The Uses and Misuses of Human Rights

A Critical Approach to Advocacy

G. Andreopoulos, Z. Arat, G. Andreopoulos, Z. Arat

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349488322, 9781137408334
• eBook ISBN: 9781137408341
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Law

This volume focuses on challenges to the effective and proper use of human rights and tries to identify, through a series of case studies, strategies and contexts in which human rights advocacy can work in favor of human rights, as well as situations in which such advocacy may backfire, or unintentionally cause harm.

CHAPTER 1

ON THE USES AND MISUSES OF HUMAN RIGHTS: A CRITICAL APPROACH TO ADVOCACY¹

George Andreopoulos and Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat

The evolution of human rights norms reveals a complex and uneven story. On the one hand, there have been unquestionable achievements, especially in the post-1945 period, which have challenged some of the traditional prerogatives of sovereignty.² More specifically, since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly in 1948, the setting of standards in human rights has advanced rapidly. Both the United Nations and regional human rights regimes have adopted declarations and treaties, many of which have been ratified by a significant majority of participating states. New constitutions, amendments, and legislative reforms tend to make explicit references to the promotion and protection of human rights (Daly, 2013). Treaty obligations and national laws have led states to establish national human rights institutions with wide-ranging mandates (Mertus, 2009).³ Advocacy organizations have proliferated, some of the perpetrators of serious violations have been brought to justice, people and activists have increasingly articulated their claims by employing a language of human rights, and very few people would openly admit to being hostile to the idea of human rights. This has led some analysts and commentators to refer to human rights as the “lingua franca of global moral discourse” (Beitz & Goodin, 2009, p. 1).

On the other hand, all kinds of human rights violations and various forms of discrimination continue all around the world. Although progress can be noted in some areas, regression in other areas raises questions about the sustainability of improvements, if they are ever made. For example, industrialization, workers’ activism, and various conventions issued by the International Labour Organization (ILO) led to prolabor legislation and increased rates of unionization in the last century, but the progress has been uneven (varied from country to country and by industry) and, most important, wavering (ILO, 2005; Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], n.d.). Parallel to the pattern of decline in the rates of unionization that began in the later decades of the last century, collective bargaining rights have been on the decline and even under attack in some places. In recent years, the most prominent example of such attack has been the targeting of public-sector unions in several states in the United States (Andreopoulos, 2012). Where collective bargaining is practiced, it has become a device through which workers invariably negotiate which of their “gained rights” should be compromised. Real wages have been declining, even before the financial crisis of 2008, despite the marked increases in labor productivity and profit margins in many industries. Informal economies, which remain outside the purview of labor law, have started to grow. Along with them have come sweatshops, human trafficking, and “new/modern-day slavery” (Bales, 2004; Kara, 2012). Industrial accidents that result in deaths and dismembering might not have reached nineteenth-century levels, but they are too frequent to be tolerated in the “age of human rights” and high technology. Yet, declining workers’ rights are tolerated, if not justified, for stimulating or sustaining economic development, competitive markets, and productivity.

Improvements in information and surveillance technology have reinforced states’ ability to control their population and endangered the right to privacy. Antiterrorism measures, which have increased both in number and severity, especially after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, have undermined (nationally as well as internationally) human rights norms for the sake of security (Andreopoulos, 2011; Chesterman, 2011; Duffy, 2004).

While the encroachment on human rights in the above mentioned examples may be considered as public/political choices among (seemingly) competing values—economic development and national security, on the one hand, and human rights, on the other—in certain circumstances human rights may also be undermined or violated in an effort to promote them, often by their most well-intended advocates. This volume focuses on challenges to the effective and proper use of human rights and tries to identify strategies and contexts in which human rights advocacy can work in favor of human rights, as well as situations in which such advocacy may backfire or unintentionally cause harm.

Use, Abuse, and Misuse of Human Rights

We begin by clarifying the key terms that constitute the focus of this volume. By use, we refer to the advancement of human rights norms and effective application of the human rights framework and instruments in redressing injustices, especially when these involve systematic violations of internationally recognized norms. By abuse, we refer primarily to situations in which the advocacy of human rights is used as a disguise to pursue other goals, as well as to the deliberate distortion of the obligations drawn from human rights documents, and the manipulation of the aims and activities of human rights and humanitarian organizations. Lastly, by misuse, we refer to actions that are undertaken by sincere and devoted advocates of human rights but unintentionally undermine international norms, question the validity of some human rights, adversely affect the well-being of their intended beneficiaries, or violate others’ human rights.

