Human Rights as a Social Movement

In Chapter 1, I argued that the success of the independent human rights groups has been partially dependent upon the moral force they have mustered and the strategies they have adopted. A survey of the interactions these groups have had with governments and the various tactics they have adopted makes it clear that their strategic choices (and ultimately their political significance) depend upon the microdynamics within the groups. Several questions in particular require attention. To whom have human rights groups appealed, and why have individuals—sometimes at considerable personal risk—decided to assert themselves on behalf of a class to which they do not belong? How have groups pursued their goals, and what concerns have governed their choices? To what extent are they bounded by the dynamics of North African political culture and their own national contexts? The body of theory about social movements developed over the past two decades supplies a framework within which to organize this inquiry. Specifically, our attention is directed to interrelated questions of recruitment and resource mobilization, the place of political discourse, and the actual organization of the human rights groups.

Recruitment and Resource Mobilization

Scholars once commonly attributed the rise of social protest movements to the predisposition of personality or socioeconomic grievances, but that thinking has generally been superseded by an understanding that social movements depend upon processes of social construction and upon shared social experience, which may or may not involve grievances.^[8] Early models were not able to account for social protest that did not vary commensurately with the level of grievance, nor did they satisfactorily address questions about the social construction of meaning. Collective action was seen as the political response of the alienated and marginalized, rather than of the elites. Unlike the leaders of the Islamist movement, the principals in the early human rights movement in North Africa came from the privileged classes. Virtually all of the movement's leaders—across the three countries—were university educated, and either through professional status or family connections, or both, they felt that they should, and could, command respect. With regard to economic class and social status, they were indistinguishable from those whose claim to absolute power they challenged.

It is political passion that has set them apart, and a closer look at that passion points up the interrelations of ideas, grievance, and collective iden-

tity increasingly recognized as critical to the development of social movements.^[9] In Tunisia the passion grew out of frustration with reform efforts within the PSD. Initial concerns were not so much with protecting human rights per se as with opening up the political system and redressing the political, and personal, wrongs that followed the PSD's 1971 Monastir congress. The passion that fueled the Algerian movements was somewhat different. Ali Yahia's group coalesced within the context of the Berber cultural movement, and while his own motivations in advancing a human rights agenda were born out of frustrations with a closed political system he had experienced firsthand, it was the sense of anger and injustice spread widely within the Kabyle population that created a popular basis for the first Algerian human rights group. For Brahimi and others who helped create the LADH, the passions were less connected to a political program or to particular grievances. In a political system that otherwise appeared entirely stalemated, the LADH offered a more or less sanctioned means of effective political action. Concerns it expressed about arrest procedures, detention and torture moved the LADH to center stage when riots shook Algiers in October 1988. The situation was quite different in Morocco, where the form of political and economic relations obscured the role of the state. In principle, access to politics and private enterprise was not restricted, and it was possible in Morocco in the 1970s to pursue power and profits, without ever confronting the seamy side of politics. Those circumstances undoubtedly delayed the formation of the OMDH, just as they diminished the effectiveness of the existing groups. By the time the OMDH was shaped, the discourse of human rights had gained respect internationally and across the Maghrib, and in consequence, of all the Maghribi groups, the OMDH at its creation projected the clearest purpose of promoting and defending human rights. The nexus of individuals who shaped the OMDH shared knowledge of human rights abuses in Morocco, knowledge that in some measure they had gained through professional experiences as lawyers, journalists, and university professors. They were decent people for whom the veil of innocence had been torn off. Their passion was born of outrage at human indecency. Time and the different cultural contexts shaded the various groups differently, but what all held in common was a fervent commitment: joining a human rights group in the Maghrib was for most not a casual affair.

The passion that inspired human rights activists was for the most part tempered with caution and political savvy. Elite backgrounds meant that activists understood the need to avoid direct threats to those in power. Just a few years before PSD dissidents began to shape the LTDH, they had

witnessed the ouster—and treason trial—of the former planning minister Ahmed Ben Salah, and they well understood the risks. Groups in Morocco and Algeria likewise took stock of the local political context. Recruitment was almost always on a personal basis, and until the national law of association was changed in 1992, an application for membership in the Tunisian league required formal recommendation by an active member. Several scholars have noted the importance of social networks and personal connections in the anchoring of social movements. Mobilization is enhanced when groups share strong, distinctive identities and dense interpersonal networks, and preexisting friendships seem particularly important when the risk is high.^[10] In the North African groups, activists were not necessarily known to one another at the outset, but great care was exercised to establish individual credentials through a chain of contacts and personal connections.

