Comparing
the Influence of NGOs in Transnational Institutions: the UN, the EU and the
Case of Gender Violence
43rd Annual
Convention of the International Studies Association
New Orleans, March 24
– 27, 2002
Jutta Joachim
Institute of Political
Science
University of Hannover
Schneiderberg 50
30167 Hannover
Germany
Phone:
+49-511-762-19162
Fax: +49-511-762-19185
Email: joachim@ipw.uni-hannover.de
How, why and under what conditions are NGOs able to influence the agendas of international governmental organizations. This paper seeks to answer this question contrasting the role of NGOs in the European Union with those in the United Nations with respect to the issue of violence against women. The two organizations are suited for comparison. On the one hand, women’s organizations have been successful in placing the problem of gender violence on both organizational agendas. In 1993, the UN General Assembly adopted with unanimous consent the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women, which condemns violence against women in both the private as well as the public sphere as a violation of fundamental human rights (UN, 1993). Moreover, in 1994, the UN appointed a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Rhadika Coomaraswamy, to investigate the problem in different countries (UN, 1994). With respect to the European Union, the European Commission, following a joint decisions by the European Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, launched a European Union wide campaign on gender violence in 1999, conducted several expert group meetings on the issue, and initiated an action program, called DAPHNE, in 1997, which provides financial support to NGOs and public institutions working in the area of violence against women. On the other hand, the two organizations are interesting cases of comparison because of their different focus. While the issue’s inclusion on the agenda of the United Nations is plausible, given its general interest in social and humanitarian issues, it is surprising in the case of the European Union which is primarily concerned with economics. Hence, the European Union presents somewhat of a “hard case” in this study. Although the European Union has been quite supportive of women’s equality in the past, it has interpreted it in a narrow fashion confined to the employment sector only. Why were NGOs nevertheless successful in raising the issue of violence against women in both organizations?
Drawing on
social movement theory, I suggest that NGOs engage in strategic framing
processes to legitimize their contested issues. Whether they are successful in doing so is contingent on the
dynamic interaction of primarily two factors:
first, the political opportunity structure in which NGOs are embedded
and defined by the accessibility of institutions, the support of influential
allies, and changes in political alignments or conflict; and, second, the
mobilizing structure which these civil society actors have at their disposal,
including the presence of organizational entrepreneurs, an international
constitutency, and experts.
With this
paper I have three objectives in mind:
First, I want to explore the proposition that the EU does not exist in
vacuum, but is influenced by evolving international norms, rules and
institutions, as many constructivists argue (e.g. Christiansen et al.,
1999). Thus far, we still have little
knowledge about how and why international institutions do affect political
processes in the EU and this study aims to help fill this gap. The issue of violence against women is
particularly suited for this purpose because emerging norms and rules at the
international level empowered NGOs working at the European level. Second, I want to contribute to the burgeoning
literature on the influence of social movements and NGOs in the European
Union. Until this point, the influence
of civil society actors has very much been studied in isolation. The influence of so-called diffuse interests
concerned with social issues has primarily been compared to that of business
interests and found to be marginal (e.g. Kohler-Koch, 1994; Streeck and
Schmitter 1991; Pollack 1997).[2]
Almost no enquiries exist contrasting the influence NGOs working at the
European level to those in other settings such as international organizations
(for exceptions see e.g. Beyers 2001).
This is surprising since such comparative work might provide further
knowledge about the conditions under which NGOs can be more or less successful
in bringing about change at the international level. Third, some scholars argue that international institutions
structure the strategies of actors differently and determine in which these
actors pursue their objectives (e.g. Zito 1998; see also Marks and McAdam,
1999). Recognizing that the EU is
significantly different from more traditional international organizations, I
want to probe this hyphothesis by examining how distinct institutional settings
impinge upon the practices and the impact of NGOs.
The paper
is divided into four sections:
Following a brief discussion of the theoretical framework, I detail the
activities of women’s NGOs within the United Nations. I show how women’s NGOs, initially excluded from state structures
succeeded in legitimizing violence against women as a human rights issue by
defining the problem, offering a solution and by politicizing it. In the third section, I trace the issue’s
trajectory in the EU. I detail the activities
of the European Women’s Lobby, which adopted violence against women as a
priorty issue following the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China,
in 1995. I continue with the European
Parliament, which responded to the pressure of NGOs, urging EU-institutions to
take initiative on the issue, and conclude with a discussion of the European
Commission and its adoption of the DAPHNE-Program. In the final section of this paper, I summarize the findings and
draw out the implications for future research.
Short of material resources NGOs exert influence by engaging in
strategic framing processes, defined
by social movement scholars (e.g. McAdam et al., 1996: 6, Snow et al., 1986) as
“conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared
understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate
collective action.” Frames are
guideposts for knowing, analyzing and acting.
They help in selecting, organizing and making sense of a complex
reality, by defining problems, offering solutions, and by providing
justifications for action (Snow and Benford, 1988: 201). According to Martin Rein and Donald Schön
(1991: 263) a frame “provides a perspective from which an amorphous,
ill-defined and problematic situation can be made sense of and acted upon. As such it offers both a “mental map” but
also determines practices and behaviors (Surel, 2000: 498).
The concept
of framing is appealing for our analysis because it helps to explain why
relatively weak actors such as NGOs can have an impact in international
governmental organizations. It captures
the ways in which actors “deliberately package and frame policy ideas to
convince each other as well as the general public that certain policy proposals
constitute acceptable solutions to pressing problems” (Campbell, 1998: 381). Moreover, framing, according to Beate
Kohler-Koch (2000: 513), is useful for evaluating what kind of ideas or
conceptual models will prevail and why some gain precedence over others,
because it is a process of discriminating between various options and follows a
certain logic. Finally, framing draws
attention to the conflicts associated with the definition of new shared
interests. Frames introduced by certain
groups may conflict with those of others and trigger counter-framing efforts
(McAdam et al., 1996: 16). The challenge
for NGOs consists of aligning their frames so that they resonate with those of
their targets (Snow and Benford, 1988).
