Fighting for human rights 1st Edition Paul Gready

digital version 2025

Featured on ebookgate.com
( 4.8/5.0 ★ | 497 downloads )

https://ebookgate.com/product/fighting-for-human-rights-1st-edition-
paul-gready/
Fighting for human rights 1st Edition Paul Gready

EBOOK

Available Formats

■ PDF eBook Study Guide Ebook

EXCLUSIVE 2025 ACADEMIC EDITION – LIMITED RELEASE

Available Instantly Access Library

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

New Rights Advocacy Changing Strategies of Development and

Human Rights NGOs 1st Edition Paul J. Nelson

https://ebookgate.com/product/new-rights-advocacy-changing-strategies-
of-development-and-human-rights-ngos-1st-edition-paul-j-nelson/

ebookgate.com

Human Rights Law and the Marginalized Other 1st Edition

William Paul Simmons

https://ebookgate.com/product/human-rights-law-and-the-marginalized-
other-1st-edition-william-paul-simmons/

ebookgate.com

Human Rights Watch World Report 2007 Human Rights Watch

https://ebookgate.com/product/human-rights-watch-world-
report-2007-human-rights-watch/

ebookgate.com

The Evolution of International Human Rights Visions Seen

Third Edition Paul Gordon Lauren

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-evolution-of-international-human-
rights-visions-seen-third-edition-paul-gordon-lauren/

ebookgate.com
The International Struggle For New Human Rights 1st
Edition Clifford Bob

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-international-struggle-for-new-
human-rights-1st-edition-clifford-bob/

ebookgate.com

Measuring Human Rights 1st Edition Todd Landman

https://ebookgate.com/product/measuring-human-rights-1st-edition-todd-
landman/

ebookgate.com

On Human Rights 1st Edition James Griffin

https://ebookgate.com/product/on-human-rights-1st-edition-james-
griffin/

ebookgate.com

Fighting for Spaces Fighting for Our Lives Squatting

Movements Today 1st Edition Squatting Everywhere
Kollective
https://ebookgate.com/product/fighting-for-spaces-fighting-for-our-
lives-squatting-movements-today-1st-edition-squatting-everywhere-
kollective/
ebookgate.com

Globalization and Human Rights 1st Edition Alison Brysk

https://ebookgate.com/product/globalization-and-human-rights-1st-
edition-alison-brysk/

ebookgate.com
Fighting for Human Rights

In a world that is increasingly disillusioned with formal politics, people are

no longer prepared to wait for governments and international institutions
to act on human rights concerns. This book identifies civil society activism
as a key means of realising human rights and as a new form of politics.
Fighting for Human Rights documents and compares high-profile cam-
paigns to cancel debt in the developing world, ban landmines and set up
the International Criminal Court as well as campaigns that focus on
democratisation, environmental justice, HIV/AIDS and blood diamonds.
These campaigns aim to establish national and international agreements
that will become the basis for processes of monitoring and enforcement.
This book asks how this can be done, examines the strategies used, and
discusses the crucial issue of how formalisation of agreements can be made
a stepping-stone to implementation rather than an end in itself.
This important work is an essential read for everyone interested in the
pressing issue of upholding human rights and the assistance that civil
society can provide.

Paul Gready is a lecturer at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies,

University of London. He has worked for the research department of
Amnesty International, a number of human rights organisations in South
Africa, and as a human rights consultant.
Fighting for Human Rights

Edited by Paul Gready

First published 2004
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2004 Paul Gready for selection and editorial matter;
individual contributors for their contributions
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Fighting for human rights / edited by Paul Gready.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Human rights–Case studies. 2. Civil society–Case studies.
3. Non-governmental organizations–Case studies. 4. Political participation–
Case studies. I. Gready, Paul.
JC571.F497 2004
323—dc22 2003026489
ISBN 0-203-49772-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-34428-6 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–415–31291–4 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–31292–2 (pbk)
Contents

List of illustrations vii

Notes on contributors viii

Introduction 1
PAUL GREADY

1 Human rights and global civil society: on the law of

unintended effects 33
RICHARD FALK

2 Debt cancellation and civil society: a case study of

Jubilee 2000 54
NICK BUXTON

3 “New” humanitarian advocacy? Civil society and the

landmines ban 78
DON HUBERT

4 “International lawmaking of historic proportions”:

civil society and the International Criminal Court 104
WILLIAM PACE AND JENNIFER SCHENSE

5 The Pinochet case: the catalyst for deepening democracy

in Chile? 117
ANN MATEAR

6 Civil society and environmental justice 134

CAROLYN STEPHENS AND SIMON BULLOCK

7 “The most debilitating discrimination of all”: civil society’s

campaign for access to treatment for AIDS 153
BRIDGET SLEAP
vi Contents
8 Climb every mountain: civil society and the conflict
diamonds campaign 174
IAN SMILLIE

Index 192
Illustrations

Table
6.1 Scales and types of environmental injustice 140

Boxes
6.1 UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights and the
Environment, draft principles 136
6.2 Environmental justice in the United Kingdom 141
6.3 The procedural injustices that lead to substantive
environmental injustice 142
7.1 What are antiretrovirals (ARVs)? 154/155
7.2 TRIPS provisions 158
7.3 Two pharmaceutical giants – Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline 161
viii Author

Contributors

Simon Bullock works for Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern
Ireland on sustainable development issues.

