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Advancing International Human Rights Law Responsibilities of Development NGOs: Respecting and Fulfilling the Right to Reparative Justice for Genocide Survivors in Rwanda 1st Edition Noam Schimmel full chapter instant download
Advancing International Human Rights Law Responsibilities of Development NGOs: Respecting and Fulfilling the Right to Reparative Justice for Genocide Survivors in Rwanda 1st Edition Noam Schimmel full chapter instant download
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Advancing International
Human Rights Law
Responsibilities of
Development NGOs
Respecting and Fulfilling
the Right to Reparative
Justice for Genocide
Survivors in Rwanda
Noam Schimmel
Advancing International Human Rights Law
Responsibilities of Development NGOs
Noam Schimmel
Advancing
International Human
Rights Law
Responsibilities of
Development NGOs
Respecting and Fulfilling the Right to Reparative
Justice for Genocide Survivors in Rwanda
Noam Schimmel
International and Area Studies
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, USA
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
In loving memory of Berthe Kayitesi; survivor of the Rwandan genocide
against the Tutsi, human rights advocate, educator and tireless champion of
survivor rights and welfare—an inspiration, friend, and extraordinary
woman of courage, generosity of spirit and resilience
We miss you so very much
And in loving memory of Daphrose Mukangarembe, whose resilience as a
survivor inspired and inspires so many
And in honor of those who risked their lives to rescue Tutsis during the
genocide. You are the guardians of Gihanga and of humanity, and to you
our thanks is infinite.
In memory of the one million individuals who lost their lives in the
Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and the tens of thousands of Hutus
murdered for rejecting genocide and defending freedom and equality for
their fellow Tutsi citizens
Baruhukire mu mahoro n’imigisha
And for the Survivors with Love and Deepest Respect
Turi Kumwe
To the memory of an extraordinary defender of Tutsis during the genocide
against the Tutsi. A leader in Bisesero, Simeon Karamaga was one of the
leaders of the local Tutsi community who fought back despite daunting odds
against a military and militias equipped with weapons for mass murder
and a ferocious zeal to maim, torture, and murder every Tutsi, loot and
destroy their property, kill their livestock, and erase the memory of their
collective, communal existence and their distinctive culture as cattle-herders.
For more than two months, Simeon fought the genocidal Hutu army, Hutu
militias, and Hutu civilian accomplices who massacred over 50,000 Tutsis
in that part of Rwanda in the most horrific and brutal ways. Because of
Simeon, hundreds of Tutsis in Bisesero survived the genocide. Because of
Simeon, despite their staggering losses, Tutsis found strength in their capacity
to organize themselves to resist and to strive to protect themselves.
Simeon passed away in May of 2020 as this book was going to press. His
dignity, courage, and self-determination are a great inspiration to survivors
of the genocide against the Tutsi. His defiance of the genocidaires and his
defense of the human rights of his people—of their very lives—was and remains
a clarion call for justice and freedom and for protecting the innocent from
those who prey upon them. Simeon lost his eight children and his wife during
the genocide as he fought for the right of Tutsis to be respected as equals in
Rwanda. His loss is an enormous one for the survivor community. May his
memory and the values he fought for strengthen survivors and contribute to
their continued resilience. The justice that Simeon fought for and his quest for
freedom are not yet won. Simeon’s spirit is unvanquished.
Acknowledgments
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
and your insistence that justice, dignity, and repair are irrevocable and
essential rights which cannot be compromised, denied, and postponed.
No organization has done more—in partnership with genocide survi-
vors—for genocide survivors than SURF, Survivors Fund, and the agencies
run by and for survivors which it supports, particularly AVEGA, AERG,
and GAERG.1 David Russell and Sam Munderere at SURF and other
friends of SURF and all who fund SURF—especially Britain’s Department
for International Development—are a model for those who seek to sup-
port survivors in dignity, with justice, and in respect for and advancement
of their human rights. I have been privileged to support SURF since 2009
and I recommend that readers familiarize themselves with its extraordinary
efforts and achievements which merit scaling up to reach all survivors in
Rwanda. David and Sam’s contributions over many years to SURF have
impacted tens of thousands of survivors in transformative, healing, and
empowering ways. I cannot thank them enough for their outstanding lead-
ership, indefatigable courage and tenacity, and their compassion for survi-
vors. They are gentle, soft spoken, and humble advocates who are also
incredibly effective and unbowed. They have always been encouraging and
supportive and have shown great generosity for which I am most grateful.