Frame resonance has a historical dimension which social movement theorists have linked to the protest cycle. While earlier framing efforts have “a more emergent, inchoate quality,” are less predictable and more conflictual, later ones are much more strategic (McAdam et al., 1996: 16). They have the potential of “becom[ing] part of the political culture—which is to say, part of the reservoir of symbols from which future movement entrepreneurs can choose”—so-called master frames (Tarrow, 1994: 197; Snow and Benford, 1992). Applied to our case at hand, we should expect that, frames developed by NGOs and accepted in the UN, will be employed by NGOs working at the European level, and that over time NGOs become more knowledgeable in their framing efforts. Which frames will become selected and potentially serve as master frames is contingent on the dynamic interaction of primarily two factors: the political opportunity structure in which NGOs are embedded and the mobilizing structures which NGOs have at their disposal.
The political opportunitiy structure
captures the institutional setting which imposes obstacles and provides
opportunities for action (Tarrow, 1994; McAdam et al., 1996). It provides an external arsenal for
relatively resource-poor actors to pursue normative change at the international
level. Structure is broadly defined
comprising organizational structures, procedural rules, but also normative and
cultural principles (Thelen and Steinmo, 1992: 2-12; March and Olsen, 1998;
Hall and Taylor, 1996). It is neither
static nor confined to the international level. Tthe political opportunity structure shapes the perceptions of
actors and the political interactions between them. It also functions as “gatekeeper” privileging certain frames
while marginalizing others. In
response, actors gravitate to institutions which provide a favorable venue for
their issue, a tendency which Baumgartner and Jones (1991: 1047), studying the
careers of public policies, explain in the following manner:
“Each venue carries with it a decisional bias, because both participants and decision-making routines differ. When the venue of a public policy changes, as often occurs over time, those who previously dominated the policy process may find themselves in the minority, and erstwhile losers may be transformed into winners.”
Similarly, Anthony Zito (1998) who compares the EU with more traditional international organizations in the environmental sector and finds that institutional, structural differences determine in which international arenas actors will pursue a particular policy as well as the nature of the policy outcome. In the case of the environment, decision-makers pursued radical and new initiatives in more traditional international organizations which are broader in scope and where issues cannot be treated in a vacuum, but turned to the EU for more concrete results. It will be interesting to see whether Zito’s findings can be generalized to other issue areas.
Three
elements of the political opportunity structure have been identified in the
literature as particular pertinent. Access to institutions is vital. It is determined, on the one hand, by the
institutional structure and the number of access points it offers. Both the UN and the EU are generally
considered favorable venues due to their decentralized and fragmented structures
with the General Assembly and a large number of relatively independent agencies
and organizations, in the case of the former (Willetts, 1996), and the European
Parliament with its committees, the EU Commission and its directorate generals,
the Council of Minister and the European Court of Justice, in case of the
latter (see Pollack, 1997; Marks and McAdam, 1996; Tarrow, 1995). On the other hand, symbolic events can be
instrumental in gaining access (Keck and Sikkink, 1998) because they “recast or
challenge prevailing definitions of the situation, thus changing perceptions of
costs and benefits of policies and programs and the perception of injustice of
the status quo” (Zald, 1996: 268).
These can be international crisis which place existing policies into
question or international meetings and conferences which provide opportunities
for lobbying and interaction. In
addition to access, influential allies
which possess resources that NGOs lack are critical. These can include both institutional actors, such as governments,
agencies or individuals, as well as external ones, such as the media or
like-minded NGOs. Finally, changes in political alignments and conflicts can
impinge upon the framing activities of NGOs.
While the former might bring into power, groups whose ideas are more in
line with the frames promoted by NGOs (Tarrow, 1994), conflicts can be
opportunities when frames serve as bridge for the divided parties (Surel, 2000:
51). While structural opportunities are
important, they are not sufficient for frames to be accepted.
Also critical
are the mobilizing structures of
NGOs. Defined as “those collective
vehicles, informal as well as formal, through which people mobilize and engage
in collective action” (McAdam et al., 1996: 3), they are the networks of NGOs. Mobilizing structures take account of the
“self-conscious capacity of actors to engage in deliberate and creative
transposition (…) [and] inject agency into structural explanations…” (Campbell,
1998: 383). Through them NGOs are
capable of engaging in practices aimed at changing the normative context in
which they are embedded and because of them NGOs can translate structural
opportunities into frames considered legitimate, i.e. they can be
strategic. Mobilizing structures are
the source of ideas and mobilizing energy.
They provide people power and knowledge.
Three
mobilizing resources appear particular relevant within both the UN and the EU
context. First, organizational entrepreneurs (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Mazey, 1998:
134) are an asset and catalysts for initial framing processes. These are individuals or organizations who
care enough about an issue to absorb the initial costs of organizing (Oliver
and Marwell, 1992: 252), bring with them a wealth of organizing experiences,
are well-connected, and carry frames from the international to the regional
level. Second, the support of a heterogeneous constituency is important
(della Porta and Diani, 1999: 174-176; McAdam et al., 1988). Comprised of individuals from different
backgrounds, a constituency (1) makes it difficult for opponents, to label the
frame as affecting only a few, (2) enables NGOs to exert pressure at different
levels with different strategies and tactics, and (3) may have radical flank
effects, with the presence of more extreme groups enhancing the bargaining power
of more moderate ones vis-à-vis instutional actors (McAdam et al., 1996:
14). Finally, experts are an essential ressource for the framing activities of
NGOs. Experts are broadly defined
including not only social scientists who draw on technical and scientific
knowledge to be convincing (Haas, 1992), but also affected individuals who can
provide testimonies on the basis of their experiences (Keck and Sikkink, 1998:
19).