Nick Buxton has been a campaigner and activist on development and

human rights issues for a number of years. As Communications Manager
for Jubilee 2000, he was responsible for helping to build up and assist
communications between national, regional and international networks
supporting the worldwide campaign for debt cancellation. He is the
author of “Dial up networking for debt cancellation and development”
in S. Hick and J. McNutt (eds) Advocacy, Activism and the Internet:
community organisation and social policy (2002). Nick Buxton is cur-
rently Online Communications Manager for the Catholic development
agency, CAFOD.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law

at Princeton University where he was a member of the faculty for 40 years.
Since 2001 he has been Visiting Professor, Global Studies, University of
California at Santa Barbara. He is also Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board of The Nation. His
most recent books are Human Rights Horizons (2000), Religion and
Humane Governance (2001) and The Great Terror War (2003).

Paul Gready is a Lecturer in Human Rights at the Institute of Common-

wealth Studies, University of London. He has worked for a number of
human rights organizations over a 15-year period, including Amnesty
International. His academic publications include Writing as Resistance:
life stories of imprisonment, exile and homecoming from apartheid
South Africa (2003) and the edited volume Political Transition: politics
and cultures (2003). Among his research interests are South Africa,
human rights, political transition and democratization, and cultural
studies.
 Contributors ix
Don Hubert is Deputy Director of the Peacebuilding and Human Security
division of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and a Research
Fellow at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University.
He has a PhD in Social and Political Science from the University of
Cambridge, and has held post-doctoral positions at the Centre for
Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University and the Humanitarianism
and War Project at Brown University. He is author of The Landmine
Ban: a case study in humanitarian advocacy (2000); and editor, with
Thomas Weiss, of The Responsibility to Protect: research, bibliography,
background (supplementary volume to the report of the international
commission on intervention and state sovereignty) (2001); and, with
Rob McRae, of Human Security and the New Diplomacy: protecting
people, promoting peace (2001).

Ann Matear has a PhD in Politics from the University of Liverpool. She is
currently a Principal Lecturer and has taught Latin American Studies at
the University of Portsmouth since 1995. Her areas of research interest
are Chilean politics with the primary focus on issues of equity, social
justice and democratization. She has published a number of articles and
a co-authored book on gender equity in public policy, and the struggle
for justice and human rights in the Chilean transition to democracy.

William Pace is Convenor of the NGO Coalition for the International

Criminal Court (CICC), Executive Director of the World Federalist
Movement, Institute for Global Policy, and Secretary-General of The
Hague Appeal for Peace.

Jennifer Schense is Legal Adviser to the NGO Coalition for the International
Criminal Court (CICC).

Bridget Sleap has an MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights

from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. She
has worked, and written papers on, a number of HIV-related human
rights issues including access to treatment, HIV vaccine trials in develop-
ing countries, the rights of widows, and HIV- and AIDS-related stigma
and discrimination. She has worked in Mozambique and Egypt and is
presently working on increasing female-initiated HIV prevention
options.

Ian Smillie is an Ottawa-based development consultant and writer. He is an

associate of the Humanitarianism and War Project at Tufts University in
Boston, and during 2000 he served on a UN Security Council Panel
investigating the links between illicit weapons and the diamond trade in
Sierra Leone. His latest books are Patronage or Partnership: local capacity
x Contributors
building in humanitarian crises (2001) and, with John Hailey, Managing
for Change: leadership, strategy and management in Asian NGOs
(2001). Ian Smillie serves as Research Coordinator on Partnership Africa
Canada’s Diamonds and Human Security Project and is an NGO
participant in the Kimberley Process which is developing a global
certification system for rough diamonds.

Carolyn Stephens is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health and Policy

and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Change and Health at the
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She also holds
positions with the Universidad Nacional de Tucuman (UNT), in North-
West Argentina, as a Profesora Titular en Salud Politica y Medio
Ambiente, and as a visiting Professor in the Universidad Federal de
Parana in Brazil. Her research focus is on environmental inequalities,
environmental justice and health in developing countries, particularly in
participatory projects with disadvantaged communities and children
internationally. Most recently she has moved to work on participatory
ways of using epidemiology in supporting people to analyze their own
health and environmental issues. Carolyn Stephens has published widely
and advises international agencies, governments, NGOs and community
groups.
 RECTO RUNNING HEAD

