Rights for Others: A Book Commentary

by Cynthia Soohoo

It turns out the United States is not alone in thinking of human rights as a foreign policy export, and even in countries with a commitment to internationalism, it’s difficult to get governments to live up to their human rights obligations at home.

 Barbara Oomen’s new book Rights for Others: The Slow Home-Coming of Human Rights in the Netherlands describes how despite a long Dutch tradition of support of international law and a constitutional structure that make the Netherlands "one of the most friendly constitutions towards international law in the world," using international human rights obligations to actually change domestic policies is never easy.

 The Dutch constitution directly incorporates international treaties into domestic law and provides that treaties that are passed by two-thirds of the Houses of the States General can supersede constitutional provisions.   Human rights treaties protect a broader range of rights than the Dutch constitution and, unlike the rights protected by the Dutch Bill of Rights, are subject to judicial review.  The Dutch openness to international law reflects a long tradition of support for the international legal order and engagement in developing international treaties and institutions.

 Despite this, Oomen describes the struggles that domestic activists face in using international human rights law to change domestic policies.  She explains that although the Dutch constitution appears open towards international law, when you dig deeper, legal culture and substantive and procedural barriers often prevent direct implementation. 

 In discussing the Netherlands, Oomen also identifies many of the same structural issues that plague human rights implementation in the United States, i.e., the disconnect between foreign affairs officials who enter into human rights commitments and domestic agencies that lack incentive to implement them and the perception that human rights arguments are inappropriate in countries with relatively good human rights records.

 Many human rights issues in the Netherlands are strikingly similar to issues in the United States.  One chapter discusses efforts to prohibit discrimination against gay teachers in religious schools.  Another chapter describes how the Dutch framework to address domestic violence developed in parallel to international standards, resulting in the absence of key elements of a human rights approach.  For instance, Dutch domestic violence policies were criticized by the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women because of their emphasis on gender neutrality.  According to the Special Rapporteur, failure to look at domestic violence within the larger context of gender discrimination resulted in an over-emphasis on the role of culture that linked violence to immigrant cultures.  Dutch policies also failed to recognize socio-economic factors underlying violence and the increased vulnerability of many immigrant women resulting from their undocumented status and lack of access to benefits such as government-funded shelter.  Interestingly, like the United States, the Netherlands also has been criticized for an over-emphasis on criminal justice approaches in response to domestic violence and trafficking that fail to prioritize the rights of victims and survivors.

 Although the Dutch have historically been known for their multiculturalism and internationalism, Oomen describes a profound shift in attitudes at the beginning of the millennium resulting from the pressures of immigration and growing Islamophobia after 9/11.  Dutch ambivalence towards immigrants is reflected by the Netherlands’ failure to ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families -- the only major human rights treaty that it hasn’t ratified.  And like the U.S., the Netherland denies a number of basic social benefits to undocumented immigrants.

 Oomen also relates how the rise of xenophobia, fear of immigration and attempts to dismantle the welfare state in the Netherlands simultaneously created a greater need for human rights arguments and the growth of an opposition claiming that enforceable human rights commitments threaten Dutch culture, sovereignty and democracy.  In the face of this opposition, Oomen discusses the importance of local adoption and ownership of human rights through a vibrant human rights cities movement and the creation of a National Human Rights Institute as efforts to breathe life into Dutch human rights commitments. 

The Rights of Others reminds us that even in countries with favorable views towards international law, using human rights to bring about real change is a slow process.  Despite profound differences in constitutional architecture and attitudes towards international law, the struggles in the United States and the Netherlands to "bring human rights home" have remarkable similarities.