Filtering Information: Human Rights Documentation in Bangladesh
journal contribution
posted on 2024-10-04, 13:42authored byMorten Koch Andersen
Documentation of human rights violations is a difficult and dangerous practice. The capacity of human rights organizations does not match the extent of the problems they encounter and the depth of the issues they illuminate. Documentation of human rights violations frames claim-making, manifestations of victimhood and citizenship. By examining documentation practices in Bangladesh, I show how information travels through a line of filters that determines and delimits what we can know about violations, what we can do to assist victims, and how we can prevent future abuses. I argue that this filtering process is a selective political practice—one which is conditioned by the individual capacities, organizational resources, and political contexts through which exposures to violence become human rights cases. It is this—the ‘how’ of documentation—that delimits what is made public and what is known about violations.
History
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Morten Koch Andersen, Filtering Information: Human Rights Documentation in Bangladesh, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Volume 11, Issue 1, February 2019, Pages 73–95, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huz007