In summary,
the frames constructed and employed by NGOs are reflections of both their own
mobilizing structures and the political opportunity structure in which they are
embedded. While the political
opportunity structure mirrors political realities and institutional practices
which provide resources and clues for action, the mobilizing structures reflect
the beliefs and aspirations of NGOs that are the seeds of framing efforts and
enable NGOs to take advantage of institutional and international changes. The way in which the dynamic interaction between
the political opportunity structure and the mobilizing structure gives rise to
different frames in different institutional settings will be explored in the
following pages by contrasting the case of violence against women in the UN and
the EU.
Although the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women only in 1993, the struggle to combat gender-based violence at the international level dates back further and can be divided into three phases: Starting with the 1970s, when women organized an International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in Brussels in 1976, bringing together over 2000 women from over forty countries who condemned all forms of male oppression as a crime against women, continuing with the 1980s during which the UN Divisions for the Advancement of Women and the Criminal Prevention and Criminal Justice conducted an expert group meeting on domestic violence which called for the criminalization and the prosecution of the perpetrator as solution, and concluding with the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, when women’s NGOs fashioned the “women’s rights are human rights” frame and mobilized governmental support for the international recognition of all forms of violence against women as a human rights issue.
Inspired and prompted by the emerging shelter movements in Great Britain and other European countries in the 1970s, a small group of women from almost exclusively Northern countries organized the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels, Belgium, March 4-8, 1976, bringing together almost 2000 women from over forty countries. The Tribunal had been intended as a counter-action to the First UN World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975 of which the organizers were very distrustful. On the one hand, it highlights the power of testimonial knowledge in the mobilization of an international constituency. The exchange of women’s experiences provided for the first time evidence that violence against women was an international problem transgressing geographical, cultural, and class boundaries. On the other, the Tribunal reinforces a point by McAdam et al. (1996: 16) about the conflictual nature of initial framing processes.
Organizers
and participants were divided over the format of the Tribunal. For example, while the organizers had
appointed moderators to ensure broad and equal participation, they were
rejected by the participants who questioned their representativeness and saw
them as reproducing patriarchical power structures. Conflicts also ensued over the content of the Tribunal. In contrast to the organizers who wanted to
give participants a chance to talk about the violence they had experienced,
many participants considered it as a waste of time and “not feminist” since
political, sociological and ideological structures remained unquestioned
(Russell and Van de Ven, 1976: 253).
Divisions between these two groups were reinforced by the location of
the Tribunal. Brussels favored the
participation of Northern women who constituted the majority (Russell and Van
de Ven, 1976: 2), and the building in which the Tribunal took place resembled in
the eyes of the participants man-made structures ill-suited for
consensus-building efforts. Moreover,
the participation of the international media was a source of conflict. The organizers had agreed to exclude male
journalist from the regular proceedings of the Tribunal based on their negative
experiences with their reporting and to give female journalists a chance to
cover the event. While many male
journalists responded with anger perceiving it as a violation of journalistic
ethic and the right to free access, others were supportive of the
decision. Even female journalists were
divided. Some feared that the exclusion
of male journalists would hurt their career, others considered it adequate
since men would not report what women wanted (Russell and Van de Ven, 1976:
248).
Despite
these initial conflicts over strategy and organizing in international
structures, the Tribunal constituted an important turning point with respect to
the issue. The meeting resulted in a
series of solidarity statements in which women condemned all forms of man-made
oppression as violence against women and a crime against humanity. This did not mean that differences had
disappeared. However, participants
considered their alliance as a strategic necessity to fight a system that
wanted to keep them apart (Russell and Van de Ven, 1976: 200). In addition to these ideational statements,
the Tribunal inspired the formation of international networks such as the
International Feminist Network, coordinated by ISIS International, and gave
rise to national women’s groups fighting gender violence (Schuler, 1992:
5). In all of these activities did
women place the emphasis on independence and autonomy because they were
distrustful of state institutions (Russell and Van de Ven, 1976: 198).
The
Tribunal highlights the way in which testimonial knowledge can serve as a
catalyst for collective action (Keck and Sikkink, 1998: 19; Price, 1998:
623). First, the statements of victims
of male violence provided for the first time evidence that violence against
women was an international problem, affecting women across geographical,
cultural, and class boundaries. Second,
they sat in motion a movement away from individual blaming toward what McAdam
et al. (1996: 9) call “system critical framing” or “cognitive liberation.” The testimonies of the Tribunal participants
made apparent that structural inequalities between men and women, reinforced
through religious and cultural practices or customs, were responsible for male
violence rather than the behavior of individual women. Third, the statements were emotionally
moving with women describing the pain and brutality they had been subjected
to. While the testimonies of women were
important, they were not sufficient.
The
solidarity among women was reinforced by broader international events, such as
the already mentioned First UN Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975,
which was highly political due to the prevailing Cold War and the North-South
conflict. In the eyes of the Tribunal
participants the conference was a “hypocritical and token gesture” organized by
men that would achieve very little and co-opt women’s energy (Russell and Van
de Ven, 1976: 216). In addition, the
solidarity between women was solidified by further extra-institutional events,
such as the Global Feminist Workshop to Organize Against Traffic in Women held
in Rotterdam in 1983, where thirty-four women from twenty-four countries
gathered for a week to document and strategize about problems of female sexual
slavery (Barry, Bunch, and Castely, 1984), or the Third World Forum on Women,
Law and Development (WLD) in 1986, which sparked efforts to clarify strategies
related to gender violence (Schuler, 1992: 6).
In sum,
international meetings such as the Tribunal in Brussels provided a forum for
women to share their personal experiences, recognize what they had in common,
and overcome their structural and ideological differences. The Tribunal had also radical flank effects
contributing to greater awareness about the problem and helping women’s NGOs
lobbying inside the UN to win institutional allies. At the third UN World Conference for Women in Nairobi in 1985,
violence against women was identified as a priority issue in the coming decade
requiring special attention (UN 1985a; 1985b).[3]
Following the Tribunal in 1976 and the UN Conference on Women in 1985, the UN Divisions for the Advancement of Women and for Criminal Prevention and Criminal Justice organized an expert group meeting in Vienna entitled “Violence in the Family with Special Emphasis on Women” from 8-12 December, 1986 (UN, 1986). Contrary to the Tribunal in Brussels where the experts had been victims of male violence, those in Vienna were twenty-four academics from around the world including lawyers, criminologists, and sociologists. Triggered by the lack of information on the subject, the expert group meeting was to provide more systematic knowledge about the causes and consequences of domestic violence and on that basis generate a solution for counter-acting it.
