon government and intergovernmental agency grants
• Closely associated with intergovernmental organisations, such as
the UN

9. Structure of human rights NGOs
cont.
• Effectiveness of NGOs to lobby governments is partly brought about by
their structure
– Amnesty’s peculiar structure of national sections together with an
international secretariat has proved successful at organising
coordinated campaigns such as the campaign against torture. Another
example of successful lobbying.
• Various western governments including the Netherlands, France and
Australia rejected the legally binding provisions of the Convention Against
Torture. Saw it as an intrusion into their national sovereignty
• Countered by Amnesty working closely with other NGOs and the UN
Human Rights Commission to lobby national governments
• Amnesty’s structure allowed it to focus on the weakest link to opposition
to the human rights campaign

10. Methods of NGOs
• The use of ‘insider tactics’ is now commonplace- with access
to top level institutions at a national and particularly at an
international level to advise and influence policy (Smith, 1998)
NGOs have gained more influence with the creation of the
UN, the largest international institution there is
• Part of the more formal process that has been established is
that NGOs, highly rated ones at least, have the ability to set
agendas at UN
• Circulation of reports enables the spreading of information on
a particular topic amongst a large number of delegates very
quickly, meaning that reports immediately get given to states
at a higher level than would otherwise be possible

11. Methods of NGOs cont.
• ‘Naming and Shaming’ to win over public opinion and encourage third
party states to increase pressure on the ‘shamed’. (Davis et al, 2012) can
have a particular effect at a public platform such as the UN, where the
whole world can watch
– NGOs can use this moral authority to remind liberal democracies, by
definition, that they are supposed to be concerned with protecting
human rights and the rule of law
– Shaming implies a process of persuasion, since it convinces leaders
that their behavior is inconsistent with an identity to which they aspire
– Example: Transnational Civil Society accused the Moroccan King
Hassan II of serious human rights abuses in 1990. ‘Naming and
shaming’ left him insulted since the national identity of Morocco was
at stake

12. The UN in the 'Boomerang Model'
• If attempts by an NGO to influence human rights policy in a country by a
local NGO fail then they ask a third party NGO to pressure their state,
which in turn puts pressure on the state committing human rights
violations
• Creates pressure from ‘”below” and “from above”’, as well as threatening
further scrutiny or ‘loss of foreign aid’ if no action is taken (Davis, 2012)

13. The UN in the 'Boomerang Model'
cont.
• The second NGO in this model cannot always simply demand
it's home state to take action, and a solitary state cannot
always put enough pressure on another to get policy changed
• Here the UN is where the NGO or second state can lobby the
international community so that the human rights violations
that are committed are appropriately dealt with
• The UN is the only platform where an NGO can access every
reconsigned country on Earth in the same place, making the
UN a natural ally for this kind of humanitarian work

14. Factors affecting NGO success at
the UN
• NGOs can get access to high level officials from a huge number of states at the UN,
and have official powers of agenda setting and the right to sit on meetings
• However, the UN does provide limitations
• The association with an official organisation prevents more direct confrontational
action such as protest, at the risk of losing the influence it has acquired amongst
delegates
• An NGO attempting to get the UN to do anything is heavily reliant upon the
support of a large network of other NGOs and states, each with their own agenda
• The UN excludes NGOs that it does not recognise or deem important enough,
limiting the range of issues and arguments that are legitimised by appearing in the
UN
• The UN is slow moving body that revels in bureaucracy

15. Conclusions
• Only since the Second World War have human rights NGOs become organised
enough to influentially lobby international organisations, coinciding with the
creation of the UN
• The Helsinki Final Act is the first example of how NGOs have been able to
internationally lobby for human rights and successfully change a states attitude on
the matter. This was achieved without the support of the UN.
• The structure of the NGOs is generally a member based and consensus driven
organisation. The structure can benefit in international lobbying and UN
cooperation as shown by the case of Amnesty International and the anti-torture
campaign
• Methods used within the UN involve ‘Naming and Shaming’, ‘insider tactics’,
circulation of reports, agenda setting, direct lobbying and the ‘boomerang model’
of lobbying
• The UN provides blockages to the work of NGOs with bureaucracy, slow movement
and a necessity that any NGO actor within operating within the UN is forced to rely
upon a large network of not consistently trustworthy allies

16. Bibliography
• RP Claude, BI Weston, Human Rights in the World Community: Issues and Action, University of Pennsylvania Press,
2006
• D Thomas, ‘Human Rights in US Foreign Policy’, in S Khagram, JV Riker, K Sikkink, Restructuring World Politics:
Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, University of Minnesota Press, 2002
• T Rissse, SC Ropp and K Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights, Cambridge University Press, 1999
• J Smith, R Pagnucco and GA Lopez, ‘Globalising human rights: the work of transnational human rights NGOs in the
1990s’, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2, May, 1998, pp 379-412
• D Davis, ‘”Makers and Shapers”: Human Right INGOs and Public Opinion’, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1,
February, 2012, pp 119-224
• F Gaer, ‘Reality Check: Human Rights Nongovernmental Organisations Confront Governments at the United
Nations’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp 389-404
• T Risse, ‘Chapter 7’, in A Florini, The Third Force: the Rise of Transnational Civil Society, Carnegie Endowment, 2000
• C Bob, ‘Globalisation and the Social Construction of Human Rights Campaigns’, in A Brysk, Globalisation and
Human Rights, University of California Press, 2002
• K Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics, WW Norton and
Company, 2011