376 CHAPTER TEn ■ Human Riht
is mixed. One study of over 400 human rights organ izations on shaming governments
between 1992 and 2004 found that states targeted by NGOs do improve their human
rights practices. But shaming is not enough. Shaming is effective when both domestic
NGOs on the ground and advocacy by other third parties and individuals are pres
ent.^11 Another study of monitoring by the UN, NGOs, and the media between
1975 and 2000 found that governments identified as violators often “adopt better pro
tections for po liti cal rights afterward, but they rarely stop or appear to lessen acts of
terror.”^12 Only when NGOs actively took up issues did practices improve.
Thus, IGO and NGO monitoring over time, as well as the Universal Periodic
Review, is not necessarily enough to alter practices. Achieving compliance with inter
national human rights norms can be a long pro cess. Moreover, when states fail to com
ply with existing norms, it may not be a deliberate act. Obstacles may prevent willing
states from readily complying, as explained in Chapter 7.
All of these activities of the international community on behalf of human rights
are fraught with difficulties. A state’s signature on a treaty is no guarantee of its will
ingness or ability to follow the treaty’s provisions. Monitoring state compliance through
self reporting systems presumes a willingness to comply and be transparent, a major
caveat that cannot necessarily be taken for granted. Taking direct action by imposing
economic embargoes may not achieve the announced objective— a change in human
rights policy— and may actually be harmful to those very individuals whom the embar
goes are trying to help. Reports suggest that the international community’s economic
sanctions against Iraq after the first Gulf War resulted in a lower standard of living for
the population and an imposition of real economic hardship on the masses, while the
targeted elites remained unaffected. The sanctions did not have the intended effect of
securing the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.^13
Despite these difficulties, the international community is moving toward the soft
law position or norm of responsibility to protect (R2P) that, first, states have a respon
sibility to treat their own people humanely. It is the second part associated with pro
tection of populations in other countries that is more controversial. Intervening in the
affairs of other states even for humanitarian purposes, as Chapter 8 introduces, comes
with its own set of prob lems. Can intervention be a legitimate response if it is used only
selectively, in some cases and not in others? In 2011, for example, why did the interna
tional community (the UN, NATO, and the League of Arab States) all voice support for
military action against Libya’s Col o nel Muammar Qaddafi? Qaddafi’s predictions of
“rivers of blood” against his opponents and his threats to “cleanse Libya house by house”
provided the justification for internationally sanctioned intervention.^14 But mass atroci
ties attributed to the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad against the Syrian people since 2011
have not led to the same response. Might the danger be that all interventions in another
state’s affairs can ultimately be justified by R2P? After all, the American government,
when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, justified the invasion by