PART I
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE POLITICS OF CHANGE

Politics has been defined as a matter of who gets what, when, and how, and accordingly, the game of politics may be discussed in terms of the rules that govern the allocation of political values. Political analysis generally begins with recognition of the parameters of a political game, and analysts make their task one of identifying operational rules and the moves that can be made within their bounds. By definition, "illegal moves" lie beyond the scope of regular political play and so for the most part escape scrutiny.

That is not to suggest that rules are never challenged. Revolutionary movements offer only the most dramatic evidence of efforts to change the rules of the political game. Most systems harbor some players, or would-be players, who contest existing structures, but more often than not, their actions are without consequence. Through political repression or legal constraints they are excluded from play, and the game goes on.

Some players inevitably persist, however, and a combination of contextual factors that include social and economic conditions, political leadership, the history of political institutions, and the power of the zeitgeist may carry reform or revolutionary efforts to fruition. In the 1980s, such possibilities captured imaginations around the globe. Voices were raised against authoritarian rule, and repressive governments fell. Scholars wrote tomes on the process of democratization, which in a fundamental sense involves changing the rules of the game.

A vision of democratizing reform and expanding possibilities of participation touched North Africa, as it did other regions, and this book traces the efforts of one set of actors inspired by the possibilities of structural transformation. Human rights groups in North Africa have spearheaded a democratization movement, but ironically, their efforts have not received

the attention they merit. Their position in the game of politics, whether as monitors or as challengers of the rules, puts them beyond a scope of vision focused on established structures and conventional players. Human rights activists have not been conventional players, but their contribution to the North African games of politics has been substantial. Part I of this book develops an analytical framework that allows their efforts to come into focus.

1
Introduction

Attention to the possibility of democratic transformation that has gripped scholars in recent years initially swept unnoticing past the Middle East. In consequence, interesting developments in Middle Eastern societies were neglected. Although the region as a whole remains characterized by authoritarian rule, by the late 1980s there was evidence of a growing concern about the linkage between governed and governors.^[1] In November 1989, Jordan held its first full legislative election in more than twenty years. The popularly chosen parliament began to exercise atrophied muscle by investigating allegations of corruption in government agencies, referring several of them for judicial investigation. Following dissolution of the Kuwaiti parliament in 1986, Kuwait saw a popular expansion of its diwaniyya , a system of informal networks that generally promoted the sharing of interests within occupation groups. Diwaniyyas in the late 1980s evolved into political fora where the "guest audience" frequently numbered in the hundreds. Parliament was restored in 1992, and the new legislature promptly formed a human rights committee. In Egypt, associational life began to expand, and the concerns of intellectual critics increasingly found voice.^[2] Within the greater Middle East, democratization seemed in the late 1980s to stand its best chance in the Maghrib, where the forced departure of Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba focused attention on political problems, and where just a year later, turmoil provoked by economic crisis called the viability of Algeria's social contract into question. Expectations of democratization were raised high across the region.

In the interim, the euphoria has waned; skepticism has in large measure replaced the optimism of the late 1980s. All the same, societal pressures for democratization remain stronger than at any time in the recent past. Among elites in and out of power, questions of structural change still pro-

voke animated debate. Into the 1990s, across the Maghrib, small groups of individuals, most of them professionals, found themselves meeting in homes or restaurants specifically to discuss matters of public policy and political action. Their relatively quiet, but persistent, efforts to effect liberalizing political change merit close examination. It is to such efforts that this book directs attention.

Efforts, of course, are not to be confused with results. Regardless of expressed concerns and accompanying efforts, democratic transition is far from a certain outcome in the contemporary Maghrib. Many forces are at work, and the ventures of democratically oriented elites are only one among them. An eventual transition is far from assured, but likewise, it cannot be precluded. From the vantage of this book, the outcome of the present ambiguous situation is less critical than understanding pressures for structural change and how they are articulated. Even the truncated stories of failed or incomplete transitions can reveal much about the impetus for structural reform. Studies of accomplished democratic transitions have pointed up weak areas in our understanding of the process by which change is initiated. Little is known, for example, of the tactical decisions made by opposition elites, who in many situations have provided the impulse and the framework for democratization. As useful as it is to identify the conditions under which their actions are likely to be successful, of equal relevance are the factors that make them decide to act. An investigation of the exertions of opposition elites as actions are planned and executed affords a different perspective than that presented in post hoc studies of achieved transitions. Retrospective studies that project backward from successful transitions may screen out false starts and negative outcomes. Such an approach is appropriate when the focus is on the success of structural transformation; it necessarily yields fewer insights into the impetus for action that initiates a transition and carries it forward. A close-up, in situ view offers an opportunity to observe crafting in progress and apply analytic tools to help understand the process of democratization.

What is to be understood as "democracy" in a region where there are few indigenous referents? Even in the abstract, consideration of democratization is problematic, for the meaning of the word democracy itself is subject to dispute. The historical evolution of democracy and democratic theory from classical Athens to the contemporary period has given rise to a variety of governmental forms and theoretical models. With choices as extreme as those represented by Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, democratic thought is like a tree with many grafted branches: the varieties of fruit may be only distantly related. Dominant perspectives alternatively

emphasize representation and participation, and historical combinations have been myriad. What at root serve as the common denominator to different perspectives are twin notions of popular choice and accountability, although exactly who constitute the responsible citizenry remains at issue.^[3] In a work commonly recognized as a central referent for democratic theory, Robert Dahl posits as defining characteristics of democracy, or polyarchy, the right to participate and the right to oppose. For Dahl, the noteworthy advantage of democracy does not lie in the particular policies it may produce, for in their content democratically produced policies may differ little from those arrived at by other political means. Democracy's major virtue is found, rather, in the protection from massive coercion it extends to those who enjoy the franchise.^[4]

Form rather than content affords this protection from tyranny. Building on Joseph Schumpeter's argument that democracy is best seen as a political method, or institutionalized competition, democracy at its core is a set of agreed-upon rules for resolving conflict. Conflict is inherent in politics, and democracy distinguishes itself in recognizing that fact, enshrining rules that establish the parameters of acceptable—and unacceptable—political activity. Within the established bounds, uncertainty of outcome in political struggle is the hallmark of democratic process. Inherent uncertainty introduces an added measure of anxiety into democratic politics, but it is the source of the system's strength. The fact that the game is not fixed in advance keeps at the table many players who otherwise might retire in dismay, disgust, or indifference. Losing one round in democratic politics does not preclude winning the next, and vice versa.

The North African societies at the heart of this book, or at least important segments within them, have been clamoring for increased access to decision-making structures and increased influence on outcomes. In Tunisia, the Movement of Socialist Democrats (MDS) for many years carried this banner, and for the past decade, Islamists have most vocally contested the monopolistic control of power. Likewise, the proliferation of parties in Algeria after political liberalization in spring 1989 attested to widespread, albeit fragmented, interest in access to power. In Morocco, where multipartyism has long been constitutionally enshrined, but the role of parties has been circumscribed, organized labor pressed for political change. In 1990 it shifted its attention away from economic demands to concern for the political rights to organize, strike, and criticize government policy without fear of reprisal.

As Maghribi regimes flirt with the idea of democracy, the strongest proponents of liberalizing change have sounded their voices most often from

the wings, at some distance from the seats of power. Their commitment to institutionalized democracy—and the possibility of political defeat—goes untested, but their demands and their commentary have helped shape a debate among elites about the nature of democratic governance. Criticism of personalism and monopolistic, single-party rule sets the measure of such discussions, and it has become as much a part of popular political culture in Tunisia and Algeria as has acknowledgment of the monarch's hold over the political system in Morocco. While some have focused narrowly on openly contested national elections, others have argued that democratization is a process that to be effective must extend beyond multipartyism and open elections to respect for the independence of law.

