International Human Rights Norms and Regional International Organizations [Essay]

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International support for human rights has been in the news recently due to the crack-down of the Myanmar military junta on pro-democracy protests over the last week.  It is often assumed that participation in international organizations, such as the United Nations, or regional groupings, such as the Organization of American States, will help socialize states into obeying human rights norms.  In the following essay, I argue that, in fact, international organizations often serve as a cover for human rights abuses to be carried out, and fail in their expected utility as an effective tool for preventing them.

The issue of human rights has long been associated with international organizations.  This history goes back at least to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human rights by the United Nations in 1948.  Respect for human rights has become such a widely accepted (if not widely implemented) norm that most international and regional organizations include at least pro forma declarations of support for human rights in their charters.  Large networks of non-governmental advocacy groups have developed to promote the spread of human rights and to pressure governments and the international community to enforce human rights norms both at home and abroad.

Despite the increasing number of groups dedicated to spreading human rights and the widespread acceptance of the importance of the concept, there continue to be a number of states who willfully flout international human rights standards.  Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, two of the main human rights NGOs, report thousands of cases of abuse each year.  Considering the effort put into human rights campaigns, and the number of success stories which the international community has seen over the years (such as South Africa, Rhodesia, Chile, and so on), one of the most puzzling questions faced by human rights campaigners is why some countries prove susceptible to pressure while others are able to maintain their course of abuse in the face of international condemnation and even sanctions.  In some cases the reasons seem fairly clear - for example, the patronage of a hegemonic state in the international system (such as the support of the United States for perennial abusers such as Egypt, or the French support of Algeria's military government) can go a long way towards patching over human rights concerns.

Not all cases of continued abuse can be explained away so easily, however.  Many apparently weak countries are able to maintain oppressive policies even in light of substantial political pressure from both international and domestic organizations and even international economic sanctions.  Countries such as Zimbabwe in southern Africa and Myanmar in South East Asia have been capable of defying international pressure for many years.   Zimbabwe has persisted in abusing human rights and suppressing its opposition even in the face of crippling economic sanctions imposed by the EU and the United States in 2002 and 2003.  Myanmar has been the subject of sanctions even longer - since 1997.  Both countries have been pressured internally by domestic groups as well as externally by individual nations and IOs.  Additionally, in both cases strong regional IOs (in the case of Zimbabwe, the South African Development Community, and in the case of Myanmar, the Association of Southeast Asian States) have been involved in campaigns to help improve the human rights situation.

Given the amount of pressure brought to bear on these two countries, their ability to persist in flouting human rights norms is quite puzzling.  Why have these countries been able to resist international pressure when other, similarly situated countries have been forced to address human rights concerns?  This paper will argue that the answer lies, at least in part, in the ability of these states to use their participation in regional IOs to legitimize their actions.  The SADC and ASEAN both formally incorporate respect for human rights into their charters, however this formal incorporation is, in both cases, overridden by informal regional norms of non-interference and respect for state sovereignty.  These informal norms have allowed Zimbabwe and Myanmar to avoid strong pressure from the states that are the most capable of applying it to them.  The informal normative constraints of these regional organizations have restricted their ability to effectively promote human rights among their membership, even when such promotion is a formal part of their charter

To understand how this has come about, we must trace the development of two parallel sets of norms which evolved in the post-World War II period - human rights norms and state sovereignty norms.  In the post-colonial period newly developing states in the Third World were strongly compelled to defend their sovereignty, both against domestic and regional challengers.  This led to the development of strong, if informal, norms of non-interference and respect for sovereignty in the regional IOs that these countries developed.  At the same time, Western donors (both public and private) were promoting the adoption of human rights norms by these same states and regional IOs.  This tension led to the formal adoption of human rights norms by many regional IOs, with a continued informal understanding in the importance of non-interference, allowing regional IOs to, in some cases, serve as cover for substantial human rights abuses.  

