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Abstract
Research on transnational advocacy networks has tended to focus on how non-state actors from developed countries interact with those from developing countries to pressure states, often by drawing in liberal Western states. This article adds a different perspective, focusing on how local civil society actors in different locales interact with each other to persuade their own governments ‘from below’. It examines how these actors facilitate norm emergence amongst Asian states on issues with little domestic traction and for which there are well-developed international norms, standards and procedures. In studying the way local civil society actors conduct norm entrepreneurship, it is important to recognise the political, material and ideational conditions that constrain their work; their positionality and fragility in their own societies; and the way they relate to other actors working on the same issues. Focusing on the case of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, it is argued that working through a formalised network has changed the ways and the conditions under which local civil society actors engage in norm entrepreneurship on refugee protection. It has changed the attributes of actors, helping them develop visibility, capacity and connectedness through the formation of a ‘community of practice’; it has changed power relations between them and other actors – in particular, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; it has facilitated the development of ‘regional imagination’ and the practice of ‘scale shifting’, helping local actors move beyond domestic contexts to engage with state and non-state actors through regional and international fora. It has also introduced shifts in the dynamics of norm entrepreneurship by introducing a new actor – the network itself, which exercises agency through a Secretariat – and intra-network sensitivities, which need careful attention to prevent member disengagement.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on the author's observations as one of the founding members of APRRN as well as an analysis of data produced by APRRN. As a volunteer for FORUM Asia, the author was the main organiser of the inaugural conference in 2008 described in this article. She served as APRRN's first chair (2008–2010) and subsequently as a steering committee member (2010–2014; 2015–present). The views expressed in this article are the author's own, and do not represent the official view of APRRN. This article was presented at a workshop organised by Susan Kneebone on ‘Comparative Regional Protection Frameworks for Refugees: Norms and Norm Entrepreneurs’ on 15 November 2013 at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London. The author is indebted to Alexander Betts, Brian Barbour, Helen Brunt, Vivienne Chew, Tamara Domicelj, Petrice Flowers, Martin Jones, Susan Kneebone, Julia Mayerhoffer, Mauricio Angel Morales, Aeden Pillai, Alejandro Peña and James Thomson for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article. Any mistakes remain the author's own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Alice M. Nah is a Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, United Kingdom.
ORCID
Alice M. Nah https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0253-0334
Notes
1. UN General Assembly, Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) 189 UNTS 137. Opened for signature 28 July 1951. Entered into force 22 April 1954; UN General Assembly, Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (1967) 606 UNTS 267. Opened for signature 31 January 1967. Entered into force 4 October 1967.
2. Although note that there are non-binding instruments. See for example the Bangkok Principles on the Status and Treatment of Refugees, 31 December 1966, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3de5f2d52.html (accessed 16 December 2015).
3. Resources from this conference, called the Asia Pacific Consultation on Refugee Rights, can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/apcrr2008/Home (accessed 14 December 2015).
4. See for example B.S. Chimni, Miyoshi Masahiro, and Li-ann Thio, Asian Yearbook of International Law: Volume 14 (2008) (London: Routledge, 2010).
5. Sara E. Davies, ‘The Asian Rejection?: International Refugee Law in Asia’, Australian Journal of Politics & History 52, no. 4 (2006): 562–75.
6. Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe’, International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1999): 86.
7. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 887–917.
8. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction’, in The Power of Human Rights, ed. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1–38.
9. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Etienne Wenger, Richard Arnold McDermott, and William Snyder, Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2002); Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
10. Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
11. Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, 891.
12. Cass R. Sunstein, ‘Social Norms and Social Roles’, Columbia Law Review 96, no. 4 (1996): 903–68; Cass R. Sunstein, Free Markets and Social Justice [Electronic Resource] (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
13. Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’, Annual Review of Sociology 26 (1 January 2000): 611–39; Rodger A. Payne, ‘Persuasion, Frames and Norm Construction’, European Journal of International Relations 7, no. 1 (2001): 37–61.
14. Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’. The authors suggest that this ‘tipping point’ is often reached when about one-third of states make formal commitments to a new norm.
