ABSTRACT

The human rights tradition, a necessary and continuing struggle to limit state repression, grapples with a world in which some violators cannot be picketed at the presidential palace or sanctioned by the UN. These newly visible abusers are more than simple criminals wielding brute coercion because they often exercise delegated authority through legitimate social institutions-such as families, businesses, religions, and professions. The dark side of the private power of civil society and its alternative to government authority is the ability to harm. And global civil society’s private wrongs fall hardest on the world’s most vulnerable populations, who

tend to lack full access to state citizenship, public protection, and even visibility: women, children, the poor, the sick, refugees, and victims of state terror.