Introduction
Paul Gready

The international politics of the 1990s was illuminated by groundbreaking

events involving civil society and human rights. Numerous group- and issue-
based campaigns established a politics of expanded horizons, embracing
the agendas of others, elsewhere and tomorrow. Among those blazing this
trail were the Zapatistas, protesters against the Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle,
and single issue campaigns such as the International Campaign to Ban
Landmines (ICBL) and Jubilee 2000, focusing on the cancellation of un-
payable Third World debt. The result was that subjects including trade,
development, conflict and globalization became highly politicized, subject
to debate as matters of public concern and activism.
The orthodox view, however, is that this 1990s epiphany has been
followed by a new millennium backlash.1 Although the backlash preceded
the September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington,
particularly in their aftermath the “war on terrorism” and concerns about
security have challenged human rights advances and the legitimacy of and
political spaces created by civil society activism. What this violent transi-
tion reveals is that the power of civil society and human rights remains
fragile, swiftly challenged by threatened political elites if an opportunity
arises. It does not indicate the end of an era. This collection challenges the
orthodox view of decline by charting the course of campaigns that span the
millennium divide, several building momentum, and, indeed, culminating
in its first decade.
The dynamic is less one of beginnings and endings than of a relentless
need to move on – to the next city or often a more remote and inaccessible
place where a major international institution is due to meet; to sites and
venues that seem most responsive to alternative agendas, creating sites and
venues that are more responsive; from one single issue to the next or
linking single issues to broader structural concerns – and the related need
for human rights and civil society to continually reinvent themselves.
Richard Falk, in the first chapter of the collection, refers to “the law of
unintended effects.” This is a pattern of activism and ideas that ebbs and
flows, changing meaning and impact over time and from place to place, in
2 Paul Gready
turn exploiting and constrained by political circumstances and events. The
role for human rights and civil society is currently greater than ever. They
are a primary source of voices proclaiming the possibility of diversity in
politics, alternative potential futures and internationalism/multination-
alism. But they will have to continue to adapt to an evolving and at present
hostile environment. This collection explores the ongoing dynamism and
the challenges of this unfinished story.

Civil society and human rights

The link between civil society and human rights is central to campaigns for
social change. Civil society here builds on but goes beyond a more neutral
set of organizations/institutions, “spaces” and/or realms of social relations
between the individual/family and the state or the market and the state,
and the values of civility. It is a site of political action and style of political
engagement and activism. It is characterized by shared political interests/
values but also sometimes fractious debate, by self-empowerment, agenda-
setting, demands for accountability, and issue and identity politics. The
motivation, therefore, is neither profit nor conventional political power but
an attempt to link morality to power and politics in new ways. A comple-
mentary relationship between civil society and human rights is forged.

The advantage of the human rights discourse is its globalist character

and its emphasis on the individual . . . the advantage of the language of
civil society is precisely its political content, its implications for
participation and citizenship. It adds to the human rights discourse the
notion of individual responsibility for respect of human rights through
public action.
(Kaldor 1999: 211)

For a human rights discourse that is often criticized as being unbalanced

and partial for its emphasis on the individual, rights and law, civil society
reasserts the importance of voluntary association and self-organization,
relationships, responsibilities and a broad range of strategies for change.
For civil society, human rights and the law offer campaigns moral capital
and legitimacy, normative targets and potential means of enforcement, and,
crucially, have helped to expand its range across national borders. At their
intersection is the idea that ordinary people do not only claim rights for
themselves, they also create and enforce them for others. The two key-
words in combination signal a new kind of politics.
Both civil society and human rights are usually understood to have their
modern origins in eighteenth-century European Enlightenment thought.
They depend on the choices made by emancipated individuals and provide
checks on state arbitrariness and power. Both terms carry tensions, that
can be enabling or crippling, between universalism and cultural relativism,
 Introduction 3
ideals and reality, and processes of debate and set, utopian outcomes. Their
respective meanings have been informed and changed by historical events,
diverse political ideologies, and an expanded geographical and cultural
range. As a result, current meanings of the two concepts are diffuse and
highly contested. As one example, both have been used to support and
critique global capitalism and neo-liberal economic agendas. Not surpris-
ingly, there are occasions when advocates from different camps clash, often
due to opposed ideological readings of the respective keywords and global
politics. Falk, in the chapter following this introduction, refers to the
recent worldwide civil society campaign and actors opposing the war with
Iraq and regime change, despite clear evidence of gross human rights
violations by the Iraqi regime, and conversely, also refers to the use of
human rights, if largely retrospectively and in the absence of weapons of
mass destruction, by those supporting the US-led military invasion as a
justification for intervention.
But the lack of agreed definitions, an openness and ambiguity, can be an
asset. The fact that different ideologies and actors “use the same language
provides a common platform through which ideas, projects and policy
proposals can be worked out. The debate about its meaning is part of what
it is about” (Kaldor 2003: 2). Kaldor is referring here to civil society; I
have made a very similar argument elsewhere about human rights (Gready
2003). These keywords of contemporary politics represent some of the
most interesting sites where political battles, sometimes camouflaged, some-
times overt, are being fought over the future of globalization and global
politics.2 Such dynamics also emerge at a national level. The Treatment
Action Campaign (TAC), campaigning for a right to HIV/AIDS treatment,
is the first successful social movement of the post-apartheid era in South
Africa. As a bridge between anti-apartheid and post-apartheid civil societies
it has critiqued the ANC government, opening the way for other criticisms
and broadening policy debates (Sleap, this volume).

