UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai has authored an op-ed in Foreign Policy in which he calls upon international financial institutions to counter the global trend of closing civil society space by promoting more community participation in their activities. His call comes roughly one year since the United Nations set the Sustainable Development Goals (SDDGs), an ambitious blueprint for governments and financiers to use their political power and resources to end poverty, hunger, and disease. Kiai notes in the op-ed that while development banks play a key role in ensuring the success of the SDGs, they cannot do it alone. "Far more important than governments and international donors are the individuals and civic organizations that will help design, carry out, and monitor the development projects on which the whole scheme depends," Kiai wrote in the piece. "Without vibrant civil societies, the Sustainable Development Goals are dead in the water." Despite this, the entire concept of participatory development is in danger, Kiai notes. In many parts of the world, groups and activists who work to improve development proposals "increasingly find themselves threatened, intimidated, and even violently attacked by governments, investors, private security forces, and others who want to avoid scrutiny." "As I... Continue reading →
Many States view human rights as an integral part of their foreign policy – or at least claim to. There are many challenges in fully integrating human rights into foreign policy, and in keeping them there through difficult geopolitical circumstances. On November 13, 2013, the Ireland Department of Foreign Affairs will host its annual NGO Forum on Human Rights in Dublin. The subject is “Ideals and Interests; the place of Human Rights in Foreign Policy.” The goal of the conference is to examine the difficulties in the integration of human rights into foreign policy, and to gauge areas of progress in recent years. We’d like to hear your views on the subject, particularly as it relates to the freedoms of peaceful assembly and of association. These freedoms are particularly important in foreign policy considerations at the moment: massive protest movements continue in geopolitically strategic countries such as Bahrain and Egypt, and a growing number of states are implementing an array of harsh restrictions on association rights. Is it realistic to believe that human rights can be a positive force that anchors an effective foreign policy, or is it the other way around: An anchor that states view as weighing them down, to be cast aside when interests perceived as more important arise? What are... Continue reading →
