Researching activism as a driver of social change

For the ten past years, the Bergen Exchanges on Law and Social Transformation has been a meeting place and avenue for discussions on the use of law as a driver of social change.

At the Bergen Exchanges, researchers and practitioners from all over the world come together to discuss the status of human rights around the world. Many of them are part of the CMI/LawTransform RightAct project, which investigates how human rights activists navigate in an increasingly complex political landscape.

With so many prominent scholars and practitioners gathered in Bergen, we seized the opportunity to put the rights research agenda in the spotlight. We sat down with Roberto Gargarella, Rachel Sieder, Satang Nabaneh, Adrian Jjuuko, and Matthew Gichohi to ask them: How do human rights activists operate in a shrinking civic space? What are the most important achievements in the field? How can research contribute to the rights agenda, and how do you prevent the lines between research and activism from blurring? Where does the struggle stand now? And what are the benefits of bringing scholars and practitioners together?

Researching human rights during a time of backlash
Roberto Gargarella emphasises that humanity is at a crucial moment: The backlash against democracy is present in politics all over the world. We’re at a critical moment where everything we have achieved in terms of advancing human rights is at risk. There is a prevailing sense of social anger. We see people distancing themselves from society because they feel let down by the state not providing for them and by a political elite that is only working for themselves, he says.

This backlash poses a challenge for academics and human rights advocates. Gargarella points out that academics have both a responsibility and an opportunity to contribute.

We cannot lead the change, but we can provide the diagnostics. In dealing with the backlash against democracy, the increasingly challenging political environment for human rights advocates, and the social anger, scholars and academics must provide the critical thinking that is needed to address and overcome these issues, he says.

Similarly, Rachel Sieder, who researches indigenous rights and land determination, states that Indigenous peoples are the survivors of long-run policies of colonial erasure and extractivism. All over the world, Indigenous peoples' self-determination is threatened by dominant "development" policies, which extracts resources from their territories and denies their internationally and nationally recognized legal rights. The energy transition has only exacerbated these trends, centering as it does on mineral extraction and "green" energy generation which often negatively affects Indigenous lands. The guarantee of Indigenous peoples' rights necessitates a transformation of understandings of "development".

Adrian Jjuuko has first-hand experience of advocating for rights in a country with a shrinking civic space. As a lawyer working for LGBT rights, Jjuuko lives in constant risk of being arrested. He is executive director of the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF) and is by definition regarded as a criminal. Still, he refuses to give up his rights advocacy. He has chosen to live with fear.

But the lack of international attention to the plight of Uganda’s LGBT community is a continual source of worry for him: If there is no international presence or attention, we have no protection, he says.

As recently as ten years ago, the Ugandan LGBT community could count on the support of their international partners and fought vocally against the new anti-homosexuality laws that were being planned. When Uganda passed the draconian anti-sexuality act in 2023 opening for death penalty for consensual same-sex relations, the decision was met with international condemnation. Since the passing of the law, violent attacks targeting the LGBT community have increased fivefold.

Norway was one of the first international partners to seek out and provide support for the country’s LGBT community. However, the Norwegian authorities closed the embassy in the capital of Kampala in July 2024, a decision which came as a shock to Jjuuko and his fellow LGBT rights advocates: For the LGBT community, this was a dramatic turn of events. If Norwegian authorities had closed the embassy as a protest to the anti-homosexuality act, I would have understood. That would have sent a strong signal to the authorities. But this has not been the case. If they closed it merely to save money, it’s a real stab in the back, says Jjuuko.

He argues that the international community must practice what it preaches if their support is to have any real effect and highlights the closing of the Norwegian embassy as an example of how the LGBT community has increasingly been left to fend for themselves: By now we know that we are on our own.

Turning to the case of Nigeria, Matthew Gichohi recently came back from fieldwork in Nigeria, where he and other team members looked into how women’s organisations work to have an impact. The insights from the fieldwork show that it can be a hard balancing act for human rights activists to operate in a shrinking space. Nigerian women’s organisations do not take any decisions to openly show disagreement with the government lightly. They would rather lobby or use other institutional means than publicly take to the streets, says Gichohi.

Several laws concerning women’s rights have been discussed and some also passed in parliament over the last few years. But there seems to be a clear limit to the willingness to grant women political power. There has been progress in terms of protection of women, but not in terms of sharing political power equally with them, he says. 

Language also plays a big role in whether laws protecting women are passed.  In Nigeria, avoiding the word gender in legislation has proven effective. One of the best examples is the Violence against Persons (VAP) Act. Previously coined the Violence against Women Act (VAW), the law faced resistance in parliament. Changing the name made passing the law easier. The harsh realities of human rights activism may be disconcerting.

