Alexandra Cosima Budabin

Diasporas as development partners for peace? The alliance between the Darfuri diaspora and the Save Darfur Coalition

There is increasing interest today in the relationship between diaspora groups and international development. As a stand-in for the domestic organisation in Keck and Sikkink’s model of a ‘transnational advocacy network’, diasporas serve as important sources of legitimacy and first-hand knowledge to support the ‘information politics’ of host country ngos; in turn, diasporas gain access to policy making around development and conflict resolution. But these alliances present a complicated picture of power and agency with unevenness across actors. Using field research on the US-based ngo Save Darfur Coalition and its partnership with the Darfuri diaspora, I argue that a host country ngo must balance its relationships across numerous stakeholders, including the diaspora, as well as short and long-term development needs. In addition, the strength of the alliance across actors may be influenced by the status of the diaspora and the home and host country contexts.

Celebrities as norm entrepreneurs in international politics: Mia Farrow and the ‘Genocide Olympics’ campaign

How do celebrities go beyond the promotion of human rights causes to shape thinking around possible solutions? This article looks at celebrity activism in international politics by tracing Mia Farrow’s norm entrepreneurship of the term ‘Genocide Olympics’. Expanding on the concept of ‘celebrity diplomacy’, I utilise a norm-building ‘life cycle’ model to argue that a celebrity can not only amplify human rights issues but may also reshape non-governmental organisational and institutional policy frameworks. I contend that the ‘norm entrepreneurship’ of a celebrity lies outside of international forums like the United Nations and involves a more aggressive polemical approach, contrasting with previous understandings of celebrity engagement in international politics. While scholarship has viewed figures such as humanitarian actors and world leaders as norm entrepreneurs, this case demonstrates the capacity of a celebrity to convince the international community to embrace a new norm.

Beyond naming and shaming: New modalities of information politics in human rights

ABSTRACT How and why does information become currency in human rights advocacy? Human rights organizations (HROs) produce media content in an increasingly diverse manner today across multiple platforms, for divergent purposes, and for distinct audiences. Advocacy practices are no longer confined to fact-based reporting aimed at exposing abuse. The sheer magnitude of resources expended in communication evidences the early stages of a shift in which HROs widen their broadcast and target mass audiences. However, human rights scholarship has not adequately addressed this new trend, which has the capacity to radically alter the advocacy landscape. Moving beyond the traditionally narrow focus on “naming and shaming,” we contend that a critical, detailed approach to understanding the strategic use of information will reveal a more complete image of how HROs build influence through their communications strategies. Expanding upon Keck and Sikkinks concept of “information politics,” we develop a theoretical framework that distinguishes a set of practices we call media advocacy. Three unique modalities of media advocacy (juridical, revelatory, and activating) capture a robust portrait of information politics in twenty-first century human rights advocacy. Our innovative tools disclose specific operational and pragmatic implications for HROs, as well as help structure future research in this area.

Celebritizing Conflict: How Ben Affleck Sells the Congo to Americans

From serving as UN ambassadors to appearing as spokespersons for major NGO campaigns, global celebrities have become increasingly important actors in promoting humanitarian causes in Africa. Yet the growing visibility and proliferation of celebrity humanitarianism has been critiqued for legitimating and promoting neoliberal capitalism and global inequality. This article, using emerging literature on celebrities in north-south relations, analyzes the celebrity discourses and practices of professional entertainer Ben Affleck and his engagement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in order to understand how celebrities intersect with and popularize representations of poverty, conflict, and development in Africa. We conclude that the celebritization of African conflicts in the DRC—as understood from the interventions of Affleck—remain linked to the needs of marketing causes, celebrities, and products, and considerably removed from the voices of Congolese on whose stories these interventions rely. As a result, the constraints of celebrity humanitarianism in an age of media saturation limit the possibilities that individual celebrities might have in engaging in alternative, more complex, and less sound-bite friendly discourses.

Documentarian, Witness, and Organizer: Exploring Celebrity Roles in Human Rights Media Advocacy

Recent years have seen a growth industry for celebrity engagement in human rights work, broadly construed. For example, the website Look to the Stars has calculated that over two thousand charities have some form of celebrity support (Look to the Stars, nd). Hollywood stars Jennifer Garner and Julianne Moore promote the work of Save the Children as Artist Ambassadors; Gwyneth Paltrow and Rashida Jones designed t-shirts to support the ONE Campaign to alleviate poverty; meanwhile, George Clooney and Don Cheadle have formed their own organization Not On Our Watch to promote mass atrocities prevention. Celebrities raise money, speak to the media, pay visits to victim populations, and address US Congress and the United Nations. This expanding continuum of celebrity activity is linked to broad political, technological, and social trends in the human rights landscape.

Celebrity-led development organisations: the legitimating function of elite engagement

Abstract The past decade has seen a frontier open up in international development engagement with the entrance of new actors such as celebrity-led organisations. We explore how such organisations earn legitimacy with a focus on Madonna’s Raising Malawi and Ben Affleck’s Eastern Congo Initiative. The study draws from organisational materials, interviews, mainstream news coverage, and the texts of the celebrities themselves to investigate the construction of authenticity, credibility, and accountability. We find these organisations earn legitimacy and flourish rapidly amid supportive elite networks for funding, endorsements, and expertise. We argue that the ways in which celebrity-led organisations establish themselves as legitimate development actors illustrate broader dynamics of the machinery of development.