NGO/Civil society efforts at integrating human rights into conflict resolution

NGOs can also play a significant role in demonstrating how conflict resolution and human rights can work together. However, it is difficult to systematically study the work of NGOs doing conflict resolution, as they are usually small, local, and hard to access.

Named “Reflecting on Peace Practice” (RPP), the research was designed as “an experience-based learning process that involves agencies whose programs attempt to prevent or mitigate violent conflict. Its purpose is to analyze experience at the individual program level across a broad range of agencies and contexts. Its goal is to improve the effectiveness of peace work.. [From] September 1999- to April 2001, RPP completed 26 field-based case studies of work in different areas of the world, in different conflicts and different stages of conflict. The cases examine what prompted people to undertake conflict work; what, how, and why they did it; and what happened as a result of their efforts (and why).¹⁶

In reviewing these case studies as well as the RPP Issue Paper, “Balance and Trade-Offs between Working for Reduction of Violence or for Social Justice,” one can group the international and local NGOs that say they do both human rights and conflict resolution into three categories. The first is the group that uses the terms “human rights” and “conflict resolution” in their titles and literature, but whose program activities are primarily one or the other. Their claims to address both sets of issues stem from their assertions that doing human rights work leads to peace, or that doing peace work protects human rights.

The second group is made up of those who, in trying to move into the justice arena, find that their “impartiality” is called into question and potentially compromises their conflict resolution credibility. They therefore choose to work either explicitly or implicitly with human rights organizations, either feeding the human rights advocates information about abuses they have observed in the context of their peacemaking work or following up on reported abuses by convening dialogue processes to confront the problem.¹⁷ They present an interesting model of coordination between conflict resolution and human rights groups, rather than a change in conflict resolution theory and practice itself.

A third group of NGOs has found ways of integrating their conflict resolution and human rights work. While these do not necessarily serve as models, four examples are interesting because of the possibilities they represent.

First, a faith-based NGO in the Israeli Occupied Territories provides a visible “street presence” (the volunteers wear armbands to identify themselves) to monitor the treatment of the Palestinians living there, but also to engage in “conflict intensification” under some circumstances, on behalf of both sides, to make “hidden conflict more visible and open, for purposeful non-violent ends” (Fisher, 2000: 18). In their own words,

The challenge...is to stand for justice, using conflict intensification judiciously and respectfully, while taking measures to prevent the demonization of “the other"...It involves taking a stand alongside victims - whether they be farmers who can no longer plow their land or bus-riders who no longer feel safe riding buses-while seeing the humanness in the perpetrators of harm, listening to them, taking measures to not allow one's statements or thinking to become prejudicial, and to constantly reach out in all directions (p. 19).

Second, an NGO in Sri Lanka is attempting to use a human rights issue - the protection of children - to bring together both Tamils and Sinhalese, believing that this is a common concern of both communities (Zanduliet and Kriegman, 2001: 23). Although the organi­zation, as of 2001, had not been extremely effective in shaping concrete goals for the initiative, the notion of creating a shared normative vision for two contending societies is an intriguing one. Third, a coalition of faith­based organizations operating in Chiapas, Mexico, aims to help Mexican organizations promote peace there “by using its own presence to help protect nationals working for justice, peace, and human rights and by providing people outside of Mexico with information about the conflict” that is “not being disseminated through the press” (Levine, 2000: 12). It does this by providing a “witness” function for reporting actions taken by each side, and training in conflict transformation for all parties to the conflict. At the same time, it publishes quarterly bulletins extensively disseminated outside of Mexico as well as within the country, which discuss the human rights situation in the region but “... include the perspectives of all people involved in the events about which it is reporting. They have a reputation for unique evenhandedness in that regard.”

A fourth approach, taken by International Alert of London, is to publicly proclaim its commitment to both human rights and conflict resolution. They have written an extensive Code of Conduct for their organization, available on their website, which explicitly details their support for human rights and humanitarian law while acknowledging that this is sometimes in tension with their primary aim of building trust and understanding (International Alert, 2004: 20). They see their role as “.principally that of supplementing and supporting those directly involved in the work of promoting and protecting human rights and humanitarian law and principles” (International Alert, 2004: 21) However, they are also engaged in advocacy work to ban land mines, control light weapons, and support vulnerable groups such as women and children.

Undoubtedly, as the work of other conflict resolution NGOs comes to light, we will discover other powerful examples. The four NGO efforts discussed above suggest four possible ways that NGOS can explicitly add human rights norms to the conflict reso­lution agenda: (1) the “rhetoric” approach, in which a conflict resolution or human rights NGO explicitly states that its work is meant to address both sets of goals; (2) the “partnership” approach, where a conflict resolution NGO works closely with a human rights NGO; (3) the “parallel action” strategy, in which an NGO does both conflict resolution and human rights work separately but in the same context; and (4) the “integrated” approach, where human rights concerns are woven into the conflict resolution work.

Thus, both Track 1 and Track 2 actors are demonstrating not only that human rights norms and conflict resolution norms can coexist in the same organization, but also that the human rights norms can support the conflict resolution agenda in important ways.