Challenging the savior mentality in human rights work: Narratives from community activists in Myanmar

• In Event: Peace and Human Rights Education and Activism: International and Indigenous Intersections

Proposal

This paper will share data from a participatory action research project conducted with community activists in Myanmar, building on discourse around inherent power imbalances in international human rights work by highlighting local activists voices. The notion of European colonial legacies existing in human rights work is prevalent in the discourse around the human rights project. Weissman (2004) writes that “the disparity in power between the colonizer and the colonized continues to affect the ongoing development of human rights norms, and that “the human rights project must be guided by an awareness of the power relationships that shape proposed remedies” (p. 262). She is not alone in her work calling on critical understandings of human rights work (Bob, 2005, Rieff, 2002, Spivak, 2002, Vinjamuir & Ron, 2013). These scholars highlight the notion of power in the human rights project and its colonial legacies. Using postcolonial and third world feminist frameworks, this paper offers analysis of narratives of local activists’ relationship with human rights discourse and their relationships with international aid and human rights workers. Often times, human rights activists coming from countries with poor human rights records were themselves labeled victims in the same place they came to empower the work they were doing. There are two problems with this; one is the essentialist notion that everyone from that place is the same and therefore a victim of a human rights violation, and the second is that because everyone is a victim, it must take someone from outside to save them. The assumptions are that all people within a nation are the same; they come from a country that suffers human rights abuses and therefore are all victims of human rights abuses. This narrative reinforces an idea that to “help”, an outsider must come into to provide human rights.

This paper will address nuanced understandings and critical analysis of how and why certain activists will embrace or reject the use of human rights standards and practice. It offers suggestions for reform within education and training of international human rights activists to challenge the North to South gaze, which often accompanies those from the North attempting to “save” those from the Global South.

The research that this paper draws on took place from 2011-2014 through a Participatory Action Research project where two co-researchers from Myanmar and the presenter, a U.S. born Latina, gathered the narratives of community activists in Myanmar to better understand their work and their perceptions of foreign-born workers and activists. Through the conduction of this project, the co-researchers and the presenter did not only gather narratives but also had the opportunity to reflect on our own process of working together. This allowed us a space to self-reflect on the process of researching together as a group as well as gathering data on what others say about the human rights work within the country. The data presented in this paper discusses how narratives from Myanmar either contested or reinforced an understanding of human rights as civil and political rights. It will also highlight what type of relationships exist around human rights work, and what these relationships can tell us about how transnational activism is taking place from the perspective of local activists from Myanmar. Following that, this paper will discuss implications for this work both in fields of global studies and human rights programs



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Weissman, D. (2004). The human rights dilemma: Rethinking the humanitarian project. Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 35(259), 259-336.

Author

• Amy Argenal, University of San Francisco