As either product or ongoing process, democracy requires active cultivation. Even in well-established democracies, the continuous reproduction of democratic rule both in the polity at large and in smaller organizational groupings is far from automatic.^[5] In societies struggling to establish avenues of participation and structures of accountability, the opportunities for failure abound, and outcomes are highly uncertain. Returns on democratization may be both unevenly distributed and slow to show themselves; as a structure of governance, democracy will likely prove more cumbersome than the alternatives. Guiseppe DiPalma notes that arriving at a working democracy requires not simply the proper raw materials, but considerable craftsmanship, and the mastery of the craftsman becomes that much more critical absent congruent elements of political culture to provide even indirect support. "When . . . countries arrive on the threshold of democracy without those structural or cultural qualities deemed important [for sustaining democracy], when [they] arrive under conditions of harried and divisive mobilization, then the task of crafting should be the more crucial and challenging. Whatever the historical trends, whatever the hard facts, the importance of human action in a difficult transition should not be underestimated."^[6] The shape and durability of the outcome is a function, not only of advantageous contextual conditions, but of particular judgments made at particular junctures with more or less political skill.

The shapers of governance structures everywhere include the universal suspects of politics: old elite families, bourgeois industrialists, the military, sectarian groups and religious leaders, labor unions, and political parties. Although the salience of given players varies according to national history, the Maghribi countries of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco offer examples of the full panoply of actors and actions. The region has known reform, revolution, and stagnation; its era of twentieth-century independence opened on a newly formed republic, a revolutionary socialist state, and one

of the world's oldest ruling monarchies. The prominence of such national leaders as Habib Bourguiba, Hassan II, and Houari Boumediene has tended to obscure the more ordinary and less visible effects of mobilization parties and the relatively quiet bargains struck by elites, but in the ongoing lives of their polities, these political forces have molded the patterns of contemporary political culture. Clientelism, factionalism, and governmental centrism have all helped shape the political process, building institutions and developing patterns that, if far from being to the satisfaction of all, have nevertheless resulted in a high degree of order and continuity. The dynamics of the political process as they have evolved over the past thirty years are explored in Chapters 3–6 of this book. At this point, it need simply be noted that, in the long view and by comparison either to sub-Saharan Africa or the eastward reaches of the Middle East, the three states of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have been noteworthy for the upper hand they have kept over popular disruptions.

All the same, basic tensions have not dissipated, and neither have the problems of polity formation been fully resolved. On the contrary, the prospect of chronic economic difficulties has raised serious questions about Maghribi states' continued ability to satisfy their citizens, and the rise of Islamist ideology over the past two decades is indicative at very least that views differ as to how the polity might be organized. To a significant degree, Maghribi states consolidated their powers by embracing a welfare function. With the greater demands of a larger, more educated, and urbanized population and a concomitant scarcity of resources, however, the expectation of state strength has become a political liability. Yesterday's state functioned effectively with limited popular access, doling out services and subsidies where desirable or expedient and exercising political repression elsewhere. Today's state, with relatively limited resources, faces a fundamental challenge of participation. The old game leaves too many would-be players on the margin, threatening social cohesion. Total abandonment of established patterns threatens chaos, and statesmen do well to move with caution. Yet where the established political game enters another iteration of demand and unsatisfying response, perhaps with superficial modifications intended to placate marginalized players, the results are ever more disappointing. Maghribi statesmen today face the serious challenge of injecting flexibility and resilience into the institutions crafted a generation ago. The contemporary political challenge is to alter, without entirely scrapping, the rules of the game.

A conceptual distinction between metapolitics and relational politics points up the critical nature of the choices at hand.^[7]Relational politics de-

notes the efforts of players within an established framework to affect a political outcome. These are the moves—advances, retreats, alliances, and compromises—that determine the distribution of political goods. The analysis of relational politics customarily assumes the basic stability of the social, economic, and institutional parameters within which players operate. That is, variation is expected within the formal and informal structures of a reasonably well-anchored political system; the terms of the struggle are uncontested and figure largely as background, contextual variables. Where events occur to undermine the efficacy of existing arrangements, those erstwhile contextual variables are brought center stage. Metapolitics refers to the political dynamics of efforts to set and alter the rules and parameters of political contests. Regime transformation necessarily involves alteration of the system itself and entails efforts to reset the operating political parameters. It is the nature of a transition to call into question old arrangements. In such periods, actors old and new seek to satisfy interests, carrying out the business of relational politics, but they are also engaged in efforts to establish "rules and procedures whose configuration will determine likely winners and losers in the future."^[8] Transitions are more than just an old contest with new actors. To a significant degree, they engage energies in an effort to create a new political game.

Uprooting established patterns of political interactions and redirecting social energies is a daunting task. Inevitably, the attention of actors and observers alike is directed to formal structures—constitutions, parliaments, courts, and electoral systems. Formally articulated structures represent only the tip of the iceberg of politics, however, and they are difficult enough to change even with an expressed popular mandate. Informal patterns anchored in a society's political culture present an even greater challenge, insofar as their foundation and perpetuation are rarely examined by those enmeshed in them. Culture provides a social frame of reference, and as such it is commonly perceived as an extension of the natural order. Culture's power to orient energies is enhanced by the fact that it is reproduced without being articulated and thus remains unquestioned. The invisibility of patterns to those who operate within a culture—and even more so, the invisibility of their roots—leaves those patterns resistant to change. Structural forces work on culture as wind and water work on stone, but continuity is the lawful expectation of culture. Even revolutionary political change, or structural transformation, must eventually reconcile itself with patterns of socialization reproduced in small parochial units.^[9] Appreciation in recent decades of the monumental proportions of the task of transformation has led many observers to doubt the probability, if not the

possibility, of far-reaching political change in the direction of democratization in societies with a long history of authoritarian rule.

The power of political patterning notwithstanding, an impulse toward important political change is readily apparent in North Africa. As already noted, the rise and spread of Islamism across the Maghrib and the proliferation of political associations signal shifting, and sometimes contradictory, frameworks of political interaction. Change must be considered as more than hypothetical—without being inevitable. It has been argued that modernity ineluctably drives cultures toward tolerance and cultural flexibility, an adaptive response to the rapidity of change and recognition of the diversity imposed by technologies that have reduced cultural isolation.^[10] To the extent that modernity is a ubiquitous social force, democracy—with the emphasis on form rather than content—appears more consonant with cultural flexibility than authoritarian structures. From that vantage, some have argued that democracy is the political form of choice, and of history.^[11] In fact, nothing is less certain. Human responses at both personal and social levels often fly in the face of wisdom, and history. The crafting of democracy is fraught with uncertainties; opportunities to slip abound. However desirable, democratic forms do not simply appear. They must be worked with skill, and given the formidable difficulties of political engineering, democracy is far from assured as the product of current political demand. Indeed, there are few indications that those who now clamor for access to the structures of governance would, if in power themselves, be inclined to share that power. The rhetoric employed to contest monolithic structures of power opens up the possibility of democratizing change, but transformation is hardly guaranteed.

If democracy in its essence is a set of rules that leave open the question of political victory, how are such rules established? Who or what social groups have the capacity to direct structural transformation? In the Maghrib, social and political structures that might assist in the birthing of democratic rule are themselves weak or compromised. Ruling parties cling fiercely to their power; opposition parties are fragmented and weak. With few exceptions, the industrial bourgeoisie has no base independent of government. There is little history of pluralism; such associations as do exist steer carefully clear of politics. Labor unions, the notable exception, are dwarfed by political parties in Morocco and co-opted by central power structures in Algeria and Tunisia.