There are specific places in Rwanda, in addition to people, that have
been instrumental in helping me to begin to understand the history of the
Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and its legacy for survivors. Murambi,
Bisesero, Nyamata, and Ntarama in the Bugesera, and Nyanza in Kigali
left indelible marks upon me. They are sights of memory and resistance to
the genocide, and in referring to them I wish to honor the individuals and
communities who were murdered there—alongside those of hundreds of
thousands of others across Rwanda—and as a reminder that each story of
life and death is specific to a particular place and community and that these
places reverberate with memory and with the memory of the survivors.
This book is written with the hope that all who are in the position to
advance the rights and welfare of survivors will finally do so without fur-
ther denial of the rights of survivors and delay: governments, national aid
1
AVEGA stands for Association des Veuves du Génocide (Association of Widows of the
1994 Rwandan Genocide);
AERG stands for Association des Etudiants Et Éleves Rescapés du Génocide (Genocide
Survivors Student Association);
GAERG stands for Groupe des Anciens Etudiants Rescapés du Génocide (Graduate
Student Genocide Survivors Student Association).
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Introduction 1
6 Conclusion107
Bibliography119
Index137
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
This book asks what are the potential responsibilities to respect, protect,
and fulfill1 international human rights law (IHRL) of a particular class of
non-state actors: non-governmental organizations (NGOs).2 The book
focuses on those NGOs3 pursuing development in a post-genocide
transitional justice context acting simultaneously in partnership with state
governments, as proxies and agents for these governments, and providing
essential public goods4 and social services as part of their development
remit. I define development as a process of expanding realization of social,
economic, and cultural rights addressing food security, economic
1
See UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, General Comment 12,
1999, on the respect/protect/fulfill trichotomy.
2
Menno T. Kamminga, “The Evolving Status of NGOs under International Law: A Threat
to the Inter-State System?” in Alston, (ed) Non-State Actors and Human Rights (Oxford
University Press 2005) 96.
3
This book focuses on development NGOs rather than bilateral and multilateral aid agen-
cies such as USAID, DFID, agencies of the United Nations such as UNDP, UNICEF, and
UN Women, and the World Bank. However, despite this focus, the arguments it advances are
relevant to these agencies as well, although they may have different legal status as agencies of
national governments and of the United Nations, respectively. I focus on NGOs precisely
because they are not direct agencies of national governments and thus are traditionally con-
sidered to be outside the remit of international human rights law. References to NGOs in this
book refer to development NGOs, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
4
Public goods and public services/social services have similar meanings; I use the phrase
public goods which includes the provision of social services such as healthcare and education.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/RemedyAndReparation.aspx
All online documents were accessed in the fall of 2019 and winter of 2020.
6
Menno T. Kamminga, ‘The Evolving Status of NGOs Under International Law: A Threat
to the Interstate System?’
1 INTRODUCTION 3
I argue, further, that current soft law demands that NGOs should never
enter into a contract for provision of development aid with a sovereign
that knowingly entails—whether by commission or omission—a violation
of international human rights law. This is a significant departure from
prevalent NGO policy which entails substantial compromise of human
rights law, despite rhetorical claims otherwise in guiding principles of
NGO self-accountability. These often collide with the real-world exigen-
cies in which development NGOs must sacrifice some degree of commit-
ment to political and civil rights within IHRL in order to advance social
and economic rights within IHRL, which are generally their focus area,
particularly for provision of public goods such as education, healthcare,
housing, and income generation programs. Such efforts may be done in
ways that undermine the civil and political rights of citizens generally and/
or the civil and political rights as well as the social and economic rights of
individuals and groups of a particular ethnic, social, geographic, or other
background that differentiates them from a favored population group (or
several), and discriminates against them. Although civil, political, eco-
nomic, and social rights are ultimately interconnected and mutually inter-
dependent—and cannot meaningfully be separated both conceptually and
practically into a rigid binary—repressive regimes often favor social and
economic rights and severely limit political and civil rights. Only a com-
prehensive soft law framework within the UN system that addresses the
issues of NGO IHRL responsibilities as they pertain to the full range of
political, civil, economic, and social rights can elucidate the extent of these
obligations in a way that can achieve some degree of uniformity, dissemi-
nation, normalization, and accountability.
