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The United Nations-based system of universal human rights is one of the major achievements of this century Codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it provides a normative framework as well as a source of inspiration for achieving justice and protecting the weak and vulnerable. In this article, I define justice as treating people and populations fairly and allowing individuals to participate in society according to their abilities.
Globalization increases the sources of injustice that are beyond the scope of national systems of justice. Today, forces that are geographically and institutionally distant from the scene of the action may influence individuals and communities. Multinational corporations and the Bretton Woods institutions-the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund-have a major impact on the lives of millions, but there are few local or decentralized institutional opportunities for recourse against their actions. The political space for governments is equally affected by international forces, which may have an impact on how governments behave domestically
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have begun to fill some of these widening institutional and geographical gaps for people or communities who want to exercise their guaranteed rights. Particularly during the last 25 years, NGOs have contributed to international and national discourse on issues of global scope, such as the eradication of poverty and the promotion of gender equality, peace, sustainable development and human rights. Most NGOs no longer work alone, but rather in networks that transfer information and other resources across borders. In this article, I explore the extent to which the gradually increasing density of NGO networks and intensifying degree of NGO advocacy can be seen as a nascent organizational articulation of a global human rights enforcement mechanism. Such a response would answer the traditional critique that the U.N. human rights principles lack sufficient organized enforcement mechanisms. The question is whether this anticipates a more institutionalized role for NGOs in emerging systems of global governance.
The study of NGOs and how their networks might be organized to enforce human rights leads to a qualitative discussion of the relationships among these organizations. This article explores the distinctive relationships among NGOs-as well as the relationship between NGOs and nation-states. It examines how effective they are in promoting human rights and to what level of accountability they...