The purpose of this master thesis was to gain more insights into the actual impact that INGOs like Human Rights Watch incorporate as part of global politics. The case of HRW proved to be a great example, which had been largely neglected by the academic analysts so far. The theoretical framework introduced important implications necessary to understand the influence of INGOs to date. Based on a constructivist thinking, it was possible to outline a global political order, which is tremendously influenced by civil society actors such as INGOs. Especially the increasing significance of norms within an internationally arena -- that is becoming more and more connected -- gives impetus to actors that base their work on these collective beliefs. The deliberative power incorporated by INGOs enables them to actually challenge nation-states as well as market representatives by transforming the public sphere thoroughly. Human Rights Watch as particular case study has been analyzed as an organization that epitomizes the power of a rising global civil society. Throughout their historical development, HRW actively contributed to the defense of human rights against repressive governments as well as other violators. Obviously, the foundation of HRW was to a tremendous extent dependent on an overall evolution of human rights within the international arena. The end of the Second World War and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations paved the way for human rights to become an official and crucial part of international affairs. However, it took until the mid-70s when human rights turned into a major paradigm to be followed by nation-states. With the emergence of Helsinki Watch and the consequent evolution of other watch committees, the non-governmental organization strongly engaged with repressive governments (regardless of political orientation) in various regions of the world. Analyzing the contemporary organizational structure of HRW has been a difficult task due to relatively little information available. However, one can clearly state that HRW nowadays acts as a human rights defending organization that is virtually able to respond to abuses in every corner of the world. Its eagerness to review organizational process and adjust to novel human rights issues provides HRW with a unique flexibility and a large room for operations. This is also further strengthened through the integration of HRW within the international arena when considering their consultative status at the United Nations, the platform for worldwide relevant negotiations. Their growing presence in major capitals in conjunction with effective methodological approaches frequently permits HRW employees to meet up with heads of states. The impact this might have on the domestic opposition as well as on the actual socialization of norms has been described with the help of the example from Mexico, where the government refused to deal with forced disappearances. By actively engaging on-site, HRW tremendously fostered civil society movements that were otherwise unheard and powerless. As indicated in line with the spiral model, the intervention of HRW transformed the public sphere and boosted the dialogue between public and civil society representatives. The eagerness of the Mexican government to implement changes must be perceived as a success of HRW in its pursuit to defend human rights.

This doctoral research project conducts a political sociology of knowledge of non-governmental actors engaged in advocating and reporting on issues relating to conflict and human rights. It engages the following research question: what are the limits of knowledge produced by non-governmental advocates? This question is applied to empirical case studies looking at, firstly, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, and secondly, a network of global activists working on post-war Sri Lanka (2010-2014). Applying a Bourdieusian sociological framework, the thesis argues that professional advocates' epistemic practices are shaped by an array of socio-political dependencies. Contrasting with past applications of Bourdieu to International Relations, this thesis reveals contextually-specific dependencies through multiple levels and scales of analysis. At the organisational level, these dependencies manifest through advocacy NGOs' market-like relations with their targeted consumers, as well as their relations with rival knowledge producers. At the level of the human practitioner, it is shown how leading advocacy NGOs are reliant upon a relatively narrow labour market, consisting of practitioners who share a strong dispositional affinity with their consumers. Studying a smaller group of global advocates working on post-war Sri Lanka, the thesis also demonstrates how symbiotic relations between NGO practitioners and leading policy stakeholders had a structuring effect on advocates' network relations, as well as stimulating a deference to a dominant policy discourse of 'liberal peace'. Shifting the attention to advocates' extraction of knowledge from its proximal contexts, this thesis also examines the influence of advocates' localised dependencies. In the case of post-war Sri Lanka, it is shown how foreign advocates' knowledge is informed by a limited set of domestic actors, primarily encompassing the country's liberal elites. Overall, these dependencies are argued to place significant constraints on knowledge generated in advocacy contexts - limits that differ to other modes of knowledge production.