Most groups recognized the advantage of having a well-placed, politically unassailable member at or near the head of the group. Especially desirable was someone whose integrity could not be questioned—that is, someone who would make a credible public advocate for human rights but at the same time would not be viewed as threatening by the defenders of the state. The small group of individuals who spawned the LTDH considered these issues and deliberately recruited Saadeddine Zmerli to satisfy this purpose. As a physician practicing in colonial Algeria, Zmerli had belonged to the Algerian branch of the French League of Human Rights and was respected as an educator and a practitioner. Unlike the LTDH's actual progenitors, however, he had never played a role in politics and was not politically ambitious. The OMDH in Morocco made similar calculations, but as many of the founding members there were relatively unknown and had previously abstained from political involvement, they sought a politically respectable but uncompromised player whose own reputation would move their cause forward while minimizing the appearance of contentious intent. Mahdi el-Mandjra for a time supplied that need. Brahimi's connections within the inner circle of the Algerian political elite likewise afforded certain protections.

Where groups allowed passions to override their pragmatic assessment of political realities, stiff penalties could be exacted. In 1987, in the midst of political turmoil, the LTDH's secretary-general, Khemais Chemmari, was arrested for criticizing the prime minister. Members of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH) and the Moroccan league were called in for questioning following a joint communique issued in 1989. The pragmatic wisdom of self-restraint is amply illustrated by the experiences of the LADDH in Algeria and the AMDH in Morocco. Under Ali Yahia's

leadership, the LADDH only minimally diversified its Berber membership base and as a matter of principle it maintained a careful distance from both the FLN and those in seats of governmental power. It dared to operate openly before receiving official approval, and in return, its members were sent to prison. Somewhat more liberal laws of association in Morocco gave the AMDH more breathing space, but the outspoken leftists among its members are sometimes harassed—even to the point of arrest and imprisonment—and for many years the organization was effectively marginalized. While most activists sought to avoid such outcomes, it was ultimately a commitment to speaking out against abuses that bound them together. Maintaining that commitment often necessitated a careful balance between effective action and political risks that were by no means negligible.

If passions tempered by political pragmatism provided energy for the movement, the financial resources to sustain it were of only slightly less importance. Producing press releases and publishing reports involves certain expenses, and equipping an office requires more substantial investment. In Morocco and Tunisia, members reached deeply into their pockets, and thanks to their own relative affluence found the wherewithal to fund their causes. In Tunisia, early activists met in the office of Hammouda Ben Slama, a private physician; they soon were able to rent modest office space but waited several years to benefit even from a typewriter. The OMDH's purse was more comfortably lined, and from the outset it occupied spacious quarters in a residential area near the law school in Rabat. In Algeria, where private sources of income are less abundant, government funds have paid for for the LADH's office. Its members, mostly professionals, donate their services and stock supplies. The LADDH, by contrast, has not been provided with an office and depends almost entirely on the limited resources of its president.

Ironically, the activities of human rights groups have been sustained in part by neopatrimonial structures that undergird personal rule. As functionaries or as self-employed professionals, many activists are fairly well paid but relatively underemployed. Energies devoted to human rights groups create meaning and offer a path to social engagement that in some circumstances patrimonial linkage may also supply, but that income alone cannot.

The Role of Political Discourse

Onlookers at times dismiss the rhetorical battles in which social activists and defenders of the status quo engage, but such exchanges are deeply

significant. Political discourse lies at the heart of the work of social movements. David Snow and his associates note that social movements don't simply carry forward well-formulated ideas: they engage in a process of constructing ideas, producing and maintaining meaning for antagonists and bystanders as well as for their own constituents.^[11] Political discourse shapes political action, and social movements both borrow from and try to change public discourse. As Sidney Tarrow puts it, "collective action is the stage on which new meanings are produced, as well as a text full of old meanings."^[12]

In the Maghrib, human rights activists were inspired primarily by the immediate political situations they confronted, and the different histories of individual groups and their various rhetorical emphases are explained by the local context. The Tunisian league pressed for political pluralism and the enforcement of civil and political rights for the most part already set out in law. The two Algerian groups differed in their strategies, but both sought to introduce the notion of civil and political rights. In Morocco, the three human rights groups joined together in efforts to make law more prominent in society and politics. Although all groups argue the indivisibility of civil and political rights on the one hand and of social, economic, and cultural rights on the other, it is clear from both actions and rhetoric that civil and political rights have thus far occasioned the greatest concern.

