Human Rights Advocacy Evaluation in the Global South: A Critical Review of the Literature

Advocacy evaluation has emerged in the past 20 years as a specialized area of evaluation practice. We offer a review of existing peer-reviewed literature and draw attention to the scarcity of scholarly work on human rights advocacy evaluation in the Global South. The lack of published material in this area is concerning, given the urgent need for human rights advocacy in the Global South and the difficulties of conducting advocacy in contexts in which fundamental human rights are often poorly protected. Based on the review of the literature and our professional experiences in human rights advocacy evaluation in the Global South, we identify themes in the literature that are especially salient in the Global South and warrant more attention. We also offer critical reflections on content areas not addressed in the existing literature and conclude with suggestions as to how activists, evaluators, and other stakeholders can contribute to the development of a field of practice that is responsive to the global challenge of advocacy evaluation.

Indonesian Female Police Officer’s Deployment as International Police Officers in United Nations – African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) (2016-2018)

The main purpose is to analyze the role of Indonesian female police deployed as Individual Police Officers in the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Darfur from 2016 to 2018. This research was designed as a qualitative case study that triangulated data from previously published researches, institutional documents, and semi-structured qualitative interviews. Previous scholarly publications were used to observe gender deficit – which is the lack of female personnel in UN peacekeeping missions. Institutional documents, particularly ex-Indonesian female police reports, were analyzed to contribute to data enrichment in this research. Lastly, the authors conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with some ex-female police who have completed their deployment in UNAMID (2016-2018). Concerning the gender equality and counterinsurgency concepts, this research figured out that Indonesian female police could demonstrate their strategic role to provide skill-building activities, trust-building with refugees, and human rights advocacy. The numbers of Indonesian female police in this mission remained higher than other Southeast Asian contributing countries, but the Indonesian female police were also functional in line with the UN gendering peace and security agenda.

Three days in December: Jewish human rights between the United Nations and the middle east in 1948

The twin birth of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Genocide Convention in 1948 have received enormous scholarly attention in recent years. Yet historians have largely ignored how these legal projects intersected with that year’s war in Israel/Palestine. In this article, I push these two stories back into a single frame by examining the year-long efforts of one early human rights organization, the World Jewish Congress, to advance rights-claims on behalf of Middle Eastern Jewish communities imperiled by the regional repercussions of the war. The WJC’s record of activities affords us a direct window into contemporaneous activist understandings of the ties between the Holocaust and the Nakba, human rights and genocide, and international law and politics. More broadly, it reveals the intrinsic limits of early human rights advocacy in an emerging global system exclusively structured around nation states.

Information and AccountabilityRegulating the Corporate Social Responsibility to Respect Human Rights through Ranking and Reporting

This chapter argues that regulation can occur through rankings and reporting by providing information about risks to rights allowing concerned citizens to exercise informed choice. This chapter examines the emergence and evolution of selected ranking and reporting frameworks in the expanding realm of business and human rights advocacy. Specifically, it examines how indicators in the form of rankings and reports evaluating the conduct of transnational corporate actors can serve as regulatory tools with potential to bridge a global governance gap that places human rights at risk. It explains the conditions that have led to coordination and collaboration among those entities engaged in creating reporting frameworks and rankings while nevertheless relying upon the competitive impulses of the business enterprises being ranked to assert influence. It also identifies why the businesses being ranked have been slow to deploy effective counterstrategies despite efforts to contest emerging reporting requirements. It considers the interaction of selected business and human rights indicators with recent laws regulating supply chain transparency in the United States and with recent global policy initiatives calling for business enterprises to conduct human rights impact assessments. It reviews some of the methodological and moral risks raised with respect to ranking rights. In conclusion, the chapter argues that in the ecology of global governance, these new business and human rights indicators will provide rights advocates with greater power and have the potential to play an important role in solidifying emerging soft law standards and in strengthening corporate self-regulation. The strategic use of indicators in the business and human rights realm could ultimately prove to make the commitments contained in voluntary codes of conduct to respect human rights obligatory.

Strategies for Reform: Facilitating Intersectionality in Human Rights Advocacy

An intersectional human rights framework offers victims of human rights violations the best chance to recover remedies that fully address the complex and structural dimensions of the violations. To be effective within any national, regional, or international human rights system, however, intersectionality must be part of the institutional culture. Members of the human rights bodies must be conversant with the theory and comfortable applying it in a variety of human rights scenarios. Chapter 7 explored the ways in which NGOs can facilitate intersectional analysis by engaging human rights bodies in the discourse of intersectionality. This chapter examines structural reforms within the UN human rights system that will foster intersectional analysis. Breaking down the silos in the treaty body system and creating opportunities for collaboration will help to facilitate system-wide intersectional analysis, all of which will benefit victims of human rights violations around the world.

Putting Intersectionality to Work: Non-governmental Organizations

Just as the UN treaty bodies have been increasingly willing to consider intersectionality in the international human rights context, many nongovernmental organizations have also incorporated an intersectional approach into their human rights advocacy. NGOs enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the treaty bodies, holding the treaty bodies accountable for their human rights work while also accepting guidance from the treaty bodies as to how best to engage with the UN system. This reciprocal dynamic makes NGOs a fruitful source for exploring their potential to advocate for intersectional approaches within the United Nations and for examining ways in which the treaty bodies might also encourage NGOs to use intersectional frameworks in their own advocacy work. The growing acceptance of intersectionality within the United Nations and within the civil society sector is mutually reinforcing and holds the promise of more comprehensive remedies for human rights victims.