Productive tensions: women's rights NGOs, the “mainstream” human rights movement, and international lawmaking

Abstract

Non-govermental organizations (NGOs) are among the most discussed non-state actors involved in the creation, interpretation, and application of international law. Yet, scholars of international law have often over looked the critical issue of diversity among NGOs, and the differing stances they may take on key international law issues and controversies. This oversight exemplifies the ways in which international law scholarship sometimes takes overly unitary approaches to its categories of analysis. Feminist international law questions the accuracy of such approaches. When one unpacks the “NGO” category, one often discovers multiple constituencies reflecting conflicting concerns and perspectives. Hence, feminist international law theories should reflect a view of NGOs as international lawmakers that is equally complexified.This chapter will focus on one example of such diversity, namely the inter-NGO dynamic sometimes found between human rights NGOs and what is often termed the “mainstream” human rights movement. These relationships have long been complicated . At times these constituencies are allies with the same international law priorities. At other times they are opponents or at least involved in what might be described as a tense dialogue. Sometimes the human rights groups become themselves the targets of the lobbying of human rights groups. Indeed, women’s human rights NGOs and other human rights NGOs may have very different views of particular inter­ national law questions . Over time, however, the rights groups have often - though not always - prevailed on human rights groups to evolve their view of international law in a more gender-sensitive direction.This dialectical relationship between groups and other human rights groups has played out in numerous arenas, including in the 1990s debate over the definition of torture, and, most recently in regard to the need to (also) respond to atrocities by fundamentalist non-state actors in the context of critiquing the war on terror:' In each instance, groups and other human rights NGOs have some­ times had uneasy, multifaceted and shifting relationships that have shaped critical international lawmaking processes and debates. Groups within both of those broad categories of NGOs have also taken diamet­rically opposed positions at times. All of these sets of complexities, these putatively productive tensions, have both enriched and rendered more difficult the role of NGOs as lawmakers, and must be reflected in any meaningful theorizing of the issue.What then should these layered inter-NGO dynamics tell us about our conception of as a category of analysis, and about the role of NGOs in the creation and practice of international law? What can analyzing these dynamics tell us about how progress can most success­ fully be made toward a feminist reshaping of international law? This chapter will consider each of these questions in light of several case studies.I come at this subject from a range of vantage points, having been an Amnesty International legal adviser, having also worked closely with a range of NGOs, and currently as an academic. Hence, I will try to look at these questions at the intersection of both academic and these various practitioner perspectives. To that end, this chapter begins with a brief overview of NGOs and their roles on the inter­national law stage, as described in the literature. An examination of the categories used here follows, interrogating the meaning of the terms, women's human rights NGO and mainstream human rights NGO. Subsequently, the chapter reviews the case studies drawn from practice, first with regard to interaction concerning the definition of torture, and then bearing on responses to the war on terror. It then concludes with a brief application of the lessons learned from these case studies about the meaning of participation in international lawmaking.