Beyond a small club of human rights elites, identifying the organizations that should and could enlist as part of a global movement—sharing organizational identities, voicing consistent messages, and campaigning through the same channels—is difficult. Why? Because internationalization can often do more harm than good, as the example of India’s human rights arena makes clear.
The case for making human rights advocacy more representative is undeniable, and three models for doing so have emerged from the discussion so far: decentralization (the shift eastwards and southwards); franchising (the creation of local hubs from the ground up); and partnership (linkages between groups at the domestic and international levels). Each approach offers several benefits, and they lend the experience, resources and reach accrued by INGOs to domestic groundswells of activity.
But the call for a global movement of NGOs by NGOs makes the assumption that linking local and international groups arm in arm is unproblematic. Doing so obscures the enormous diversity of the human rights community when, in fact, this heterogeneity is central. The differences reflect carefully considered choices about identity, strategy and reach on the part of rights groups, and these distinctions make clear that internationalization is not for everyone.