One reason
for the lack of information regarding domestic violence had been the difficulty
of gaining access to the family. In
most countries, the family was perceived as a “private” and “sacred realm”
which needed to be protected from outside interference (UN, 1989: 49). The prevailing framework affected both the
responses of victims and public authorities.
Victims frequently remained silent about the abuse they had suffered because
of guilt, shame, or fear of repercussions.
Public authorities such as the police were reluctant to interfere,
failed to keep records, or recorded the incident in a fashion that it was
ill-suited for research purposes (UN, 1989: 17-18). Finally, social scientists studying the problem conceived of
domestic violence in a narrow fashion focusing almost exclusively on married
couples. The lack of access to
information contributed, on the one hand, to the perception that domestic
violence was a “societal ill” with the victim and the perpetrator being
abnormal or sick, and gave rise, on the other, to therapeutic or so-called
welfare frames, which emphasized mediation between the partners and the
maintenance of the family unit as a solution (UN, 1989: 51). Participants of the expert group meeting
considered the prevailing assumptions about the causes and the solution as
inadequate. While the former did not
explain the extent of the problem, the latter provided insufficient protection
to the victim (UN, 1989: 30).
In contrast
to the participants of the Tribunal, who had been suspicious of state
institutions, the experts called for the intervention of the criminal justice
system. In their eyes, violence against
women needed to be treated as any crime and the perpetrator subjected to
prosecution. The choice of the justice
system was no coincidence: According to
the experts, involving the courts and the police had symbolic
significance: Through the prosecution
of the perpetrator, society communicated that violence against women was
unacceptable and assigned personal responsibility to the offender (UN, 1989:
52). Moreover, the frame had empirical
credibility. Recent studies provided
evidence that the involvement of the criminal justice system decreased the
probability of repetitious violence (UN, 1986: 17). The criminal justice frame constituted a radical departure from
the therapeutic or welfare frame.
Nevertheless, it was widely supported within the UN.
Several
factors contributed to the acceptance of the new framework. First, contrary to the Tribunal where
testimonial knowledge had played an important role, technical information was
crucial in the UN context. The case
studies prepared by the experts provided for the first time systematic evidence
and statistics about the causes and the consequences of domestic violence
indicating that it was a global problem which had long-lasting effects for
women and children as well as society at large (UN, 1989). In addition to the nature of the
information, the status of its carriers was also important. As scientists, the experts enjoyed institutional
legitimacy. Moreover, they were a
representative group. Due to the
financial support from the Dutch government, participation of experts from
around the world had been made possible (UN, 1989: 5). Second, shifts in political alignments within
the UN away from Northern dominance towards the increased influence of Southern
countries enhanced the access to information about domestic violence in
developing countries. The Third UN
World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985, was symbolic in this regard where
women in development was a major theme of discussion and a series of surveys
and studies were conducted in preparation for the conference (Patton, 1995:
62). Third, events such as the killing
of fourteen female students by a gunmen blaming feminists for his ruined life
at the University of Montreal on December 7, 1989 contributed to the acceptance
of the criminal justice frame.
Receiving significant media attention, the shooting triggered public outrage
and anger. [4]
Technical
knowledge provided by social scientists together with changing alignments and
symbolic events helped to legitimize the intervention of the criminal justice
system as a response to domestic violence within the UN and overcome the
problem of access posed by the privacy of the family. The expert group meeting stimulated extensive research on the
subject. Following the meeting, the UN
commissioned the first comprehensive survey on Violence Against Women in the Family (1989). However, the involvement of social
scientists and the support of the UN secretariats had also drawbacks. In contrast to the Tribunal in Brussels,
where violence against women had been broadly defined, the expert group meeting
confined their focus to the domestic realm only, prompting women’s NGOs to reassert
control over the issue.
The UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in the summer of 1993 provided an excellent opportunity for women’s NGOs to politicize the issue of violence against women. Following the announcement for such a conference and the absence of any reference to women’s rights issues in the draft Platform of Action, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) in Newark, New Jersey, under the directorship of Charlotte Bunch emerged as an enterpreneur. It organized a series of so-called leadership institutes gathering approximately twenty women from different regions around the world. Although the women brought with them a wealth of experience in working on the issue of violence against women in national settings (CWGL 1992), they had difficulty in gaining access to the human rights agenda.
A major
obstacle for women’s activists regarding access was the prevailing division in
the UN between human rights and women’s rights. Ideologically, this distinction was grounded in the separation
between public and private (Romany, 1994; Charelsworth, Chinkin, and Wright,
1994). As Charlotte Bunch of the CWGL
explained: “Human rights violations, in
the minds of UN officials, occurred in the public sphere and were perpetrated
or condoned by state officials, while women’s rights violations happened in the
domestic realm involving private individuals.
They were therefore not considered to be the business of human rights
organizations.”[5]
Institutionally, the division between these two frames was symbolically
reinforced through the existence of two separate agencies—the Human Rights
Commission in Geneva and the Commission on the Status of Women in New York.
To overcome
this division, the CWGL together with the support of other women’s NGOs engaged
in a two-pronged strategy linking technical and experiential knowledge. On the one hand, Charlotte Bunch published
an article entitled “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” in the prestigious journal
Human Rights Quarterly in 1990,
providing a scientifically grounded explanation for why women’s rights are
human rights (Bunch, 1990). On the
other, women’s NGOs organized the 16 Days
of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence linking November 25, the day of
gender violence, with December 10th, the Human Rights Day, and
engaging in symbolic activities ranging from vigils to tribunals (CWGL, 1993:
39). While these activities helped to
mobilize an international constituency, the linkage of technical and testimonial
knowledge helped to win the support of influential allies.