After decades of repression and segregation South Africa managed to break free from the Apartheid era. The year was 1994 when democracy started to prevail in South Africa. That year a truth commission was created in the country to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid. This thesis will analyze the truth commission’s management through three perspectives. These perspectives are the Truth Commission’s, a report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and lastly a theory by Samuel Huntington. The analysis is designed as a case study of the truth commission’s work. This thesis describes the commissions work and the challenges that followed. The purpose of the thesis is to describe and analyze some of the different approaches on South Africa’s process of reconciliation. This has been done to see if there is parallels or possible contradictions between the perspectives and to highlight challenges. The result shows that the perspectives do have split opinions about the commissions work. The Truth Commission aims to bring the country forward in a fast pace, while Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stands more critical on how the commission chooses to go about. Clear parallels are also shown between Huntingtons theory and the reality of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Transitional justice emerged as an integral part of state- and peacebuilding processes during the same period as the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This created a market for human rights promotion in which non-governmental organizations were perceived as experts. Although transitional justice is a well-researched area, few studies have analyzed the production of knowledge by non-governmental organizations in this field. The aim of this study is to bridge this research gap by analyzing how two non-governmental organizations – Human Rights Watch and Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation – create and use the concept of victim in their reports. The reports were analyzed in two steps, based on qualitative content analysis. The first step was to code the material based on theoretical assumptions and the content. The second step was to create a narrative which was the base for the theoretical analysis of the material. The analysis centers around three key concepts: cosmopolitanism, representation and the subaltern. This theoretical framework is created based on the two scholars Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Ulrich Beck. The analysis shows that both organizations are creating a space in their reports, a cosmopolitan reality, in which they are legitimizing their own work. The creation of different subjects, such as victim, is also done in relation to this space. In other words, the organizations create the concept of victim to suit their own world-view and rationale.

As media organisations dedicate less money and resources to journalism covering issuesrelating to development and social change, NGO’s are becoming increasingly visible as newscreators, funders and enablers. NGOs and media organisations are now frequentlycollaborating and even making partnerships to produce news content, which is having wide-ranging effects on the field of journalism.These phenomena coincide with the wide diversification of the news media landscape overthe past 2 decades, with a generation of ‘new media’ organisations rising up to challengethe dominance of legacy media entities, and bringing with them new practices andunderstandings of journalistic values.Where previous research has centred on the ‘blurring of roles’ between traditionalmainstream media outlets and NGOs, this thesis explores partnerships between NGOs and‘new media’ organisations which are not necessarily grounded upon the core practices ofprofessional journalism, using a case study of a recent ‘content partnership’ between the UShuman rights NGO Human Rights Watch, and the viral content website Upworthy.Given the vertiginous rise of digital media organisations over the past two decades, suchpartnerships could have a significant impact on how both NGOs communicate, and howmedia entities interact with NGOs, raising questions over journalistic standards, the powerdynamics between NGOs and the media, and even the viability of ‘objective’ news coveragein the future.To interrogate these issues, this thesis studies articles and videos produced as part of thepartnership between Human Rights Watch and Upworthy through statistical and textualanalyses, taking primary theoretical inspiration from Kate Wright’s “Moral Economies:Interrogating the Interactions of NGOs, Journalists and Freelancers”, (2016) and MatthewPowers’ Beyond Boon or Bane; Using normative theories to evaluate the newsmakingefforts of NGOs (2017).The findings of this study could be of use to NGO practitioners and journalists who areconsidering engaging in an NGO-media partnership, as well as to journalism, media anddevelopment researchers.