Международные неправительственные организации по защите прав человека

Работа по специальности международные отношения, выполнена на английском языке. Тема - Human Rights non-governmental organisations. ...

TABLE OF CONTENTS.


Introduction………………………………………………………………………...3
Chapter 1 5
1.1.The definition of international non-governmental organisation and its main function………………………………………………………….……...…………..5
1.2.Classification of international non-governmental organisations…………............................................................................................13
Chapter 2 17
2.1. The activity of human rights international non-governmental organisations and the international humanitarian law……………………………………………..…17
2.2. Main human rights international non-governmental organisations 25
Conclusion..…………………………………………………………………….....31
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………32

Nowadays not only states but international organizations, both intergovernmental and non-governmental, are active players on the international scene.
International organizations are the most diverse and developed mechanisms that streamline the international order. And they play more and more significant role in the contemporary world. This tendency started only in the second half of the 20th century, although the history of the international organizations counts more than 2000 years. The important feature of the 21st century is the increase of exactly non-governmental organizations’ role, and also we are witnesses of the significant increase of their number.....
.....There is a great variety of non-governmental organizations that have different purposes. I would like to study the role of h uman rights international non-governmental organizations in the contemporary political process.
According to the goal of my research, I can set following tasks:
1. to study the definition of the international non-governmental organization and its main functions;
2. to look at the classification of the NGOs;
3. to examine the activity of human rights international NGOs;
4. and finally to study main human rights international non-governmental organizations.
The object of my research is human rights international non-governmental organizations, and the subject is the role of such NGOs in the contemporary political process.