The cyclical nature of social protest makes the place and the shape of its initial appearance in any given cycle of particular note.^[13] Early ideational frames of collective action within a cycle condition subsequent ones, and although the Tunisian league was not the very first Maghribi human rights group, its role as the first fully mobilized group has had implications for rights organizations across the Maghrib and in other parts of the Middle East as well.

That "human rights" emerged as a master frame of social protest in the Maghrib owes something to the fact that the protest cycle itself commenced in Tunisia. It is a paradox of political dynamics that relatively open governments are most likely to experience political protest.^[14] The fact that Tunisian political rhetoric tacitly acknowledged and legitimized the idea of public liberties gave early activists there a political foothold from which to ratchet upward their claims to more extensive civil and political liberties. More than two decades of official discourse about human dignity had provided compelling rhetorical devices to political opponents who first gathered as the ad hoc council on public liberties. Habib Bourguiba and his political entourage within the PSD were able to expel them from formally

designated political space, but they could not entirely silence them without incurring costs of their own.

Some critics now pose questions about the compatibility of Western-based notion of rights and the Arabo-Muslim cultural heritage, but those issues were not raised at the inception of the LTDH and may appear more a tactical ploy than evidence of a fundamental philosophical difference. Almost a decade before, the Tunisian government had ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: a venerable tradition of political reformism solidly anchored the notion of individual-based rights within the bounds of Tunisian political culture.^[15]

An individualist view of rights need not locate itself within the Western tradition or establish itself as anathema in the East. To assure coherence, Wuthnow argues, a moral ideology based on the individual minimally entails both rights and responsibilities: individuals are seen as capable of possessing rights; individuals are free to act and constitute the locus of choice; and individuals are conceptualized as having moral obligations. Moral accountability is meaningless without freedom, since any notion of moral obligation requires that an individual be free to reject the obligation.^[16] Such a notion of freedom and individual rights and responsibility may be contested by many in Tunisian society inasmuch as it connotes the ability to make doctrinal interpretations that adapt universalistic ideas to particular situations,^[17] , but it is essentially compatible with the reform tradition that can be traced in Tunisian political history from Khayr al-Din Pasha forward.^[18]

"Human rights" was a term gaining international currency in the late 1970s, and Tunisian activists seized upon the notion as a schema that could effectively organize and represent their own concerns. Such schemas, or "collective action frames" as they are identified within the literature on social movements, aid in efforts to locate, perceive, identify, label, and generally interpret events as they occur.^[19] Frames once developed take on a power of their own. When drafting its charter in 1985, the Tunisian League accordingly found itself led through the debate by its own prior conceptualization of the issues as pertaining to human rights (as opposed to Tunisian, Arabo-Muslim, or male rights). In the process, it broadened and expanded the concerns within its purview and explicitly endorsed a universalist concept of human rights.

The terms of popular debate were likewise transformed. Discussions about the role of women in society that had once fallen under the rubric "status of women," for example, were subtly reframed as a rights issue. Women's groups formed in the late 1980s across the region use "rights"

and "democracy" rather than "feminism" or "equality" to advance their claims. Similarly, political uprisings and governmental reprisals conventionally analyzed in terms of class struggle or social order were now seen through the prism of human rights. "Human rights" by the late 1980s had enough currency in the streets of Tunis to sustain conversational debate about the relative precedence of civil and political, as opposed to social and economic, rights. Moroccans and Algerians heard the term somewhat less frequently, but there, too, it entered public discourse. In Algeria the Gulf War was discussed in terms of human rights, and a 1993 sex scandal in Morocco centering on Casablanca's police superintendent was framed as abuse of power, violation of the public trust, and accountability—all terms within the Moroccan human rights lexicon.^[20]

That Tunis was the birthplace of the contemporary Maghribi human rights movement was important for another reason. As already noted, periods of moral disorder frequently give rise to competitive ideologies, and human rights was not the only broad social movement to emerge in the Maghrib in the late twentieth century. The human rights and Islamist movements had parallel histories in Tunisia in the early 1970s, formulating alternative visions. The human rights movement arguably has a major role to play in the evolution of Maghribi politics and has successfully imposed its own frame on public discourse, but it is important not to lose perspective. Of the two contending movements, it is fundamentalist ideology and not human rights that resonates most deeply with the popular culture of the Maghrib. As it turned out, however, "human rights" conveyed a message of protest clearly and effectively enough that Islamist groups chose to adapt the language used by human rights groups, rather than vice versa.

