Which countries are likely to be ignored for their human rights abuses? This article focuses on one particular way that cases of human rights abuse might be overlooked by human rights organizations (HROs): the relative visibility of the state’s abusiveness vis-à-vis its geographic and social peers. HROs are more likely to target abusive states that are located in regions with more HRO resources and/or are surrounded by states that demonstrate higher respect for human rights, as these abuses will stand out much more clearly. Further, human rights treaties can be used by abusive states as a form of strategic “social camouflage,” with states trying to minimize the risk of HRO attention by ratifying human rights treaties to look more like their rights-respecting peers. Using a cross-national time-series research design, this article finds much support for the argument: abusive states that “join the chorus” avoid HRO attention.

What countries are likely to be internationally “shamed” for their human rights abuses? Conversely, what countries are likely to be ignored? Negative public attention has long been a central tactic of international nongovernmental organizations interested in promoting human rights (human rights INGOs or, as used hereafter human rights organizations [HROs]). For example, in reflecting upon their history at the start of the Helsinki Accords, Human Rights Watch remarked that they, operating then as Helsinki Watch:

adopted a methodology of publicly “naming and shaming” abusive governments through media coverage and through direct exchanges with policymakers. By shining the international spotlight on human rights violations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Helsinki Watch contributed to the dramatic democratic transformations of the late 1980s. (see http://www.hrw.org/node/75134, accessed July 11, 2016)

Like Human Rights Watch’s contention, current scholarly literature has found much evidence that shaming works. Recent literature has linked negative reports by HROs to improved physical integrity rights in certain situations (Franklin 2008; Murdie and Davis 2012; Hendrix and Wong 2013), reductions in mass killings (Krain 2012; DeMeritt 2012), and even peace after civil conflict (Burgoon et al. 2015). Shaming has also been linked to increased responses by the world community, bringing powerful states and corporations into the network of human rights advocates (Barry, Clay, and Flynn 2013; Murdie and Peksen 2013, 2014).

Shaming, however, does not perfectly correlate with abuse. While previous studies have found that observed human rights abuses do serve to predict shaming (Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers 2005; Hill, Moore, and Mukherjee 2013), recent work on the covariates of shaming and other forms of public human rights attention have highlighted how shaming is likely linked to foreign policy and trade concerns (Hafner-Burton and Ron 2013; Hendrix and Wong 2014) and the availability of local human rights advocates (Meernik et al. 2012). Further, as case study evidence has shown, the salience of the particular issue and the characteristics of both the abuser and the abused all matter for where the international spotlight is directed (Bob 2002, 2005). In other words, shaming by HROs may suffer from many of the same audience and organizational pathologies as do other international marketing campaigns. Given these concerns, which states are likely to find themselves in the “spotlight”? Or, conversely, how might abusive governments use the gaps in the international HRO advocacy network’s coverage to avoid the spotlight?

In this article, we focus on one particular way that cases of human rights abuse might be overlooked by HROs: the relative visibility of the state’s abusiveness vis-à-vis its geographic and social peers. We argue that HROs are more likely to target abusive states that are located in regions with a large number of HRO resources and/or are surrounded by states that demonstrate higher respect for human rights, as their abuses will stand out much more clearly than those committed by regimes that are surrounded by abusive states in regions with fewer HRO resources. Colombia provides an interesting example of this phenomenon: in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the country had an abysmal human rights record that stuck out from the more middling human rights performance of its geographic peers.1 The visibility of the abuses as the worst in the region, together with the large number of HRO resources embedded within the country and its neighbors, helps explain why the Colombian government was continually publically targeted by HROs for their abuses during this time period.2

Further, like Simmons (2009), we contend that human rights treaties could be used by abusive states as a form of strategic “social camouflage” with states trying to minimize the risk of HRO attention by ratifying human rights treaties to look more like their rights-respecting peers. In this way, abusive states may “join the chorus,” avoiding the spotlight by making states that have thus far been unwilling to ratify certain international treaties easier targets for HROs seeking to make immediate, visible differences in the perception of respect for human rights globally. This could explain why Colombia and other regional worst offenders have quickly ratified human rights treaties. When Indonesia, for example, ratified the Convention against Torture (CAT) in 1998, it was after a period of intense shaming by HROs for the regime’s human rights abuses. After ratification, the HROs attention paid to Indonesia dropped precipitously, despite its continued horrendous human rights record.3

Understanding the underlying process that determines when and where shaming is likely (or unlikely) to occur is necessary for a fully formed model of human rights advocacy. It can help inform both scholars and advocates as to which human rights cases are likely to get a possible boost from international advocacy and which issues and cases could possibly be forgotten (Bob 2005; Carpenter 2007, 2010). In the long term, it may serve to help HROs design a better model of targeting human rights abusers.