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T20:21:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thania Enriqueta Soto Lemke.pdf: 522307 bytes, checksum: 7727adfbbfe4020f406e1fb1b490a593 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-10-19 / The transnational nature of phenomena as human rights and the environment consolidated action spaces for civil society agents and, specifically, transnational non-governmental organizations which were organized to attend the demands from the state area and the international organizations; besides rising local problems to an international sphere. As to human rights, the defence of universal values has been constituted into a fertile arena for non-governmental organizations action. Protagonists of a constant monitoring movement and pression on governments and international organizations, aiming the respect for civil and political rights, these actors from the institutional field were raised to direct actions in the governability sphere worldwide, not only referring to human rights themselves , in a consultig way, but also their role as opinion makers. Taking into account the direct actions performed by the transnational non-governmental Human Rights Watch organization, this research intends to contribute towards the understanding of action strategies taken by transnational non-governmental organizations in the contemporary international relations / A natureza transnacional de fenômenos como os direitos humanos e o meio ambiente consolidou espaços de atuação de agentes da sociedade civil e, especificamente, de organizações não-governamentais transnacionais que se organizaram para atender demandas vindas da esfera estatal e dos organismos internacionais e elevando problemáticas locais à esfera internacional. No campo específico dos direitos humanos, a defesa de valores universais se constituiu numa arena fértil para a atuação das ONGs transnacionais. Protagonistas de uma ação constante de monitoramento e pressão aos governos e organizações internacionais para o respeito dos direitos civis e políticos, alçaram estes atores da esfera institucional a atuação na esfera da governabilidade mundial; no que se refere aos direitos humanos, em caráter consultivo além da atuação como formadores de opinião. A partir do estudo dos instrumentos de atuação da organização não- governamental transnacional Human Rights Watch, esta pesquisa pretende contribuir no entendimento das estratégias de atuação das ONGs transnacionais nas relações internacionais contemporâneas

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T14:56:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thania Enriqueta Soto Lemke.pdf: 522307 bytes, checksum: 7727adfbbfe4020f406e1fb1b490a593 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-10-19 / The transnational nature of phenomena as human rights and the environment consolidated action spaces for civil society agents and, specifically, transnational non-governmental organizations which were organized to attend the demands from the state area and the international organizations; besides rising local problems to an international sphere. As to human rights, the defence of universal values has been constituted into a fertile arena for non-governmental organizations action. Protagonists of a constant monitoring movement and pression on governments and international organizations, aiming the respect for civil and political rights, these actors from the institutional field were raised to direct actions in the governability sphere worldwide, not only referring to human rights themselves , in a consultig way, but also their role as opinion makers. Taking into account the direct actions performed by the transnational non-governmental Human Rights Watch organization, this research intends to contribute towards the understanding of action strategies taken by transnational non-governmental organizations in the contemporary international relations / A natureza transnacional de fenômenos como os direitos humanos e o meio ambiente consolidou espaços de atuação de agentes da sociedade civil e, especificamente, de organizações não-governamentais transnacionais que se organizaram para atender demandas vindas da esfera estatal e dos organismos internacionais e elevando problemáticas locais à esfera internacional. No campo específico dos direitos humanos, a defesa de valores universais se constituiu numa arena fértil para a atuação das ONGs transnacionais. Protagonistas de uma ação constante de monitoramento e pressão aos governos e organizações internacionais para o respeito dos direitos civis e políticos, alçaram estes atores da esfera institucional a atuação na esfera da governabilidade mundial; no que se refere aos direitos humanos, em caráter consultivo além da atuação como formadores de opinião. A partir do estudo dos instrumentos de atuação da organização não- governamental transnacional Human Rights Watch, esta pesquisa pretende contribuir no entendimento das estratégias de atuação das ONGs transnacionais nas relações internacionais contemporâneas

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本論文是在研究西藏自一九五○到二○○八年三月間發生過的反共抗暴所引發並受國際與國際人權組織所觀著之西藏人權問題。文中討論美國、歐盟與國際非政府組織(如，人權觀察(Human Rights Watch)和國際特赦組織 (Amnesty International))如何提出相對的策略來抵制中共對西藏的人權政策，並研究中共在即將舉辨奧運的同時如何面對來自各方的抵制與強大壓力，這些問題也隨著奧運的接近而更加顯著。 也許西方文化與中國文化有所不同而在人權的定義也有著些許的差異，但是這並不構成一個適當的理由來否認聯合國所定義用來參考的世界人權宣言（Universal Declaration of Human Rights）。同時本論文的研究範圍也涵蓋到因西藏宗教、政治、經濟與教育上的不自由而今年三月所引發之抗議示威遊行 ，並討論因中共近年來之掘起而美國與歐盟在此次事件上對中共的影響力與態度，這也許與中共的貿易關係不同而產生的影響力與表達的態度會有所不同。 / 中共雖然受到西方政治與國際非政府組織之強大壓力，可是西藏之人權問題仍然未得到改善，也許中共擔心若給予藏民太多的由自而可能造成更多的混亂，但西方政府與國際非政府組織持續在些問題上觀著，並積極保護西藏之宗教、語言與文化，因而讓中共當局在西藏問題上受到極大之挑戰，也必須注入更多的資源來因應。 / This research project focuses on the Human Rights situation in Tibet under the occupation of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) since the 1950s right up to the present times when popular protests against China in Tibetan areas since March 10 this year has put the issue Tibet right back on the international arena. China’s policy stand on human rights and how it refutes accusations by International NGOs of human rights violations in China and Tibet are examined through case studies of the works and reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the current international attention on human rights in the run up to the Olympic Games in Beijing in August, 2008. Contrasting definition of ‘Human Rights’ between China and the west is also examined to suggest that arguments about cultural distinctiveness are no excuse for the denial of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Case studies of lack of religious freedom and the general discrimination suffered by Tibetans in political, economic and educational spheres suggest why the recent popular Tibetan uprisings have erupted. An examination of the influence of International NGOs on the human rights policies of western governments like the US, France, UK, Germany as well as the EU that constitute China’s largest trading partners, show considerable influence and impact through their reports and monitoring of violations of human rights by China. / By adopting a judicious mix of the two approaches of ‘silent constructive engagement’ as well as direct, confrontational ‘naming and shaming’ of individual instances of human rights abuses and violations, the International NGOs and western trading partners of China have achieved incremental success in forcing China to make changes to its human rights policies. Despite the enormous international pressure from International NGOs and western Governments, the leadership of the Communist Party that effectively runs China, is found to be extremely uncooperative in terms of improving human rights in China or Tibet where the current spate of protests have reaffirmed their abiding fear that allowing more freedom and rights to the people could risk a challenge to the supremacy of the Party in continuing to run the PRC and leading it into the 21st century as the undisputed global power. This makes it obvious that International NGOs campaigning for human rights in China and Tibet in particular will continue especially in light of China’s policy of assimilation of minority nationalities like the Tibetans and the Uighurs and the destruction of their distinct national, cultural and religious identity.

Le 22 juin 1994, le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU vote la résolution 929 autorisantle déploiement d’une force multinationale humanitaire, neutre et impartiale au Rwandaayant pour mission de mettre fin aux massacres. Concrètement, c’est la France, àl’initiative de ce projet, qui va assurer le commandement de la mission dénomméeOpération Turquoise. Celle-ci se heurte à l’opposition des rebelles tutsis du FrontPatriotique Rwandais, aux réserves des organisations humanitaires mais elle reçoit lesoutien appuyé du gouvernement intérimaire rwandais hutu. L’Opération Turquoisesuscite surtout une vague d’accusations dans la presse française, le président FrançoisMitterrand et les militaires français étant accusés de « complicité de génocide », voire de« participation au génocide ». Ces accusations perdurent et reviennent régulièrementdepuis plus de vingt ans, relayées par des journalistes qui disent avoir découvert puisrévélé « l’inavouable » rôle de la France au Rwanda.Cette étude analyse les enquêtes journalistiques menées de 1994 à 2014 et lesconfronte aux documents confidentiels et secret-défense issus des archives américaines,françaises, rwandaises et onusiennes, ainsi qu’à la stratégie militaire mise en oeuvredurant l’Opération Turquoise. Elle permet ainsi d’identifier les sources sur lesquellesreposent ces accusations et d’en évaluer le bien-fondé. Ce faisant, elle met en évidence lafaçon dont la recherche s’est concentrée sur le génocide au détriment de la lutte arméeinitiée par le FPR de 1990 à juillet 1994, laissant de côté des aspects essentiels à lacompréhension de la tragédie rwandaise. / On the 22nd June 1994, the UN Security Council passes the resolution 929authorising the deployment of a multinational humanitarian, neutral and impartial force toRwanda having as its mission to put an end to the massacres. In concrete terms, it isFrance, on initiative of this project, who goes to carry out the command of the missionnamed Operation Turquoise. This comes up against the opposition of the Tutsis rebels ofthe Rwandan Patriotic Front, to the reservations of the humanitarian organisations but itreceives the backup support of the acting Rwandan Hutu government. OperationTurquoise incites above all a wave of accusations in the French press, with the PresidentFrançois Mitterand and the French military soldiers being accused of 'complicity ingenocide', even of taking part in the genocide. These accusations have endured and havebeen regularly coming back for more than twenty years, relayed by journalists who claimto have discovered then revealed the shameful role of France in RwandaThis study analyses the journalistic inquiries led from 1994 to 2014 and comparesthem with confidential secret defence documents stemming from American, French,Rwandan and UN records, as well as the military strategy put in place during OperationTurquoise. It also allows identification of the sources on which these accusations lie andevaluation of their validity. In so doing, it brings to the fore the way in which the researchhas focused on the genocide to the detriment of the armed struggle initiated by the RPFfrom 1990 to July 1994, leaving aside essential aspects in the comprehension of theRwandan tragedy.