III-k. Informal Civil Society
Some observers speak as if civil society were constituted entirely of civil society organizations. That is a serious disservice because it can lead to the neglect of the social functions of the population as a whole. Through voting, social movements, writing letters to newspapers, holding neighborhood discussions, contributing money and energy to some causes and not to others, and many other day-to-day activities, ordinary people can play major roles in shaping their societies. We suggest a distinct label, informal civil society (ICS) to designate this sector. (We don't want to use a label that suggests it is disorganized!) We include here the many non-governmental agencies, such as newspapers, that can have important roles in shaping policies even if they are not wholly devoted to the particular issues in question.
The active functioning of informal civil society is essential to the realization of human rights. Individuals have their rights fulfilled not as passive objects benefiting from governmental largesse, but as active subjects, fully participating in establishing the public agenda and in crafting proposals and final decisions. Thus, the realization of human rights implies the existence of democracy. There must be real democracy, going beyond the mere mechanics of voting and representation, and including active public participation and broad sharing of power.
As we will show in Subsection X-e, the movement in support of the human right to food and nutrition in Brazil was based on a clear understanding of the essential role of civil society, in both its informal and its organized manifestations. They recognized that:
A strong government-civil society partnership is essential for a human rights approach to food and nutritional security. The formation of this partnership may require: (i) for social movements to play a facilitating role in mobilising all sectors (rather than a confrontational role); (ii) for government leaders to be sensitive to social demands and to open up negotiating spaces; and (iii) for all segments of society to understand that social problems, such as hunger, and the establishment of a democratic society are linked, and that only in partnership can social problems be resolved, and not just by the State. The partnership implies equality of status, and finding complementarities in relative strengths of action (Valente 1999, p. 4).
Human rights do not come simply as a gift from above, but as a result of political struggle. Civil society, both informal and organized, plays a central role in social mobilization, providing the public support that is needed in the transition to human rights-based governance.
After human rights-based governance is established, civil society continues to play key roles in shaping legislation and other forms of policymaking, but the roles played after that transition may be quite different. It is not so much a matter of challenging the fundamental legitimacy of established power, but of working with it to protect and strengthen the culture of human rights. The relationship of civil society with government becomes more collaborative than confrontational.
The role of social movements in the historical development of human rights has been analyzed by Neil Stammers (Stammers 1999). He focuses on the role of social movements in forcing the transition to human rights-based governance:
- Social movements are chiefly concerned with defending or changing at least some aspect of society and rely on mass mobilisation or the threat of it as their main political sanction. . . .
- [They always have] "dual faces" which dialectically combine instrumental--political, economic, or social--demands with an expressive dimension oriented towards norms, values, identities, lifestyles, etc.
- . . . many of the key innovations in the socio-historical development of human rights were constructed and articulated in the first instance in the context of social movements seeking to challenge extant relations and structures of power.
Stammers points out that the human rights literature is preoccupied with international public law and technical issues such as monitoring and enforcement, and fails to recognize the role of social movements in the construction of human rights. The emphasis on legal codification "means that non-legal forms of human rights claims are not considered to have any analytical import. . . . Yet it is precisely in their non-legal form that the link with social movements is most evidently apparent."
Some critics argue that human rights movements can be used to sustain particular forms of power, by providing a kind of sustaining legitimation. To illustrate, natural rights came to be used to impede further change when "the original and largely bourgeois proponents of natural rights gradually moved out of political opposition and into control (Donnelly 1989, p. 29)." Stammers' emphasis is on the idea that social movements construct human rights as challenges to power. However, he acknowledges that human rights can "both challenge and sustain power but in different degrees, in different ways, in different places and at different times". In other words, depending on circumstances, human rights can be either a conservative or a radical political force.
How then can we understand why human rights work has a power-sustaining impact in some settings but a power-challenging impact in other settings? Stammers puts his answer in the form of a question:
- If it is indeed the case that it is in their institutionalised/legal form that ideas and practices in respect of human rights are most likely to sustain relations and structure of power, is it also the case that it is in their pre-institutionalised, non-legal forms that we can see claims for human rights most evidently challenging relations and structures of power?
Thus . . .
- Social movements construct claims for human rights as part of their challenge to the status quo. To the extent that social movements succeed in facilitating change, new relations and structures of power will then typically become institutionalised and culturally sedimented within a transformed social order. In other words, political, economic and cultural forms come to reflect and sustain that balance of relations and structures of power both instrumentally and expressively and do so, partly, through existing discourses on human rights.
Social movements can help to create democratic societies based on legally codified human rights. However, after that transition, social movements of another form are needed to continue the task of assuring that existing rights are fully honored, and assuring that new and more refined rights become codified. The transition to a human rights culture may sometimes involve a transformational crisis. However, after that transformation, the refinement and realization of human rights is an ongoing progress that requires continuous effort.
Continue to IV-a. Food and Nutrition Rights in International Law
Subsection III-k last updated on September 26, 1999