Among the conventional players, only the courts offer some promise. Through powers of adjudication, courts may ideally function as referees in the game of politics. That function turns on trust and good faith, how-

ever, and requires impartiality of the referee. The willingness of courts to accept evidence extracted under torture, or falsified testimony, compromises that requisite impartiality. Courts across the Maghrib are not universally compromised, but neither is the full independence of the judiciary established. In recent years, courts have begun to exercise their powers more fully, and over time they may be expected to play an important role in limiting arbitrary power. In August 1991, for example, a Moroccan court refused to convict Islamist students charged with petty theft and "insults to bureaucrats" (outrage à fonctionnaire ) on grounds of insufficient evidence. With the government's blessing a few months later, the Algerian Constitutional Council struck down a provision of the 1991 electoral code allowing men to procure the vote(s) of their spouse(s). It remains that at the present juncture a court system that in the past has been compromised in the most critical cases cannot bear responsibility, ex nihilo, for the safeguarding of a democratic polity.

If the "who" of democratic transition is problematic, the "how" is no more obvious. Bargaining strategies have been suggested as one important avenue to structural reform. Recent experiences in Tunisia and Algeria, however, have failed to establish viable working rules of democratic procedure. Tunisia's 1988 National Pact, intended to oversee a transition to a democratic contest, was discredited within months. Islamists, included in the negotiation of the pact, were denied formal access to the electoral system, and stringent rules of candidacy exacerbated the problems of new parties trying to compete. The ruling party's complete sweep of the legislative contest in 1989 confirmed cynics in their belief that it did not intend to share power, and the once-celebrated pact faded from Tunisia's political landscape.

In Algeria, Prime Minister Sid Ahmad Ghozali's difficulty in late 1991 in selling parliament a package of electoral reforms that would credibly guarantee an open electoral contest further illustrates the problems inherent in bargaining among the elite as a path to democratizing reform. In an open political market, competition for spoils may well entail establishing rules for their distribution. However, where the outcome of an eventual contest is or appears to be embedded in those rules themselves, mistrust in the immediate term of the democratic intent of at least one important player may overshadow longer-term interest in opening up the political system. Bargaining strategies are unreliable as a route to open contest and may be as likely to sabotage democratization as to promote it.

Government-led liberalization seems no more trustworthy as a sure path to democracy. Liberalization may signal the need of an authoritarian

regime to reach beyond the bounds of its coalition for additional support, but it may also simply be the means by which an authoritarian regime buys time for itself. Political succession, economic crisis, or manifest loss of legitimacy signaled by popular protest may provide the impetus for liberalizing measures intended to establish or bolster legitimacy. The political need for legitimacy cannot, however, be depended upon to sustain liberalization. Legitimacy is certainly useful to a regime, in that it reduces the need for coercive measures, but as Adam Przeworski notes, many regimes manage to establish and maintain a hold on power through fear, or the simple lack of alternatives.^[12] Liberalization seemed critical to establish the legitimacy of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's claim to power in the aftermath of the bloodless coup that removed Habib Bourguiba from office in 1987. In time, however, with the military and security apparatuses under firm control and any threat from the legal opposition minimized, political liberalization has become less compelling for the regime.

It is against this backdrop of increased demand for access to the political system and a mixed response from the regimes that hold the reins that the emergence of a North African human rights movement takes on political significance. Since the mid 1970s, an organized commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights has taken shape across the Maghrib. In the three countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, six human rights groups now pressure their governments to exercise their authority within the bounds of law. The Tunisian League of Human Rights, founded in 1977, is in many regards the doyen of the Maghribi movement. It was not the first such group to appear, that title having been claimed by the Istiqlal Party's Moroccan League of Human Rights as early as 1972, but it was the first politically independent group. Political unrest shook Tunisia within a year of the league's founding, seriously testing the league's commitment to its cause in the face of risk to its own members. The league passed that test, and for several years was the only consistently audible Maghribi voice raised in defense of human rights and protesting at their violation. A Moroccan Association of Human Rights, initially affiliated with the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) was formed in 1979, but like the LMDH, it maintained a low profile. Three Algerian groups, since narrowed to a pair, joined the field in the mid 1980s. Their commitment, too, was tested by events of October 1988. Finally, the emergence of the politically independent Moroccan Organization of Human Rights in December 1988 dissociated human rights from partisan contest and in the process gave new purpose to Morocco's two party-affiliated organizations.

As watchdogs over the practices of their governments rather than as

contestants for political gain, the Maghribi human rights groups have established themselves as important political players. By the mandate they have fashioned, they are seeking to change the rules of the game rather than to assure a given political outcome. To the extent that they resist engaging in direct political contest, relational politics, they free themselves to monitor, and shape, metapolitical forces. They play politics at a different level, but one that may be more germane, ultimately, to the development of democratic governance. In this region, which has neither folk tradition nor national historical tradition on which to draw for guidance through a transition from authoritarian rule, human rights groups have become political players of critical importance precisely because their single goal is to see the rules of the political game rewritten.

History will have to judge the measure of their success. This book can only document their efforts. The story of the Maghribi human rights movement is complex, and can be divorced neither from the context of local political struggles nor from the larger international framework through which it took shape. Nor, for that matter, can it be entirely extricated from the personal affiliations and rivalries of some of its central characters. Desire for political change of the sort advocated by rights groups is a matter of conscience, which is often born of accidentally acquired and morally troubling knowledge. There is a considerable leap from knowledge to action, however. This study is an attempt to understand the process by which individual knowledge is crystallized into political action and the elements that contribute, more or less explicitly, to calculated expectations of success.

In these introductory pages, I have argued that human rights groups challenge the rules of the political games across North Africa, and that in so doing they perform a "metapolitical" function. Their experience is a prism through which to view democratizing efforts across the Middle East, and, indeed, in other regions where private concerns have overshadowed public rules in political contests. The very existence of these groups represents a challenge to entrenched authority; their mere survival is worthy of note, and any appreciable impact they have had requires explanation.

Several factors have enhanced the efforts of human rights groups and have protected their members; in Chapter 2, readers are directed to the most important of these. Evaluating both the process of crafting structural change and the extent of change itself, however, demands closer attention to the contexts in which the human rights groups operate. Only with a

baseline in mind can we appreciate either the objectives that are being pursued or the dialogue that has been opened with governments. Chapters 3–6 accordingly examine the underpinnings of political culture in the Maghrib and outline the frameworks of political games as they were historically developed and have been played across the Maghrib on a country-by-country basis. Chapter 7 traces the emergence of politically independent human rights groups in all three countries, while Chapters 8 and 9 consider the contemporary period more closely to explore the dynamics of their internal operations and interactions with the governments of the Maghrib. The story of Maghribi human rights groups would be incomplete, and an analysis of their political function would be seriously flawed, without attention to the role actors from beyond the Maghrib have played. Outside, international parties have helped protect human rights groups, and they have also brought their own pressures to bear on all of the governments of the Maghrib. In Chapter 10, the dynamics between individual groups and the governments whose practices they challenge are fitted within the context of what has been called "post-international politics." Public policy and political processes are no longer simply a matter of domestic concern in North Africa, assuming they ever were. Chapter 11, finally, assesses the net effect of all these pressures on political systems in the Maghrib.

The bulk of this book is about making and playing political games, which for some is effectively a matter of life and death. Political games are not easily created or undone, and the task of constructing a game fair to all players taxes even the most skillful and the most committed. It is thus important to reiterate that this is a book about efforts. The question of success is left to the end of the book, and beyond.

2
The Political Power of Human Rights

By content alone, the message of human rights groups directly confronts vested authority. It is noteworthy that in the West, the two principal human rights documents—the French Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen and the U.S. Bill of Rights—were drafted explicitly to limit the arbitrary powers of government. Both documents seek to protect individual liberties against the oppression of those who govern, and both assure due process of law for those accused of wrongdoing. So long as authority has effective control in a nondemocratic regime, it is difficult to imagine that such groups will be appreciated. In many ways, they present as direct an assault as abusive authority ever faces. As Jack Donnelly puts it, "Respecting human rights is extremely inconvenient for a government, even in the best of circumstances. And the less pure the motives of those in power, the more irksome human rights appear."^[1] —And the more irksome groups that lobby for human rights appear, it might be added.