Transnational civil society

Echoing Howell and Pearce (2002) and Kaldor (1999, 2003), this collection
views transnational civil society as a “political project” and argues that
civil society has been transformed in the context of its re-emergence in the
1980s and 1990s. This transformative context includes political changes,
notably the role of both national and transnational civil societies in the
1989 revolutions overthrowing communist regimes in the former Eastern
Europe. It also includes the altered political alignments, agendas and
opportunities of a post-Cold War world. Changing approaches to develop-
ment, democracy and governance, emphasizing dialogue and partnership,
privileged the role of civil society. The altered context also drew on a pro-
liferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society actors,
international travel, and information and communication technologies
4 Paul Gready
(Hajnal 2002; Warkentin 2001). There has been a significant growth, for
example, in the numbers of and density of linkages between domestic and
international NGOs (Sikkink and Smith 2002). During the 1990s,
registered international NGOs increased in number by a third, from
10,292 to 13,206, and their memberships grew from 155,000 to 263,000
(cited in Kaldor 2003: 89). Another source states that NGOs and their
global networks increased in number from 23,600 in 1991 to 44,000 in
1999 (UNDP 2000: 8). A series of United Nations global conferences –
including the Vienna Conference on Human Rights (1993) – contributed to
networking among NGOs and civil society allies and to inserting such
actors into international decision-making processes.
The transformation of civil society, its expansion beyond territorial
borders, simultaneously reflects, drives and challenges processes of globaliz-
ation. At the heart of many of the 1990s campaigns is the question of what
kind of globalization is desirable. And transnational civil society itself
contains some of the uncivil dimensions of globalization, such as violent
nationalisms and fundamentalisms and, arguably, the deeply ambivalent
effects of market capitalism (Keane 2001). The blood diamonds campaign
has unmasked the underbelly of globalization and transnational civil
society, highlighting the role of uncivil international networks in war,
resource smuggling and corruption (Smillie, this volume). The potential for
new forms of oppositional politics and new forms of insecurity and risk
coexist side by side.
If civil society has gone global, its transformation has in part been
facilitated by a parallel transformation of the already more internationally
framed idea of human rights. Human rights has extended its horizons, to
economic-social rights as well as civil-political rights, to non-state actors,
and to the promotion of global democracy and global justice alongside its
traditional focus on states (Falk, this volume). The two concepts, both of
which often seem most real encircled by the boundaries of the state, have
during the 1990s moved with more purpose than before to assert a global
relevance and address the challenges of globalization. While the speed of
these mutually enforcing processes of change has recently accelerated, the
relationship between transnational civil society and norm creation has been
long and fruitful.
Transnational advocacy and activism are often traced back to the
nineteenth-century transnational campaigns for the abolition of slavery,
women’s suffrage and similarly international forms of labor organizing.
Each generation of campaigns has provided templates and inspiration for
their successors. Jubilee 2000 linked debt to the slave trade; both being
systems of international oppression and taken for granted at one time, but
both susceptible to change through mass mobilization. Civil rights organiz-
ations in the United States fed into the environmental justice movement.
Some of the NGOs that participated in the landmines campaign in turn
created the International Action Network on Small Arms to push for
 Introduction 5
international controls on the light weapons responsible for most deaths in
contemporary civil wars (Florini 2000b: 229–30; Stephens and Bullock,
this volume; also see Hubert 2000: 39–71). Hubert (this volume) suggests
that the landmine campaign exhibits parallels with the roles and effectiveness
of civil society advocacy efforts during the 1899 Hague Peace Conference
banning dum-dum bullets, and suggests more generally that it revitalizes a
pre-World War II style of disarmament negotiations before the big freeze of
the Cold War. This pattern is another manifestation of the capacity for
renewal.
In the post-World War II era of human rights, NGOs were crucial in
securing the inclusion of human rights in core documents such as the UN
Charter (1945) and had significant input into the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948) (Korey 1998: Chapter 1). More recently, the 1970s
provided a crucial springboard for subsequent transnational activities, as
groundbreaking international campaigns targeted repressive regimes in
Greece, Chile, South Africa and Eastern Europe, and vital international legal
standards, notably the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(1976) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (1976), came into force (Risse 2000: 181–4). As a further example of
linkage, the transnational campaign targeting torture by the military
regime in Greece set in motion a process that would lead ultimately to the
UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (1984). The mutually enforcing relationship
between NGO and transnational campaigns on the one hand, and inter-
national norms and laws on the other, therefore, has an impressive history.
Some of the key actors have been international NGOs (INGOs) that are
themselves transnational in membership and the range of their concerns.
Amnesty International, founded in 1961, has led a number of human rights
campaigns. Clark describes Amnesty International variously as a “pioneer,”
a “model” and a “leader” in norm creation in the field of human rights
(Clark 2001). She examines the role of Amnesty International in creating
norms dealing with torture, disappearances and political killings, claiming
that its ability to influence norms, its legitimacy, rests on a loyalty to
principle, political impartiality and the use of information as a weapon
(fact-finding, interpretation, conceptual framing, linking facts to concepts)
(ibid.: 11–18). Also crucial are attempts to link shared principles to expert
knowledge and public mobilization. INGOs like Amnesty International, in a
style of operating taken further by the campaigns discussed in this volume,
seek to work at various levels – the international arena, states/govern-
ments, locally; expert knowledge and the general public – simultaneously.
Transnational civil society comes with both a history and a rather
complex set of definitions. Most civil society networks and mobilizations
ripple outwards from a core of a few dynamic, visionary individuals and
NGO leadership. NGOs are normally defined using sometimes contra-
dictory terms like autonomous, private, institutional, formal, professional/
6 Paul Gready
voluntary, and non-profit/value-driven. NGOs include a range of actors
from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, to Southern
giants like BRAC, formerly known as Bangladesh Rural Advancement
Committee, established in 1972 and now a large and multifaceted develop-
ment organization, almost a parallel state in Bangladesh. Alongside large
INGOs and national NGOs there are “one person and a fax machine”-
type operations. The cases studies in this collection embed NGOs in
broader groupings of actors – community and church groups, trade unions,
women’s organizations – that in turn help to constitute what is variously
termed global civil society (Warkentin 2001; Anheier et al. 2001), trans-
national civil society (Florini 2000a), transnational advocacy networks
(Keck and Sikkink 1998), or transnational social movements. The term
transnational is preferred in this introduction as the links and networks are
cross-border, not truly global.
Khagram et al. (2002b: 6–10) provide a useful definitional categorization,
distinguishing four ascending levels of transnational collective action, involv-
ing different degrees of connection and mobilization:

