Agendas all their own: the perils of NGOs—non-governmental organizations

National Review, Jan 26, 2004 by Kate O'Beirne

In September, Secretary of State Colin Powell's Open Forum played host to "philosopher, philanthropist, financier" George Soros. In his remarks at Foggy Bottom, Soros called on the global community to empower "civil society" when governments don't merit support. Two months later, Soros was giving the Washington Post a somewhat more pointed message: that he considered Powell's boss the global community's Enemy Number One. In fact, Soros explained, defeating George W. Bush "is the central focus of my life" and a "matter of life and death"--because "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world."

Soros is a billionaire, and boasts about the estimated $25 million he has pledged to MoveOn.org and other left-wing groups. But documents recently leaked from one of the global pressure groups he supports--his foundations spend almost $500 million a year around the world--outline a more covert assault, one based on the conviction that it's representative democracy itself that threatens the international order.

Under the banner of a "civil society" that claims to represent citizens rather than governments, hundreds of groups are aggressively lobbying international organizations and U.N. member states under the misleadingly benign classification of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Many of them are funded by governments, and their private funding is not fully disclosed. Although largely unaccountable to the public, they define their agendas as the public's interest--and seek to impose their policies through undemocratic means.

The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), one of the groups backed by Soros, has been revealed as an alarming example of the threat posed by NGOs. In early December, leaked copies of its internal strategy memos landed in the offices of Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, which he founded to counter the assault of NGOs that advocate abortion and other liberal social policies. Ruse distinguishes between the hundreds of "service NGOs" that provide direct humanitarian assistance and the "advocacy NGOs" that prefer "swinging policy rather than swinging bags of rice."

Ruse says the CRR memos "substantiate that what we have always known about [the group's] intentions is true despite their persistent denials." One of the memos admits: "At the heart of [CRR's] international work is a commitment to building a global network for reproductive rights legal advocacy by building the capacity of NGOs to use international human rights laws and mechanisms to advance reproductive rights." Within hours of Ruse's disclosure of the memos' contents, CRR--recognizing that its cover was blown--threatened legal action, claiming "irreparable harm" and demanding that Ruse stop any further dissemination and identify those who had received the "proprietary information."

Within three days, the number of people privy to CRR's tactics and aims had grown exponentially. On December 8, Rep. Chris Smith, New Jersey Republican, submitted CRR's leaked documents to the Congressional Record. Smith noted the importance of the public's right to know--and contrasted CRR's frank admission, in one of the memos, about how it prefers to operate. "There is a stealth quality to the work," the memo said. "We are achieving incremental recognition of values without a huge amount of scrutiny from the opposition. These lower-profile victories will gradually put us in a strong position to assert a broad consensus around our assertions."

This stealthiness is central to CRR's strategy. The group eschews democratic processes in favor of establishing "international legal norms" through accords and tribunals. "Our goal is to see governments worldwide guarantee women's reproductive rights out of recognition that they are bound to do so." CRR plans to use so-called "soft norms," such as the repetitious use of the phrase "reproductive health" in non-binding U.N. resolutions, to establish a customary international right to abortion. This approach "involves developing a jurisprudence that pushes the general understanding of existing, broadly accepted human rights laws to encompass reproductive rights." Recalcitrant countries are brought in line when enforcement committees reinterpret intentionally imprecise terms.

And this might have consequences even in the U.S. Ruse reminds us that when the Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws in the Lawrence case last year, it cited a decision of the European Court of Human Rights. Ruse believes that with the present Court's reliance on foreign laws and international opinion to interpret the Constitution, CRR's strategy memos "provide a highly specific blueprint to our Constitutional future." Chris Smith says we need a cadre of pro-life lawyers to mount an international counteroffensive--to offer support to NGO-beleaguered foreign officials (like the justice minister from eastern Europe who recently told Smith his country is "under siege" by aggressive NGOs).

And CRR is just one of the stealth pressure groups. Advocacy NGOs, working in well-coordinated networks, monitor and advise international organizations and tribunals with the goal of establishing controlling international authority on issues ranging from family law to disarmament, the environment, and labor law. Some NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross, are currently determined to undermine American wartime policy on the handling of enemy combatants.