That such groups have survived, in operation, more than a decade is in itself a political development of significance in the Maghrib.^[2] The North African human rights dossier includes socioeconomic concerns as well as a gamut of civil and political rights abuses, among them torture and ill-treatment, "disappearances," political imprisonment, fair trials, incommunicado garde-à-vue detention, and restrictions on freedoms of association and press. That activists may claim some success in advancing their cause is even more noteworthy and merits the attention of both scholars and policy makers.

The contribution of human rights groups to Maghrib politics stems directly from the historically unique position they occupy. They have been able to draw on protective resources that interest groups cannot so readily claim: a strong moral component, effective international support, and the

ability to adopt political tactics that while maintaining their effectiveness minimizes their political threat to vested authorities. These unique shields have created a special place for human rights groups within the framework of national politics.

The Moral Claim

The basic texts from which human rights activists derive a mandate may be religious or secular in origin, but worldwide the fundamental argument by which they take up their charge is a normative one. Preambular clauses to principal human rights texts refer to natural rights and human dignity, enshrining an ideal of justice that incorporates equality and fairness in law. In international law, such texts arise from sources designated "general principles." While not recognized as a major source of international law, arguments from general principle have, for example, undergirded the legal imposition of United Nations sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime. Retrospectively, they have been invoked to explain and justify the abolition of the international slave trade and traffic.

The principal human rights documents of our time, drafted in the aftermath of the Nazi holocaust, have clear moral origins. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), passed without dissenting vote by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948, justifies its creation in part as a reaction to the "barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind." Without specifying either a philosophical or a legal definition of "rights," the UDHR's thirty articles establish a common understanding of ideas and expectations about the relationship between governments and citizens and about the socioeconomic basis of human dignity. The two main treaties derived from the Declaration, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), alternatively proclaim the rights of full participation in the political processes of state and government and elevate basic welfare needs to the status of rights. Rather than reflecting an existing Hobbesian reality, human rights instruments aim to create a new, more idealistic reality, setting "a common standard of achievement" by which the world is expected to abide. Inherent moral considerations and the claim to universality reduce human rights groups' risk of reprisals from hostile authority, even though immunity from persecution can never be guaranteed where fundamental rights are not fully protected by law. The limited protection enjoyed by human rights groups may not be fully reliable, but the appeal to principles beyond the narrow scope

of self-interest does afford a certain liberty of speech and action. The appeal to principles, and by extension the moral power of human rights groups, is strengthened by the claim of universality. Because of the controversy it poses and its centrality to the work of North African human rights groups, the notion of universality must be treated at some length here.

Human rights texts—the UDHR and the international covenants—do not simply claim to be a moral guide for our times, an amalgam of worldwide normative standards. The UDHR lays broader claim to universality, applicable to "all members of the human family," "all peoples and all nations." Accession to the UN Charter entails acceptance of the UDHR, and members at least nominally pledge themselves to achieve universal respect for and observation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. That act is facilitated, it must be acknowledged, by the fact that the legal status of the Declaration alone is unclear. In consequence, states rarely stumble over it, and even the covenants are observed more by lip service than in practice. By the end of 1993, nearly two-thirds of the UN's 188 member nations had acceded to or ratified the two main covenants, which took force in 1976, but only 72 states had ratified the more constraining Optional Protocol, enabling the ICCPR's Human Rights Committee to receive and consider plaints from individual citizens of party states.

From the perspective of governments, tacit acknowledgment of the UDHR and even accession to principal treaties may hold little meaning, but for groups promoting respect for human rights, the existence of the UDHR and derivative treaties holds great significance. They establish, philosophically at least, the limits of sovereignty over questions of human rights. By the principle of universality, human rights can be considered as a collective good belonging not to a single nation but to the international family of humankind. If the "good" is seen not in terms of the state's own mission but as the collective welfare of humankind, national governments are shown to protect narrower interests—those of the state. Policies and practices that fall below standard invite censure at the least. A Lockean logic transposed on the international system might even suggest that a government failing to guarantee fundamental human rights has not earned legitimacy, so that it becomes the duty of a global citizenry to contest its rule. Such an outcome is, in fact, suggested by the language of the Universal Declaration: " . . . it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law."

The North African human rights groups at the center of this book and the governments under which they operate both accept the principle of

universality. Were the contest over political structures and dynamics limited to those two sets of actors, the discussion of moral and legal underpinnings that lend strength to the human rights movement might well end here. The resurgence of Islam as a political force, however, along with continuing questions about the role of Islamic law and practice in everyday life, have engaged human rights groups in a broader debate that requires more extensive discussion.

A universalist view of human rights adopts the position that a single set of human rights principles applies to all societies, and that all governments are obliged to bring their laws and practices into conformity with those principles. That position is contested by relativists, who argue the multiplicity of acceptable human rights standards and see them as inevitable in a culturally diverse world. Critics of a universalist position point with justification to the fact that the UDHR's roots essentially lie in the Western tradition, and that at the time of its drafting, few of what are now known as states of the developing world were in a position to offer substantive input. A "universal" declaration composed today might arguably look very different from the one acclaimed forty years ago. At the June 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, in their final pronouncement, states unanimously reaffirmed the principle of universality and inseparability of rights, but not before several of them had registered counterconcerns about the preservation of sovereign control over domestic matters.

Human rights activists defend themselves against relativist arguments adduced both by scholars sensitive to charges of parochialism and nationalist actors with a stake in defending cultural patrimony. The argument of universal and/or absolute rights versus culturally relative standards is one of particular relevance in cultures with claim to Muslim heritage and the Shari'a tradition of law. It is indeed worth noting that Saudi Arabia was one of the eight UN members who in 1948 chose to abstain from the General Assembly vote on the UDHR.

Several scholars have recently addressed the intellectual opposition of universal and relativist positions and shed light on the underpinnings of the argument. Richard Falk, for example, notes that cultural relativists who orient themselves toward societal tradition, religious teachings, and the primacy of cultural settings implicitly or explicitly favor a view that cultural attitudes automatically deserve deference. Their defense of local practice generally overlooks elements that undergird repressive, dominating, and exploitative practices. At the same time, Falk is critical of "secular fundamentalists" conditioned by the European Enlightenment who promote

a rational social and political order that by its nature includes a "vestigial distaste for any intrusion on the terrain of human rights by recourse to religion, tradition, and emotion."^[3] Alison Renteln is likewise critical of universalist arguments that quickly slide into absolutism. They are, in her view, representations of thinly disguised ethnocentrism, "insofar as Western ideas are presumed to be ubiquitous."^[4] She argues that neither the universality of rights nor their absolute nature can be inferred from a select number of documents of Western origin; valid arguments of universality depend instead on manifestations of similar principles in diverse cultural contexts.

