Theories of change for human rights and for development

Few human rights agencies work with an explicit theory of change. It is much more common for agencies to have an implicit, partially formed theory of change. Eyben et al. (2008, 202–3) place an ‘archetypes framework’ in this category – change is implicitly thought to come about through some takenfor-granted conventional wisdom (enlightened elites, new laws, people in the streets, a good example, a shock to the system, etc.). The objective of this chapter is to explore what might be gained by bringing these implicit, partially formed theories of change to light within human rights practice

Transitional Justice and Theories of Change : towards evaluation as understanding

This article has two goals. First, to make explicit the theories of change currently operative within transitional justice and, second, to critically engage with both these theories, and dominant theories in international development. As such, it seeks to replace a focus on results, attribution, and linearity with a privileging of process, contribution and complexity. Developing theories of change for transitional justice is challenging, as it is characterised by diverse interventions, complex and contested contexts, and the need to balance principles and pragmatism. Normative, linear and mechanism-based claims remain dominant, while the evidence base for transitional justice is still weak. This article looks at insights from adjacent fields, some of the challenges facing the development of theories of change within transitional justice, and evidence from impact studies and evaluations. In a final section we propose an alternative, drawing on complexity theory and actor-oriented approaches, which suggest an important set of terms – systems, interaction, contingency, context, encounter, emergence, incrementalism – to inform what we term evaluation as understanding

South African life stories under apartheid: Imprisonment, exile, homecoming.

Apartheid South Africa was variously imprisoned, exiled, and engaged in the task of homecoming. This troika permeated society as reality, symbol and creative capital; as a political reality each of the experiences distilled the diverse human possibilities and potentials of apartheid. This is a study of the linked political encounters of detention/imprisonment, exile and homecoming, as well as the more general dynamics of oppression and resistance and the culture of violence, through the life story genre. Within the dynamics of struggle the focus of the thesis is on the transformative nature of resistance, in particular auto/biographical counter-discourses, as a means through which opponents of apartheid retained/regained agency and power. The main aim of the thesis is to articulate and apply a theory of life story praxis in the context of political contestation. The theory has five main components. Firstly, the life story in such contexts is marked by the imperative for narratives to be provisional, partial, tactical, to be managed in accordance with an evolving political purpose. The second component relates to the violent collaboration of state and opponent in identity construction and interpretation. This argument facilitates, as the third theoretical premise, a broad definition of texts that either are auto/biographical or impact upon the context and process of narration. Fourthly, lives are told many times over, identities are repeatedly un/remade, within an arena that is dense with prior versions and/or a discursive void. Finally, I argue that the ownership and meaning of life story narratives are provisional and contested while retaining a dominant narrative and political truth. In the main body of the thesis this theory is applied to the life stories of incarceration, exile, and homecoming

From agency to root causes: addressing structural barriers to transformative justice in transitional and post-conflict settings

Transformative justice has emerged as a new practice agenda for addressing structural and systemic violence in post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. This article is situated at a critical juncture: while the emerging scholarship has focussed on community agency and action, there is little as yet that has explored the social structures and relations in transition societies that are harm-generating and which constrain action. We argue that a critical social science, grounded in realist social theory, systems thinking and complexity theory, have a vital role to play in rendering transparent the relations and structures that resist change. New knowledge about the ‘root causes’ of harm is both conceptually innovative and useful to practice, helping practitioners identify societal arrangements in need of change and informing strategies for action. This article illustrates the approach through its application to a study with poor farmers in post-Revolution Tunisia. The article should be of interest to researchers and practitioners in transitional and transformative justice, conflict and post-conflict, peacebuilding, and security sector reform, who are engaged with understanding and addressing issues of structural and systemic violence

Transitional Justice from the Margins : Collective Reparations and Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission

The Tunisian revolution of 2011 moved from socio-economic to political concerns, and from the margins and periphery of the South and West of the country to the centre, Tunis, driven by the slogan of “jobs, dignity and freedom”. The goal of this article is to understand the potential of using the spatially informed concept of marginalisation to reimagine transitional justice, using the “victim zone” as a case study. The Truth and Dignity Commission's founding legislation tasked it with identifying victim zones that had “suffered systematic marginalisation or exclusion” and proposing reparation for structural violations suffered. Empirical data collected from two disadvantaged regions of Tunisia are used to provide a bottom-up, victim-centred, look at structural and economic violence. The IVD has largely failed to-date to deliver on its promise in relation to collective reparations, but a combination of theory and empirical data provides a springboard for a discussion of how the margins could unsettle current transitional justice practice, both normatively and practically. The article concludes by outlining an unfinished business agenda for Tunisia and implications for future transitional justice. Specifically, it argues for a transitional justice from the margins that focuses on space as well as time, collectives as well as individuals, a normative plurality rather than a single universalised global framework, decentralised agency rather than centralised institutional primacy, and a new social contract (forms of participation and recognition) rather than the continuity of elite bargains

The cultural politics of human rights and neoliberalism

Do human rights offer the potential to challenge neo-liberalism? I argue that rather than understanding human rights as ideology, as obscuring or legitimating neo-liberalism, it is more productive to see both human rights and neo-liberalism as hegemonic projects. In this article I explore convergences and divergences between dominant discourses and practices of human rights and neo-liberalism around key ideas ‘the state’, ‘the individual’ and ‘the nation’, to clear a space for appreciation of the cultural politics of human rights: divergences in constructions of responsibility and hierarchies of value of concrete individuals offer openings for challenging ideas and practices of neo-liberalism through campaigns for human rights

Speak out on poverty: Hearing, inaudibility, and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa

In 1998, Speak Out on Poverty held hearings across South Africa shortly after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) completed eighteen months of highly publicized, nationwide hearings at which victims testified. Speak Out challenged the TRC’s focus on overt political violations, seen to occlude forms of structural violence central to apartheid's policy and practice, as well as longer legacies of colonialism. Reading Speak Out alongside the TRC puts pressure on supposed differences between official truth commissions or tribunals and those run by civil society. Discussing Speak Out in relation to the TRC signaled more than a set of comparisons. In a time of transition, Speak Out spoke from within and against the noise of the TRC. It aimed to make poverty and inequality the nation's priority rather than reconciliation, or at least to challenge notions of reconciliation that did not have inequity and poverty at its center

What Change Are We Trying To Achieve? Theories of Change in Human Rights and Development

Few human rights or development agencies work with an explicit theory of change. It is much more common for agencies to have an implicit, partially formed theory of change. The objective of this research project is to explore what might be gained by bringing these explicit, partially formed theories of change to light. It addresses two core questions: What is gained by making theories of change explicit rather than implicit? And, what are the similarities and differences between human rights and development theories of change, and why is such an analysis useful? The potential advantage of rendering a theory of change explicit is that it provides a vantage point from which all aspects of organisational activity can be viewed, coordinated and, if necessary, reformed

How to Build a Culture of Human Rights in the Era of Populism: Reflections From the Human Rights City of York (UK)

This article analyses how to build a culture of human rights in the era of populism. The UK, and the York Human Rights City initiative, provide a case study. The article draws on a human rights practice methodology, activist practices and broader social processes and practices, both in York, to analyse the potential of the ‘local’, and in particular cities, to develop a human rights culture. It argues that such a culture needs to go beyond current responses to populism, notably a focus on values and framing (a variant of ‘if only people knew’), to draw on thicker components of culture (history and place, rather than law and institutions). Interviews with artists in York as a proxy for wider public engagement suggest an enduring disconnect with human rights but also that meaning-making, co-creation, not just better communication, is needed to build a culture of human rights