Entering the global dealing room: Reflections on a rights-based framework for NGOs in international development

The human rights framework cuts across different aspects of development. It has a universal appeal which is increasingly supported by a stronger social, political and cultural global rooting. NGOs have made important contributions to this growing global culture of human rights. The potential of human rights as a normative instrument to further shape and form the political and human quality of globalisation can hardly be underestimated. Human rights offer NGOs the possibility to strategically position themselves at the crossroads of emerging transnational relationships between different actors in the state, market and civil sector. This will strengthen enforcement of human rights, shared among and across different levels of institutions and decision making. But in order to enter the global dealing room, the function of NGOs must be grounded more firmly in the United Nations framework, which gives human rights their principal global legitimacy.