This paper will begin with an examination of the development of human rights norms and state sovereignty norms, followed with a discussion of how international human rights norms have been capable of fostering change at the domestic level.  Next, I will examine the cases of Zimbabwe and the SADC and Myanmar and ASEAN to show how the formal adoption of human rights norms by both of these regional IOs, combined with their informal adoption of norms of non-interference and respect for sovereignty, allowed these two human rights abusers to resist international criticism and sanctions.  I will contrast these two cases with the counter example of Argentina's interaction with the Organization of American States during its last period of military rule.  Out of these case studies I will develop a brief argument about how to minimize the ability of states to use their participation in regional IOs to cover their human rights abuses.

Human Rights and International Organizations

In the aftermath of World War II, the importance of respect for basic human rights increasingly began to become accepted in international society, at least among the more developed Western states which dominated the post-war order.  The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948 struck an optimistic note about the possibility for the promotion of world-wide respect for human rights.  Although the declaration is non-binding, it affirmed that there were certain inalienable human rights which states could regulate, but not legitimately violate.  

Following the adoption of the Universal Declaration, the UN drafted a number of covenants and protocols which states could sign to affirm their support for human rights.  While these documents did not typically have strong enforcement mechanisms, they did generally allow for complaints to be made and investigations to be carried out.  The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights all exemplified the drive to incorporate human rights rules into written form under the aegis of international organizations (MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 69).  Later, more specific protocols would add strong enforcement mechanisms, albeit in more limited cases.  

The promotion of human rights by the largest international organization of them all led many regional organizations to adopt human rights norms into their formal constitutions.  Although often nonbinding or negotiable, these declarations affirmed the need for basic protections and development.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Europe was the first to develop a strong regional regime to protect human rights.  Starting with the Treaty of London (which created the Council of Europe), and culminating in the creation of the European Commission and Court of Human Rights, this regional regime created protection mechanisms far more robust than anything which had been seen before (MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 71).  The Organization of American States and the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), the other two continent-wide regional IOs, quickly followed Europe's lead and incorporated (at least on paper) respect for human rights either into their charter or into optional protocols sponsored by the organization (MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 70-74).  In the post-World War II period, then, we see the emergence of an understanding that regional organizations should officially incorporate human rights protections into their organizing documents, and serve as a check against human rights abuses.  We also see, however, a contradiction developing, in that in most cases these protections are rather weak, or are worth little more than the paper they are written on.

Sovereignty & Non-Interference Norms

At the same time that these human rights norms were being propagated through the formal structures of international organizations, states in the developing world were beginning to develop informal understandings about the need to respect sovereignty and norms of non-interference into other state's internal affairs.  Post-colonial states often had weak governments which faced great internal challenges, both economic and political.  Reversing the classical realist understanding of international relations, these states became as or more concerned with dealing with internal problems - such as secessionist movements, unrest over economic issues, and the need to strengthen their newly developed states - as they were with external security threats (Ayoob 1991).

Because of these concerns, many nascent regional IOs developed by post-colonial states operated under the understanding that states should not interfere in their neighbors' domestic concerns.  The norm was not developed out of a fear of direct military intervention, but rather a fear that criticism by a fellow regional state might create domestic instability or weaken the government's position vis-à-vis the more powerful Western states that often controlled the purse strings of development aid.  An informal norm slowly emerged in some regional IOs that strongly rejected the right of regional states to criticize each other's affairs, even beyond the rejection of this right that is implicit in the (often ignored) traditional notion of sovereignty rights.  Even if "the Westphalian model has never been an accurate description of many of the entities that have been called states" (Krasner 1995, 115), members of regional IOs that accept these non-interference norms do all that they can to reap the advantages of operating under such a system.

Ironically, this posture is often justified under the guise of concern for human rights - after all, how can states develop if they faced the constant threat of interference from their neighbors?  Does it make sense to go to great extremes to protect the rights of a few when the masses can barely make enough money to survive?  These norms of non-interference allow developing governments to operate with wide latitude, even when their actions go against the wishes of a majority of the members of the regional IO (Weatherbee 2005, 121-123).  This is mutually advantageous to all involved, since by maintaining solidarity these governments free themselves from the threat of powerful regional and international criticism, even if they occasionally lose on specific policy issues.