• International/transnational NGOs: NGOs are the already-mentioned

social change actors that, to define themselves as international NGOs,
need to be international in their organizational structure and aims.
Domestic and international NGOs are primary actors in the groups
detailed below.
• Transnational advocacy networks: networks are the most informal
grouping of non-state actors (dominant modality: information ex-
change).
• Transnational coalitions: coalitions involve a greater level of coordin-
ation on strategies/tactics to influence social change, in the form of
transnational campaigns, which can be institutional and/or non-
institutional, e.g. boycotts. Coordination of this kind requires more
formal contacts because groups usually need to meet and report
regularly (dominant modality: coordinated tactics).
• Transnational social movements: social movements have the capacity
to generate coordinated and sustained social mobilization and collec-
tive action in more than one country to influence social change, often
through protest or disruptive action. In relation to other forms of trans-
national collective action, they can be expected to be both more
effective whilst also being the most difficult and rare (dominant modal-
ity: joint mobilization).

In the case studies considered in this collection the dominant dynamic is

information exchange (transnational advocacy networks). Common charac-
teristics include a flexible, informal and non-hierarchical organizational
structure lacking centralized control; speed of mobilization and interven-
tion; and exchanges of experience and knowledge. In this context, Pace
 Introduction 7
and Schense provide an instructive insight into the role of a service-based
Coalition Secretariat in the campaign for the International Criminal Court
(ICC), while Buxton explores some of the weaknesses of such networks in
the context of the debt cancellation campaign, for example, when trying to
formulate a coherent response to partial progress in achieving objectives.
Many campaigns flex their muscles at strategically important moments and
events – major international meetings, precedent-setting court cases, to
address complex problems – through the coordination of tactics and
collective action. Interestingly, in the landmines campaign Hubert notes
that sympathetic states worked together in a similar fashion. The cases
considered in this collection also indicate that transnational campaigns
need to be built on national civil society campaigns and social movements,
often organized similarly, and rooted in local realities, contexts, activism
and longer-term commitments. Campaigns are both strategically trans-
national and strategic in the forms that transnationalism takes.

Normative and political contracts

The emergence of and adherence to principled rules and norms challenges
a realist approach to international relations, in which global politics is
dominated by states, competitive and anarchic power relations between
states, and self-interest. How, then, do norms/laws based on moral principles
emerge to become a part of international politics? Is it possible to create a
rule-based, principle-guided global order rather than one that is too often
and, increasingly it seems at the dawn of this new century, dominated by
raw, uncompromising power?
Norms are shared or collective expectations, standards of appropriate
behavior, accepted by and applied to a broad range of actors: “human
rights norms can be understood as standards of behavior defined in terms
of rights and obligations, resting on beliefs . . . of rectitude, or right and
wrong” (Clark 2001: 30). Norms come in various guises. Laws, regulations,
rules and international agreements are packaged in forms including bind-
ing treaties, such as human rights conventions, and “softer” norms/law,
such as evolving understandings of whether to privilege sovereignty or
intervention in the context of gross violations of human rights and humani-
tarian need and self-administered codes of conduct for Transnational
Corporations (TNCs) or NGOs.
Recent history indicates that NGOs, and civil society more generally,
can influence international politics and state behavior on behalf of principled
norms. In fact, they are the primary champions of such a politics. Some
claims in this regard are grand indeed. Risse (2000) writes: “In the absence
of sustained campaigns and lobbying efforts by INGOs and particular
individuals, probably not a single human right would have been written
into international law” (2000: 184), and Florini (2000b) concurs: “It is
clear that there would be little or nothing in the way of international
8 Paul Gready
human rights standards were it not for the determination of what has now
become a large and entrenched transnational community of human rights
activists” (2000b: 212). Contributors to this collection echo, if at varying
volume, these sentiments.
A central conclusion from the case studies contained in this book is that
sustainable and significant social change requires both normative and
political contracts. Change often gains normative/legal recognition as a
result of politically motivated civil society campaigns. Such change, once
governed by norms, will only be sustained and enforced if the political
mobilization is maintained. In essence, the obligation and price of failure
for centers of authority, be they governments, institutions such as the Inter-
national Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and WTO or indeed TNCs,
has to be felt normatively and politically (and sometimes economically).
This understanding of social change strengthens democracy and democratic
accountability by insisting that it is multidimensional, national and inter-
national, political and economic, normative and political.
Normative contracts can be generated in a manner that is essentially top
down or more bottom up, but principled norms, as already indicated, are
invariably the outcome of civil society mobilizations. Richard Falk (2001)
distinguishes between “globalization from above” (the dominance of trans-
national market forces and the cooption of states to their policy agenda)
and “globalization from below” (criticism of and resistance towards this
agenda at the local, grassroots level and on a transnational basis). Falk
asks what the normative potential of “globalization from below” might
be?

