Situating her reflections at the intersection of moral psychology, social epistemology, and development ethics, Diana Meyers makes an important contribution to the field of human rights theory, namely the use of human rights abuse testimonies, in advancing human rights agendas. Using extracts from victims’ stories throughout to support her claims, she makes the missing, and intuitive, link between these stories and our understanding of human rights. While publicizing victims’ stories can increase public awareness about dehumanizing situations, Meyers urges us to prioritize respect for victims. Before delving into the ethical and political implications of using victims’ stories, Meyers analyzes how we must understand their victim status in the first place, which narrative templates can influence victims’ stories, how the dialectic between the reader and the text can help us to grasp the human rights paradigm, and what role empathy can play.
Meyers initiates her reflection by questioning the common understanding of the status of a victim of human rights abuse, separated by two unsuitable paradigms: the ‘pathetic victim’ paradigm and the ‘heroic victim’ paradigm. Whereas the former portrays victims as helpless, innocent, vulnerable, and passive, the latter refers to idealistic and brave victims who resist or engage in public dissent towards unjust power. Meyers argues that the characteristic of innocence, which lies at the centre of both paradigms, should be rejected, as it cannot capture ‘impure’ models of victims (for example, trafficked sex workers or death row inmates). Instead, she suggests a characterization of victims as having “burdened agency,” where the focus is on how, and to what extent, this agency is constrained by force, fraud, and coercion (61). Focusing on constrained agency, which implies a rejection of both paradigms, leads us to consider victimhood in a more nuanced, less binary framework.
In Chapter 2, Meyers shows how common narrative templates of stories cannot represent the plurality of victims’ experiences. A common narrative is defined, amongst other things, by its moral closure. However, we ought to think of a different form of moral closure for victims’ stories, since it is rather a temporary moment of closure, given that human rights are a work in progress. Meyers writes that “a victim’s story that successfully represents a moral void, together with an implicit moral imperative that has been systematically ignored, achieves this alternative kind of moral closure” (99).
Meyers argues in Chapter 3 that an affective understanding of human rights abuses is not enough, since affective biases could obfuscate our comprehension. It is our imaginative capacity that enables us to innovatively grasp the complexity of human rights. While Meyers recognizes the convenience of the stories of abuses that clearly evoke human rights, the stories that refer to human rights only in an oblique way are ultimately more productive. Indeed, they force the readers to simultaneously use their affective and imaginative capacities “to better grasp the meanings of human rights in human lives and perhaps to identify shortcomings in current conceptions of human rights” (106). Readers, then, are responsible for linking concrete situations of injustice with the human rights paradigm.
In Chapter 4, Meyers addresses the debates in the “empathy diaspora” and its role in the understanding of empathy as having a unique moral power in the building of a culture of human rights (143). On empathy, Meyers adopts a universalistic stance, arguing that its expression helps us to grasp the common humanity behind the individual testimonies and, therefore, to raise awareness about human rights issues. She characterizes empathy as being morally stronger than sympathy, but as an accessible stance, by which one becomes acquainted with others’ subjectivity. Empathetic engagement enables one to “viscerally comprehend values and disvalues” of others (149). By becoming familiar with victims’ stories, we are able to transcend victims’ socio-historical and cultural contexts. Although Meyers addresses the possible critiques of her universalistic stance on empathy, a closer discussion of these critiques would have been fruitful. For example, her rejection of Sonia Kruks’ work on the influence of the embodiment on empathy could have been expanded.
Given the importance of empathy for reaching of a universalistic stance, it is evident that testimonies can have a greater influence than data when it comes to understanding human rights abuses; this information is especially useful for NGOs. In the last chapter, Meyers engages with the ethical and political implications of the utilization of victims’ stories by human rights NGOs, grassroots movements, and international organizations. These associations should avoid misuse of victims’ stories or sensationalism. Publicizing testimonies of abuse runs the risk of creating victim blaming and disengagement, because some citizens might resent their own powerlessness to act in the face of those testimonies. These associations should, therefore, reflect on how to foster social responses and avoid implicit biases. More practically, governed by the ideal of informed consent and a practical concern for avoiding further victim traumatization, Meyers offers concrete guidelines for the use of victims’ stories, whether that be in the context of justice projects (for example, a truth commission) or in aid and research projects.
Meyers ends her book with a discussion on the transnational power dynamics between NGOs, founding agencies, and grassroots movements, suggesting that human rights NGOs should stop competing with one another in order to foster an ethics of global solidarity. Given the shrinking of aid budgets, the survival of human rights NGOs depends on a move towards a collective aim for the common good. Although I share these concerns about the needs of the NGOs to take concerted actions, I am disconcerted that Meyers does not consider the neoliberal and colonial roots of this competition.
Overall, this book offers an interdisciplinary analysis on the pressing issue of using victims’ stories of human rights abuse that will interest political philosophers as well as activists and NGO workers.