Before we proceed, several caveats are in order. First, norms, including human rights norms, are not exogenous to social interaction. While norms constitute a framework for existing rules, they continuously evolve as a result of the interplay between the rules and the actions of various actors. This interaction affects the substantive content of the norms, as well as their overall authoritativeness (Buzan, 1993; Sandholtz & Stiles, 2009). In this context, any discussion of use/abuse/misuse has to be situated within an ongoing interactive process where assessments of shared expectations about appropriate conduct may vary in accordance with the dynamics of the particular case/dispute. A good example of this would be the impact of a campaign seeking the adoption of a law regulating certain types of hate speech. This does not mean that there are no clearly identifiable normative signposts; rather what it indicates is that these signposts serve as baseline understandings in the effort to identify the “prevailing” shared expectations at a particular point in time. Second, the narratives of use, misuse, and abuse do not unfold in strictly compartmentalized trajectories; they inhabit the same public and private spaces, and their intersections at times render precise determinations of the actions involved (for example, abuse vs. misuse) and of intentionality (intended vs. unintended) rather difficult. What adds another layer of complexity in such determinations is the realization that sometimes misuse may be due to limitations in or incompleteness of framing. Identifying the appropriate “schemata of interpretation” (Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986, p. 464), so as to draw the necessary links between practices and violations and guide collective action, is not always as clear cut as it may appear. However, there are many instances in which what appear as limitations in framing are actually the self-imposed constraints of an advocacy model that seeks different outcomes, while insisting upon the same course of action and resisting a critical reexamination of its fundamental premises.⁴ Third, though considerable differences between human rights and humanitarianism exist, as well as between human rights and humanitarian organizations, some of the issues of concern raised here are common to both. It is with these caveats in mind that one should examine the basic matrix of outcomes that we present in Figure 1.1 later in this chapter.

The ongoing discussion on uses, abuses, and misuses indicates that the human rights discourse, despite the challenges that it faces and its manifest shortcomings, does matter. As human rights entered the agenda of intergovernmental organizations, and they, along with major international human rights organizations, have broadened their understanding of human rights and their activity domains, the tendency to employ human rights language in framing various causes has increased. Amnesty International, which started in the United Kingdom in the 1960s with the limited agenda of opposing political imprisonments, has been expanding its area of activity both geographically and thematically (Clark, 2001). Especially since the 1990s, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and to some extent social and economic rights have started to be addressed in its press releases, reports, and meetings organized by its chapters. The other major international advocacy organization, Human Rights Watch, followed suit, though perhaps more cautiously. Ronald Holzhacker’s essay in this volume examines the development of the framing of LGBT rights as human rights by focusing on its institutionalization in various jurisdictions.

As human rights gained currency and started to be used as a benchmark for legitimate social action, it also became more prone to abuse. For example, the United States’ wars in Afghanistan, which was originally launched to end the Afghan government’s support for Al-Qaida, and in Iraq, which was aimed at eliminating the weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Saddam Hussein, were intentionally reframed as human protection operations; in particular, administration officials argued that the goals of these operations included the advocacy of women’s rights, liberating people from repressive regimes, and introducing democratic rights and procedures.⁵ The manipulation of human rights by the Bush administration to justify the use of force by “the coalition of the willing” against these countries and their subsequent occupations have not only violated various rights of the people living in these countries but also endangered international human rights advocacy by enforcing skepticism among developing countries about the intentions of such advocacy.⁶

However, leaders in developing countries can be equally calculating and devious. For example, in July 2008, the government of Álvaro Uribe Velez allowed the Colombian military to use the disguise of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to negotiate with a major opposition armed group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and obtain the release of some high-profile hostages. While the act was presented as a humanitarian action and seen as a major victory against the guerrillas, it tainted “the neutrality” of the ICRC and potentially exposed its staff and other humanitarian workers to greater risk (Penhaul, 2008).

Rather than focusing on such blatant abuses, this volume is more interested in exploring misuses of human rights. With the best intentions, human rights may be promoted in a way that sells them short, neglects the input of the target population, or underestimates the undesirable impacts. The promotion and advancement of a right may engender backlash and cause reversals. Moreover, the actual content and intention of human rights advocacy may be misunderstood; the root causes of violations may be neglected; human rights may be interpreted narrowly; or beneficiaries may be defined in a limited way. Finally, the process of promoting the right of a particular group may undermine some other rights of the very sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1  On the Uses and Misuses of Human Rights: A Critical Approach to Advocacy
• 2  “Gay Rights Are Human Rights”: The Framing of New Interpretations of International Human Rights Norms
• 3  The Politics of a Strange Right: Consultation, Mining, and Indigenous Mobilization in Latin America
• 4  The Price of Confrontation: International Retributive Justice and the Struggle for Haitian-Dominican Rights
• 5  The Human Rights Framing of Maternal Health: A Strategy for Politicization or a Path to Genuine Empowerment?
• 6  Arms Transfers and the Human Rights Agenda
• 7  Transitional Justice and Injustice: The Uses and Misuses of the Liberal Peace
• 8  Constituencies of Compassion: The Politics of Human Rights and Consumerism
• List of Contributors
• Index