Outside the
UN, the support of the media and human rights NGOs was crucial. In contrast to the Tribunal in Brussels in
1976, where the involvement of the media had still been contested, women’s
organizations in the 1990s were convinced of the necessity to engage it. Apart from symbolic activities aimed at
gaining media attention, such as an 18-hour Tribunal at the Human Rights
Conference, the CWGL actively tried to influence the reporting by hiring its
own media consortium, selecting its own experts to give interviews, and by
distributing media kits (Bunch and Reilly, 1994: 94-99). With respect to human rights NGOs, Amnesty
International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) established women’s rights
programs in the late 1980s and early 1990s which investigated women’s rights
violations perpetrated or condoned by the state (e.g. Amnesty International,
1991). The data supplied by these
organizations exemplified the much contested political nature of gender
violence and enhanced the legitimacy of the issue vis-a-vis states since AI and
HRW had a reputation of providing credible and reliable information.
Inside the
UN, the support of individual states was vital. At the UN World Conference on Human Rights, the United States’
delegation assumed leadership on the issue of violence against women. Several forces contributed to its
position. First, domestic women’s groups
had placed the issue on the domestic agenda already in the 1970s, when President
Carter established the first federal office on domestic violence (Heise and
Roberts Chapman, 1992: 290). Second,
the issue fit the liberal views of the Clinton administration which was
supportive of women’s issues. Finally,
changes in the international context contributed to the support of the U.S.
administration.
The
campaign against gender violence did not take place in a vacuum. The end of the Cold War unleashed a series
of events that were beneficial to women’s NGOs. It led to a redefinition of the security framework away from the
sole emphasis on the sovereign state and towards greater attention to the
rights and the well-being of the individual, a frame that according to Anne
Walker of the International Women’s Tribune Center in New York, “was more in
alignment with that of women’s rights.”[6]
Further, ethnic conflicts such as those in the former Yugoslavia,
Rwanda, or Somalia demonstrated the political nature of gender violence,
because women were raped by soldiers and policemen for political purposes. Finally, the end of the Cold War also
brought about changes in political alignments within the UN. With the demise of the Eastern bloc,
countries more or less aligned around two major blocs: the North, comprised of the so-called
JUSCANZ (Japan, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and the European
Union, and the South, represented by the Group of 77. These two blocs were divided over the definition of human rights
at the Vienna Conference. While
Northern bloc countries emphasized civil and political rights, Southern ones
advocated economic and social rights.
The division opened an opportunity for women, which had organized across
these divisions and had an issue that cut across these distinctions (CWGL,
1993).
Following
the Human Rights Conference in Vienna and the recognition of all forms of
violence against women as a human rights violation, the UN General Assembly
adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against
Women and appointed Radhika Coomaraswamy as a Special Rapporteur on Violence
Against Women. Moreover, violence
against women remained on the agenda of the UN. At the Fourth World Conference for Women in Beijing, China in
1995, it was identified as one of twelve priority areas in the Platform of Action
(UN, 1995). Together the Vienna
Platform of Action, the Declaration on Gender Violence and the Beijing
Conference provided opportunities for women’s NGOs to engage in regional
activities for more concrete state action.
As already mentioned in the beginning, the inclusion of violence against women on the EU agenda is surprising. Although the European Union has been a quite favorable venue for women in the past, the organization pursued equal opportunities policy in a narrow economic and neo-liberal framework focusing almost exclusively on issues related to women in the workplace (Rees 1998; Hoskyns 1996; Elman 1997). Since the mid-1990s, however, the EU has become increasingly active in combating gender violence. Most notably, in 1997, the Commission initiated DAPHNE, an action program providing financial support to NGOs and public institutions working with victims of male violence or engaging in awareness-raising activities. In the following section, I will detail the reasons for the inclusion of violence against women on the EU-agenda focusing on the activities of the European Women’s Lobby (EWL), the Women’s Rights Commission of the European Parliament and the EU Commission as well as the institutional, structural changes.
At the European Union level, the EWL has developed into an agency for
representing women’s interests. Created
in 1990 as a network, the EWL consists today of more than 2,700 affiliates in
the fifteen Member States of the EU, which span the whole ideological,
cultural, social, and economic spectrum of women’s interests (Helfferich and
Kolb, 2001: 143). While the EWL had
primarily worked on equality issues in the employment sector since its inception,
the network began to push more social issues at the European level in the
second half of the 1990s, one of which was gender violence.[7]
The timing
was no coincidence. The Fourth World
Conference on Women, in Beijing, China, in 1995, where violence against women
had been a major topic of discussion, contributed to a favorable climate. Particularly critical was the way in which
EU Member States had presented themselves at the Conference. As Mary Collins of the EWL indicates: “At the Beijing Conference the European
Union had for the first time negotiated with one voice and adopted the Platform
of Action wholesale, which meant for us women’s activists that we could call on
Member States’ moral obligation to follow through on their international commitments.”[8]
Previous attempts by the EWL to motivate a response from the EU on the
issue of gender violence had been rebuffed by policy-makers arguing that the
treaties provided no legal basis for the EU to take any initiative in that area
and that there was too little data indicating that this was a European
problem. Working against the EWL was
also the subsidiarity principle, according to which action in a particular
issue area ought to be taken at the appropriate level, which EU policy-makers
assumed to be the national level in the case of violence against women. [9]
Apart from these institutional barriers, the EWL encountered opposition
from women’s groups. Grassroots
organizations, which had been working on the issue for decades and been engaged
in service work questioned the legitimacy of the EWL to represent women’s
concerns at the European level. As the
former general secretary of the EWL, Barbara Helfferich, recalls: “Some questioned the competency of the EWL
arguing that it was meeting politicians for lunch, but didn’t really know what
was happening on the ground.”[10]
Several
institutional changes, however, provided a window of opportunity for the
EWL. The Maastricht and Amsterdam
Treaties adopted in 1993 and 1997 were critical in this regard. First, the Maastricht Treaty added two new
pillars to that of the economic union:
a common foreign and security policy and justice and home affairs. Particularly the latter on justice and home
affairs paved the way for addressing non-economic issues. According to Mark A. Pollack and Emilie
Hafner-Burton (2000: 434) “...[it] has created the political space for a new
and vigorous EU policy on violence against women, previously off-limits to an
economically oriented EC.” Second, the
Amsterdam Treaty facilitated action on violence against women because it placed
greater emphasis on and made explicit reference to human rights with Article. 6
of the Treaty of the European Union proclaiming that “the Union is founded on
the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental
freedoms and the rule of law.” Further,
the EWL had successfully negotiated the integration of a new gender equality
clause into the Amsterdam Treaty.