Reports of NGO representatives from inside international negotiations help disclose “laggard” behaviour by governments.1.2.Classification of international non-governmental organizations.NGOs differ in a number of dimensions that are highlighted in the literature and/or employed by existing international institutions. These dimensions may generally be used to classify NGOs. Such classifications can help structure our thinking about NGOs as international actors. Primary Aims. NGOs can be classified according to their primary aims, interests or motivations. For example, private-interest NGOs can be contrasted with public-interest NGOs (PINGOs); business and industry NGOs (BINGOs) can be distinguished from environmental, human rights, development or expert NGOs. A somewhat related distinction is made in some existing international institutions that require NGOs to be of a non-profit-making nature (although this excludesneither private-interest nor business NGOs). Type of Activities. Some authors have distinguished NGOs according to the main type of activities they are pursuing. For example, Arts distinguishes pressure groups that focus on advocacy and lobbying inside political arenas andinstitutions from protest groups which pursue their goals and strategies outside political arenas and institutions (e.g. through street protests). Similarly, Princen distinguishes professional and public opinion NGOs. In principle, it might also be possible to specify further the kinds of activities of certain NGOs (e.g. public-awareness campaigns).However, existing international institutions generally do not differentiatethe participatory rights of NGOs according to their preferred type of activity. Any such attempt would also meet with severe difficulties. Most NGOs (even relatively small ones) are involved in a range of activities. These activities are also steadily being further developed and are therefore subject to constant change. Scope of Activities. Another classification applied by some international organisations (e.g.ECOSOC, UNCTAD) is to distinguish NGOs which pursue a narrow agenda (single-purpose) from other NGOs with a broad political agenda(multi-purpose). NGOs applying for accreditation at ECOSOC, for example, are grouped into one of three categories. Organisations concerned with most of the activities of the Council receive General Consultative Status (Category I). Organisations which have a special competence in, and are concerned specifically with, only a few fields of activity covered by the Council are given Special Consultative Status (Category II). Organisations which do not have general or special consultative status but which are considered to make occasional and useful contributions to the Council’s work become part of the General Roster. Each of these categories corresponds to a different set of participatory rights.The legitimacy of an NGO participating in international institutions does not depend on the scope of its activities but on it being qualified in matters relating to the respective issue. Reasons to differentiate between NGOs according to their scope of activities can therefore only really be found for a limited number of institutions with a particularly broad mandate. Type of Membership. As regards the type of membership, one of the most common distinctions concerns the origin of the members of an NGO from industrialised or developing countries. It also occasionally plays a role already in the accreditation practice of existing institutions. Sometimes a broader concept of a regional balance of NGO representation is pursued (e.g. with respect to NGOs from “countries with economies in transition”).Organisational Structure. A further common distinction concerns whether NGOs are national or international. Funding-Structure. NGOs also vary with respect to the sources of their funding. Generally, one can distinguish membership contributions from outside funding sources. With respect to the latter, these can be public (from governments) or private funds (e.g. donations or grants from foundations).BINGOs, in general, derive their finances from member contributions. As regards PINGOs, the picture is much more diverse: some organizations such as Greenpeace derive most of their funding from membership contributions and donations; other NGOs such as WWF International rely to a significant degree on outside funding (at least for specific projects). In this regard, it also needs to be taken into account that the ability of NGOs to generate funding is closely related to their domestic legal environment. Tax laws, rules on voluntary contributions, rules on economic activities of NGOs (e.g. sale of products), and other regulations, largely determine which sources of finance are accessible to NGOs. Second, the “donor culture” of foundations and wealthy individuals is very different between countries and regions. Whereas in the US and the UK NGOs generate a large part of their funds from independent foundations and individual donors, NGOs in continental Europe rely much more on financial support provided by governments. In poorer regions there may not be much of a “donor culture” at all and NGOs will have difficulties to generate any funding.Although ECOSOC, for example, applies certain rules regarding funding of NGOs, and the amount of resources available to NGOs is a subject of discussion in the literature, it does not follow that the sources of funding need to be a criterion for differentiating NGOs in the context of international institutions. As long as the funding sources do not endanger the independence of an NGO, the legitimacy of their taking part in international governance is not dependent on the sources of their funding.Many criteria exist according to which NGOs can be distinguished andclassified. The criteria discussed above cover most dimensions but are not necessarily exclusive.Of the dimensions along which NGOs vary, only a few are used in existing international institutions in order to differentiate between different NGOs with respect to their rights and roles.CHAPTER 2.2.1. The activity of human rights international non-governmental organizations and the international humanitarian law. The proliferation of nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, is one of the most striking features of contemporary international politics. While states remain the major protectors—and abusers—of human rights, NGOs such as Amnesty International have emerged as central players in the promotion of human rights around the world.As advocacy organizations, human rights NGOs work with or against governments in developing agendas for action. Through treaty negotiations with governments, they seek to establish international standards for state behavior. To mobilize public opinion, they investigate and report human rights abuses and offer direct assistance to victims of those abuses. They lobby political officials, corporations, international financial institutions, intergovernmental organizations, and the media. As their numbers increase, so their range of activities continues to expand. Today, NGOs are increasingly involved in providing services, such as holding training programs for upholding the rule of law and providing humanitarian assistance in disaster areas.NGOs work to advance international human rights around the world principally by setting standards, documenting violations and lobbying for effective enforcement. First, NGOs have been instrumental in setting international human rights standards. "Standard-setting" is "the establishment of international norms by which the conduct of states can be measured or judged." For example, NGOs were instrumental in achieving the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition, NGOs have pressured their national governments to sign and ratify the treaties that embody human rights norms and have worked to increase use of the complaint mechanisms of these treaties. NGOs also had a significant impact at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. The conference was attended by over 800 NGOs, two-thirds of which were grass-roots organizations. As the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights explains, the search for "common ground" on the agenda issues at the Vienna Conference "was characterized by intense dialogue among governments and dozens of United Nations bodies, specialized agencies and other intergovernmental organizations and thousands of human rights and development NGOs from around the world." Second, NGOs work to document violations of human rights standards. Investigation and documentation by NGOs has been vitally important in bringing human rights abuses to the attention of the United Nations, the international community and the public at large. Human rights practice is a method of reporting facts to promote change. The influence of nongovernmental organizations is intimately tied to the rigor of their research methodology. One typical method of reporting human rights violations in specific countries is to investigate individual cases of human rights violations through interviews with victims and witnesses, supported by information about the abuse from other credible sources.Third, NGOs work to create and support enforcement mechanisms. As international human rights standards gained prominence, NGOs began "spurring the creation of special UN mechanisms" to enforce these standards while also "providing those [UN] instruments with the assembled documentation to make their investigations productive." Some of the UN mechanisms that have been created in part because of NGO lobbying include the thematic and country mandates under the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. These