Elements embedded in Tunisian political culture aided this evolution. Of the three Maghribi countries, Tunisia offered the human rights movement its greatest chance to take root and establish itself as an alternative to an Islamist movement. Neither Morocco nor Algeria had as strongly rooted a tradition of reform on which to draw, and in both countries governments openly opposed the domestic promotion of human rights, albeit in different ways and with different rationales. In Tunisia by contrast, Bourguiba had once used an as-yet-inchoate religious movement to combat more threatening challenges from the left, and in time, the government saw human rights as a tool to fight the Islamists. The LTDH perhaps unwittingly abetted the government in this regard with its failure to make bold appeals for the release of Islamists imprisoned in 1981 (although it did closely monitor their prison conditions), and, as explored in Chapter 8, a

combination of elite status and a strict commitment to work within the framework of the law generally diminished perceptions of threat from the LTDH. International human rights groups, though, did take up the Islamist cases, and it was probably through that means that human rights discourse was introduced to the group then known as the MTI.^[21] During the 1987 clampdown that targeted Islamists and their sympathizers, the league did strongly register its concerns. By that time, however, several Islamists had joined the LTDH and both movements were firmly implanted.

It was not simply tolerance for the philosophical notion of human rights that allowed human rights to come to the fore of political discourse. Islamism was also actively repressed. As a cornerstone of Middle Eastern culture, Islam possesses enormous legitimizing power. A movement of social protest tapping its power could threaten any government in the Arab world. Maghribi statesmen implicitly recognized that potential, and regimes in Tunisia and Algeria had sought to tame Islam soon after independence; in Morocco, its power was harnessed to the monarchy. In none of the three countries was the government in place willing to see Islam's potentially explosive power yoked to an opposition group, and in consequence organized Islamism has been met with harsh repression and its rhetoric has been vigorously contested.

There were thus multiple factors influencing the Tunisian human rights movement's delivery of its message, but while the government's intent to use it selectively and exploit it for its own ends must not be discounted, the LTDH's own success in altering political discourse in Tunisia was not negligible. Public discourse is not monopolized by any single actor, no matter how powerful, nor can its location be confined to a designated political space. As Carol McClurg Mueller notes, public discourse involves an interplay among media discourse, issue arenas, interpersonal interactions, and public opinion. In framing issues, defining grievances, and staging collective actions, social movements alter public discourse.^[22] The LTDH managed to insert human rights into political discourse in Tunisia, and with its voice amplified internationally, it spread to other Maghribi societies and polities. In the early 1980s, it would have been difficult to predict that within a decade, the leaders of Algeria and Morocco would take up the theme.

Organization and Tactics

In addition to recruitment issues and political discourse, a social movement's effective micromobilization depends upon the strategies and tactics it adopts. As with political discourse, successful tactics must resonate within the political culture and call on constituents to act, perhaps cre-

atively, with familiar means. Because contextual factors loom very large, there can be no single blueprint for effective action.

North African human rights groups initially faced two questions of broad tactical significance: how to structure their organizations and how to target their efforts. After extensive deliberations, each group developed different strategies, but as with questions of political discourse, the patterns established by the Tunisian league informed and influenced decisions in Morocco and Algeria.

The issue of organizing structures turned on two poles: who (and not simply how ) to recruit, and what relationship to pursue with political parties. The first of these issues occupied groups most keenly in their formative period. Members talked about how large their group might become and whether or not they sought a mass-based organization. Drawing on experiences with the PSD, in Tunisia the choice was for an organization small enough to be monitored from, but not entirely dominated by, the center. In 1982 the league consciously limited the number of groups it would sponsor in Tunis.^[23] In Morocco, the OMDH drew members primarily from professional circles in major cities; the resurgent AMDH attracted members of the OADP as well as more radical elements from within the USFP and set up branches throughout the country.