Rhoda Howard has recently responded to this argument, noting with irony that if cultural standards are inferred from prevalent attitudes and practices, the West itself could not be said to endorse or respect human rights.^[5] Human rights is a fairly young idea in Western political thought, and moreover, the notion of a monolithic "Western" culture is itself problematic. Properly speaking, contemporary human rights ideals come from two separate intellectual traditions in the West, and Western political history is replete with examples of human suffering occasioned by the blatant disregard of noble principles. Slavery and slave trade are only the most ignominious examples; the oppression of religious, racial, and ethnic minorities and the repression of those who advocated workers' rights, women's rights, or an alternative political doctrine are all part of Western history. Howard contends that efforts to reconcile modern human rights norms with cultural practices worldwide in order to establish universality are bound to fail. We do better, she argues, to acknowledge that ethical questions may legitimately be addressed, abstractly and philosophically, in a way that transcends the diversity of cultures.^[6] Amplifying the argument and making a poignant appeal for cross-cultural application of the UDHR, Reza Bashari writes: "We should resist all impulses to mythologize authenticity. . . . Power, domination, and inequality are the issues."^[7] His claim that "the insistence on the universality of human rights standards is a political demand for the protection of individuals in the contemporary world of the modern states and capitalist, market economies"^[8] echoes Falk's suggestion that a largely fruitless debate could be resolved if human rights attention were to be focused squarely on human suffering and human "intolerables."^[9]

In endorsing the notion of universality, human rights groups across the Maghrib have not felt compelled to surrender any claim to an Islamic heritage. To the contrary, they have sought to emphasize elements embedded in their culture that condemn "intolerables" and sanction the protection

of human rights (huquq al-insan ). They frequently note that the principle of mutability extends to Islamic law as to other legal systems. What distinguishes the Islamic tradition, and by extension politics in the Arabo-Muslim world, is the starting position that Shari'a is the speech of God rather than positive law, and that the corpus of religious law is inextricably linked to political practice. Within the framework of Islam, the ability to create new law is constrained, but Shari'a may be made relevant in a contemporary world through interpretation. Islamic law, like international law, derives from several sources. Most important is the Qur'an itself, the word revealed to the Prophet Muhammad from 610 to his death in 632. Originally maintained as an oral tradition, it was eventually preserved in written form. In addition, the Sunna (tradition) of the Prophet, preserved in collections of hadith (sayings) of the Prophet, served as a source of law, amplifying and expanding the limited legal principles set forth in the Qur'an. A variety of techniques were employed by the jurists of Islam to develop legal rules based on these sources. One of the most important of these was qiyas , or analogical reasoning. Solutions to legal problems that were subsequently ratified by a consensus, or ijma' , of legal scholars were regarded by most Muslims as definitive. The degree to which Muslims remained free to ignore the solutions worked out by the early jurists and to engage in independent interpretation of the sources (ijtihad ) has been a matter of dispute in the course of Islamic legal history.

Following the Islamic legal tradition, "Islamic" human rights documents and texts that have proliferated since the promulgation of the UDHR in 1948 share the common approach of testing contemporary provisions and concepts against the Qur'an and Sunna or, alternatively, comparing and analyzing religious texts against each other to generate a body of Islamic "rights."^[10] Islamic thought about human rights is developed strictly through deductive reasoning and as such stands in fundamental contrast to the Western tradition. It is important to recognize, however, that even within the framework of textual exegesis, there is room for substantial interpretation, and substantial discretion.^[11] Scholars working within the tradition of Islam differ on such important rights-related issues as the status of the individual,^[12] equality, and duty.^[13] Moreover, with time there has been legal as well as social attrition of certain practices sanctioned by the holy writ. Slavery, for example, is permitted and governed by the Shari'a, but like Western states, even governments that have adopted Islamic law prohibit it today. Similarly, Ann Elizabeth Mayer notes that jabr , or forced marriage, is permitted by the Shari'a but was eliminated in the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19.i of that

document, prepared under the auspices of the Islamic Council (itself affiliated with the conservative Muslim World League), provides that no one should be married against his or her own will.^[14]

Within circles of Islamic scholars, the debate over huquq al-insan is fairly constrained, but in the arena of politics, possibilities multiply, and "essential" elements of Islam that transcend local custom are more difficult to identify. While every government of Muslims is theoretically obligated to implement the law of Islam,^[15] and although some twenty-five countries label themselves Islamic, only a handful, in fact, claim to apply the Shari'a. Writing prior to the Iranian revolution, Michael Hudson noted:

Today Saudi Arabia is the only major country where there is extensive practical application of the Shari'a, although in many other countries the Shari'a and the Muslim judges (qadis ) govern matters of personal status. But there can be no doubt of the long-term historical trend; and in most countries the central state with its European-inspired law codes inexorably extends its authority, circumscribing the Shari'a in its traditional urban and settled strongholds and replacing tribal customary law predominant in the wilder regions of desert and mountain.^[16]

If the 'ulama (Muslim clerics) find it difficult to reconcile positive constitutional law, and particularly its human rights provisions, with the Shari'a, governing elites in the twentieth century have not shown the same difficulty. Even if they are increasingly careful to consult with clerics on policy matters,^[17] several Arabo-Muslim states have of their own volition taken liberal positions with regard to international human rights law. The two principal human rights covenants have been ratified or acceded to by Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, and Tunisia. As an interesting measure of comparison, the United States, with whose legal tradition at least the ICCPR is more consonant, ratified that treaty only in 1992.

Beyond both government and theology lies society, with growing numbers of committed Islamists but an important secular segment as well. The prominent role of Islam in society and the entwining of theology and politics makes secularism publicly taboo (and thus more difficult to discern). A secular orientation in some circles is anathema, heresy that is not pronounced lightly. Secular Arabs may be overlooked because they speak guardedly of their personal beliefs, but their voices, too, must register in an account of the diverse thought of the Arabo-Muslim world. The words of one Tunisian woman, angry at the Tunisian League of Human Rights' internal compromise on the role of Islam, illustrates secular thinking that does not conform to deductive principles of Islamic thought: "Why should

I have to bow to Islam before I can assert my own rights as a human being?"^[18] Without the anger, Reza Afshari expresses a similar sentiment:

In defense of the human rights of millions of educated, secular, and modern Middle Easterners, I urge rejection of the dichotomy created between tradition and modern, between authentic and inauthentic Muslims. . . . I am aware that "human" in human rights has ceased to be the "other," it has become "me," and the experience of my life shared by thousands of men and women who have broken intellectually and emotionally with the past.^[19]

The Middle East accommodates considerable diversity even within the religious tradition of Islam, and the fact of diversity takes intellectual precedence over any ideal of unity. As translated ideologically, unity does not represent a common denominator but instead substitutes a single line of thought for all others. Human rights activists contest such representation, as they dispute any claim of exclusionary rights to the legitimate interpretation of text and tradition. Cultural integrity, or essentialism, is as elusive in the Arabo-Muslim world as it is in any other of the world's many cultures. By its nature, culture is dynamic, and within the evolutionary political culture of the contemporary Middle East, adhesion to international human rights standards is one emerging element that deserves recognition. In the words of one Egyptian scholar, "The pressure for democratization, respect and expansion of human rights go hand in hand. The sentiment and voice of each reinforces the other. Together, these developments seem to be the basis of a new, though embryonic, Arab consensus."^[20] The several dozen human rights groups in the Arab world have recognized the importance of universality for their efforts to limit arbitrary administration of power.

International Connections

Human rights groups in nondemocratic societies are offered assistance in their efforts by their international counterparts and, to some extent, by the policy arms of democratic foreign governments. The impact of such support is not, of course, unequivocal. Excessive "support," especially when from politically unwelcome quarters, turns into "intervention" and can be used to discredit or isolate domestic groups. On the other hand, outside support can both strengthen local groups and effectively shield them from government reprisal. North African human rights groups have noticeably profited from outside support, but the story is not without complexity. It is examined closely in Chapter 10, but a number of elements that transcend the North African particulars may be set out here.

Several external factors affect the work of indigenous human rights groups, but none is more important than the development of a large and vocal worldwide human rights movement since the early 1970s. Both the geographic and intellectual footings of the international human rights movement are firmly planted in the West, but the vehicle of universality discussed above has allowed it to spread and take root even in classes and cultures that maintain a critical posture vis-à-vis the Western tradition. This movement is one element in what James Rosenau has labeled the multicentric world , a world comprising relatively equal actors, which today functions alongside and interacts with the Westphalian system of sovereign states. Within today's "global universe," states are constrained by responsibilities to protect state interests, but in the nonhierarchically structured world, a host of actors—ethnic groups, corporations, political parties, religious groups, peace groups—freely undertake international policy initiatives untroubled by concerns about sovereignty.^[21] In assuming the role of human rights activists, individuals conceive of themselves as members of a global civil society. Their actions may involve or bypass the nation-state as a particular situation warrants.

