Advocacy: A Good Word Gone Bad (original) (raw)
Related papers
How did advocacy become a core term in the vocabulary of international rights? Examining how the term is used, the reasons for its success, and the practices it designates constitutes a useful tool for analyzing certain transformations underway in the world known as “international civil society.” The style of promoting causes and interests, and the legitimate forms of speaking out for international and local NGOs that advocacy implies, has a consequence: the higher cost of criticism for those who do not have the necessary resources to commit to this format.
Humanitarian Appeal and the Paradox of Power
Humanitarian organizations have in the past 10 years enjoyed immense support with their Western publics. At the same time, however, the humanitarian sector is under increasing pressure from various sources, under scrutiny for its administration costs, its marketized practices, its alleged politicization. Some say that humanitarianism is in crisis. This paper examines the development of humanitarian advertising through analysis of 124 newspaper ads published in the period from 1970 to 2005. Using a discourse analytical approach which combines institution analysis with multimodal text analysis, it draws out the most marked changes that can be observed in the mode of appeal employed during this period, with a view to understanding the impact of the changing conditions of existence of humanitarian organizations on their public appeal. The paper exposes an increasing submission of humanitarian organizations to external demands, in terms of their choice of beneficiaries for public attention and in terms of the symbolic relations they set up between donors and beneficiaries. It is argued that this development is associated with a paradox of power and results in humanitarian organizations surrendering their moral authority and professional expertise.
Advocacy is an important strategy in achieving change in international development programming. Different aid agencies design and implement advocacy programmes to influence the political climate, policy and programme decisions, public agenda, resource allocation and social norms and practices. Despite the extensive recognition of the importance of advocacy in development discourse, its effectiveness is sometimes questioned. This study sought to explore the understanding of advocacy by development workers and identify new approaches to make it more effective. In-depth interviews were conducted with some 65 development professionals from at least 30 UN and non-UN development agencies. The findings reveal that advocacy is still broadly perceived as indispensable in achieving social outcomes but many development workers are ill-equipped for this function. The study identifies major causes of advocacy ineffectiveness such as lack of strategic approach, deficient issue framing and positioning and weak application of the science and art of social influence. It concludes that without a critical consideration of the complex interplay of local, national and international forces which frame political and social environments, advocacy will not be able effect change at the popu lation level.T he study recommends more research on how leadership enhances advocacy effectiveness.
Advocacy and Diplomacy two sides of the same coin
Diplomacy is not what it used to be and diplomats are not the same as in the past. The decadence of the Diplomatic system is it also the decadence of a global model that is claiming for changes, getting rid of bilateralism, anti-global goals, isolationist strategies and prominent role of no diplomatic leaders. A global strategy on Human security is basically a matter of a skillful use of Diplomacy as a tool for delivering stability and moving beyond Mediation. Indeed, under current global model, crises –as Middle East- are not isolated from the rest of the world but part of an international machinery of “doing politics” that is creating dangerous roots around instability, violation of IHL, Human Rights and no accountable military presence/attacks that go beyond a national conflict.
Public Humanitarian Advocacy: Challenges, Opportunities and its Channelling through Celebrities
The work explores public humanitarian advocacy aimed at championing humanitarian issues stemming from conflict-related crises. It develops around two arguments. First, in current humanitarian environment advocacy has lost its original positive connotations and has assumed negative implications, thus transforming it into a 'good word gone bad'. Second, agency-media relationship engendered drawbacks for the humanitarians that pushed them to explore the use of vectors alternative to the media. The work analyses the evolution of humanitarian advocacy, identifies the main reasons for its deviation and provides conceptual and theoretical frameworks for its understanding. It investigates two initiatives in line with advocacy's original meaning. It examines the grounds for the agencies to reshape their relationships with the media, and to explore alternative vectors to convey their messages. It concludes with a study of the reasons, effectiveness, advantages and challenges behind the use of celebrity advocacy. The work sheds some light on a poorly analysed and researched topic, and is of interest to humanitarians and researchers in conflict humanitarianism and war/crisis communication.