International Human Rights Norms and Domestic Change

Up to this point we have seen how in the post-World War II period two sets of potential norms developed for regional organizations - one favoring the adoption of human rights protections into regional IO law, and one favoring the adoption of norms of non-interference and a strong respect for state sovereignty.  While these two norms seem to be directly competing, this paper does not argue that non-interference norms are circumventing the implementation of the human rights protections that most regional IOs place in their charters.  Rather, I argue that the respect for human rights enshrined in these charters, combined with the adoption of norms of non-interference, allow member states of regional international organizations to avoid the international pressure that human rights norms (in the broad sense) would bring to bear on them.  To understand how this is so, I will briefly explain the mechanism by which international human rights norms can affect domestic change, and then show how regional IOs who have adopted non-interference norms can circumvent this process.

Although many scholars of international relations (particularly those influenced by realist or neo-realist schools of thought) would deny the possibility of international human rights norms to affect domestic change, there has been substantial work done to show how these changes can in fact occur.  In addition to the work of the United Nations in promoting respect for human rights, there are numerous large and well organized non-government organizations (such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International) which work to coordinated international and international campaigns to pressure government to take action.  

I draw heavily on the work of Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink to explain how these processes take place.  In a path-breaking edited volume (1999) on the subject, the authors develop a five phase "spiral model" to explain how these outcomes can develop.  The first phase is a nascent period.  In this period, the human rights violating state is actively flaunting human rights norms, but is not yet on the agenda of transnational advocacy networks.  To get on their agenda, and to end this first phase, some links must develop between domestic groups and transnational human rights advocates, which allow the abuses to be publicized and put on the international agenda (1999, 22).

In the second phase, the targeted state operates in denial of its abuses.  International human rights advocates lobby for change and put pressure on IOs and their own states to act and put pressure on the norm violator.  This pressure, the authors argue, almost inevitably leads to the state denying that abuses took place and, further, arguing that even if they did take place "its national practices in this area are [not] subject to international jurisdiction" (1999, 23).  While this stage rarely produces any direct action to alleviate the problems, the very act of denial does "demonstrate that the processes of international socialization are already under way...[and that the governments in question] are at least implicitly aware that they face a problem in terms of their international reputation" (1999, 24).  

Transitions from the second phase to the third phase - that of tactical concessions - are the most difficult to accomplish.  The international community must have some leverage on the state in question, through the ability to withhold material aid or draw on previous normative commitments (such as a desire on the part of the abuser to be seen as part of the community of liberal states) (1999, 24).  Once the transition occurs, in the third stage we begin to see some changes in domestic behavior based on international norms.  Authoritarian rulers, pressured to act, loosen up some controls on the public discourse, allowing domestic opposition groups to develop and criticize the government (although they typically have no real power).  The authors argue that this sets the groundwork for normative change, as these leaders "tend to believe that `talk is cheap' and do not understand the degree to which they can become `entrapped' in their own rhetoric" (1999, 27).  By allowing domestic advocacy groups to form and to link with the transnational groups, the abusive governments give them de facto recognition as legitimate actors, whether they realize it or not.  At this point, the authors argue, only two options become realistic - either a controlled liberalization, or further repression followed by a domestic overthrow of the government (1999, 28).

In either case, this movement pushes the country in question into the fourth phase - "prescriptive status" - of acceptance of human rights norms.  To move into this stage, the actors involved (both the government and the major opposition parties) must both ratify and observe international human rights conventions, institutionalize these norms into domestic law, give citizens a voice to complain about abuses, and discursively acknowledge the validity of human rights norms (1999, 29).  This step does not, however, require complete compliance, as there may still be some dialogue about the best way to carry out protections, and some lag time before the government can fully control its security forces or bring all members of the administration on board.  This phase can sometimes be difficult to move beyond, as the disappearance of the grossest rights violations may lessen the international attention (and pressure) which prompted the change in the first place.  Once this step is passed by, the last phase is simply the full adherence to human rights norms in practice as well as rhetoric.