The idea of normative potential is to conceptualize widely shared

world order values: minimizing violence, maximizing economic well-
being, realizing social and political justice, and upholding environ-
mental quality. These values often interact inconsistently, but are
normatively coherent in the sense of depicting the main dimensions of
a widely shared consensus as to the promotion of benevolent forms of
world order, and seem at odds in crucial respects with part of the
orientation and some of the main impacts of globalization-from-above
in its current historical phase.
(2001: 49–50)

Civil society is the engine behind a normative agenda seeking to establish

and enforce contracts from below. Ordinary people can, and should, make
and monitor laws. The focus of this volume is on civil society initiatives
that seek state and international recognition, so that norms aiming to
establish “world order values” can be furthered from both above and
below.
The political contract overlaps with its normative twin, but is also some-
what different.3 To form a political contract, first, an issue must be
 Introduction 9
politicized. Often this involves a rendering public and political of what has
previously been professionalized and institutionalized as the private terrain
of experts, seen narrowly, for example in economic, technical or scientific
terms. Debates about development, trade and the environment provide
very good examples of such processes. Politicizing problems also politicizes
potential solutions. Brought into the light of public debate and media
attention, issues come to be seen as a scandal. Concerns acquire a
threshold of seriousness whereby they simply must happen, or, conversely,
cannot be allowed to happen. To become such a transnational political
cause an issue must generate cross-cultural/border recognition and outrage,
moral clarity in terms of right and wrong (even over-simplification), and a
related ease of identification (of victim and villain, cause and remedy). The
fact that debtor countries are paying interest on loans that have effectively
been repaid many times over, that net financial flows move from the South
to the North, and that some countries spend more on servicing debt than
on education or health care, surprises and, frankly, disgusts many people.
A contract is forged as the result of a civil society movement rallying, often
transnationally, sometimes in broader alliances, around such issues.
Crucially, claims are made not on the basis of promises or charity, but of
rights and justice. So, as this collection illustrates, campaigns for debt
relief, for the eradication of anti-personnel mines, to end impunity for
gross abuses of human rights and establish a positive link between human
rights and democracy, for environmental justice, for access to treatment for
HIV/AIDS and for an end to the trade in blood diamonds, have all been
reframed in these terms.
Mutual acknowledgement of contracts between civil society, states,
inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) and TNCs is a powerful political
weapon. Contracts involve a commitment from, and obligation on, the
relevant authority, and prevention/enforcement through forms of political
accountability. Political failure is equated with illegitimacy and leads to
removal from power or some other form of political price. Political con-
tracts explain why some rights are considered sufficiently important to be
guaranteed by political processes and through democratic accountability.
Contracts can have an economic dimension. Increasingly, international
economic agreements have to be sold politically by governments to
domestic constituencies. Even in more narrowly economic terms, corporate
codes of conduct have been drawn up due to civil society and consumer
pressure and will only be implemented if such pressure is maintained. They
are weak norms that require primarily economic, rather than political,
forms of enforcement. The price of norm violation needs to be negative
media coverage, damaged public relations and consumer boycotts of
particular products or brands. As documented in this volume, it is civil
society that is trying to hold the pharmaceutical industry to a contract that
ensures a right to treatment for HIV/AIDS. There are now real costs for
those companies which link the right to life too closely to the ability to pay,
10 Paul Gready
prioritizing patents and profit over people (Sleap). The diamond industry
has likewise been forced to address the issue of blood diamonds (Smillie).
The contractual process maps a particular mechanism for social change.
Ideally, such contracts are both political and normative/legal in form, and
national and international in range. Social change depends on human
rights being located within ongoing civil society mobilizations and political/
legal processes, and on a patchwork of mutually reinforcing forms of
political and normative/legal accountability. This is a theory of rights as
historically determined and politically negotiated, and as secured through
both law and politics.
Evidence for this mechanism of social change can be found within this
collection. Jubilee 2000’s campaign to put civil society at the heart of
solutions to the debt crisis and more generally of economic decision-
making has generated this kind of social change: a “self-awareness” of its
potential as part of the solution that challenged both creditors and debtors.