The origins of the international human rights movement can be traced to Europe in the 1920s and the establishment of an International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) to promote human rights ideals and combat abuses. In 1927 the Paris-based organization first proposed a world declaration of human rights, and although World War II interrupted its activities, the passage of the UDHR in 1948 gave it new purpose. Its sixty-five affiliates, including most of the North African groups,^[22] work exclusively on issues in their own countries, but for more than twenty years the central organization has dispatched delegations to monitor elections, to investigate instances of abuse, and to observe political trials.

The FIDH's mission was complemented in 1961 by the creation a grassroots organization that called itself Amnesty International (AI). Individuals from around the world joined "adoption groups" to work on behalf of individuals in other countries; because of practical concerns and a desire to foster international solidarity, the organization's rules prohibited them from addressing human rights abuses in their home countries. From London, AI ran campaigns and conducted research, and its reports early on won respect for their reliability and impartiality. The strength derived from an extensive membership base is more often overlooked, but better than any other indicator, it signals an internationally shared concern about human rights. The organization, which began in 1961 as a narrow group of European lawyers and public figures, now boasts a network of more than

one million activists in 150 countries. From 1978 to 1993, the number of its building-block local groups increased from 2,000 to 8,000.^[23]

AI's grassroots orientation, its charge to consider violations worldwide, and a restrictive mandate have enhanced its credibility, but have also limited its effectiveness in other regards. Over the past two decades, an entire constellation of groups has emerged—particularly in Europe and the United States—to fill the lacuna. An international register lists more than 1,700 organizations worldwide concerned in some measure with the international protection of human rights.^[24] Some groups adopt the grassroots approach but concentrate their energies on a single country or region. Others organize concerned professionals—notably doctors and lawyers—to respond to urgent situations. Still others, including the International Commission of Jurists and the U.S.-based Watch Committees, send out investigative missions and issue reports, which often treat an array of human rights concerns broader than those addressed by AI. In addition to functionally specific human rights groups, numerous professional associations have in recent years created human rights committees or networks that take up cases of concern to their memberships, often by virtue of shared profession or religious belief.

Nearly all groups appeal to their members, or their readers, to make the voice of protest heard by offending governments.^[25] The human rights foot soldiers marshaled into action by such organizations have made it their business to take note of and call the world's attention to government actions that contravene the spirit of the UDHR and the letter of its attendant ICCPR. It is difficult to measure their impact on human rights practices, although testimonies from former political prisoners over the past two decades suggest that governments are not impervious even to relatively insignificant citizen action—especially when the citizens in question are those of influential nations. Amnesty International frequently claims, via prisoner testimony, that the sheer volume of appeals can make a difference; in some countries protest letters are measured in centimeters.

For indigenous human rights groups, the international movement makes an important contextual contribution along what might be called an "exposure" dimension. Governments may vary in their relative immunity to international pressures, but no government seeks to advertise its human rights failings. In many cases, egregious abuses violate not only international standards, but domestic law as well. In the mid 1980s, a full third of the world's countries regularly and consistently tortured political detainees, despite the existence in many instances of domestic laws expressly forbidding the practice and threatening punishment for those who

engaged in it.^[26] In all cases, costs attach to a demonstrated record of human rights abuses, and only the extent and acceptability of those costs are in question. A human rights cause célèbre at very least puts a government at risk of international embarrassment; in some instances, well-publicized cases have inspired the imposition of more painful economic and political sanctions.

The international press serves as the primary vehicle through which human rights abuses by governments have been most publicly exposed, and there has been a noticeable increase in human rights reporting over the past decade. It is now commonplace in both the United States and Europe for major newspapers to run summary accounts of reports issued by international human rights watchdog groups with established credibility. The willingness of the press to print such stories must in some measure reflect both the credibility and stature of these organizations, but one must also surmise that the marked increase in such reporting is itself a function of the same public interest that has fed the membership base of international human rights organizations. Human rights stories are news in large part because there is a demonstrated interest among the readership.

The backdrop of direct pressure on governments by international human rights groups and indirect pressure through the dissemination mechanism of the international press has provided important, if intangible, support for domestic groups. International attention shines a spotlight on abuses; because its beams also illuminate domestic groups, governmental reprisal is at least made inconvenient. Local activists are treated as heroes and have in some prominent cases themselves been awarded regular access to the international press.

Attention from the international community provides a degree of moral support that is impossible to measure. Prominent international visitors seek out local activists and thereby elevate their status; links of communication forged with any number of international groups concerned about a particular situation may at times create confusion, but they also serve to reinforce local commitment. Few human rights activists are selfless saints, and attention from abroad may boost the egos of many, as it does the cause. The urgency of an international phone call may be sufficient to revive flagging energy, just as a timely report issued abroad may provide the missing impetus for local action. The importance assigned a situation by known and respected international activists in general fuels concern locally. Support of this nature cannot be quantified, but anecdotal evidence of its importance abounds. Equally immeasurable, but somewhat more tangible, is the assurance activists have that, in the event of trouble, their

own cases will receive international attention. Several international human rights groups provide legal services and trial observers, and human rights activists in trouble can today count on full press coverage as well.

Whereas this backdrop of international human rights movement activity may have been negligible in the past, both numbers and information technology have made it much more important today. For indigenous human rights groups, it provides critical moral support and a sense of solidarity. More important, it keeps the spotlight trained both on the offenses themselves and on quarters where potential reprisals are likely.

Compounding the direct pressure by citizen groups and indirect pressure from the international press, foreign democratic governments have become more vocal about human rights issues. In a few prominent cases, in addition to less-consequential rhetoric, they have included human rights factors among their foreign policy decision-making criteria. Governmental endorsement of human rights concerns is rarely uncontroversial, for mindful of both domestic audiences and foreign policy issues, sovereignty-bound states are more opportunistic in their appeals than members of a global society who demand adherence to a single set of international standards. Underlying political motives may effectively discount the value of government measures, but even discounted, foreign governments' attention to human rights remains an important element in the array of international forces affecting the performance of domestic human rights groups.

Many governments incorporate reference to the safeguarding and promotion of human rights into their foreign policy rhetoric, but none has been more outspoken than that of the United States. Human rights was fully incorporated into U.S. foreign policy discourse only during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, but concern for human rights is embedded in the much older, if variable, U.S. foreign policy objective of promoting democratic values and democratic forms of government. For much of the twentieth century, democracy—in foreign policy application—has been seen in terms of political competition and political institutions, but there have also been explicit references to human rights. The Truman Doctrine, for example, which paired the goal of promoting democracy with that of maintaining and strengthening noncommunist governments in what was the first clear elaboration of containment policy,^[27] included freedom of speech and religion, freedom from political repression, and guarantees of individual liberty among the criteria defining democracy. Although President Carter's decision to make human rights the hallmark of his foreign policy gave the concept new rhetorical life, in the

aftermath of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Congress had itself begun to pay legislative attention to human rights in foreign policy. Congress had already in 1974 linked human rights performance to security assistance, and in 1978 it made consideration of rights performance mandatory in the aid allocation process.^[28] Furthermore, in 1977 Congress created a Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs within the Department of State, and from 1985 on required all U.S. embassies to send regular reports back to Washington about torture. U.S. embassies now routinely designate an officer responsible for following human rights issues.