While this theoretical framework provides a useful rubric for understanding the mechanisms through which international human rights norms can affect domestic change, the authors do not do as much to explore the ways in which the process can be derailed.  This is in part understandable, as they were developing a framework for positive action.  Nonetheless, to flesh out our understanding of how international norms work we must also examine cases where the normative transition fails.  The most interesting cases are those in which most of the criteria Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink develop are present, but normative change does not occur.

This paper does not aim to explore all of the possible reasons human rights norms might fail; rather, it focuses specifically on one mechanism that can cause failure - the ability of human rights abusers to escape pressure by covering their actions through their membership in regional IOs.  In cases where regional IOs have adopted (but not fully implemented) human rights norms, while at the same time adopting and implementing a strong respect for sovereignty norms and principals of non-interference, the spiral model developed by Risse Roppe and Sikkink exhibits weakness in a number of areas.
In the first and second phases, when the abusing state is still officially "in denial", it can point to its membership in an IO that respects human rights to bolster its arguments that whatever abuses might be occurring are not official policy.  Additionally, regional IOs' strong respect for sovereignty norms and norms of non-interference will make it more difficult for neighboring states (which often have the ability to exert substantial pressure) to criticize the abuser and create the critical mass for moving to the third phase.  

Once in the third phase, membership in the regional IO continues to give the government substantial leverage vis-à-vis the opposition.  Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink argue that repression is difficult in the third phase due to the possibility of domestic revolt and the increasing linkages between domestic groups and transnational groups.  Support from the regional IO, however, can short circuit many of these important connections.  If non-interference norms lead the members of the regional IO to sponsor white-washed elections monitoring, or give the abusive state an important leadership position within the organization, the abusive government can often use these events to bolster its credentials and to continue to operate in partial denial of its abuses.  This is particularly true when most of the states within the regional IO actually do live up to their human rights commitments - perversely, the abusive state looks "cleaner by association" than it would if it was not a member of the group.

The same dynamic can make it difficult to move beyond the fourth phase - after all, if the state in question is a member of a regional IO that has a decent track record of respecting human rights, and it appears to have cleaned up its act, pressure groups are likely to move on to more pressing cases.  The support that the government receives from the non-interference norms of the IO will make it that much easier to ignore or discount pressure from both the international and domestic groups that continue to advocate on the issue.  Even once the human rights norms are fully accepted, it seems likely that occasional abuses are far more likely to be tolerated if cover can be expected from a regional IO than if the state in question is at the mercy of the international system.

Case Studies

To more fully understand how these situations developed, we must examine case studies of some regional IOs that have experienced this dichotomy of formal respect for human rights norms combined with strong informal respect for norms of sovereignty and non-interference.  I will examine three cases which provide exemplary evidence of how these mechanisms operate.  In the case of the South African Development Community, despite the formal protections for human rights written into the group's charter, the organization has been unable and unwilling to control the abuses of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.  A similar situation has developed in the case of Myanmar, which is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian States.  Finally, we will examine the case of Argentina and the Organization of American States, which provides an example of how regional IOs can become useful actors in promoting human rights norms, when they are not constrained by informal understandings of non-interference.  These studies will be divided into two parallel sections.  First I will examine the development of sovereignty norms and human rights norms in each regional IO.  Then I will follow with an examination of how those norms were used (or not) to protect human rights abusers in each case.

South African Development Community

The South African Development Community was formed in 1980 as:

a loose alliance of nine majority-ruled States in Southern Africa known as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), with the main aim of coordinating development projects in order to lessen economic dependence on the then apartheid South Africa. The founding Member States are: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe (SADC Profile, 2007).