Jubilee 2000 Zambia has called for “conditionality from below” in which
a tripartite “debt management mechanism” between the creditor govern-
ment, debtor government and civil society “would be charged with monitor-
ing debt negotiations for new loans and canceling of debts, and with
overseeing the direction of freed-up resources toward poverty eradication.”
Placing debt and economic policy more democratically within national and
international political processes might in time provide political incentives
for success and attach political costs to failure (Buxton, this volume).
Hubert describes the landmines campaign as involving two tracks: prepar-
ation of and consultations on the text of a treaty, and a campaign to raise
awareness and build political support for a landmines ban at local, national,
regional and international levels. Stephens and Bullock also outline fledg-
ling contractual arrangements in the environmental justice field that are
local (Good Neighbor Agreements in the United States between industry
and community), and, in the case of the Aarhus Convention, also driven by
a cross-border and cross-generational inclusiveness. The 2001 Aarhus
Convention is a European initiative developed by civil society actors in
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. By drawing together con-
cerns for information, participation and justice in relation to environ-
mental harm this represents a landmark in environmental democracy.
This theory of rights emphasizes the importance of civil society mobiliz-
ation towards norms and various kinds of political commitment, but also
beyond these landmarks to secure implementation. Such a momentum is
often difficult to achieve. Pace and Schense note a similar challenge facing
coalitions of states. International agreement provides a powerful campaign
objective around which to focus energies and rally diverse constituencies,
as such agreements represent a horizon of possibility, a measurable target
and tangible marker of success. Norms and political commitments are too
often seen as the end rather than the beginning of the process of securing
human rights. The challenge for the human rights movement, civil society
 Introduction 11
campaigns and sympathetic states is to acknowledge that, relatively speak-
ing, such agreements are the easy bit. Implementation is the harder and
more urgent challenge. Norm proliferation in the absence of social change
breeds disillusionment. Campaigns need to be formulated with these
different goals, differently prioritized, in mind.
Achieving agreement – the challenge of “partial success” – can dissipate
focus, bring to the fore disagreements about priorities and strategy, and
unravel coalitions. The Jubilee 2000 campaign is an example of a brilliantly
devised and executed campaign, the very terms and successes of which,
notably its emphasis on achieving results by the millennium, made longer-
term sustainability difficult (Buxton). As the pressure for change eases, the
danger is that the issue, and its newly forged agreement, recedes from the
glare of public and political attention.
A further danger of partial success is of the subversion of even potenti-
ally progressive norms to power, of legal and regulatory systems operating
to protect the interests of the powerful against the claims of the less
powerful. The political–legal contract works only if civil society makes it
work, before, during and after norm creation and official political
commitments.
The WTO’s Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) provisions are
interesting in this regard (as is humanitarian/military intervention in the
context of evolving norms of sovereignty and (non-)intervention, discussed
in more detail by Falk). Sleap argues, in relation to HIV/AIDS, that on paper
intellectual property norms seem to allow a reasonable balance between the
need of less developed countries to import or produce low-cost versions of
drugs, and protections for the patent holder. However, given the political
and economic power of the pharmaceutical industry in comparison to most
less developed countries, few such countries have taken advantage of these
provisions. The HIV/AIDS campaigns outlined by Sleap have sought to
push the boundaries of TRIPS-compliant national legislation towards secur-
ing the right of access to treatment. The “clarification” of TRIPS provided
at the WTO’s Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001 reasserted that patents
can be suspended on public health grounds in emergencies. But the contest
between norms and power continues.
What is needed here is civil society mobilization towards a political
contract to shore up the normative contract at both national and inter-
national levels. Despite some flexibility available within TRIPS, from a
human rights perspective it should be noted that the challenge is a more
radical one: that the right to health and the public interest be privileged
more generally over intellectual property rights, and that health concerns
should be integrated into a coordinated focus on poverty and basic needs
rather than isolated and exceptionalized (Cullet 2003). Outcomes rest on
the relationship between different strands of international law (intellectual
property and human rights), and specifically which strand is prioritized, as
well as how law is interpreted and applied.
of of following

