Human rights NGOs reinforced the neoliberal split between violent politics and peaceful markets

Evidence

When a new generation of international human rights NGOs came to prominence in the late 1970s, they largely pursued a narrow agenda of protecting what Hayek termed ‘classical civil rights’, rather than promoting social and economic rights. Aryeh Neier, the former head of the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), noted with displeasure that, in enshrining a list of social and economic rights, the UDHR marked a ‘radical break with its predecessors’. ‘Not everybody can have everything’, Neier contended in 2006, and the role of human rights should be to specify those few things to which everyone is entitled. Even as major human rights NGOs, including HRW, have gradually shifted their attention to social and economic rights, they have largely restricted their focus to discrimination in the provision of welfare, where it is possible, as HRW’s current director Kenneth Roth explained, to identify specific violators and perpetrators. Human rights NGOs flourished in a period of neoliberal ascendancy, in which Hayek’s contention that it was meaningless to declare that ‘everyone’ was entitled to food, housing, clothing and medical care had begun to seem self-evident. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 148 (#expands, via linked claim)

By the time major states and international financial institutions had embraced the belief that only free markets could secure free people, and that human dignity was intimately tied to a market order that freed individuals from dependence, these had been neoliberal articles of faith for decades. Since the end of World War II, organised neoliberalism had been focused on promoting a world order in which morals and interests would reinforce each other. In human rights standards, they too saw a means to ‘depoliticise’ international economic relations, protecting the right to trade and securing the space in which individuals and corporations could pursue their interests unhindered. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 40; Neoliberal human rights legitimize state violence to protect global markets.; Human rights NGOs absorbed the neoliberal civil-society-versus-coercive-state dichotomy — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 60 (+15 more)

Related

• Modern human rights NGOs narrowed their agenda to civil liberties under neoliberal ascendancy (similarity 0.94)
• Human rights NGOs strengthened, not merely concealed, the link between markets and political violence. (similarity 0.91)
• Human rights NGOs absorbed the neoliberal civil-society-versus-coercive-state dichotomy (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberal human rights legitimize state violence to protect global markets. (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberalism converged with human rights activism around shared political aims. (similarity 0.89)
• Neoliberals adopted human rights language to enshrine a moral order for global capital. (similarity 0.88)
• Post-UDHR human-rights activism narrowed from economic to civil rights in tandem with neoliberalism (similarity 0.87)
• Neoliberals judged human rights solely by whether they supported market relations. (similarity 0.87)
• Early neoliberals championed human rights as instruments for market order, not as social protection (similarity 0.87)
• Major human rights NGOs drew on the neoliberal account of rights. (similarity 0.87)
• Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets (similarity 0.86)
• TV rights NGOs were powerless companions of 1970s-era neoliberalism (similarity 0.86)
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital (similarity 0.86)
• Neoliberal human rights primarily preserve the market order rather than protect individuals (similarity 0.85)
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Modern human rights NGOs narrowed their agenda to civil liberties under neoliberal ascendancy #expands (0.88) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 148
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Market competition was framed by neoliberals as guarantor of rights and peace #expands (0.82)
• Neoliberals redeployed human rights to protect investors and property #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 428