Though states are ultimately held legally responsible for the acts of
NGOs this should not prejudice NGOs being held socially and morally
responsible in some capacity and some degree, simultaneously. Absent
such responsibility, this would enable NGO impunity for violations of
human rights, whether through acts of commission or omission. As Adam
McBeth states, “There is no reason that non-State actors should not have
concurrent obligations with states under international law.”7
From the moment that NGOs voluntarily choose to entangle them-
selves in the delicate and often highly fraught dance of negotiation with
states for the freedom to operate and to organize and provide develop-
ment programming which involves all manner of moral and pragmatic
7
Adam McBeth, International Actors and Human Rights (Routledge 2010) 244.
4 N. SCHIMMEL
Not much more than a decade ago the category of non-state actors remained
all but frozen out of the legal picture by international law doctrines and had
received only passing recognition even from scholars. While the case-law of
the regional human rights systems had begun to address some violations
committed by private actors, the resulting jurisprudence was neither system-
atic nor especially coherent.9
8
Chris Jochnick, ‘Confronting the Impunity of Non-State Actors: New Fields for the
Promotion of Human Rights’ (1999) 21 Human Rights Quarterly, 56, 59.
9
Alston, (ed) Non-State Actors and Human Rights (Oxford University Press 2005) 5.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
10
Ibid., 6
11
Peter Uvin. Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (Kumarian
Press 1998).
12
Ibid.
6 N. SCHIMMEL
Under traditional human rights law, the roles were clearly distributed among
the main players. NGOs and international organizations were keeping an
eye on the human rights performance of states and increasingly also of
TNCs. International organizations and NGOs were the ‘good guys’ and it
was their role to advocate and promote human rights, to campaign for
human rights observance, and to supervise compliance and find viola-
tions. … These roles have been partially reversed today: international orga-
nizations are now increasingly questioned about their human rights
performance. … NGO accountability is another new topic: their activities
are subject to intensified scrutiny, and they are attacked for their lack of
democratic structures and transparency. In some instance they are even
accused of acting contrary to human rights.14
Ibid., 28. Uvin cites here the scholarship of Brusten and Bindariye, 1997.
13
August Reinisch, “The Changing International Legal Framework for Dealing with Non-
14
State Actors” in Alston, (ed) Non-State Actors and Human Rights (Oxford University Press
2005) 62.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
15
See the annual reports and working papers of the NGO SURF Survivor’s Fund for
details of the scale and scope of these injustices which will be discussed in detail in Chap. 6.
See also SURF’s Annual Reports 2009–2018:
https://survivors-fund.org.uk/about/our-reports/annual-reports/
Eric Stover and Harvey Weinstein, My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the
Aftermath of Mass Atrocity Cambridge University Press (2004).
J. Hatzfeld, The Antelope’s Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux 2007).
Zachary Kaufman, ‘Lessons from Rwanda: Post Genocide Law and Policy’ Stanford Law
and Policy Review (2019).
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
For more on the legacy of sexual violence and its impact on Rwandan genocide survivors
and on trauma generally in genocide survivors see Kaitesi, Zraly, Zraly and Nrayizinyoye,
Schaal and Elbert, and Schaal and Dusingizemungu, as discussed in Chap. 6.
See also Rianne Letschert, Ed. Victimological Approaches to International Crimes: Africa.
(Intersentia 2011).
20
Ibid.
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— Mais répondez donc !
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IV