include Working Groups on issues such as disappearance and detention; Special Rapporteurs on topics such as torture, arbitrary and extrajudicial killing, violence against women, and racism; Special Rapportueurs on particular countries, such as Cuba, Sudan, Burma (Myanmar), Burundi and Rwanda; and Special Rapportueurs or Representatives on groups of countries, such as the UN Special Rapporteur for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). NGOs were also the impetus behind the creation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.At the heart of human rights work is the attempt to protect individuals from the abuse of power or neglect on the part of their own governments. At the international level, this translates into State responsibility for the way in which the government treats its own people, supplementing the older international law regarding the treatment of aliens and the law of war which also (originally) addressed only the treatment of non-nationals.It is therefore not surprising that non-governmental organizations involved in safeguarding human rights have always focused on the implementation (or violation) of universal or regional human rights standards by governments. This reflects the traditional view of governments as the centres of power and responsibility as well as the general principle that States are bound by international law (either by virtue of becoming party to a treaty or because the rule is recognized as a norm of customary international law) and the classic human rights view that governments and only governments can violate human rights. Killings committed by individuals or groups are crimes. Such acts become violations of human rights if the perpetrator is the agent of a State or if the State fails in its duty to protect the individual or to prosecute the alleged perpetrator. However, the world has changed and the law along with it. The growing number of internal (non-international) armed conflicts and the attention they receive internationally has produced a number of developments. International humanitarian law has moved from its exclusive concern for international armed conflict to active interest in internal armed conflicts as well. The first of this was Article 3 common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The second came in 1977 with Additional Protocol II, which is applicable to non-international armed conflict. Humanitarian law has thus moved into the human rights arena, as it were, in the sense that it now addresses the relationship between those in authority and the people they govern. This raises the question of the relationship between international humanitarian law and human rights law, since human rights law continues to apply (though with limitations) in time of armed conflict. This same development raises questions about some of the fundamental tenets of international humanitarian law: the equal standing of the parties to an armed conflict and the reciprocal nature of their obligations. Finally, the regulation of internal armed conflicts raises the whole question of accountability on the part of non-State entities under international law.Traditionally, human rights NGOs have tended to feel that international humanitarian law was the province of the International Committee of the Red Cross and that it was complicated, containing as it does all sorts of strange and ambiguous (at least to human rights people) concepts such as “collateral damage” and “military necessity”, so that even something as apparently straightforward as the killing of civilians might, though regrettable, not constitute a violation of international humanitarian law. For human rights NGOs, there have been questions about how to interpret the law and whether there is a danger of lowering standards by applying international humanitarian law rather than human rights law.However, the proliferation of armed conflicts — in particular internal armed conflicts — and the apparent convergence of human rights law and international humanitarian law has led certain human rights NGOs to reconsider their position. A basic principle for human rights NGOs is that it is unacceptable to ignore violations on the grounds that they occur during armed conflicts. How then can these organizations respond effectively to such violations? Does international humanitarian law provide a useful framework? These questions will be examined with respect to two issues: applicable standards and the accountability of non-State forces.Where the government accepts that it is involved in an armed conflict and, therefore, that international humanitarian law applies, there is an advantage in holding the government to the standards established by that law. This avoids any argument about the yardstick: since government and NGOs refer to the same law, they may focus the debate on the facts and their interpretation in relation to that law. A classic example of this is Amnesty International’s report on Israel’s “Grapes of Wrath” operation in southern Lebanon.This was in fact the first time that an Amnesty International report used international humanitarian law to assess a governmental military operation. The alternative approaches of either seeking to apply human rights law to this military action or to ignore it completely obviously would have been unsatisfactory.Furthermore, as knowledge of international humanitarian law has grown among human rights NGOs, there has been an increasing recognition that at least some of the standards provide a degree of specialization and specificity that human rights standards lack, even in relation to internal armed conflicts. A notable example of this is the rules governing displacement of the civilian population. Such displacement is a common phenomenon in internal armed conflicts but one on which human rights law provides little assistance. By contrast, Article 17, paragraph 1 of Additional Protocol II provides that people may be relocated only for their own security or for “imperative military reasons”, and specifies that “all possible measures” must be taken to ensure “satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, health, safety and nutrition” for those displaced. This provision was used by Human Rights Watch in its recent report on Burundi as the yardstick for judging the camps set up by the government. The reality of today’s world is that there are countries with no government or with titular governments only partially in control of the territory. Can (or should?) human rights NGOs either ignore such situations or go on considering only governments accountable under human rights law?The legal and conceptual ambivalence about non-State forces is not exclusive to NGOs. It is also nicely reflected in the proposed optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on involvement of children in armed conflict (another example of convergence of human rights and international humanitarian law) in the latest draft of that text’s provision on military recruitment by non-States forces. The preambular paragraph recalls “the obligation of each party to an armed conflict to abide by the provisions of international humanitarian law”, while draft Article 3, paragraph 1 balances the moral (not legal) obligation not to recruit children under 18 with a legal obligation on S tates to prevent such recruitment: “Persons under the age of 18 years should not be recruited into armed groups, distinct from the armed forces of a State, which are parties to an armed conflict. States Parties shall take all feasible measures to prevent such recruitment.”For human rights NGOs, therefore, it might seem that the obvious solution to the problem of non-State entities is to use international humanitarian law. However, it is not as simple as that. Firstly, humanitarian law applies only if there is an armed conflict, and there are situations in which non-State entities are involved without there being an armed conflict. Still other situations are simply difficult to define. Secondly, even where there unequivocally is an armed conflict, human rights law continues to be binding on governments, although in certain circumstances they are permitted to derogate from some of its provisions. Human rights NGOs could, therefore, find themselves invoking both human rights law and international humanitarian law vis-à-vis the government while referring only to international humanitarian law vis-à-vis armed opposition group. Does it matter whether the government is held to higher or different standards than the opposition? Furthermore, Protocol II only applies if the State concerned is party to it. Should the non-adherence of a government prevent human rights NGOs from insisting that its provisions be complied with by non-State entities to whom those provisions would otherwise apply?The disparity between the standards laid down by human rights law and international humanitarian law is greatest where only common Article 3 applies but not Protocol II. This “inequality” of standards may present a problem from the perspective of international humanitarian law. However, for human rights NGOs the application of international humanitarian law standards to the armed opposition group does not amount to putting them on a par with the government. It merely lays down a generally accepted yardstick for their conduct. Applying both sets of standards to the government precludes the risk that the standards to which it is being held will be diluted. In Northern Ireland, for example, to oppose the killing of “civilians” (those not taking active part in the conflict) by the IRA on the basis of common Article 3 could be seen as legitimizing IRA killings of members of the British armed forces.