Following the fall of apartheid in South Africa in 1992, the conference moved to incorporate that country into its membership and formalize its structures into a stronger, development-promoting organization.  Considering this history, the SADC and its predecessor organization were very interested in leveraging human rights norms against the abuses of the South African apartheid government.  After apartheid fell, the newly formed SADC formally incorporated many human rights norms into its charter; it explicitly endorses the Universal Declaration as well as African Union declarations on human rights and the constitution of the ILO, and twelve of the charter's fifteen articles deal with individual rights (SADC Charter, 2007).

Interestingly, however, the treaty which formed SADC also states that members must respect the "sovereign equality of all member States" (SADC History, 2007).  The post-colonial legacy in southern African made these states very aware of the possible repercussions of allowing other states to criticize or meddle in their internal affairs. The experience of Daniel Arap Moi in Kenya (a near neighbor to, but not a member of, the SADC), who was strongly pressured by international groups to change his governance style (Schmitz 1999), must have been remembered by regional leaders as they were drawing up the SADC's bylaws.

The interaction of these two norms has provided a useful cover for the SADC member state of Zimbabwe.  Zimbabwe's human rights problems began to come to the awareness of human rights advocacy groups in the mid to late 1990s, and thus by the year 2000 substantial international and domestic pressure had developed for the state to respect human rights and allow for free and fair elections (Laakso 2002, 449-452).  Election monitors were provided by both international groups and by the SADC.  The international monitors largely criticized the elections, while the SADC monitors, pressured by the non-interference norms their governments adhered to, largely praised them as being free and fair.  Emboldened, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe continued to crack down on the political opposition.  Even as international sanctions have increased, Mugabe has been able to maintain the support of the SADC - at the end of March 2007, the SADC reaffirmed its commitment to Zimbabwe and called on the West to lift economic sanctions which are meant to pressure Mugabe into relaxing his rule (London Times, 30 March 2007).  

Association of Southeast Asian States

The case of ASEAN provides a nice contrast to the SADC, as ASEAN exemplifies a strong respect for non-interference norms and a somewhat weaker formal respect for human rights norms (while still coming across as an IO that is interested in human rights).  Developed in the 1960s, ASEAN members states were worried right from the beginning about threats to their sovereignty.  Recent conflicts between two of the major member states - Indonesia and Malaysia - had starkly illuminated the problems that could develop when sovereignty norms weren't respected.  All member states were worried about economic growth and internal stability.  Agreeing on a norm of non-interference was crucial, and the ASEAN charter and the adoption of the "ASEAN way" very clearly signified that no violations of sovereignty or criticism of domestic policy would be tolerated (Katsumata 2003, 106-107).  ASEAN's non-interference norms are perhaps the most well developed in the world; they are so strong that during the East Timor crisis of 1999 ASEAN states officially remained on the sidelines.

While ASEAN did not formally incorporate human rights norms into its foundational document, the 1967 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), a portion of the treaty emphasizes the participating state's desire that the increased cooperation facilitated by the treaty would lead to more economic opportunity and "social justice" within the participating states.  This further exemplifies the importance of those norms - even states which had no real intent on obeying them felt forced to make a pro forma recognition of their existence.  As ASEAN developed and expanded throughout the 1980s and more members of ASEAN began to democratize, concern for human rights expanded as well (Acharya 2003).  In particular, the ASEAN effort to liberate Cambodia from its status as a puppet state of Vietnam highlighted the importance of human rights considerations.  Currently, about half of the ASEAN states are partially or fully democratic, and most would probably fit into the third or forth phase of Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink's model of the internationalization of human rights norms.  Although ASEAN has no formal structure to deal with human rights issues, a working group of retired upper level ASEAN officials is working with the IO to develop an acceptable mechanism (Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, 2007).