Membership policies reflect how the risk of participation was assessed. Both the LTDH and the OMDH understood that they were pushing the boundaries of politically acceptable action and recognized the importance of internal cohesiveness and trust. Their membership was deliberately drawn from professional classes who maintained important stakes in society. Not wishing to court trouble, they moved carefully. Algerian groups, too, were initially cautious, but Ali Yahia and associates within the Sons of the Martyrs group had already been chafing for several years and were not inclined to patience. And as noted earlier, for direct expression, they paid a price. As the LADDH developed, Ali Yahia came to exercise considerable personal discretion, and although by 1991 several thousand LADDH membership cards had been distributed, "membership" in the organization did not seriously engage many others besides him. Under Brahimi's wing, the LADH had much less to fear, and its several branches operated freely.

Relation to parties was the second major organizational issue faced by groups, and the more delicate one. The Tunisian league had originally feared that it might be swallowed by the PSD, but a more substantial threat actually came from the social democrats out of whose midst it had been formed. A fiction of separation was originally maintained by electing Zmerli, an independent, as president and by Mestiri's decision to maintain

distance from the league. In 1982, the LTDH went so far as to close one Sahelian branch it thought would be overtaken by the PSD and refused to open another it judged dominated by leftists. Problems developed in 1985, however, when more than a third of the delegates to the league's congress and half of the candidates for the league's executive committee had strong connections to the MDS. The problem caused the league to reaffirm its commitment to nonpartisan action, and the immediate difficulties were finessed by expanding the executive committee (which in 1982 had been reduced to fifteen members). For the moment, at least, the league managed to stay its nonpartisan course.

As the Moroccan Organization of Human Rights was forming, it took heed of the Tunisian league's experience, as well as that of the two existing Moroccan groups. Both of those groups were affiliated with political parties, and as a result both were stymied either by political policies or political wrangling. The OMDH recognized these problems and discussed them with its counterparts in Tunis, but the issue in Morocco was not an easy one to transcend. Even from the beginning, the OMDH locked itself into party structures by permitting parties to send representatives, and following the fall 1989 resignation of most independents within the organization, the OMDH relied more heavily on party structures. Gradually it became associated with the USFP mainstream, and in January 1992 it elected Abdelaziz Bennani, a prominent USFP member, as its president. Ironically, the OMDH's growing links to the USFP have allowed the AMDH—formally affiliated with that party—to develop greater independence.

Algerian human rights activists considered the Tunisian experience as well, but without serious engagement. Although the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS) had resumed its activities in the late 1970s, and the Avant-Garde Socialist Party (PAGS) offered a venue for limited opposition within a partisan framework, in 1987 the FLN was legally and effectively the lone political party in Algeria. The question of party affiliation was thus a simple one, and for Ali Yahia, a known critic of the FLN, the matter was clear. Brahimi's group, on the other hand, might have accepted formal FLN linkage, but it was particularly covetous of affiliation with the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), whose guidelines in the interest of independence prohibited connection to any single party. In 1985, the FIDH had recognized the rival league, and that was the LADH's primary concern.

Allowing political parties to play a substantial role potentially involved both assets and liabilities, which each group had to weigh. Affiliation with parties risked the engulfing of the human rights groups, but allowed the

possibility of harnessing organized energies and gaining access to party congresses, party presses, labor organizations, and so on. Furthermore, only preexisting organizations or cliques promised to counterbalance the strong personalities who emerged as leaders in some of the groups. Party connections by themselves were not necessarily either harmful or helpful to groups, but they posed the difficult question of trade-offs between principle and expediency, which in turn raised the specter of compromise. Groups recognized that they could be effective only to the extent that they maintained the requisite political independence, and the advantages of affiliation with parties had to be balanced against the potential costs of becoming embroiled in partisan struggles. To the extent that groups were committed to metapolitical goals rather than relational politics, the question was critical. If human rights groups sought to alter the political game, their task was in some degree to remove themselves from it. Overlapping roles and conflicting loyalties necessarily confused the concerns.

In this sense, a recent change in Tunisian law that appeared intended to weaken the league may in time strengthen it. A 1992 modification in the law of association (explored more fully in Chapter 9) prohibits overlap between party leadership and group leadership, and although the stipulation resulted in the league's temporary dissolution in 1992, its ultimate impact may well be to strengthen its metapolitical role. As with many questions of political strategy, no single path is clearly optimal. What does seem clear is that the stronger groups have wrestled with these issues, and it is the failure to address them rather than a particular resolution that most threatens a group.