Critics frequently charge that the foreign policy commitment to human rights, like the broader goal of promoting democracy, is convenient for great powers and is used selectively. Even in the best of circumstances, such policies represent long-term, visionary goals, which inevitably take a back seat to more immediate foreign policy objectives. Despite the prominence of its rhetorical commitment, the Carter administration was never able to forge a coherent human rights policy, ironing out a workable relationship between the civil and political rights it sought to promote and often conflicting security and economic interests.^[29] The Reagan and Bush administrations were not been inclined to try. Recent studies conclude that more general efforts to promote democracy have almost always failed, in large part owing to the conception of the policy itself. As Abraham Lowenthal notes, in the Latin American case, U.S. pro-democracy policies have arisen primarily as a function of U.S. politics—not of Latin American realities. "Enthusiasm for active democracy promotion has ebbed and flowed, and the inconstancy of U.S. policy has tended not only to erode the efficacy of U.S. policy but actually to undermine the conditions for democratic politics."^[30]

Historical examples abound, not only of U.S. failure to promote democracy, but of actual detriment to existing democratic or democratizing regimes. Even as Washington has officially favored the installation of democracy, its intelligence branches have engaged in operations that by distorting local political forces have also undermined democratic processes and values.^[31] In considering Latin American and southern European reaction to the promotion of democracy by the U.S. and western European governments, Laurence Whitehead concludes that most such efforts have been largely ineffective because in fact—particularly in the U.S. case—democracy runs counter to actual foreign policy objectives. He observes that

one requirement of any genuine international support for democratization is that local actors must be given sufficient freedom of maneuver to act on their own behalf, and to establish their credentials as authentic groupings,

not "puppets" manipulated by external powers. This involves a self-denying ordinance by those external powers wishing to promote democracy. Such restraint may be particularly hard to achieve in countries where genuine progress toward democracy necessitates some clearcut break with a past pattern of power relations.^[32]

Historical analyses reinforce the conclusion that in times of peace, outside forces have at best a secondary influence on democratization.

Attention to the manifest contradictions within democracy-promoting foreign policy can obscure more positive aspects of policies designed specifically to ensure protection of human rights. In the U.S. case at least, it is worth distinguishing between policy statements—reflecting the intent of a given presidential administration—and initiatives undertaken by Congress. Human rights positions adopted by both entities are vulnerable to charges of inconstancy and incoherence, but where the former must always be viewed as a function of state concerns to protect and promote sovereignty, the latter has more latitude to escape those constraints and is markedly more open to the influence of human rights lobbyists. The executive branch retains most responsibility for foreign policy, and with regards to most foreign appropriations, it effectively represents the interests of countries it seeks to favor. Congress, whose primary power is to check or alter—rather than initiate—foreign policy, may position itself to pose uncomfortable questions. David Forsythe's 1988 study of U.S. foreign policy making in the area of human rights documents the inherent contest between Congress and the executive branch and assesses congressional efforts to carry both the Carter and the Reagan administrations beyond their original intents with regards to human rights. The limits to congressional efforts undertaken from 1974 to 1984 are patently clear: despite the passage of three major pieces of legislation linking financial assistance to human rights performance, Congress was not able to assure full oversight of the law. Several human rights certifications required by Congress went unscrutinized; the legislature's own attention both to general human rights concerns and country-specific situations was erratic.

A comparison between paper and performance exposes its shortcomings, but all the same, the impact of congressional activism has not been negligible. Congress's most important influence has often been exercised as a veto. It revalued human rights when it rejected Ernest Lefever as the Reagan administration's nomination for head of the Human Rights Bureau, a man who in public statements had denigrated the importance of the rights that were to be his charge. Likewise, Congress acted to modify President Reagan's conduct of foreign policy on South Africa and a number

of Latin American countries. Human rights law, even if its letter was not to be implemented, encouraged both policy makers and policy implementers to consider the linkages between human rights and economic assistance.

Debate [within the foreign policy establishment] evolved over the form of the human rights policy and its linkage with other policies, not whether to have such a policy. This attitude was a clear change from the Kissinger period when human rights was largely regarded as a domestic issue, from the Carter period when many Foreign Service officers and some bureau heads regarded human rights as part of softheaded naïveté in world politics, and from the early Reagan days when high-ranking officials, including the president himself, wanted to substitute simple anticommunism for human rights concerns. Congress must be assigned credit for establishing and maintaining this redefinition of the U.S. foreign policy agenda from about 1973.^[33]

The annual country reports on human rights practices have become the central reference point of official U.S. discourse on human rights. These reports are taken seriously by both the Congress and the national press when they are released each February in conjunction with the administration's proposed foreign aid budget, and the importance assigned them has contributed greatly to legitimating human rights in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. The process by which they came to occupy such a place of prominence points up the interchange between human rights groups and official policy makers and points as well to the means by which governments, despite the historical vagaries of democracy-promoting policies, can lend effective support to democratizing forces in other countries.

Congress first required human rights reports on countries proposed as recipients of U.S. security assistance as an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Members' concerns were aired in 1973 congressional hearings prompted by Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's regard for power politics and commensurate disregard for moral values.^[34] The Kissinger State Department complied with congressional instructions only in a minimal sense. The directive was taken more seriously by Cyrus Vance, who in 1977 oversaw the State Department's first major attempt to collect and assemble relevant information from U.S. embassies around the world. Congress in the meantime had created the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs within the Department of State and in 1980 its assistant secretary for human rights became responsible for annually compiling a comprehensive report on every member of the United Nations, and not simply on recipients or potential recipients of U.S. security assistance.^[35] In the initial years of reporting, the Human Rights Bureau under

Patricia Derian's direction privately invited human rights groups to comment on the reports prior to their release. When Eliot Abrams became head of the bureau in the Reagan administration, the cooperative relationship stopped, and a consortium of private human rights groups began to publish, and distribute widely, their own critiques of the State Department country reports.^[36] Following the Lefever nomination debacle, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations had in 1981 been wary enough of administration intent to issue its own critique of the State Department reports. It did not hesitate to hold hearings in scrutiny of the annual reports, or problematic sections of them; it became a regular practice to solicit independent testimony from private human rights groups and invite State Department officials to explain the compilation process or justify language.^[37] By this process the State Department was forced to take the reports seriously. Even if the reports were never used to deny economic or security assistance, as had been the original legislative intent, veracity in reporting did become established as a legitimate demand of Congress. The reports had been extended to cover nonrecipients of aid—that is, the Soviet bloc countries—at the initiative of congressional conservatives who hoped to redirect bad press,^[38] but by the mid 1980s, more attention to adversaries did not mean less for allies. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, with human rights groups, gradually saw to it that the unsightly records of friendly governments could not be whitewashed and forgotten.

With a basic norm of honesty in reporting established, and with the first modest reports eventually expanding to 1,500-page authoritative tomes, both the State Department, in issuing, and the U.S. Congress, in accepting, the annual report were on record as officially acknowledging egregious abuses by governments to whom they lent support. Government representatives on their own perhaps have little incentive to act in particular cases, but the human rights activists among their constituents constitute an increasingly vocal lobby, better informed and better organized than at any time in the past.^[39] Human rights groups, focusing on just those cases where U.S. leverage was presumed greatest, asked congressional human rights leaders to put at least their pens where their mouths were. Even if Congress as a body was not willing to restrict aid allocations, individual members were ready to direct human rights inquiries through the State Department, draft their own letters to foreign governments, read statements into the Congressional Record , or circulate "Dear Colleague" letters to other members for signature. As holders of the national purse, Congress had implicit power at least to embarrass human rights offenders seeking

U.S. aid. Unlike most domestic programs, foreign aid is an orphan in the American political process; foreign governments frequently rely on paid agents to press their cases in Washington. Members of Congress face little political exposure in lodging protests against abuses, and they potentially gain the support of constituents.

