scholarly journals When States Crack Down on Human Rights Defenders

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin M Bakke ◽  
Neil J Mitchell ◽  
Hannah M Smidt
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Theoretical Implication ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Global Database ◽  
Know How ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Treaty Compliance ◽  
Policies And Practices

Abstract Research suggests that civil society mobilization together with the ratification of human rights treaties put pressure on governments to improve their human rights practices. An unexplored theoretical implication is that pressure provokes counterpressure. Instead of improving treaty compliance, some governments will have an interest in demobilizing civil society to silence their critics. Yet we do not know how and to what extent this incentive shapes governments’ policies and practices regarding civil society organizations. In this article we argue and show—using a new global database of government-sponsored restrictions on civil society organizations—that when governments have committed to human rights treaties and, at the same time, continue to commit severe human rights abuses, they impose restrictions on civil society groups to avoid monitoring and mitigate the international costs of abuses.

A National Treasure? The Role of Civil Society in Promoting and Enforcing Human Rights in the United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Samuels
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Social And Economic Rights

Abstract The article investigates the negative attitude towards civil society over the last decade in the United Kingdom and the repercussions for human rights. It considers this in the context of the United Kingdom government’s implementation of the policy of austerity. It reflects on the various policy and legal changes, and the impact on the campaigning and advocacy work of civil society organizations, particularly those that work on social and economic rights.

scholarly journals Silencing Their Critics: How Government Restrictions Against Civil Society Affect International ‘Naming and Shaming’

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Smidt ◽  
Dominic Perera ◽  
Neil J. Mitchell ◽  
Kristin M. Bakke
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The One ◽  
Naming And Shaming ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Cross National

Abstract International ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns rely on domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) for information on local human rights conditions. To stop this flow of information, some governments restrict CSOs, for example by limiting their access to funding. Do such restrictions reduce international naming and shaming campaigns that rely on information from domestic CSOs? This article argues that on the one hand, restrictions may reduce CSOs’ ability and motives to monitor local abuses. On the other hand, these organizations may mobilize against restrictions and find new ways of delivering information on human rights violations to international publics. Using a cross-national dataset and in-depth evidence from Egypt, the study finds that low numbers of restrictions trigger shaming by international non-governmental organizations. Yet once governments impose multiple types of restrictions, it becomes harder for CSOs to adapt, resulting in fewer international shaming campaigns.

The Protective Shields

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinda Mohamadieh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Arab Region ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Challenges

This chapter examines the various roles undertaken by civil society organizations (CSOs), or nongovernmental organizations, in the Arab region and their implications for collaboration between CSOs and the United Nations, with particular emphasis on how CSOs figure in policy debates and the human rights movement. CSOs in the Arab region, mainly those working on policy and legislative issues, have been engaged with UN-led processes and conferences since the 1992 Earth Summit, and including the 1995 Summit on Social Development and the 2000 Millennium Summit. However, as some UN agencies, driven by a quest for funding, have moved into programmatic interventions, tensions have sometimes emerged between CSOs and UN agencies when some UN agencies have ended up potentially competing with CSOs for funding or crowding out the space available for CSOs. This chapter first traces the history of CSO-UN interactions in the Arab region before discussing the new challenges and possibilities raised during the period of the Arab uprisings.

Body Abjectification as a Tool to Represent Poverty in Black Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-86
Author(s):  
Floribert Patrick C. Endong
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Age Stereotypes ◽  
African People ◽  
Black Africa

Many human rights activists and West-based INGOs have entrenched the questionable culture of using pathetic and socially pornographic images to boost their advertising, mobilization and fundraising campaigns aimed at tackling social problems in Africa. The images deployed by these advocacy entities most often function as double edged swords: they do not only capture the wisdom and rhetoric marketed by the campaign organizers but sometimes subtly act as negative symbols or metaphors of the African continent. Many of these visuals as used in posters and ad copies subliminally abjectify Africans, thereby reinforcing the myriad of decades-old myths and stereotypes of the continent and its people – notably abject poverty, famine, illiteracy, and backwardness, among others. This chapter illustrates the above-mentioned thesis through a semiotic analysis of posters and image-based ads recently deployed by some West-based civil society organizations during the Nigeria-born #BringBackOurGirl movement. The chapter specifically illustrates how the visuals and anchorages used in the #BringBackOurGirl posters hyperbolically abjectify and denigrate African people, associating them with old-age stereotypes.

The Role of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Developing Norms and Standards on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights

Global Jurist ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebenezer Durojaye
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
National Level ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
African Commission ◽  
Hiv Aids

AbstractThis article examines the role of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Commission) in establishing norms and standards on HIV and human rights that will assist African governments in addressing human rights abuses in the context of HIV as well as in combating the spread of the epidemic. The article argues that through the promotional and protective mandate of the Commission, opportunity exists for the establishment of important norms and standards to guide African states in addressing human rights challenges raised by HIV/AIDS. It concludes by arguing that the African Commission needs to forge more collaboration with states and civil society groups to ensure proper implementation of its norms and standards at the national level

Join the Chorus, Avoid the Spotlight: The Effect of Neighborhood and Social Dynamics on Human Rights Organization Shaming

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam R. Bell ◽  
K. Chad Clay ◽  
Amanda Murdie
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Cross National

Which countries are likely to be ignored for their human rights abuses? This article focuses on one particular way that cases of human rights abuse might be overlooked by human rights organizations (HROs): the relative visibility of the state’s abusiveness vis-à-vis its geographic and social peers. HROs are more likely to target abusive states that are located in regions with more HRO resources and/or are surrounded by states that demonstrate higher respect for human rights, as these abuses will stand out much more clearly. Further, human rights treaties can be used by abusive states as a form of strategic “social camouflage,” with states trying to minimize the risk of HRO attention by ratifying human rights treaties to look more like their rights-respecting peers. Using a cross-national time-series research design, this article finds much support for the argument: abusive states that “join the chorus” avoid HRO attention.

scholarly journals ASEAN’s Problematic Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights: The New Media’s Role in Enhancing the Protection of Human Rights

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Ramcharan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
New Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
World Conference ◽  
The World ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Standards

Citizens of ASEAN states appear to be increasingly involved, through Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), in pushing for greater openness and accountability of their political leaders and public institutions. In particular, ICTs afford citizens of ASEAN States and like-minded counterparts around the world in the human rights community to push for greater accountability of ASEAN’s human rights institutions. With the adoption of the ASEAN Charter in 2007, ASEAN states embarked on a process of crafting a regional ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), eighteen years after the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria. While the World Conference had reaffirmed the universality of human rights, ASEAN states have moved grudgingly and gradually, egged on by greater global concern for human rights and by the pressures of globalization, towards the protection of human rights. The Terms of Reference (TORs) of the AICHR, adopted in July 2009 and favouring promotion rather than protection of human rights did not provide for an institutionalised role for the media. Subsequent drafting by AICHR of a proposed ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) has excluded mainstream news media and civil society organizations (CSOs) from the process. In the absence of reporting and substantive reporting by most mainstream media in the region civil society, most importantly the new ICT based media, has played a vital role in seeking to advance the protection of human rights. This includes scrutiny of the specific rights that will be included in the forthcoming AHRD to ensure that international human rights standards are upheld and that ASEAN states honour their existing commitments under international instruments. The new media-environment provides a platform for a multitude of actors to disseminate human rights related information, to document human rights abuses and thereby enhance the protection of human rights in the region.  

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