Pambazuka: Foreign Policy and Human Rights: is dialogue possible?
Conectas na Mídia
To advocate for more pro-rights and pro-social justice foreign policies in our home countries requires, nonetheless, active civil society organizations to serve both as watchdogs and as partners in/for action.
Southern countries are increasingly playing a major role in several realms of international life: from security and peacekeeping, to development cooperation, trade and investment, environmental issues, and human rights. Nonetheless, domestic public debate on the contours, and impact, of this more prominent role is still incipient. How much have Africans countries invested in peacekeeping in Africa? What has been the vote of the African group in the last Human Rights Council session in the resolution on peaceful protest? What have been the position of African countries in regards to the Syrian crisis? And what about Guantanamo?
To advocate for more pro-rights and pro-social justice foreign policies in our home countries requires, nonetheless, active civil society organizations to serve both as watchdogs and as partners in/for action. In order to fulfill this role, civil society groups must monitor policies and actions, provide knowledge and technical support, and challenge policies and behaviors that are undemocratic or that violates human dignity, at home or abroad.
Working with foreign policy means adding a new layer of work for many of the, already deeply busy, CSOs in the Global South, and developing some new skills and institutional capabilities. Some reflection work on that has already been made.
Conectas Human Rights has recently launched a publication “Foreign Policy and Human Rights: Strategies for Civil Society Action”, based on its work with foreign policy and human rights in Brazil, providing strategies, tips and critical analysis together with concrete examples on how can CSOs engage with foreign policy making in their home countries.
The publication explores five lines of action, that currently support Conectas advocacy work in trying to influence foreign policy making and taking in Brazil: researching and producing information, establishing partnerships, making use of governmental checks and balances, fostering media and public scrutiny, and monitoring multilateral fora and mechanisms. The table below summarizes[1] those five lines of action.
Organizations wanting to have an impact on this policy need to employ those different strategies throughout the policy cycle (which includes, for instance, agenda setting, selection of options, implementation and evaluation). According to the issue and on the political context, the same organization can (and will) interact with different phases of this cycle.
On that note, some concrete examples are worth sharing. On information gathering – understood as “knowledge for action” without which no advocacy will be possible – gathering information about your country’s foreign policy helps understanding the dynamics of policymaking, and it enables CSOs to visualize patterns and inconsistencies in their country’s international engagements. Since 2006, Conectas publishes the yearbook “Human Rights: Brazil at the UN”. The purpose of this publication is to systematize and compile all the information available on Brazilian engagement on human rights at the UN and disseminate it, in Portuguese (Brazil’s national language and a non-UN official language), to other organizations in Brazil in order to help other CSOs interested in participating and monitoring Brazil. It also serves as a reminder for public officials that civil society keep tracks of government activities and will hold public servants accountable for misdoings. In 2014, Conectas decided to expand this exercise and to change the medium through each those data is presented, creating an online tool, the “Database – How Brazil, India and South Africa vote in the UN”.
Another example that speaks to building partnerships and to making use of governmental checks and balances mechanisms and media is a cross-regional campaign on Zimbabwe. In 2007, Conectas facilitated a mission of two Zimbabwean human rights defenders (from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights) to Brazil to raise awareness of the political crisis happening ahead of the presidential elections. Back then, Brazil was (and still is) one of the few Latin American countries with a diplomatic mission in Harare, and enjoying respect from local rulers. Good relations were built, however, on the basis of mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty, which was often translated into silence when it comes to the human rights situation on the ground.
Taking this into account and in order to raise the cost of Brazilian traditional silence on the matter, which also included abstentions in the former UN Commission on Human Rights on resolutions about Zimbabwe, Conectas and its partners organized a meeting with seven Latin American CSOs in Brazil. As a follow-up to the meeting, the organizations took action to influence the foreign policy of their respective governments, and also at the regional level at Mercosur. The advocacy work conducted after this meeting also resulted, in Brazil, in a lawmaker heading to Harare to monitor the first round of the elections. As an additional outcome, two Brazilian journalists went to Zimbabwe to follow the pools in loco. Since then, Conectas and its partners in Zimbabwe have been working together, before Brazilian institutions and at the UN-level, to promote a more vocal stance of the international community when it comes fundamental liberties in Zimbabwe.
This campaign has led to useful reflections and learning opportunities. Even when external scrutiny does not prevents human rights violations or violence to happen; it nonetheless progressively raises the costs for local rulers to proceed with them. Civil society mobilization also sends Brazilian government a clear message that their good relations with other countries cannot be an excuse not to take a stance when human rights are at risk. Moreover, if diplomats are not willing to take action, there is also other venues to explore – such as the Legislative branch or the media.
The aforementioned examples show Conectas engagement with Brazilian decision-makers in the field of foreign policy and human rights. However, African CSOs willing to work the same field, should consider going beyond their own government and also spend some time building bridges with (re)emerging powers (both from Africa and from other regions), whose footprints are increasingly visible in Africa. The first step could be to recognize and identify the nature of the impact of these new players in African politics, and human development. The second one would be to start directly engaging with emerging powers in Africa. This could be done more frequently through creating channels for dialogue with emerging powers’ embassies in Africa, but also through specific campaigns or media actions target to foreign leaders come for official summits and/or country visits. Creating cross-regional campaigns together with rights groups from the emerging countries themselves could also be used to create leverage.
Emerging countries can make it different in promoting a rights-based engagement toward Africa. They can go beyond aid and/or intervention, but they will not do it unless there is active scrutiny and social pressure in both ends to make those foreign engagements accountable. Civil society from emerging countries and from Africa can work together to ensure that this new wave of South-South relations are developed to benefit all citizens.
Emerging countries are the champions of the debate on reforming global governance institutions, and democratizing international politics. Let’s not forget that in order to do so, they also need to democratize their own foreign policy in form and content. In other words, democratizing the way in which foreign policy is made and taken (through greater transparency, accountability, and citizen participation), as well as the nature of the decision that is being implemented; keeping in mind our countries non-negotiable international and national commitments to human rights and social justice.
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