Intervention and the human rights framework

In ‘Arena Magazine’ 118, Jessica Whyte condemns the ‘interventionist politics of rights’ carried on by Western NGOs in alliance with Western states’ governments and military backing. She casts doubt on the moralistic agenda of Western NGOs and implicates them in a conspiratorial relationship with dominant states that seek to augment or entrench their power in the global arena. What makes the alliance between states and NGOs desirable for both parties is the will of each to intervene and to have the power to determine outcomes for entire communities and territories beyond their borders, in violation of those other countries’ and communities’ autonomy. Whyte goes on to argue that, since the 1970s, collective justice and a focus on political contestation has been replaced by a focus on the rights of individuals and the most vulnerable, such as women and children, and actions justified through this individual rights-based moralistic discourse have been at the expense of the rights of communities and collectives. This is in line with a broader liberal West-centric focus on individual freedoms and rights. This same discourse, says Whyte, has served as a justification for the Intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory that began in 2007 and served to undermine those Aboriginal communities’ rights to self-determination.