The power of human rights to shape the mandate and operations of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) is vividly illustrated in this timely study. Highly readable and original, it holds great appeal for both students and scholars in the fields of international organizations (IOs) and human rights.
At the outset, Joel Oestreich explains that his primary purpose is to explain “how and why IGOs develop and nurture new ideas in the field of human rights” and, at the broader level, to delineate “some of the ways international organizations are able to play a positive, independent role in international politics.” (p. 3). Departing from a purely state-centric analysis of international norm development and transfusion, Oestreich focuses “on the preferences of the organizations themselves,” thus studying how “IGOs can act as ‘norm entrepreneurs,’ developing and promoting ideas in the international system that are not dictated by state preferences and that also cannot be reduced to a matter of simple bureaucratic self-interest” (ibid.).
The heart of Power and Principle is an examination of rights-based programming within three UN-affiliated international organizations: the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO). Oestreich writes that the criteria by which these cases were chosen include the following: 1) Each organization has been at least somewhat receptive to rights-based programming, and 2) none of the organizations has been “under pressure from member states to adopt these new policies” (p. 6). Even assuming Oestreich's factual allegations to be true (and one may debate whether states refrain from pressuring IGOs for rights-based programming), the rationale for excluding a more diverse pool of cases from this study could have been made stronger and the comparative nature of the analysis enhanced. Nonetheless, as presently configured, the cases in the book do point to some powerful conclusions.
Although all of the three case studies are insightful, UNICEF is the strongest. Through his narrative, Oestreich demonstrates considerable change over time in UNICEF's relationship to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). At first, UNICEF feared that the CRC would “work against UNICEF—by placing it in confrontational, political situations vis-à-vis state parties” (p. 33). However, that fear evaporated as UNICEF staff increasingly turned to the CRC and CEDAW as advocacy tools. Reliance on the CRC led to a more complete view of children as rights holders and, in turn, to an expansion of UNICEF's mandate and programs, focusing on a range of needs and not just on survival and development.
Among the many helpful findings in the UNICEF case study is Oestreich's definition of a “rights-based approach,” which is said to be “one that seeks social change, not mere service provision” (p. 39). This is an important point that could benefit from elaboration: What is the distinction between rights-based programming, on the one hand, and service provision, on the other, and what are the implications for adopting one or the other? Another particularly interesting part of the chapter is the stark contrast drawn between UNICEF leaders Carol Bellamy and James Grant. Clearly, when it comes to the embrace of human rights norms by IOs, leadership matters. Yet staffs matter, too, especially if they work with little oversight in remote corners of the world. Oestreich astutely recognizes that UNICEF's internal culture, which emphasizes decentralized planning and effective problem solving, has an impact on the definition of rights (p. 63) insofar as it allows flexibility in the realization of rights-based programming.
This flexibility in the operationalization of human rights should not be confused, however, with the claim that human rights are purely instrumental constructs with no fixed meaning—a claim that Oestreich makes in the beginning of his text . With no references to authorities, his introduction of human rights (pp. 19–20) asserts that the content of human rights is always up for grabs. This simply is not so. As an introductory text for human rights students, Power and Principle should pay more attention to defining key terms and concepts. The author would benefit by recalling the importance of customary international law, by appreciating the findings of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights that human rights are indivisible and interconnected, and by observing the development of human rights jurisprudence and the integration of human rights into the foreign policy of the most powerful.
One of the strongest points made in the book is that the relationship of IGOs to human rights rests largely on factors internal to the organization and that entrenched bureaucratic interests may prove to be the most formidable foes to rights-based efforts. When Oestreich departs from this thesis, he does so at his own peril. He simply does not marshal sufficient evidence to support his statement that human rights ideas “were fed into the Bank far more than they were developed by internal advocates” (p. 115). Unfortunately, the citations for the World Bank chapter are the most dated in the book, and they contain no flavor of the internal human rights debates currently underway at the bank.
Curiously, the author fails to mention the appointment of a human rights advisor during the latter part of the Wolfensohn tenure at the World Bank. He likewise neglects to mention James Wolfensohn's high-profile appointment of a disability advisor, a longtime American disability rights activist. This appointment led to the participation of the World Bank in the process to draft the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted by the General Assembly in 2006, and a host of World Bank publications and events on the treaty. These and other examples could have enriched the consideration of rights-based work within the bank, as would have the rollback in rights-supported work that occurred following the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz (leading to the abrupt departure of the disability advisor).
Another observation that warrants further exploration pertains to the agency of IGOs. Oestreich observes that “the most important states parties are less likely to supervise the day-to-day operations of an organization that does not operate in an area they consider of primary security or power concern” (p. 17). Innovative human rights advocacy depends upon the recognition of the spaces in which human rights activity takes place outside the strict control of state actors. The author does not fully appreciate that NGO activity may be either progressive or regressive in nature. Instead, he presents a rather optimistic view of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), concluding with the suggestion that NGOs be granted a “greater voice within IGOs” (p. 209). His future work might well present a more detailed picture as to how this could materialize.
Power and Principle will no doubt provoke a healthy dialogue on the impact of human rights on international organizations and, I hope, on the impact of international organizations on human rights.
