Blurring Boundaries or Deepening Discourses on FoRB? From Global to Local and Back Again

Abstract

This article explores whether, and if so, how, vernacularization could play a role in fostering commitment to the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) across different cultural and political contexts. It suggests that while there are indications that vernacularization could and does contribute to this goal, there are points of concern and aspects that remain under-researched. These lingering caveats relate to the process of vernacularization itself and to its specific application to the right to FoRB. Resolving these dilemmas requires sustained, active attention by scholars, policymakers, and advocates engaged in human rights research and implementation.

Keywords:

• human rights
• freedom of religion or belief
• vernacularization
• religion
• intercultural communication
• interreligious dialogue and engagement
• cross-cultural translation

Translation or vernacularization¹ as a means for promoting human rights across political and cultural differences has gained increasing attention in both policy and academia in recent years. Proffered as a means for overcoming the neo-imperialist baggage and cultural relativist objections raised against the universal human rights agenda, vernacularization concerns the processes by which human rights activists and advocates make universal human rights “known” — that is, recognizable, intelligible, understandable, relatable, and relevant — to the culturally and politically distinct, diverse lived experiences and everyday realities of individuals and communities around the globe.

Yet questions remain regarding the extent to which vernacularization is successful in achieving this goal. First, processes of vernacularization may lead to a watering down of international human rights standards, owing to the need to make human rights familiar and harmonious with existing local norms and practices (Merry and Levitt 2019), alongside the diversity of concepts and terms that are then introduced into the human rights field of discursive action.

Second, with a few notable exceptions (see, for example, Doffegnies and Wells 2021; Levitt 2020), much of the research has focused on the work of human rights activists and advocates in the NGO sector. Yet these are not the only actors engaged in the work of vernacularization. The goals of other vernacularizing agents, such as states and corporations, may significantly diverge from the goals of human rights activists and of the international human rights agenda, potentially even undermining these norms.

Third, vernacularization has been presented as a means to challenge or overcome the dominance of “Western,” Euro-American values and institutions in global human rights language and values (Merry 2006). Yet there are two avenues through which vernacularization may instead actually contribute to reinforcing this power imbalance. Firstly, vernacularization seems to imply that international human rights standards are unintelligible for some individuals and communities around the globe, that they are incapable of grasping these principles as they stand and thus need to have them translated. Vernacularization “assumes a global norm as the lingua franca,” running the risk that local indigenous structures for establishing equality and justice may be overlooked (Doffegnies and Wells 2021). Secondly, in much scholarly work and documentation of vernacularization processes, the translation of norms and values is unidirectional — from international human rights law and institutions to diverse communities (Levitt et al. 2012; Madson 2022). There is little consideration of whether vernacularization occurs “in reverse” and, if it does or could, how would that occur and what possibilities and challenges might it raise?

These are the dilemmas this article considers, specifically with reference to the right to freedom of religion or belief. The article explores whether, and if so, how, vernacularization could play a role in fostering commitment to the international human right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) across different cultural and political contexts. It suggests that while there are positive indications that vernacularization can and does contribute to this goal (see, for example, Gruell and Wilson 2018), there are points of concern and aspects that remain under-researched. These lingering caveats relate to the process of vernacularization itself and to its specific application to the right to FoRB. Resolving these dilemmas requires sustained, active attention by scholars, policymakers, and advocates engaged in human rights research and implementation.

The article begins with an overview of various disciplinary approaches to human rights in general. This serves two purposes. First, it situates the discussion of vernacularization and FoRB within the broader discursive field of human rights. Second, diverse and at times competing, even contradictory, approaches to human rights also influence perceptions of vernacularization’s possibility for positively contributing to the human rights agenda.

Having set the theoretical stage, the article then proceeds to a discussion of vernacularization itself, drawing primarily on existing anthropological research on processes through which international human rights concepts are translated, vernacularized, made relatable and intelligible in specific, culturally and politically diverse contexts. Three key observations emerge from this analysis: first, processes of vernacularization thus far documented seem to be primarily unidirectional, raising the question of whether there are possibilities for “vernacularization in reverse.” Second, there is an uneasiness or wariness of vernacularization in international human rights law scholarship, worried that vernacularization could lead to a watering down of international human rights standards. Third, vernacularization has thus far been used as a way to describe processes by which human rights activists and advocates make human rights intelligible across different contexts. Whether vernacularization could also be seen, implemented and utilized as a proactive, deliberate strategy for human rights promotion and protection has to date not been adequately explored.

