Content area
Abstract
This project examines rights-based mobilization (RBM)—advocating for domestic policy change by claiming internationally defined rights and engaging international human rights institutions—by local activists in Colombia and Kenya. It investigates how the expansion of human rights norms and mechanisms of enforcement has impacted when and how activists employ international norms to promote domestic policy change. Data gathered during fourteen months of fieldwork in Colombia and Kenya are used to compare the strategic use of international human rights law by activists in two issue areas: 1) lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, and 2) women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Each country case reflects rights-based mobilization at domestic, regional, and/or global levels to map the variety of modalities through which local stakeholders employ international human rights law to advocate for domestic change.
This study finds that domestic activists make strategic choices about the use of international human rights law within the context of two interacting structural factors. First, the domestic opportunity structure predicts the initial strategy of mobilization. Second, the transnational structure of the human rights issue at stake encompasses existing legal frameworks and patterns of mobilization that shape how activists navigate the opportunities and constraints of RBM at other levels and over time. The extent to which these structures enable or restrict certain forms of RBM is further mediated by the process through which local activism emerges, that is, whether the issue and attendant RBM arise organically from demands of local activists, or through external, non-domestic sources of associational life.
This study expands our understanding of international law and human rights mobilization in three ways. First, it specifies the forms of RBM by further unpacking the practices and modalities through which international human rights law can impact domestic policies. Second, it highlights the agency of domestic activists within a broader strategic context of domestic and international human rights politics. Finally, it extends the empirical study of international human rights law to LGBT and women’s reproductive rights to reflect the expanding universe of activism claiming internationally defined rights to advance domestic policy changes.