Articles 2 and 3, make equal opportunities for women and men—an not simply
equal pay or equal treatment in the workplace—a central objective of the Union,
hence, they provided a stepping stone for fighting discrimination outside of
the labor market (Helfferich and Kolb, 2001: 143; Pollack and Hafner-Burton,
2000; Mazey, 2001). While the movement
of the European Union away from a purely economic association and toward a
community based on common values and norms was crucial in placing violence
against women on the institutional agenda, it was not sufficient. Also important were events within the
broader environment that drew attention to the problem. The Detroux-case in Belgium involving the
sexual abuse of young girls by a paedophile couple in 1996 was eye-opening in
this respect. Drawing a lot of media
attention,[11] the issue
sent, as one interviewee put it, “shock waves through Europe signaling that
sexual violence was happening right in front of the EU’s door step and could no
longer be ignored.”[12]
Encouraged
by these institutional changes in the European Union and the Beijing
Conference, the EWL established a Policy Action Center on Violence Against
Women as well as a European Observatory on Violence Against Women in 1997. While the former is devoted to the
development of policy proposals for the European Union based on the experiences
of EWL members at the grassroots level, exemplary policies or rather “best
practices” of Member States, and the EWL Charter of Principle on Violence
Against Women,[13] the Observatory advises the Center
on the matter by supplying information and data. It is comprised of independent experts from the fifteen EU Member
States including social scientists and lawyers but also women who have worked
with survivors in women’s shelters or rape crisis centers. Together the Center and the Observatory have
contributed to greater awareness about the issue of gender-violence within the
EU.
Responding
to the frequent complaint by EU policy-makers about the lack of data on the
problem of violence against women, the Center published a study in 1999
entitled “Unveiling the hidden data on domestic violence in the EU” (EWL,
1999), which details the activities of Member States in the area of domestic
violence. According to Barbara
Helfferich, “...the publication hit the spot, because it was the first document
detailing how little had been done thus far and how statistics about domestic
violence had been put together in a questionable manner.”[14]
The document provided for the first time systematic evidence about the
legal situation in Member States as well as existing services for the
victims. It served as tool for the EWL
to lobby EU institutions and states and by doing so to win influential allies.
Among the
institutional allies responding to the pressure from the EWL and its members
was the Women’s Rights Committee of the European Parliament. Several MEPs took leadership on the issue,
including Patsy Sörensen from Belgium (Group of Greens/European Free Alliance),
Marianne Eriksson (Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green
Left) and Maj Britt Theorin (Group of the European Socialists) from Sweden, and
Lissy Gröner from Germany (Group of European Socialists). Apart from their interest in the issue,
these women had in common their political outlook. All of them were members of socialist or green parties. Their initiatives with respect to violence
against women date back to the mid-1980s.
Prompted by
the UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985 where violence against
women had been identified as a major obstacle in the achievement of equality,
development and peace, the European Parliament already adopted its first
resolution with respect to the problem on July 14, 1986. In the resolution MEPs called for among
other things greater attention to gender violence, the conduct of information
campaigns in Member States, for sexual violence to be considered as a crime,
and the extension of the non-discrimination clause in the European Community
treaties to include gender-violence (European Parliament, 1986). As in subsequent resolutions, the European
Parliament justified its appeal, on the one hand, in terms of women’s
fundamental rights with reference to UN documents including the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on Civil and Political
Rights. On the other hand, the
resolution was tailored to the economic focus of the European Community. It attributed the vulnerability of women to
gender violence to her “frequently weak economic position and the economic
dependence of women which leads to an unequal division of power between men and
women.” At that time, however, the European
Parliament received little response from the European Commission or the Council
of Ministers. The Parliament was
constrained by its lack of legislative powers and by institutional
resistance. As German MEP, Lissy
Gröner, recalled: “Resolutions on
violence against women were rebuffed with arguments that there is no legal
basis for action and no budget.”[15]
Similar to
the EWL, the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties in 1993 and 1997, provided a
window of opportunity for the European Parliament by enhancing its legislative
powers. First, the Maastricht Treaty
granted the European Parliament the right to vote on new and incoming
Commissions, which it seized in 1995, when the Santer Commission was
appointed. MEPs scrutinized individual
Commissioners in public hearings, pressing the priorities of individual
members, including equal opportunities for men and women (Pollack and
Hafner-Burton, 2000: 436).[16]
Second, in the Amsterdam Treaty Member States agreed on qualified
majority voting in the Council and co-decision with the European Parliament for
future equal opportunity legislation.
Third, just at the international level, so did end of the Cold War bring
violence against women into focus at regional level. With the opening of Eastern borders, trafficking in women
increased rapidly and was even reinforced by the removal of customs in EU
Member States in line with the Shengen Agreement.
