Modern human rights NGOs narrowed their agenda to civil liberties under neoliberal ascendancy

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

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how human-rights discourse was reshaped by market liberalism — echoes the debate with Samuel Moyn’s ‘Not Enough’ on human rights vs. economic justice. — connects to: Human rights NGOs absorbed the neoliberal civil-society-versus-coercive-state dichotomy — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 60; Human rights NGOs reinforced the neoliberal split between violent politics and peaceful markets; Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 450 (+12 more)
• SEED: Angle: the institutional capture of human rights NGOs by a Hayekian ‘classical civil rights’ frame as a case study in how discourse is shaped by economic power structure.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between ‘classical civil rights’ (negative liberties) and social/economic rights that Hayek and his followers drew.

Broader Connections

• Rights advocacy aimed at forestalling revolt repeats neoliberalism’s original pacifying mission #expands (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 456
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #expands (0.78)
• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #expands (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals redeployed human rights to protect investors and property #expands (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 428
• Neoliberal reform shrank public-sector jobs and redirected educated Dalits into NGOs #exemplifies (0.72) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 562