Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are thought to be central to the social, economic and political advancements recently experienced by many African countries. Makau Mutua's edited volume contributes to a deeper understanding of these organisations by discussing the human rights issues for which NGOs advocate, the range of strategies they deploy in doing so, and the opportunities and challenges that they face. Pointing out that that human rights NGOs have been indispensable in the process of democratisation and ‘are now a permanent feature of the political landscape’ (p. 4), Mutua moves the debate on from the question of whether civil society can be said to exist in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, to a richer discussion of such themes as the ability of NGOs to address complex cultural, social and economic issues outside the traditional mandates of human rights organisations; their relationships upwards to donors and downwards to their often poor and rural grass-roots constituents; and the possibility that such bodies can retain intellectual and fiscal independence from the state and international human rights organisations.
For those seeking to understand the processes of advocacy for social change, the volume usefully illustrates the range of areas to which human rights NGOs have made a contribution. Successes have ranged from the leadership of men in the fight for gender equality within organisations, engaging in what Willy Mutunga calls ‘feminist masculinity’ (p. 112), to economic rights advocacy where, in one instance, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) teamed up with marginalised populations working for Del Monte, a global food conglomerate, to launch a campaign that ‘shook the multinational corporation’ into negotiating over labour rights. In the process, the KHRC was transformed from patronising ‘“saviours” of the masses to partners in the struggle’ for human dignity (p. 170).
The volume also describes a number of critical weaknesses among human rights NGOs. Key among them is the structure of the NGOs themselves: most have poorly developed bureaucracies and depend on the executive director for policy and direction, lack financial independence, and are seen to have ‘rather blindly copied the models of AI [Amnesty International] and HRW [Human Rights Watch]’ (p. 19) when choosing their causes and approaches, despite their unique political contexts. In a serious indictment of the sector, Mutua concludes that the ‘high public visibility of the few vocal NGOs deceptively gives an impression of a well-established … and formidable human rights movement. Nothing could be further from the truth’ (p. 28). This is a charge that deserves serious reflection.
A key strength of the volume is that it brings together the voices of the activists at the forefront of the human rights movement: those without whose views any assessment of the human rights project in East Africa would be incomplete. As present or past directors of leading organisations in the region, they have been engaged on a daily basis in securing finance for their organisations, negotiating partnerships with international NGOs, and crafting strategies for state relations. Significantly, they have first-hand experience, among other things, of attempted cooptation by the state, careerism among their fellow NGO actors, and mimicry of successful international advocacy approaches by their peer organisations. However, this strength is also perhaps one of the weaknesses of the volume: many leading activists are not scholars. The result is that the quality of the analysis varies across the chapters that comprise the volume. Some chapters read like advocacy presentations, where concepts are used rather broadly and their meanings taken to be commonly understood, while others present a range of opinions but lack a unifying thesis.
The volume could also have benefited from a broader range of contributors. While the text seeks to address NGOs in East Africa, there is only one paper that focuses specifically on Tanzania. The bulk of the papers are about Kenya, and as seven of the fourteen contributors are affiliated with the KHRC, there is overlap in the issues they describe and examples they use. A more diverse network would have ensured a richer discussion that could have drawn lessons from other important human rights struggles such as internally displaced persons and land rights.
Finally, the volume lists many ways to address the current challenges, without further analysis of what these different approaches would entail or whether they are even feasible. For instance, a number of authors argue that the organisations that will thrive and continue to make a difference will be those that embrace innovative approaches, provide intellectual leadership when responding to the needs of their constituents, cultivate accountability, and generate independent funding by harnessing technology and volunteerism – reaching out to the diaspora or engaging in profitable activities in order to liberate themselves from donor agendas. Yet it remains unclear exactly what each of these approaches would mean in practice. Nonetheless, this volume forms a good starting point for a discussion that many human rights organisations must take seriously, and provides a useful resource for those who wish to know what challenges lie ahead in the quest to increase human dignity.