Myanmar's interaction with ASEAN provides an even clearer example of how states can take advantage of non-interference norms and the cover of regional IOs to avoid international sanction.  Ironically, after joining ASEAN Myanmar became even more free to crack down on its internal dissidents.  During the early to mid 1990s, Myanmar's military made many moves (such as briefly freeing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from jail) to indicate that it was loosening its grip and willing to move towards free elections.  Given these signs (and out of a desire to expand ASEAN's membership to truly include all of South-East Asia in time for the group's forty-year anniversary), Myanmar was officially admitted to membership in 1997.  Since then, ASEAN members have actually become more constrained in criticizing Myanmar (Thailand, for example, was a willing critic up until Myanmar's admission, but has since seen even its proposals for "flexible engagement" - a very limited form of pressure - fall by the wayside) (Haacke 2005).  

Organization of American States

The Organization of American states provides an interesting counter-example to these two regional organizations.  Founded in 1948, the OAS has always largely been dominated by the leadership of the United States.  Although it shares many similar characteristics to the SADC and ASEAN, the OAS never developed strong informal norms of non-interference, largely due to the desire of the United States to interfere at will in its own back yard.  US interventions in Cuba and John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress initiative put an early rest to notions that states would be completely free to govern their own affairs as they saw fit.  The threat of international communism seemed too great; anything that put a South America state at risk for a communist revolution was deemed to be a legitimate regional concern.  This willingness to constrain sovereignty was not just limited to "good" development projects such as the Alliance for Progress; for example, South American military dictatorships shared intelligence and resources in Operation Condor, an anti-communist effort that led to the "disappearance" of thousands.

The OAS did, however, formally incorporate human rights norms into its charter early in its existence.  The group created the Inter-American Commission Human Rights in 1959 and signed the American Convention on Human Rights in 1969 (which became effect in 1978 with the creation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights).  The OAS, therefore, had a well developed system of human rights protection mechanisms, combined with substantially less agreement on the need to protect sovereignty norms or avoid criticism of other regional states.

When unconstrained by norms of non-interference, regional IOs such as the OAS can become important actors in the protection of human rights.  The case of Argentina is illustrative.  In 1976, a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government and installed martial law.  The junta recognized that international pressure would result if it was viewed as abusing human rights, so, learning from the Chilean experience, it avoided mass public executions in favor of quietly "disappearing" its victims (Sikkink 1993, 423).  This approach only worked for a little while, however, and as word got out the Argentinean government increasingly felt pressure from both abroad and at home.  In a key difference with the cases of Zimbabwe and Myanmar, however, Argentina did not receive cover from its regional IO.  The OAS sponsored an IACHR report on Argentina, and in response to international pressure Argentina eventually voluntarily allowed IACHR monitors into the country, severely constraining both the regime's sovereignty and its ability to violate human rights (Sikkink 1993, 427-428).

Conclusion

Since the foundation of the United Nations, international organizations and human rights have been strongly linked, both officially and in the public consciousness.  It is often assumed that membership in international organizations will be at worst a neutral factor and at best a positive influence when it comes to the promotion of human rights.  Having examined the cases of ASEAN and the SADC, however, we can see that these assumptions do not always hold true.  Regional IOs which have strong informal non-interference norms can provide a cover for regimes that wish to flout international opinion.

Studies of international organizations and human rights norms must take these factors into account.  International norms are often viewed as a positive force for "good", but the concepts of norms is completely value-neutral.  "Bad" norms can easily counteract "good" norms, and, as this study has shown, two seemingly unrelated norms can sometimes interact in ways that might not be obvious in a surface level analysis.  In the case of human rights norms and regional IOs, scholars and activists must be sure to move beyond a simple divide between formal and informal, or between bureaucracy and activism.  Formal legal structures can easily be circumvented by strong informal understandings, while a lack of legal structures can sometimes impede action, even when the normative basis for it does exist.  The best approach for avoiding these pitfalls in the future will be a holistic approach, which considers both the influence of formal / legal structures as well as the importance of norms (both "good" and "bad") in regulating state action at the international level.

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