In light of
these changes, the European Parliament adopted a series of resolutions urging
action on both violence against women, more generally, and trafficking in women,
more specifically,[17]
using International Women’s Day as a symbolic occasion. Of these parliamentary activities, two will
be discussed in greater detail because they triggered a response from the
European Commission. In 1994 MEP Erik
Martin issued a motion, calling for a European-wide campaign on zero tolerance
for violence against women. It
highlights the way in which national frames become master frames for the
international level. A similar campaign
had been conducted quite successfully in Edinburgh District, Great Britain, and
Martin urged its replication at the European level justifying it with the rise
in unemployment and increase in social tension throughout Europe (European
Parliament, 1994). Following Martin’s
motion, Swedish MEP Marianne Eriksson tabled a report in support of such a
campaign, a year on violence against women similar to those on Lifelong
Learning in 1996 or on Racism and Xenophobia in 1997, and the adoption of a
binding convention criminalizing acts of violence against women. The report provided a justification for the
proposed activities. In line with
previous resolutions, it made reference to women’s fundamental human rights and
invoked international agreements such as the Human Rights Declaration or
CEDAW. However, the report was also
framed in EU-specific language. For
example, it appealed to the values and norms of the Member States, arguing that
“a society that claims to champion human rights and work for equality must
seriously tackle the widespread violence which directly and indirectly affects
a majority of the population—women and children” (European Parliament, 1997:
11). Further, the report justified
European-wide action in economic terms.
Drawing on a study commissioned by the Dutch government (Korf et al., 1997),
it emphasized both the costs of gender violence and the savings for a state
providing assistance to victims (European Parliament, 1997: 18). The report, which culminated in a
parliamentary resolution, resonated with individuals in the EU Commission.
While the European Commission had shown little interest in the issue of
violence against women until 1995, its position changed in the second half of
the decade. The Beijing conference and
the movement from an economic union towards a community based on common values
and concerns certainly played a role.[18]
However, there were also changes in the Commission that contributed to a
more favorable climate for action.
First, in 1995, three new states joined the European Community—Sweden,
Finland, and Austria—countries with a long-standing commitment to sexual
equality and to combating gender-violence.
Moreover, with the entrance of these new Member States the number of
women Commissioners rose from previously one or two to an unprecendented five
in the new and incoming Santer Commission.
In the words of one of my interviewees:
“This provided a better basis for getting something accomplished with
respect to women’s issues.”[19]
At the insistence of the new Scandinavian and women Commissioners,
Santer agreed to establish a new “Commissioners’ Group on Equal Opportunities,”
consisting of Padraig Flynn of Ireland who had previously held the equal
opportunities porfolio as Social Affairs Commissioner, Commissioners Erkki
Liikanen of Finland, Anita Gradin of Sweden, and the German Commissioner in
charge of the Structural Funds, Monika Wulf-Mathies (Pollack and Hafner-Burton,
2000: 436).[20]
Of the five
female Commissioners Anita Gradin of Immigration, Justice and Home Affairs
emerged as a leader and institutional entrepreneur on the issue of violence
against women. Gradins initiative on
the issue of gender violence was not surprising. As previous Minister for Equality in Sweden she was sensitive to
women’s issues. Moreover, through her
work in the area of immigration, she was struck by the high level of
trafficking in women and the associated violence.[21]
Already in 1997, she launched the so-called DAPHNE-Initiative and the
STOP-Program, following a joint decision by the Council of Ministers and the
European Parliament. While STOP is a
program intended to assists victims of trafficking, DAPHNE is designed to
financially support NGOs as well as public institutions working in the area of
violence against women with the aim to accumulate data, facilitate the exchange
of information, and to identify “good practices” applicable to other Member
States.[22]
Started as a pilot project, DAPHNE has been turned into an action
program. Running already in its fifth
year, both its budget and the number of projects funded have increased since
its inception.
In addition
to launching DAPHNE, Gradin used the prerogatives of her office to increase
awareness and knowledge about the problem of gender violence. For example, modelled after a similar
activity in Canada, she started a white-ribbon campaign in the EU in solidarity
with the victims of male violence distributing white ribbons among male
politicians. Gradin also proofed
instrumental in realizing the European Parliament’s call for a European Union
wide campaign on zero-tolerance of violence against women. Symbolically started on March 8, 1999,
International Women’s Day, the campaign involved the distribution of posters or
videos an was accompanied by national campaigns in several Member States.[23]
In connection with the campaign, Gradin commissioned two Eurobarometer
surveys on “Attitudes to Violence Against Women and Children” released in July
1999. The surveys had questioned 16,179
people over 15 in the Member States on their perception of gender
violence. In them European citizens
condemned violence against women, considered it wide-spread, identified drugs,
alcohol, unemployment, poverty, or social exclusion as the primary causes for
male violence, and favored action on the European level.
With the
help of such symbolic activities, Commissioner Gradin prepared the ground for
moving the issue to the ministerial level.
In lieu of a European year on violence against women, which the European
Parliament had called for, and in light of the lack of data regarding the
problem, the Commissioner proposed a series of expert group meetings on
domestic violence during the zero-tolerance campaign (European Commission,
1998). Her proposal resonated with the
incoming EU presidencies. The first such
meeting was conducted under the Austrian EU-Presidency in Baden, from November
30 until December 4, 1998, and focused on the role of the criminal justice
system in fighting violence against women.
Bringing together social scientists, representatives of the criminal
justice system and NGOs, the meeting produced fifty-two standards and
recommendations of how to improve police and court practices in dealing with
victims and perpetrators. Two further
meetings followed: One such meeting was
held in Cologne under the German EU-Presidency, March 28-29, 1999, and entitled
“Violence Against Women—Measures towards Combating (Domestic) Violence Against
Women within the European Union.” It
resulted in the adoption of ten further recommendations regarding the criminal
justice system. Another such meeting
was conducted under the Finish Presidency in Jyväskylä, Finland, from November
8-10. At that meeting criminal
proceedings, standards for shelters for victims, treatment programs for men,
and standards for doing research were considered with the aim to identify
models of “good practice.”
In sum,
technical expertise, changes in the institutional and international context, as
well as the support of influential allies were critical in placing the issue on
the EU agenda despite its economic focus.
Much, however, remains to be done.
In the eyes of many actors fighting for greater recognition of the
issue, action programs such as DAPHNE are only small bandage on a big wound and
need to be followed up by more binding commitments. With the increasing numbers of female victims of trafficking and
the pressure of both NGOs and the European Parliament, the European Union has
devoted more attention to the problem since the late 1990s, with proposals for
Europol and a framework legislation for prosecuting traffickers. However, efforts to get a European-wide
legislation on the issue of violence against women more generally have thus far
been resisted by EU policy-makers arguing that it is a national issue.