Using an updated data set of shaming in the international media by over 1,000 HROs, our results stress the importance of geographical landscape and strategic treaty behavior. Although we find that shaming is influenced by the observable level of human rights abuse within a country, we find that this “need” for HRO shaming is conditioned by neighborhood human rights practices and international treaties. Our empirical focus on HRO shaming in the international media also provides a useful complement to the growing literature on the determinants of human rights attention, which has primarily focused on the organizational output of Amnesty International (AI), particularly its press releases and calls for urgent action (UA), instead of how this organizational output, combined with the output of many other HROs, is actually translated into an international media spotlight on a particular repressive regime.

This article proceeds as follows. First, we review the extant literature on the determinants of HRO attention, focusing particularly on the likely targets of their shaming strategy. After presenting the implications of our argument, we outline our research design and discuss our findings. The article concludes by reiterating the contributions of this project for both the academic and advocacy communities.

Results Table 1 presents the results of a series of negative binomial models that test the hypotheses described above. Column 1 presents a model with all independent variables plus the treaty ratification variables used to test Hypothesis 1. Column 2 presents a model with the independent variables and the interaction term between domestic physical integrity rights and neighborhood physical integrity rights, as used to test Hypothesis 2. Hypothesis 3 is tested in the model in column 3, which includes all previous independent variables plus the indicators for domestic and neighborhood HRO resources. Table 1. The Determinants of HRO Shaming. View larger version The variables included to test Hypothesis 1 produce mixed results, both in the model in column 1 and in the fully specified model in column 3. The coefficients for the ICCPR and CAT variables are not statistically significant at conventional levels. The coefficient on the CEDAW variable is negative and statistically significant, indicating that ratifiers of CEDAW are targeted with less shaming. When all other variables are set to their respective means and modes, ratification of CEDAW cuts the predicted number of events nearly in half. Prior to ratification, the predicted count of shaming events is 0.192; after ratification, the predicted count is 0.105. As discussed above, CEDAW seems to have a more consistent impact on actual human rights performance, and as an institution, requires a deeper level of commitment. As a result, it is not surprising that this treaty seems to reduce the amount of shaming directed at a state.13 In order to evaluate support for Hypothesis 2, we need to examine whether the relationship between domestic human rights abuses and shaming is conditioned by the level of abuse by states in the neighborhood. As seen in both columns 2 and 3, the interaction term between physical integrity rights within a state and the neighborhood’s physical integrity rights is positive and statistically significant. Figure 1 plots out these this relationship using the “margins” command in Stata 13, based on the fully specified model in column 3. The y-axis is the marginal effect of increased local physical integrity rights abuse (i.e. a one-unit reduction in the CIRI physical integrity rights index) on shaming. The x-axis is the average neighborhood level of respect for physical integrity rights. This allows us to examine how the relationship between local physical integrity rights abuse and shaming varies at different levels of neighborhood respect for physical integrity rights. This figure illustrates that in a sufficiently bad human rights neighborhood (the far left end of the x-axis), an increase in government repression is not significantly associated with the level of shaming. As the neighborhood level of respect for human rights increases, increases in domestic government repression are significantly associated with a higher number of HRO shaming events. This illustrates that human rights violators, in neighborhoods occupied by respecters of human rights, may stand out and are more likely to be shamed. It is easier to blend into a neighborhood where all the states are violating rights, thus leading to less HRO shaming. Download Open in new tab Download in PowerPoint With regard to Hypothesis 3, we do not find much evidence that HRO resources are significantly related to shaming in Table 1. In the fully specified model displayed in column 3, we find that the interaction between domestic HRO secretariat and neighborhood HRO secretariat is positive and statistically significant at the p < .1 level; however, none of the other variables in the model achieves significance. We believe this finding merits greater scrutiny. As such, Table 2 displays the results of models that separate out the various specifications of local and regional HRO resources. As demonstrated by columns 1 to 3 in Table 2, HRO membership presence is never found to be significantly associated with HRO shaming; however, columns 4 and 5 demonstrate that domestic HRO secretariat presence is positively related to shaming. In model 6 in Table 2, local HRO secretariats and neighborhood HRO secretariats are each insignificantly related to HRO shaming when the other is equal to 0; however, as in Table 1, the interaction between local and neighborhood HRO secretariats is positive and statistically significant. Table 2. HRO Resources and HRO Shaming. View larger version The difference in the significance of HRO membership presence and HRO secretariats is noteworthy. Barry et al. (2015) find that HRO secretariats appear to be placed in line with HROs’ overall strategic concerns, while HRO memberships seem to arise based on domestic opportunity structures. Given that large-scale publicity campaigns are likely to be driven, to some degree, by the strategic concerns of HROs, it is in keeping with those findings that HRO secretariats seem to reflect the information gathering structure necessary for carrying out this strategic initiative better than do HRO memberships. However, given previous findings that have found that neighboring HRO resources primarily affect domestic processes when (1) neighboring states allow for reasonably free movement across borders (Bell, Clay, and Murdie 2012) and/or (2) the referent state lacks a strong domestic HRO sector (Bell et al. 2014), future research should attempt to determine whether similar processes are at play with regard to the ability of HRO actors to shame neighboring governments. Turning to the other independent variables in our models, democratic regimes are less likely to be shamed by HROs. With all other variables set to their means and modes, the most autocratic state on the Polity IV combined index is estimated to be shamed approximately 0.18 times; the most democratic state on the Polity IV index is estimated to be shamed 0.08 times, more than 50 percent less than the extreme autocratic state. This is unsurprising as populations in democratic regimes have domestic pathways through which they can hold governments responsible for abusing human rights. States experiencing a civil war receive greater levels of shaming, and states that engage in violence against human rights NGOs receive greater levels of shaming. We also find evidence that states in Latin America and those with more media attention in Reuters also receive more shaming.

