Joe Amon lectures on work of a human rights activist

The work of a human rights activist consists of raising awareness, forming a coalition and setting a narrative for debate, director of Health and Human Rights at Human Rights Watch Joseph Amon said at a lecture Tuesday.

Amon explained that his work consists of convincing governments they should be or should stop doing something. This work, he said, must begin by informing the public that abuses are taking place. He added that governments and international donors are often already aware of human rights violations, but local communities may not be.

“If there’s no general awareness of it in the community, there isn’t going to be a lot of pressure on them to do anything about it,” Amon said.

This process of making people aware of human rights violations can take on a number of guises, Amon said. He explained that the main method to date has been the writing of extensive reports, but acknowledged that these are mostly read by college students, leaving the organization unsure as to what is the best way to distribute findings and recommendations to stakeholders.

Amon noted that despite this, Human Rights Watch has not shied away from modern media. He noted that it ran a campaign in 2012 lobbying the President of Nigeria to sign a bill allowing the cleanup of lead poisoning in the country, and as the president prevaricated over releasing the money for the cleanup, Human Rights Watch launched a “sign the bill” campaign on social media. The effort flopped, Amon said, until it reached the newspapers, where the reporting of a viral campaign forced the president’s hand.

A broad range of expertise is necessary to run a human rights campaign, Amon said. He noted that he completed his undergraduate degree in economics and doctorate in epidemiology and now works at an organization staffed primarily by lawyers.

Similarly, Amon explained, advocacy requires the formation of broad coalitions to effect change. Human Rights Watch has campaigned against the spread of tuberculosis in prisons, and using a team of healthcare and criminal justice experts, as well as lawyers, has been able to propose holistic solutions, changes to bail laws that will reduce the number of people incarcerated and decrease the spread of tuberculosis in overpopulated jails.

Building a coalition within the UN is an important way to place pressure on transgressing regimes, Amon explained, although he added that this can be a long and arduous task. He explained that after work by Human Rights Watch, the 2014 World Health Assembly passed a resolution calling for the “strengthening of palliative care,” which allocated resources and provided better guidelines. To get this, however, Human Rights Watch required a “cascade of voices” within the UN, with a paper chain that spanned years and included officials from the Special Rapporteur on Torture, and Health to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

To launch a successful campaign, advocates must frame the debate and hone their message, Amon explained. For example, he said, Human Rights Watch showed in the past that Burkina Faso was only importing enough morphine annually to support 10 patients, while other countries only had enough to help 0.1 percent of patients who needed pain relief. Amon explained that Human Rights Watch framed the issue by comparing the denial of medication to torture, except that for cancer patients in tremendous pain “there is no confession; the pain continues.”

The impact of Amon’s work can be delayed or nebulous, and sometimes his work has the effect of simply maintaining the status quo and preventing further abuses, he said. He noted that international scrutiny is purported to have prevented a second mass execution of suspected drug dealers in Thailand.

The changes that occur on the ground are often a lot less lofty than the ideals behind them, Amon said. He noted, for example, that the desire to improve access to pain medication in Ukraine translated into simply increasing the amount of morphine that could be prescribed by a doctor.

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Amon said that Human Rights Watch always seeks to work as part of a coalition, and that he did not want to give the organization full credit for all of its accomplishments.

“There’s a certain amount of looking for opportunistic moments to push issues,” he said. “Most of the issues are ripe to move regardless of your work.”

The lecture, entitled “Global Health Advocacy Using Human Rights Arguments,” took place in 035 Robertson Hall at 4:30 p.m. and was sponsored by Princeton Development Lab.