How, why, and under what conditions can NGOs define and influence the agendas of governmental organizations. In this paper I contrasted the engagement of these civil society actors in the European Union and the United Nations with respect to the issue of violence against women. Drawing on social movement literature, I suggested that NGOs engage in strategic framing processes to define problems, to offer solutions and justifications for political action. Whether or not they are successful in mobilizing governmental support for their concerns is contingent on the dynamic interaction of both the political opportunity structure in which NGOs are embedded and the mobilizing structures which they themselves have at their disposal. Based on the empirical findings, we can draw a number of preliminary conclusions about the commonalities and differences between the EU and the UN regarding NGO influence.
Generally, this study seems to support the proposition that international rules and norms influence decision-making processes at the European level. The inclusion of the issue of violence against women front and center on the UN agenda opened opportunities for NGOs to legitimize the issue in the EU by imposing a moral obligation on EU Member States. Following the Vienna and Beijing Conferences, the EWL adopted the „women’s rights are human rights“ frame and tailored it to the EU to motivate action on the part of policy-makers. The comparison also seems to suggest that NGOs pursue organizations with a broader focus first when their issue is new and controversial, and organizations with a more narrow focus to obtain more specific outcomes when the issue as such is already more accepted.
In both organizations the presence of organizational entrepreneurs, allies, and access to institutions played a critical role with respect to influence. In the UN, the leadership of the CWGL was crucial for fashioning the “women’s rights are human rights” frame and for the mobilization of an international constituency. In the EU, the initiative of the EWL was pertinent. Allies came from both inside and outside the institution. While UN agencies were vital in the development of solutions, governmental delegations, the media, and human rights organizations were helpful for drawing out the political dimension of the issue. In the EU, the support of individual MEPs in the Women’s Rights Committee and the Commission contributed to the acceptability of the issue. With respect to access, international events as well as events specific to the institutions, such as the movement of the EU from a sole economic association to a community based on common norms and values, created opportunties for NGOs to mobilize support for their issue.
Apart from
these similarities, the different institutional settings did affect the framing
activities of NGOs in distinct ways.
First, contrary to the UN, where NGOs emphasized the criminal and human
rights aspect of the issue, the EWL in the European Union focused more on
economics such as the societal costs of violence against women. Second, while in the UN a combination of
testimonial and technical information contributed to the legitimization of the
issue, technical information in the form of reports, surveys, and statistics
seemed the most cricial form of expertise in the EU. Third, in contrast to the EU where NGOs appeared more dependent
on changes in the political opportunity structure, NGOs in the UN seemed to
enjoy more room to manoeuvre and more flexibility. With the increasing support of allies, the mobilization of a
heterogeneous constituency, and their growing experience in how to use
institutional rules and procedures to their advantage, NGOs in the UN became
increasingly able to manipulate and change the structure.
In sum, the
findings of this study offer important insights about the influence of NGOs in
different international organizations.
In light of the increased engagement of NGOs in economic organizations,
they call for more comparative work.
Such studies could generate further knowledge about the conditions under
which civil-society actors can have an impact, why certain ideas or frames take
hold in some institutional settings and not in others, and how NGOs can
politicize issues in what are otherwise perceived as highly technical and
a-political settings.
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[1] I would like to thank the German Science Foundation for funding this conference trip, my research assistant Karla Kiy, and my interview partners in New York and in Brussels for their willingness to participate in this research.
[2] For a more general discussion about the influence of interests in the European Union see, for example, Greenwood (1997; 1999), Héritier (1997); Mazey and Richardson (1997); Imig and Tarrow (2001).
[3] For a more detailed discussion see Joachim (1999; 2001).
[4] “Angry Canadians Demand Stricter Gun Laws.” Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1989, p. 24.
[5] Interview with Charlotte Bunch, CWGL, New Brunswick, November 1, 1995.
[6] Interview with Ann Walker, International Women’s Tribune Center, New York, July 7, 1994.
[7] For a history of gender-equality policies in the European Union, see Hoskyns (1996) and Liebert (1999).
[8] Interview with Mary Collins, EWL, Brussels, March 1, 2002.
[9] Phone Interview with Barbara Helfferich, former secretary-general of the EWL, Brussels, February 7, 2002.
[10] Ibid.
[11] E.g. The Observer, on August 18, 1996, on p. 17, carried an article with the headline “Grild Found in the ‘Dungeon:’ Arrested Belgian paedophiles could be linked to disappearance and murder of 13 other children.”
[12] Interview with Mary Collins, EWL, Brussels, March 1, 2002.
[13] Phone-Interview with Colette De Troy, EWL, Brussels, February 14, 2002.
[14] Interview with Helfferich.
[15] Phone-Interview with Lissy Gröner, German Member of the European Parliament, February 21, 2002.
[16] For example, individual members of Women’s Rights Committee criticized the returning Social Affairs Commissioner, Padraig Flynn, for his alledged lack of progress on women’s issues in the Delors Commission and demanded that the portfolio would taken away from him, which Santer, however, refused (Pollack and Haftner-Burton, 2000: 436).
[17] For a more detailed discussion see Wijers (2000).
[18] Phone-Interview with Barbara Helfferich, EU Commission, February 7, 2002.
[19] Phone Interview with Anita Gradin, former Commissioner of Immigration, Justice and Home Affairs,
[20] John Palmer, “EU Promises to Tackle Sex Bias,” The Guardian, 4 November 1994, p. 13.
[21] Ibid.
[22] The initial budget for DAPHNE comprised Euro 1.5 million.
[23] Despite these activities regarding the issue, resistance towards the issue continue to persist. For example, some of the campaign posters that had been mounted in EU buildings had been overwritten with the words “they (women) really deserve it.” Interview with MEP Marianne Eriksson , reprinted in European Women’s Lobby Newsletter, No. 1-2, 2000, p.7.