6 - Legitimacy, democracy and membership

Summary

Introduction

The practice examined in the four previous chapters demonstrates that human rights and democracy have played an important role in determining both admission to and exclusion from a wide variety of international organisations. This movement is not limited to international or regional organisations of the West, but includes organisations of a global and universal character, as well as those established outside Europe. Human rights and democracy criteria have not been consistently applied within an organisation or across organisations with similar mandates or membership policies, but nevertheless have influenced decisions on participation. The role of these criteria has ranged from a form of collective legitimation of a state to a means of integrating countries within a region; a criterion for determining the application of membership sanctions and a method of promoting an organisation's ability to fulfil its functions. Individual member states and groups of states have also used the language of human rights and democracy in membership decisions to fulfil their own political objectives or to advance their ideological views. Admission and exclusion decisions have been conditioned on these criteria, although such a policy may clash with other objectives or purposes of the organisation, such as universality, regional integration and non-intervention in the domestic affairs of member states. Furthermore, the lack of a power within a constituent instrument expressly permitting an international organisation to expel or suspend a state has failed to prevent organisations excluding a member on the basis of human rights violations or breaches of democracy.