15. Ibid., 902.
16. Amitav Acharya, ‘How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism’, International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): 239–75.
17. Ibid., 241.
18. Ibid., 247–8.
19. Alexander Betts, ‘Institutional Proliferation and the Global Refugee Regime’, Perspectives on Politics 7, no. 1 (2009): 53–8.
20. Daisuke Madokoro, ‘How the United Nations Secretary-General Promotes International Norms’, Global Responsibility to Protect 7, no. 1 (2015): 31–55.
21. Steven Hetcher, ‘The FTC as Internet Privacy Norm Entrepreneur’, Vanderbilt Law Review 53, no. 6 (2000): 2041–61.
22. Michelle Pace, ‘Norm Shifting from EMP to ENP: The EU as a Norm Entrepreneur in the South?’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 20, no. 4 (2007): 659–75; Issaka K. Souaré, ‘The African Union as a Norm Entrepreneur on Military Coups D’état in Africa (1952–2012): An Empirical Assessment’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 52, no. 1 (2014): 69–94; David Lewis, ‘Who's Socialising Whom? Regional Organisations and Contested Norms in Central Asia’, Europe-Asia Studies 64, no. 7 (2012): 1219–37.
23. Christine Ingebritsen, ‘Norm Entrepreneurs Scandinavia's Role in World Politics’, Cooperation and Conflict 37, no. 1 (2002): 11–23.
24. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Sanjeev Khagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Sally Engle Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle’, American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 38–51; Richard Price, ‘Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy in World Politics’, World Politics 55, no. 4 (2003): 579–606; Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds, The Power of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
25. Muthiah Alagappa, ‘Civil Society and Political Change: An Analytical Framework’, in Civil Society and Political Change in Asia: Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 34.
26. See also Amitav Acharya, ‘Local and Transnational Civil Society as Agents of Norm Diffusion’ (paper presented at the Global Governance Workshop, Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, June 1–3, 2012). http://amitavacharya.com/sites/default/files/Local%20and%20Transnational%20Civil%20Society%20as%20Agents%20of%20Norm%20Diffusion.pdf
27. Vivien Collingwood and Louis Logister, ‘State of the Art: Addressing the INGO “Legitimacy Deficit”’, Political Studies Review 3, no. 2 (2005): 175–92; Alan Hudson, ‘NGOs’ Transnational Advocacy Networks: From “Legitimacy” to “Political Responsibility”?’, Global Networks 1, no. 4 (2001): 331–52; Sarah Lister, ‘NGO Legitimacy: Technical Issue or Social Construct?’, Critique of Anthropology 23, no. 2 (2003): 175–92; Michael Edwards, Legitimacy and Values in NGOs and Voluntary Organizations: Some Sceptical Thoughts (London: Earthscan, 1999).
28. Susan Burgerman, Moral Victories: How Activists Provoke Multilateral Action (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
29. Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism’.
30. UN General Assembly, ‘Situation of Human Rights Defenders’, A/70/217, 30 July 2015, http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/70/217.
31. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, 1.
32. César Rodríguez-Garavito, ‘The Future of Human Rights: From Gatekeeping to Symbiosis’, Sur - International Journal on Human Rights 20 (2014): 499.
33. César Rodríguez-Garavito, ‘Multiple Boomerangs: New Models of Global Human Rights Advocacy’, openDemocracy, 21 January 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/c%C3%A9sar-rodr%C3%ADguezgaravito/multiple-boomerangs-new-models-of-global-human-rights-advoc (accessed 24 December 2015).
34. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism.
35. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 331.
36. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism, 122.
37. UNHCR, ‘2015 UNHCR Regional Operations Profile – Asia and the Pacific’, 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4a02d8ec6.html (accessed 24 December 2015).