The challenges of working with human rights on the ground
As both a socio legal scholar and a human rights practitioner, Satang Nabaneh has written extensively on sexual and reproductive rights. The crackdown on abortion rights in countries like the United States inspired her to delve into the topic providing an African perspective and contextual understanding of rights struggles. Yet abortion rights are far from the only rights that are under threat worldwide. Nabaneh, like Gargarella, draws attention to the backlash against democracy we’re seeing at the moment. As someone who sometimes balances a fine line between research and activism, she has a very conscious approach to her role as what she herself describes as a scholar-activist.

Rights activism, including on-the-ground efforts, should be evidence-based, she says.

While activists and practitioners have their roles in advocacy and litigation of and for rights, it is the researchers’ responsibility to work to empower these groups, argues Nabaneh. She stresses the necessity of close relationships between researchers, activists and practitioners: We must do research with communities, not on communities. We need to create even stronger and more equitable relationships both with practitioners and local communities. Only then can we make a real difference, she says.

When asked about the sometimes-blurred lines between research on rights activism and activism, Gichohi points to transparency and academic integrity as standards that are extremely important to uphold. He urges academics to have open discussions about their positionality -  how their background, the context they work in, and their discipline affect the lens with which they approach and analyse the data.

We cannot control everything that happens in public spaces. What we can do though is to be open and transparent, he says.

He also stresses the importance of research ethics and the responsibility that comes with being a researcher: Researching highly sensitive and sometimes controversial topics, you must always ask yourself the question ‘What consequences does this work have for my interlocutors’. Academics have a responsibility not to put anyone in harm’s way.

On this topic, Sieder agrees. She predicts that in the coming years, the agenda for Indigenous rights will focus on all dimensions of strengthening Indigenous self-determination, and will increasingly centre indigenous voices in research: Land rights research will document land-grabs and extractivist forms of damage to human and non-human actors. It will also focus on the substantive content of alternative ways of understanding development and politics. Collaborative research methods and research by Indigenous scholars themselves will be strengthened. And research with/by Indigenous women and Indigenous youth, and their role in strengthening territorial self-determination will be vital. 

The Bergen Exchanges: A forum for engaging in rights research
The Bergen Exchanges allows space for sensitive and difficult topics to be addressed and featured at the forefront of discussions. Adrian Jjuuko highlights that bringing people from different places and backgrounds together creates a powerful platform: The Bergen Exchanges puts research on LGBT rights on the agenda and gives voices from the South crucial visibility. It is a network that encourages you to continue your work, and the opportunity to participate in such arenas that provides space and gives energy is and will continue to be paramount to LGBT rights not only in Uganda but also in other countries in the years to come, he says.

Matthew Gichohi also emphasizes that projects like Right Act and venues like the Bergen Exchanges give room for hope: What the Bergen Exchanges does so well is to break the silos that exist in both the academic and activist sphere. It also provides a space for long-term relationships and continued discussions. Rather than regular academic conferences where there is no continuity, at the Bergen Exchanges people from diverse backgrounds get together every year to take stock of the progress or backlash. This approach lays a more solid foundation for discussions on where the research frontier should be, he says.

For all the researchers, having a space, such as the Bergen Exchanges, where they can convene and collaborate is essential. Rachel Sieder has been part of the Center on Law and Social Transformation since the outset and has been coming to CMI for over 20 years. For her, the Bergen Exchanges are an intellectual and affective hub which facilitates path breaking, engaged research: The Exchanges mentor emerging young scholars, facilitate discussion across disciplines and regions, nurture collaborative research projects, and show that a non-hierarchical form of exchange based on care is possible in academia.

One of these scholars is Nabaneh who claims that her entire career as a researcher has been shaped by her close connections to the rights research milieu in Bergen. She first came to Bergen as a fresh PhD candidate in 2017, presenting her project to the LawTransform network. This year’s Bergen Exchanges is her eighth, You could say that I consider myself to be a local, she says smiling. Her PhD thesis was transformed into a monograph which she says is as much a product of the LawTransform network as her own efforts. In terms of interdisciplinarity it adds greatly to the research agenda. But the diversity of people and regions represented is what truly makes it special. This is a space that not only contributes to high impact intellectually research, but also to a feeling that your voice is center stage, she says.

For Gargarella, who like Sieder has been engaged with the Centre since its conception, focusing on rights in his research is not something that happened by chance but rather the outcome of a strong conviction turned into a life-long devotion. He is already planning for more projects that are relevant and significant for public discussions about rights and rights activism. Summing up the ethos of the centre and of the Exchanges, he says: We’re not engaging just for fun, but because we care.