ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses whether three Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that were particularly proactive in fostering human rights at European level during the 1970s – namely Amnesty International, the Anti-Slavery Society and the European Movement – played a role in determining a change that eventually led the European Community (EC) to include human rights into its development assistance policy. In particular, this chapter wishes to underline the importance of investigating the influence of informal actors alongside the formal ones in decision-making processes, and to indicate what actions the former put in practice and whether they were successful or not. The chapter discusses whether it is conceivable to suggest that these NGOs, through their argumentative persuasion and advocacy, put pressure on the EC institutions to consider and defend human rights within the framework of development assistance. Moreover, the chapter demonstrates through what research tools it may be possible to affirm that the EC institutions took these considerations into account when elaborating foreign aid schemes.
