Nelson, Paul J., and Ellen Dorsey. New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs.

• Author: Benjamin, Dave O.
• Position: Book review

Nelson, Paul J., and Ellen Dorsey. New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008. 232 pages. Paper, $26.95.

An important attempt to understand the relationship between traditional development and new human-rights international NGOs (INGOs), New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs assesses the impact of human-rights INGOs on more traditional development INGOs. The authors, Paul J. Nelson and Ellen Dorsey, set out to "probe the extent, [the] significance, the limitations, and the interactions among initiatives" of NGOs (p. 2). This exploration is based on the notion that the advent of newer human-fights INGOs has the potential to transform how development INGOs pursue strategy and tactics.

The authors maintain that, while both development and human-rights INGOs are outcome-driven, there is a fundamental difference in ethos and philosophical underpinnings of these two sectors of NGO activity: Development NGOs are programmatic and project-oriented and, therefore, micro-driven, whereas human-rights INGOs are oriented toward universal application of legal standards and norms and function at a macro level. This means that the strategies and tactics adopted by development and human-rights INGOs differ significantly.

Nelson and Dorsey identify two common features of NGOs: a concern for poverty and inequality "and their worst symptoms," and a "strategic interest in uniting human rights principles, standards and methods with social and economic development" (p. 2). Thus, three critical trends in NGO advocacy are identified: the embrace of human-rights-based approaches by NGOs and "donor" agencies; adoption of economic-, social-, and cultural-rights agendas by international human-rights NGOs; and, a surge in economic and social policy work viewed through the human-rights lens (p. 3). According to Nelson and Dorsey, this amounts to "new rights advocacy" (p. 3). Increasingly, the authors point out that there has been, since the mid-1990s, a "convergence of activity" in development and human-rights fields (p. 3).

In setting out this background, Nelson and Dorsey offer their thesis: that "changes in international systems have altered international NGOs' operating environment, forcing these agencies to make strategic choices significant and widespread enough to change and reorient not only individual organizations but the fields...