Declan Galvin
United States International University
Kenya
I wanted to dedicate my first blog post to discussing the human rights research I will be conducting this summer in Kenya. I am fortunate enough to be able lean on my prior experience living as a student and volunteer in Kenya, which has proven to be significant as I developed my research design with my advisor Rosalind Fredericks, the HR Fellowship advisor Vasuki Nesiah, and my classmates in our Human Rights seminar.
As I began to write the statement of purpose for the Gallatin Human Rights Fellowship application (which was nearly a year ago) I used that opportunity to reflect not only on my previous experience living in East Africa, but also on some of my frustrations with what seems to be many of the prevailing notions and discourses relating to human rights. Specifically, I have always been frustrated with the implicit assumption by some major international organizations and many donor nations that human rights is to be, first and foremost, viewed through and dealt with by “the modern state.” While I am not ignorant to the fact that the international system, particularly in the immediate aftermath of WWII, is primarily comprised of modern nation-states; I cannot help but recognize the growing importance of non-state actors (e.g., NGOs and non-profit organizations), civil society, and even business actors in reinforcing prevailing international norms, and specifically in this case human rights.
Moreover, and this is the line of inquiry that my research seeks to address, there are states which possess so little capacity that they cannot devise effective policies or standards of public health, safety, agricultural production, or urban planning; and thus, seriously affecting their capacity to promote the various economic and social rights so often invoked within human rights discourses. In other words, the state-centric emphasis implicit within conventional notions of human rights offers little guidance for states confronted with these circumstances and political realities (i.e., those in the postcolony, especially in Africa, parts of Asia, and South America) which are still expected, by threat of international law, to establish and maintain human rights within their sovereign borders.
It is this inconsistency—between international law, human rights discourse, and state capacity in the postcolony—that is at the center of my research. While in Kenya I will interview members of urban gangs and youth groups who promote the social and economic rights of “slum” dwellers by providing essential services like access to water, electricity, and protection; but who simultaneously use violence to exploit and intimidate these residents. I want to understand how these youth groups and urban dwellers, together, construct human rights in the informal settlements of Nairobi where consistent state authority is tepid or weak.
Within this, I am curious about what these residents and youth groups believe constitutes “human rights,” and whether their actions or behaviors reinforce or contradict their own notions of human rights, rather than simply comparing their behavior with an external concept of human rights (introduced in that case by the researcher). I hope that this research will inform our understanding of the construction of authority and power in the postcolony, some of the weaknesses of conventional human rights discourses in the era of globalization, and the use of violence in peri-urban settings.