38. Ibid.
39. Michael Kagan, ‘“We Live in a Country of UNHCR”: The UN Surrogate State and Refugee Policy in the Middle East’, Policy Development and Evaluation Service, Research Paper No. 201 (Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, February 2011); Amy Slaughter and Jeff Crisp, ‘A Surrogate State? The Role of UNHCR in Protracted Refugee Situations’, Policy Development and Evaluation Service, Research Paper No. 168 (Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, January 2009), http://www.unhcr.org/4981cb432.html (accessed 24 December 2015).
40. UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘UNHCR Global Resettlement Statistical Report 2013’ (UNHCR, 2014), http://www.unhcr.org/52693bd09.html (accessed 24 December 2015).
41. See also Susan Kneebone, 'ASEAN and the Conceptualization of Refugee Protection in Southeastern Asian States’, in Regional Approaches to the Protection of Asylum Seekers: An International Legal Perspective, ed. Professor Ademola Abass and Professor Francesca Ippolito (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), 295–323.
42. B.S. Chimni, ‘Status of Refugees in India: Strategic Ambiguity’, in Refugees and the State: Practices of Asylum and Care in India, 1947–2000, ed. Ranabir Samaddar (New Delhi: SAGE Publications India, 2003), 443–71. As Chimni opines, countries such as India are concerned that accession to the convention would allow greater intrusion by the UNHCR of its national refugee regime.
43. B.S. Chimni, ‘The Birth of a “Discipline”: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies’, Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 1 (2008): 11–29; Davies, ‘The Asian Rejection?’
44. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are not state parties.
45. Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are not state parties. Timor Leste, not yet an ASEAN member, is a state party.
46. Alice M. Nah, ‘Struggling with (Il)legality: The Indeterminate Functioning of Malaysia's Borders for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Stateless Persons’, in Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge, ed. Prem Kumar Rajaram and Carl Grundy-Warr (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 35–64; Pia Anjolie Oberoi, Exile and Belonging: Refugees and State Policy in South Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Ranabir Samaddar, ed., Refugees and the State: Practices of Asylum and Care in India, 1947–2000 (New Delhi: SAGE Publications India, 2003).
47. Martin Jones, ‘Moving beyond Protection Space: Developing a Law of Asylum in South East Asia’, in Refugee Protection and the Role of Law: Conflicting Identities, ed. Susan Kneebone, Dallal Stevens, and Loretta Baldassar (London: Routledge, 2014), 257.
48. Robyn Sampson, ‘Mandatory, Non-Reviewable, Indefinite: Immigration Detention in Australia’, in Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and Its Human Impact, ed. Amy Nethery and Stephanie J. Silverman (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 104–13.
49. See ABC News, ‘Cambodia to Take Refugees in $40 Million Deal with Australia’, ABC (Online ed., 26 September 2014), http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-26/cambodia-to-take-refugees-in-40-million-deal-with/5773282 (accessed 16 December 2015).
50. The obligations of the 1951 Convention do not extend to Hong Kong through the historic application of Article 40, first during British colonial rule and more recently by China.
51. Brian Barbour, ‘Protection in Practice: The Situation of Refugees in East Asia', 2 Nanmin Kenkyu Journal [Refugee Studies Journal] 81 (2012) (published in Japanese; English original available at: http://www.refugeestudies.jp/)
52. Ibid.
53. Howard Adelman, ed., Protracted Displacement in Asia: No Place to Call Home (London: Ashgate, 2013); Sriprapha Petcharamesree, ‘International Protection and Public Accountability: The Roles of Civil Society’, in The UNHCR and the Supervision of International Refugee Law, ed. James C. Simeon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 275–85.
54. Hans Schattle and Jennifer McCann, ‘The Pursuit of State Status and the Shift toward International Norms: South Korea's Evolution as a Host Country for Refugees’, Journal of Refugee Studies 27, no. 3 (2014): 317–37.
55. See: http://wao.org.my/file/file/Migration%20Working%20Group%20Joint%20UPR%202013%20Submission.pdf (accessed 14 December 2015).
56. Petrice Flowers, Refugees, Women, and Weapons: International Norm Adoption and Compliance in Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
57. See also Chimni, ‘Status of Refugees in India: Strategic Ambiguity’.
58. UNHCR, ‘UNHCR Position Paper on the Strategic Use of Resettlement’ (Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement, Geneva, 2010), http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4c0d10ac2.pdf (accessed 24 December 2015).
59. Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, ‘Human Rights Lawyer and APRRN Member Threatened in Sri Lanka’, Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, 1 March 2013, http://www.aprrn.info/1/index.php/news/178-human-rights-lawyer-and-aprrn-member-threatened-in-sri-lanka (accessed 14 December 2015). In June 2013, for example, Sri Lankan human rights lawyer Lakshan Dias, one of the founding members of APRRN, was subject to surveillance and questioning. Human rights groups were concerned that he would be abducted, tortured and forcibly disappeared.
60. Constitution of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, http://www.aprrn.info/1/images/APRRN-Constitution-2014-final.pdf (accessed 14 December 2015).
61. Personal communication with Julia Mayerhoffer, APRRN Interim Executive Director, 7 October 2015.
62. A public list of the APRRN's members can be found on its website, http://www.aprrn.info/1/index.php/about-us/membership (accessed 14 December 2015).
63. R. Charli Carpenter, ‘Governing the Global Agenda: “Gatekeepers” and “Issue Adoption” in Transnational Advocacy Networks’, in Who Governs the Globe?, ed. Deborah D. Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan K. Sell, Cambridge Studies in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 202–37.
64. Constitution of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, http://www.aprrn.info/1/images/APRRN-Constitution-2014-final.pdf (accessed 14 December 2015).
65. Since the first Asia Pacific Consultation on Refugee Rights (APCRR1) in 2008, APRRN members have met again in Bangkok in 2009 and 2010, Seoul in 2012, and Bangkok in 2014. The reports from these conferences are available on the APRRN's website.
66. I am indebted to James Thomson for sharing this observation (personal communication, 6 November 2015).
67. Nevertheless, the APRRN's joint statements now include a standard disclaimer: ‘While APRRN statements are prepared in consultation with APRRN members, they do not necessarily reflect the views of all APRRN members.' See for example, APRRN Statement, ‘Japan's Review of their Refugee Status Determination System Raises New Concerns’, http://www.aprrn.info/1/images/PDF/APRRN_Japan_Statement_29052015.pdf (accessed 14 December 2014).
68. APRRN Newsletter, September 2013. More information on SUAKA can be found on its website, http://suaka.or.id/ (accessed 14 December 2015).
69. See SSRN, ‘Launching Ceremony: Refugee Rights Network (RRN) Pakistan’, 2015, http://rrnpk.org/launching-ceremony-of-rrn-pakistan/ (accessed 14 December 2015).
70. Chimni, ‘The Birth of a “Discipline”’. In his seminal paper, Chimni notes that the UNHCR plays a significant role in the production and dissemination of knowledge about refugees. I argue that this observation applies to the way that local civil society actors understand the realities, limits and possibilities of refugee protection.
71. Personal communication with Brian Barbour, 13 October 2015.
72. I am indebted to James Thomson for sharing these observations (personal communication, 6 November 2015).
73. Peter Hayes and Kiho Yi, Complexity, Security and Civil Society in East Asia: Foreign Policies and the Korean Peninsula (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015).
74. For example, the Regional Experts Roundtable on Alternatives to Detention for Children, 19–20 November 2015, Bangkok, Thailand.
75. http://www.dpiap.org/resources/pdf/AICHR_5_YEAR_work_plan2010-2015_12_07_04.pdf (accessed 14 December 2015).
76. Susan Kneebone, ‘The Bali Process and Global Refugee Policy in the Asia–Pacific Region’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 29 June 2014.
77. Ibid.
78. It is often difficult to justify the ‘added value’ of coordination and facilitation to donors through traditional rubrics of ‘impact’ and ‘effectiveness’. Most discernible outcomes are by definition the product of partnerships and often have long gestation periods.
79. Kathryn Sikkink, ‘The Power of Networks in International Politics’, in Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance, ed. Miles Kahler, Cornell Studies in Political Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 230.