BtH: The Pursuit of Human Rights in the Middle East and Africa
The Beyond the Headlines, or BtH, series at the Fredrick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University continued on October 3, 2016 with a panel discussion on the pursuit of human rights in the Middle East and Africa.
Panelists included Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, and Tim Longman, Director of the African Studies Center and Professor at the Pardee School. John D. Woodward Jr., Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Pardee School served as the moderator.
Whitson explained the reality that the Middle East and North Africa are currently enduring five wars. As a result, Human Rights Watch devotes considerable efforts to documenting the many human rights violations from these bloody conflicts.
“We at Human Rights Watch have to document the facts. In a region within so many conflicts, that means finding the bodies of victims and identifying perpetrators,” Whitson said.
She also noted that the largest arms providers for these wars are the United States and United Kingdom. Human Rights Watch has called for suspending all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia based on its documenting numerous unlawful airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen that have taken a devastating toll on civilians.
Whitson stressed that Human Rights Watch also advocates for other human rights advances in the region such as seeking to end the male guardianship system in Saudi Arabia which remains the most significant impediment to realizing women’s rights in the country, “effectively rendering adult women legal minors all their life, not entrusted to make decisions for themselves.”
Drawing on his extensive research and human rights work in Africa, including serving as the former director for the Human Rights Watch field office in Rwanda, Longman discussed how human rights as a discourse is “one that often patronizes Africa by making Africa appear exotic, thus distancing us from Africans.”
The panelists emphasized that discourse often isn’t focused enough on the way in which we in the West are connected to these things and in some ways helped to cause the problems on the continent.
While emphasizing the need to have local investigators and advocates on the ground in the region, the panelists stressed that in many countries, authoritarian governments have closed offices, surveilled Human Rights supporters and clamped down on activists. As a result, Human Rights Watch has to pay closer attention to security and tradecraft for its personnel.
Whitson joined a group of Pardee students for a working dinner where she answered student questions and gave practical advice for young people who want to do human rights work after graduation. She encouraged students to be activists for a cause they believe in.