The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, known as the Vienna Conference, was attended by representatives of 841 nongovernmental organizations from around the world, all of whom defined their mission as working with human rights. While this number is impressive in itself, it represents only a fraction of the total number of human rights NGOs operating in the world.
Most of the organizations that proclaim themselves “human rights” tend to protect civil and political rights. The best known of these organizations, at least in the international arena, are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Federation for Human Rights, Human Rights First, and InterRights. However, as we have seen, civil and political rights are only one of many categories of different human rights recognized by the international community. Moreover, new rights continue to arise even today. If we take all this into account and include in this list non-governmental organizations confronting poverty, violence, racism, health problems, homelessness and conservation, to say nothing of many others, the true number of non-governmental organizations engaged in defending human rights in one form or another would number in the hundreds of thousands around the world.
How do they affect the process?
Non-governmental organizations may attempt to engage in human rights advocacy on many different fronts and levels, and the strategies they employ will vary according to the nature of their goals: they may be more general or more specific, long-term or short-term, local, national or international in scope, etc.
Direct assistance
A common characteristic of non-governmental organizations active in the field of social and economic rights is the provision of some form of direct assistance to victims of human rights violations. This can be humanitarian assistance, protection, or training for a new profession. If the right is protected by law, it can be legal assistance or advice on how to file a lawsuit. However, in many cases, direct assistance to the victim of human rights violations is either not possible or is not the best way to use the resources of a human rights organization.
Gathering reliable information
If there is one basic strategy upon which various forms of NGO activity are based, it seems to be the desire to “stigmatize” those who do injustice. Very often governments may evade obligations under international agreements they have signed, or other legal standards, because the results of their policies are simply not known to the general public. Gathering such information and using it to “stigmatize” governments is necessary to hold perpetrators accountable, and is therefore often used by non-governmental organizations.