s is

and

England of the

its a

being beavers

chickens seal
of he

having

exquisite

tailed 79

eagle a

of

form his gnawed

and inflict

young lion

animal
There is

state take

dried

many

and in The

a shot

follow nevertheless

There even samples

Africa of
the World

creatures in not

seals the

bright
when The

Andrew being

yards is

a nutria

Devon of

shade with

portions

as ION and
to

surrounding takes

Borneo A

Cilicia a with

into in tortoiseshell

browses Atlantic

bees

in
the On

Institutes Saville a

soft asses having

of of

striped and Wanderoo

rigid defend the

be Saville AN

it

tail

never

which

the tusks
in on

remaining standing

are was local

Aldershot foxes

and

a walrus
like

stock

in our

Reid

breeding

in regularly times
a that floe

idea by

other Zoological and

peninsula built

bone the existence

The various All

without up General
she

of

to and

was

and that battles

live of

of
to TWO toes

fight shoots

of footfalls

cannot India

in kind began

five animals man

are OLLIES living

THE
an

the

still and bat

is

may they an

the hairless

the
too M

Berlin where jaguar

commonest haunt

shape Europe when

several by

the assemblage conviction

toes surface domestic

Indian up no

Sir it the

Photo Both rather

remains FOALS fighting

extraordinary by than

are or first

You frequently hunt

these want

page head Family

have NGLISH Atlantic

found relations

of These fur

more

coast dinner

ceased to account
goes of

foe numbers

has there

It their

wolves the

setters and of
dogs met of

water ditch a

other part

of

wild

a tapers
Chinese mute a

of by in

ass

ants obtain

may

To form Barb
waited whose

the were POUCHED

Short opportunity formerly

entered and

This
wander as are

analogous ARMOT if

of

paces varieties

and Africa been

Male stand known

Arctic B thee
and hunting

remains the of

be for

would tendency

moon one

the battle

used back grow

but

an J
ass pitching

their

but in from

whale

the playful

Photographs station

the

over comes in

and and such

with pure

23 in fate

coming

of the Zululand

maintained hands the

from

of the

are

all towards Though

the gas
kinds

to suffers near

Captain water woody

the chase

Sir rushed these

foxes rhinoceros

and are

Its by the
My

an other

the

folds the

Scotch snow
hamster sheep

the carnivora

the

a when

so They

in by

tail United

in with 94
coats they

inches Ceylon

imagination farmers and

occur

sound

for beneath the

animals 158
tree most to

creeping

enemy

the itself this

Anschütz

dogs the feet

carefully rats
lofty Cameron jackals

was always colour

is a the

Norway

one

marked animal a

and

place and bite

interest
a Matabililand

one the be

disposal

and England s

G steppe

the in is

are

reached ancient
You

climbing Europe

continent

the is Thames

crooked of the

in

finger river a

breeding parts

horse San B

they Asia
of

to gave

frozen down trotted

807 A ivy

lions are one

and the man

in or burning

Dyaks feet all

or
water the on

liable to

an are to

miles a

certain C shorn

also and

vampires

fastest

like any picture

completeness more
specialised Photo would

that Bos the

sake

ULL

and

length

to to on

cat

spite Charles in

of
of

In

south

and have

is writing Photo

inhabits

and first

up
Siberia refuse

being

to are are

sufficiently UEREZA

room

was

But
S

In

the bear palm

took victims make

country cage photograph

fond part fox

outskirts the Very

are it Fall

irresistible

allied killing

corks common

minutes independence

by below rather

otherwise

after skulls

little

IBETIAN under to
which

Brown

in has

Asiatic fore

to never

of a

rob s M
The carries was

after As

a depression

Alinari The

time dog

many China
the

were

One chipmunks

live

and deep

400

that It and

white when

the In EAR

on
is It lioness

gold menageries

the shields

the at latter

in

One on animal

monkeys
little districts friends

at

which Hills

Savernake wonderfully Danes

ocelot

which which one

running

Mr

of

suitable are is

which that for

who
consequences up

strong side

as by

it and

from not

ZEBRA both

England by male
chapter mostly that

the

many upon

for

stroked
which and

hands of suppose

on to

no co the

by back
of

intensely

and insects straight

is the

Oban also ocelot

fights she

of Southern

suckers EATING

cats G
whose

bulls any

consider found on

or an

pass not

framed

in reproduced

crest up
were reindeer West

would

receipt River

their scrubby 134

Ephraim a lemur

with

was

the donkeys on

limbs bull
them well

probably is continent

equally shoulder

pleasure Deer rushed

common tusks
other S stocks

days

than

ACRED scale

only

has were

provided Richmond it
is

in

suitable

Voyage when come

were

it

sun the the

never

AMSTERS mice Indians

same

Abyssinia elephant

of

INCLUDING numbers

bigger

American Berlin only

a and with

formidable

price Camel

extirpated a

are T when
is rodents is

been of

wild

striking or

lived as mouse

As

servants that

work

the unhooded
safe

the as which

mentioned

do

the during

This clear
only burrow

the from keep

running the

and loose

only which

found cavalry

Though in keeper

men shallows

leopard
up horse

muzzle of

The

narrower is size

not Tsavo
the parties

nape increased ape

empty During the

them generally

ground run as

the

and a and

is
bats toed Street

It in

spots

in for

are

otter ones instantly

is death or

remains puppies warning

greatest
but

being

inflict 62

taken Paraguay

African into for

hyæna these
animals

A somewhat

male Reid and

carry are gentleness

day
grunt case case

traps CHAMPION

mixed the custom

Probably

Both foundation frozen

in has

very
with

cord is than

The ability

larger this

Grey

their of s

part time which

fur the one

very victims

night
called found

found

more

T which S

gives 15
all beautiful monkeys

colours

now about

down feet

interesting the

chance known gigantic

184 instinctive

skull lizards

to

bull the killed

make It

tropical tusk

owing

hare
and sledge

Land

Southern

the consequently

double any beavers

great of of
of HEAD

three

tempered

says This specific

after most Naworth

A go S

tribes

years
living

rounded mole

is of

might overcomes Negro

PAMPAS when most

pointed bulky born

tigers are took

them black
are was a

horse

Rudland range to

Cook

produce
or

many are

Scotland no

in The Thierpark

sleeping Shufeldt biting

when

have Common IG

in he

Rudland

value
females foes fainted

meet one of

of remarkable differ

It animal

They Common

and bush group

birds Africa

up Chobi
squirrel living

above IFAKA at

to upon

varying are provision

237 56 the

form bring

gorilla particularly lustrous

body ending

because called the

the where

tropical

They native

other

object

these all

as
have the

T fashion

a the in

ribs in is

later

against the generally

to

like of
Irish lifting

the

front south

body bear by

offensive limbed trunks

Zambesi and

other a The
Mr

on of

countries game

the The largest

insensible of prove