Conclusion The results here demonstrate that, while the overall abusiveness of a state does correlate with the amount of attention its human rights abuses get from HROs, some abusive states do blend in to the background and avoid the spotlight from time to time. Building off of the existing research on HRO shaming (Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers 2005; Meernik et al. 2012; Hendrix and Wong 2014), we help to demonstrate that HRO shaming of one state does not happen in a political or geographic vacuum: organizations are deciding who to shame with reference to the state’s neighborhood and their human rights records. This research finds that the HRO spotlight may depend on a country’s neighborhood. If your human rights performance is much worse than your neighbor’s performance, it is more likely that your human rights abuses will land you in HROs’ crosshairs. This provides a necessary theoretical and empirical extension to previous literature concerning the role of geography in human rights attention (Hafner-Burton and Ron 2013). We think future work in this vein could examine additional potential reference groups that could influence how HROs shame abuses, perhaps among states with shared colonial backgrounds or experiences with dictatorial regimes. Likewise, we find some limited evidence that states may be able to “camouflage” their abuse through treaty ratification. Still, only CEDAW ratification, which recent work has found is actually associated with improved women’s rights (Hill 2010; Lupu 2013), reduces the shaming directed at a state; ratification of the ICCPR and the CAT is not found to be as effective. Future studies should examine a larger body of international human rights treaties to determine whether there is a cumulative effect at play here that we have thus far missed. We also find limited support for the idea that local and regional HRO resources are important for shaming. Indeed, the primary resource that appears to be related to increased shaming here, HRO secretariats, could merely be a reflection of HROs’ strategic interests rather than a necessary cog in the information gathering and international publicity process. This is somewhat divergent from existing research on the neighborhood effects of HROs (Bell, Clay, and Murdie 2012; Bell et al. 2014) and from research on how HRO resources influence AI reports (Meernik et al. 2012). Further research is necessary. Many civil society researchers contend that the space for organizations to operate within countries is shrinking; HROs and other civil society organizations have been recently expelled from many repressive regimes (Carothers and Brechenmacher 2014; Cooley 2015; Hayman 2016). To the extent that these resources are important for HRO shaming, both locally and within a regime, closing space for civil society could influence the ability of HROs to use shaming as a political tactic for human rights improvement. As a whole, our findings draw attention to an important dynamic that could impede human rights improvement in certain regions. If HRO shaming is important for human rights change, as many scholars have shown, factors that limit the amount of HRO attention directed at a particular state thus limit the very possibility of human rights change. We find one important factor impeding HRO shaming is how “camouflaged” a state is by the human rights practices of its neighbors and peers. For human rights change to occur, HROs must acknowledge not only how a state compares to its neighbors but how a state compares to the ideals set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Without doing so, geographical areas with poor human rights practices are unlikely to improve.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding

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