Towards Transformative Solidarity: Reflections from Amnesty International's Global Transition Programme

• Citation: Vol. 34 No. 3
• Publication year: 2020

Towards Transformative Solidarity: Reflections from Amnesty International's Global Transition Programme

Sarah Jackson

TOWARDS TRANSFORMATIVE SOLIDARITY: REFLECTIONS FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S GLOBAL TRANSITION PROGRAMME

Sarah Jackson^*

Introduction

In 2014, Amnesty International ("Amnesty")—the world's largest international human rights organization—made a big shift. A people's movement of seven million members, supporters and activists, its International Secretariat was previously based in London. In a bold movement-led decision, Amnesty decided to go-global, dispersing its presence around the world through Regional Offices under a Global Transition Programme (GTP).¹ Most Amnesty members were, and still are, based in the Global North, but the organization is growing its membership elsewhere to become truly global.²

This Article looks at how this process metamorphosed Amnesty's model of international solidarity. It looks at what it would take for Amnesty's solidarity—and by extension that of other historically Northern-based international human rights groups—to become even more transformative. It is unique in two ways. First, it develops a new concept of the solidarity spectrum building on the emerging concept of transformative solidarity. This can be used to map collaborations between partners with different kinds of power—not only within the human rights movement, but also more broadly in civic, political, and social

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organizing. Second, it is the first external study on the GTP from an Amnesty International Secretariat employee.

Human rights can liberate people from fear and want, but the human rights practice can also—sometimes unwittingly—entrench existing power relations. To be truly emancipatory, such relations must instead be transformed. The efficacy of old models of Global North pressure on Global South governments may also be fading. This partially stems from growing awareness of Global North governments picking and choosing which rights to respect.³ Together with the ethical imperative to respect the agency and leadership of those most affected by human rights abuses, new forms of power are needed to claim space and negotiate respect for human rights. Transformative solidarity—standing in solidarity with people taking their agency as a starting point, rather than acting for people—looks at how human rights can be domestically, cross-regionally, and transnationally reinterpreted as a language of liberation, ensuring that it does not reproduce the hierarchies that it stands against.

Doing this requires international human rights groups to work in a more horizontal and humble way. This Article is about how to do that. It is also about the tensions that emerge in deciding when to do so. These include choosing between "command and control" and participatory organizing models; adherence to strict policies and enabling broad-based engagement; brand and collaboration; and catering to a Global North-based audience and speaking to a more global one. Inevitably, this Article cannot resolve these tensions, but it proposes that recognizing these tensions is the first step. It constructs a framework and language to discuss them. It further suggests that international human rights organizations need to explicitly decide where to situate specific areas of work on the solidarity spectrum in a contextually grounded way.

Amnesty is the case study for this research, and the organization's membership offers unique opportunities and challenges to transformative solidarity. But many of the Article's reflections are relevant to other major international human rights groups too, and it intends to be a useful contribution to broader reform efforts. In September 2018, Human Rights Watch launched its Alliances and Partnerships Initiative.⁴ At the same time, Amnesty started

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designing its next global strategic planning process based on how the organization works, rather than what it works on.⁵ How such organizations work—what they choose to work on, ways of working, and the solutions they prioritize—also affect the landscape and consciousness of human rights work more broadly.

This Article begins by describing the methodology used for the semi-structured interviews conducted within the Amnesty International Secretariat (staff servicing the movement), movement (the Amnesty membership base), and with other civil society and social movement activists. Part II follows with an exploration of different kinds of solidarity and an explanation of the solidarity spectrum, a new concept based on both the theory and practice on which this study is grounded.. Part III examines Amnesty's solidarity model before the GTP, showing the premise on which it was based and demonstrating its limits. Shifting then to solidarity after the GTP, Part IV looks at how converging external and internal pressures created a paradigm shift in Amnesty's solidarity model. It shows how with this increasingly transformative model, many Global North sections—national membership chapters—are contributing to building solidarity domestically, Regional Offices are being more selective about where international solidarity is strategic, and partnerships with less formal organizations are underway.

The latter half of this Article identifies what it would take for Amnesty—and by extension other traditionally Northern-based human rights organizations—to move towards a more transformative solidarity. Part V looks at barriers to transformative solidarity, including balancing collaboration with others subject to internal policies, brand management, and speed of response at critical moments. Part VI outlines how international human rights groups can act in transformative solidarity domestically by listening to partners, identifying when to step up and aside, considerations for aligning with social movements, the potential—and limits—of participatory research, and new domestic organizing models. Cross-regionally, it then looks at ways to flip the solidarity script through South-North and South-South solidarity. Transnationally, it looks at the role of global solidarity in responding to interconnected issues. Part VII argues that to transform solidarity among others, international human rights actors first need to transform solidarity among themselves. Solidarity must become a key feature of internal organizational culture and how staff relate to

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each other to prevent a cognitive dissonance between their work and how it is done.

I. Methodology

This Article is based on research as a Practitioner-in-Residence at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute from March to September 2018. The author was on sabbatical from Amnesty as Deputy Regional Director (Campaigns) for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. Though the organization's Senior Leadership Team reviewed the concept note, this project is independent and does not reflect an official organizational view.

As praxis, this work sits at the nexus of academic and activist knowledge. It is based on forty-three semi-structured interviews with twenty individuals from within Amnesty's International Secretariat; seven individuals from within the Amnesty movement, national offices and Secretary General-managed offices; and sixteen civil society or social movement activists. Interviews were conducted between May and October 2018, primarily by Skype with two people responding in writing. Interviewees' roles and affiliations are listed as they were at the time of interview or correspondence. Although the interviews have good geographical and gender representation, the interviews do not purport to be a representative sample. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the research integrates concepts from political science, international relations, law, sociology, psychology, post-colonial studies, feminism and gender studies, and organizational development and leadership.

II. Solidarity Spectrum

This study is grounded in a new concept, the "solidarity spectrum," ranging from charitable solidarity for people to more transformative solidarity with people. Solidarity is defined as political activism for social change based on unity of purpose.⁶ This may stem from a common identity, e.g., gender; common interests, e.g., workers who have professional interests or bargain collectively; or common moral, political, or faith-based beliefs.⁷ Responding to injustice or oppression, solidarity brings together people with shared commitment to a cause. Solidarity can be oppositional by resisting injustice, but also propositional

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with a shared vision for change.⁸ Solidarity is both rationally based on logic and interests, as well as emotionally grounded in sentiments.⁹ These may include anger, hope, sympathy, empathy, fear, and friendship.¹⁰

One end of the solidarity spectrum has a unidirectional approach to solidarity rooted in charity. Activists in the Global North see victims or survivors of human rights abuses in the Global South as objects of their solidarity.¹¹ They take campaign actions for people or speak for them, replacing the agency of affected people and communities.¹² Such actions target third parties, largely Global North governments, aiming to affect change through a "boomerang effect."¹³ This transnational advocacy model has information flowing from South to North, leading to state-to-state pressure from North to South.¹⁴

The other end of the spectrum—transformative solidarity—takes the agency of affected people and communities as its starting point.¹⁵ Activists take campaign actions with these groups to support each other in their interconnected struggles.¹⁶ Recognizing asymmetries of power, this approach is grounded in empathy and connectedness and tries to leverage collective strengths.¹⁷ It can be built domestically across people and organizations or transnationally using "multiple boomerangs" with pressure for human rights change coming from several geographic locations and directed...