Defining Rights: Contesting the Contra War Through Human Rights Advocacy, 1981-1988

Abstract

Non-governmental organizations successfully limited U.S. support of counterrevolutionary guerrillas (Contras) in Nicaragua in the 1980s by advocating for peace through a lexicon of human rights. NGOs deployed their message of opposition through a variety of methods, but the mobilization of thousands of activists rallying around the cause of human rights in public demonstrations proved most effective for influencing policy. In addition, the work of NGOs altered the debate over the Contra War and framed the policy issue as a question of human rights and not question of geopolitics and anti-communism.

Conflicting ideas about human rights underpinned the policy debate and the tension between the two governments. NGOs opposing the Reagan administration’s Contra policy and Cold War interpretations of international relations then-prevalent in Washington adhered to what this dissertation refers to as the Anticolonial Human Rights discourse. These organizations and developing nations throughout the world interpreted human rights as including economic, social, and cultural rights, collective rights of self-determination and national sovereignty, and political and civil rights. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration followed the Democratic Human Rights discourse, which elevated political and civil rights above all other rights. Reagan believed that protecting democracy ultimately protected human rights and that the Contras, or freedom fighters as Reagan referred to them, fought for democracy. The Sandinista government objected to foreign interference and U.S. support of an insurrection while NGOs also rejected the violation of Nicaragua sovereignty and the use of violence to achieve policy objectives.