If the U.S. Congress and foreign policy establishment have through these mechanisms accorded significant attention to international human rights abuses in recent years, they are not alone. Recently France under the presidency of François Mitterand has awarded considerable attention to human rights, recalling France's two-century commitment to the rights of man. Danielle Mitterand has lent further weight to that cause by presiding over a watchdog group known as France Libertés. In 1993, European states undertook revisions of the Lomé Convention, adding the weight of the European Community to the growing number of industrialized donor states that now link consideration of human rights issues to aid allocation. Scandinavian countries closely monitor the human rights performance of those to whom they extend development assistance, and Canada formally linked its aid programs to human rights in 1987. Japan, the world's largest donor, has also linked aid to human rights considerations, and at one point temporarily cut off aid to Burma for that reason.^[40]

Given the manifest contradiction between lip service to promotion of democratic ideals and actual foreign policy behavior, actions underscoring the importance of respect for human rights may in fact do more to support the development of democracy than any of the more direct attempts to induce it. The cost to an individual politician may be slight, but the impact in an allied country of a human rights inquiry by an elected body or a prominent political leader can be significant. The directly expressed concern of both elected officials and foreign policy functionaries effectively legitimizes the concerns of domestic human rights groups, who in the local context are often politically marginalized.

Survival Strategies

Action and recruitment strategies adopted by indigenous human rights groups constitute a third element that affects their survival and, by extension, their impact on democratization processes. Human rights groups have frequently escaped measures of repression directed at other political actors, and much of their good fortune can be attributed to choices of tactics and strategy. Whereas broad structural forces contribute to the forma-

tion of such groups, the day-to-day political parrying is orchestrated at the microlevel.

Microlevel political behavior has been relatively neglected by students of political upheaval, in part because data are difficult to access, but in part because structural explanations lend themselves more readily to empirical observations and in consequence are more immune to ad hoc explanations. The arguments against approaches that rely heavily on interpretation have been powerful ones, but they exclude researchers from arenas of political transaction that are especially important in understanding efforts at political transformation. Structural factors observable at a distance may delimit parameters of possible political developments under given historical conditions, but at most they constitute the setting, not the action.^[41] Structural analyses have advanced our understanding of the causes of regime collapse, but class analysis and other forms of structural analysis provide fewer insights into the processes by which a polity is successfully guided toward democracy.^[42]

How is democracy generated? Schoolchildren studying the physical world learn that it requires more energy to set an object in motion than to maintain it in motion. The construction of democracy requires effort and initiative; it involves commitment to values and institutions that may be culturally antithetical. Certainly the context cannot be ignored, but neither may the actions of individuals in key roles. Individuals are engaged in conscious choice, and individuals affect political outcomes. Just as they may act to maintain a status quo that affords them advantages, political elites may apply their energies to effecting change. The consciousness of political action should not be presumed, but neither is it to be precluded.

If the action of individuals is admitted in analysis, so must their impact be. Any situation requiring political decisions may be affected by the behavior of individuals. Even when acting within the bounds of rationality, individuals may alter an outcome by screening out information, or misinterpreting signals, or by simply managing to be in the right place at the right time, as a number of studies of foreign policy behavior have convincingly demonstrated.^[43]

The role to be played by individuals is amplified in the relative absence of institutions or procedures that diminish the volume of a single voice. That fact undoubtedly accounts for the relatively greater prominence accorded to the study of individuals and small groups in the foreign policy realm. In situations where political institutions are themselves in question, choices made by elites in or out of power may take on great significance.

Likewise, the importance of political errors is magnified. Political mistakes may become blessings—or they may prove fatal. Errors of judgment contained in a limited context may afford an opportunity to reflect on, and correct, strategy in advance of encounter with subsequent challenges. Political behavior, like all human behavior, lends itself to learning, without guarantees that lessons will be mastered.

In many instances, human rights groups are aware of the impact, or potential impact, of their choices. Debates have been waged, for example, about the political advantage of opening as opposed to restricting membership. Modern communications technology and frequent travel facilitate contact between groups, who regularly share their perceptions of experiences to emulate or avoid. The menu of potential action is in large part influenced by the governing macropolitical situation, but selections from the menu are far from automatic. Engaged in efforts to bring about concrete changes, human rights groups devote considerable effort to planning strategies, conscious of implicit trade-offs and wary of the ramifications of their choices.

North African human rights groups have wrestled with a number of such choices, to be explored at length in subsequent chapters. In general terms, however, the strategy questions they have confronted, and sometimes revisited, may be grouped loosely into three categories. The first concerns an organizations's decisions about long-term goals and strategies. Long-term objectives help situate a group within the field of domestic political actors and necessarily affect its more immediate operations. All of the Maghribi groups have had to consider their role in local politics and their relationship with political parties. Party affiliation offers access to the scarce resource of established political organization but also extends the liability of compromised independence.

It might seem natural, or logical, for groups to set forth their long-term goals and address issues of ideological orientation at the initial stages of organization, but it has in fact been more common for North African human rights groups to attend to such issues only as they arise and threaten to inhibit activity or diminish effectiveness. The Tunisian League of Human Rights waited eight years before drafting a charter to delineate its philosophy and clarify its positions relative to the UDHR.

Tactical questions, a second set of strategy issues, have been of more immediate concern. In the short run, the methods by which human rights groups try to advance their causes have the potential to invite governmental reprisal and place members at risk. Such issues cannot be deferred. In broad terms, groups have had to decide whether to cooperate or confront

abusive authority. Is potential harassment too high a price to pay for publicity to abuses? Is a "quiet" approach less alienating, and more effective anyway? How advisable is a public demonstration? Is it preferable to approach government officials with poignant, well-documented cases of abuse, or should public statements address only broad issues—torture, disappearance, judicial abuse—that leave the responsible authorities unidentified. Decisions that would seem straightforward matters of principle when viewed from a distance appear considerably more complex when considered in context. Debates are often extensive and trade-offs painfully clear. That groups within the Maghrib have made opposing tactical choices after carefully weighing arguments in light of the peculiarities of their own political reality points up the risks inherent in a blueprint approach to such decisions.

Questions about recruitment and membership have likewise received considerable attention within human rights groups. North African political associations in the twentieth century have tended to seek broad popular appeal, building a substantial membership base. Human rights groups have largely broken with this tradition, but not without debate. Groups are popularly reproached for their elite flavor, their distance from the masses. Group leaders in particular, however, are often conscious of the political advantages that come with a predominantly elite membership. With a professional membership base, human rights groups may find it easier to secure hearings for their concerns behind the closed doors of government. Social stature and perceived common class interests may also diminish the element of threat to authorities, leaving groups to function with greater liberty. In addition to concerns about the way they are perceived within government circles, human rights leaders have also wrestled with questions of internal cohesion and the possibility of police infiltration. Tensions between a recognized need to demonstrate political independence through a diverse membership base and the threat of organizational fissure or political co-optation are never more than temporarily resolved.

Questions of strategy compose a complex web, and many of the choices are interlocking. Membership restrictions have implications for potential action, as do an organization's publicly espoused goals. The importance of strategy cannot be overemphasized for groups that seek to challenge the established order: keeping out of trouble while essentially causing trouble requires careful choices. There are many slick surfaces to negotiate and numerous potential distractions; even without accounting for resistance on the part of a government in place, opportunities to fail abound. Even the possibility of success depends on careful choice.

Conclusion

North African human rights activists have garnered attention well beyond the significance of their numbers, and it is posited in this chapter that their political prominence cannot be attributed to any single factor. Rather, it is the combination of several forces—moral claims, international support, and tactical choices—that has amplified their voices, making them audible in the arena of public politics. I return to this argument, and fuller analysis of their role in politics and political transformation, in Part III of the book.

At this junction, however, it is important to note that human rights activists have not simply been heard: their message has also resonated within the range of North African political discourse. The fact that these human rights groups are situated within the local culture and address local concerns attaches meaning to their work beyond any specific changes in law or practice they might advocate. It also means that they cannot easily distance themselves from local political struggles. The analysis of both their effectiveness and their limitations is thus predicated upon an understanding of the local context, and that is the task addressed in Part II.