NGOs and Monitoring Genocide: The Benefits and Limits to Human Rights Panopticism

Abstract

In this paper we use the concept of a global Panopticon to interpret the promotion and protection of Western-informed human rights. We use the Panopticon as a metaphor to illustrate how a system of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can work in concert with hegemonic states to decrease future occurrences of serious human rights abuses. Like previous authors who use the concept of the Panopticon in this context, we see the current global human rights regime connected to, and benefiting, current hegemonic power structures. But unlike previous authors we find normative benefits to this Panoptic surveillance, even if such benefits result, and thus cannot be separated from, the power structures in which they develop. We consider why hegemons would promote the activity of NGOs when the latter are often critical of the former's foreign policy practices. We then look at two humanitarian crises as case studies to determine the role NGOs played in their outcomes.