Who is your constituency? The political engagement of humanitarian organisations
The World Humanitarian Summit of 2016 was an attempt to elevate humanitarian organisations more completely into the international political domain. Humanitarian organisations are agencies which provide life-saving assistance to populations in times of conflict or man-made disasters and use the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence to guide their work. However, humanitarian organisations have always been political entities which engage within the political arena that encompasses humanitarian activity and consists of component actors that include beneficiaries, host and donor governments, local communities, and humanitarian organisations themselves. How, and with whom, they engage contributes to their identity and consequently their ability to implement humanitarian activities. The appropriateness of their political engagement, and the impact of such engagement on their identity, is frequently a source of confusion and contention within humanitarian organisations, particularly when it comes to consideration of the neutrality principle. This commentary argues for the value of using the concept of constituency in analysing the political identity of a humanitarian organisation and its process of political engagement. Without proactively analysing their constituencies, humanitarians are not defining their own political identity and risk others defining it for them. It is often feared that by engaging politically, humanitarian organisations risk compromising their neutrality. This assertion, however, wrongly assumes that the principle of political neutrality must be associated with a state of political inactivity. Further, political neutrality, along with other dimensions of political identity, is not a concept that can be maintained passively but must be built and defined in every political context, both to implement the humanitarian agenda and to defend it from co-option. This process requires taking a clear stance aligned with beneficiaries and other allied constituents, building coalitions and constructive positions with them, and countering coercive constituents who act destructively towards humanitarian principles.
Aero-bombings of hospitals amount to 52% of all types of attacks against health care facilities having the most damaging impact on public healthcare according to WHO. This alarming tendency triggered the need for critical analysis of this phenomenon and action to be taken by humanitarian actors in response. This paper examines the use of legal arguments in humanitarian advocacy campaigns, based on a case study with the ICRC and MSF. It proposes the IRAC (Issue; Relevant Law; Applicability; Conclusion) method that can help to make a legal analysis and to be used in designing a humanitarian advocacy strategy.
40(1) John Marshall Law Review 195-233, 2006
It is commonly held that humanitarian agencies must be bound by principles of impartiality and neutrality if they are to enjoy rights and privileges similar to those accorded to the ICRC under the Geneva Conventions. Yet this view relies on a too-simplistic conception of the role that agencies play today. Unlike ‘classical’ humanitarianism which consisted of relief work during conflicts, the ‘new’ humanitarianism includes testifying and advocacy, development, and peace building, and its ideology is moving away from the ICRC principles of neutrality and impartiality. This paper challenges the argument that by taking on responsibilities beyond relief-work, and taking political and human rights considerations into account, these new humanitarian agencies have compromised their commitment to humanitarian assistance, and consequently lost claim to the rights and privileges that flow from such commitment. It argues that humanitarian assistance is a fluid concept, and its content must depend upon the situation. What is necessary is to identify the immutable features of the humanitarian enterprise, and allow flexibility in all other aspects. The paper analyzes the Geneva Conventions and the writings of some of the towering figures associated with the ICRC to conclude that of all the principles associated with humanitarianism only the primary commitment to humanity, and to some extent impartiality, carry any degree of immutability. It also studies the link between relief-work and other functions to conclude that the changing nature of involvement is called upon by the changing nature of the conflicts themselves, and is thus a more appropriately humanitarian response. Finally, it offers a few suggestions to develop a framework for determining when an agency’s actions can be considered suitably 'humanitarian' to justify the applicability of the Geneva Conventions.
2014
is an independent, non-profit research institution and a major international centre in policy-oriented and applied development research. Focus is on development and human rights issues and on international conditions that affect such issues. The geographical focus
Depoliticizing humanitarian action: motives, practices, consequences
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2021
This panel explores the politics of humanitarianism through the less common entry point of 'depoliticization'. Why do humanitarian actors aim to shape and/or present their interventions as 'not political'? How do they do it? What are the consequences, including for conflict-and disasterimpacted populations? The separation of humanitarian action from politics is one of the founding stances of humanitarianism.