Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Voice Accountability and NGOs in Human Rights Standard Setting

Janet E. Lord
Seton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
Volume 5, Number 2
Summer/Fall 2004

 

Introduction

States are routinely called to account for human rights violations against their own citizens and frame their response to such criticism in human rights terms, denying or justifying their conduct by explicit reference to their interpretation of international human rights standards. International governmental organizations responsible for overseeing the human rights systems are themselves subjected to "boomerang scrutiny" on the basis of the very international human rights standards upon which they assess state conduct. Such scrutiny extends to corporations urged to broaden and deepen their own accountability beyond the single calculus of profit to multiple indicators including social and environmental factors. It extends also to relief and development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), whose measures of accountability and legitimacy increasingly reference performance principles reflecting human rights standards. And, increasingly, core principles of human rights are held up like a mirror before the very NGOs that invoke them against states and other actors in their human rights practice, raising questions that bear ultimately upon now familiar issues of legitimacy and accountability.

The pull to assess in detail questions of legitimacy and accountability for what NGOs say and do is in part a reflection of their success. Success in a sense refers to achieving a privileged position of influence in decision-making arenas, even against theoretical barriers posed by the hegemonic discourse of realist accounts or the practical barriers to participation relating to access. So successful have been the efforts among NGOs to win access to international decision making processes, it seems that dialogue has started to shift away from assessing whether and how NGOs "get in" and more towards assessing the legitimacy and accountability of their representational role once they get there. Caitlin Weisen applies the new discourse around issues of NGO legitimacy and accountability:

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