The third section of the article draws on ethnographic research undertaken in Indonesia and India to consider the pitfalls and possibilities of vernacularization for fostering commitment to the right to FoRB in particular. It places this ethnographic research in conversation with previous research focused on the vernacularization of women’s rights to identify and describe specific strategies used by different actors. Yet there are particular challenges associated with the right to FoRB, specifically concepts of “religion,” “belief,” and “freedom,” which suggests that vernacularization cannot be approached in a one-size-fits-all manner. Not only does the concept of human rights themselves need to be made relatable across culturally and politically diverse contexts, but the content of specific rights themselves will also require contextually sensitive approaches.

In conclusion, the article suggests that the possibilities for vernacularization and vernacularization in reverse depend very much on the context as well as the priorities of the international community of human rights lawyers, advocates, analysts, policymakers, and researchers. Is the priority to uphold international human rights laws and standards, in this case FoRB, to both the letter and spirit of the law, or is there space for acknowledging diverse ways in which the spirit of the law could be protected? Does protection and guarantee of FoRB always need to be done in the language of FoRB, or can FoRB be defended without any reference to FoRB at all? Does this open up possibilities for harnessing greater commitment to international human rights standards in general, if these standards can be acknowledged, protected, and upheld without referencing “human rights” at all? Or does this risk falling back into cultural relativist arguments and weakening of respect for dignity and equality of all human beings? The article thus, in some senses, raises more questions than it can answer, highlighting the need for further research and reflection on this vital topic.

What Do We Mean When We Say “Human Rights”?

One of the distinct challenges of any effort to research, analyze, promote, advocate, and defend human rights is the diversity of perspectives from which one can engage with them. Human rights are not only legal articles. They are also normative philosophical principles and modes of political engagement. Further, by their very nature, they are lived and experienced, either in their honoring or their deprivation. Thus, they cut across law, philosophy, sociology, political science, and anthropology. No single discipline can lay claim to ownership of human rights nor to the definitive interpretation and analysis of what human rights are. It follows, then, that there is a multiplicity of ways in which to ensure human rights are recognized, upheld, and pursued (Freeman 2017). Further, within each of these different disciplinary approaches, there are further differences regarding what human rights are and how best they can be pursued.

According to Freeman (2017, 8), the field of human rights is dominated by lawyers, because the field itself has become a “technical, legal discourse.” Yet, that international human rights exist at all is the result of political, rather than legal processes. Changes in legal protections of rights over time have largely taken place after social and political upheaval (think for example of suffragettes campaigning for the women’s right to vote, the civil rights act in the US; Indigenous people’s enfranchisement in Australia; ending apartheid in South Africa; the fall of communism and the velvet revolution (Forsythe 2000)). Thus, human rights are inherently political, perhaps even more so than they are legal (Freeman 2017). Law is a codification of social and cultural norms and practices. Changes in law tend to follow changes in society and politics, not the other way around (Berger 2007).

At the same time, as well as being political and legal, human rights are social, in that determining what human rights mean and how they should be interpreted is an ongoing process of negotiation and interaction amongst multiple stakeholders, including IGOs, NGOs, states, lawyers, politicians, corporations, and rights bearers themselves. This points to a further dimension, that human rights are lived and experienced, anthropological. “The determination of the meaning of human rights is a social process” (Freeman 2017, 6). Thus, human rights are constantly evolving, at the same time as they provide us with foundational standards for how human beings should be treated by one another and by the institutions we have collectively developed. This situation requires approaching the promotion and protection of human rights in ways that are both fixed yet fluid, firm yet open, holding in tension these two contradictory realities concerning the nature of rights.

Yet how are such approaches to be fostered amidst a myriad of competing frameworks and agendas? Dembour (2010), for example, rather than focusing on disciplinary approaches, instead distinguishes four different types of human rights scholars that can be found across all disciplines engaged in the study of human rights: natural, deliberative, protest, and discourse scholars. Natural scholars hold that, whether recognized by international law or not, human rights exist a priori. Indeed, international human rights law is built on pre-existing human rights; it is a codification of those already existing rights. On the whole, natural rights scholars see human rights as relatively fixed and unchanging.

Deliberative scholars, in contrast, hold that human rights are standards that societies choose to adopt. For deliberative scholars, human rights are not natural, but are the result of political mobilization, action, social agreement, and institutionalization. Human rights can evolve and new rights can develop, but these must be acknowledged and agreed on by all stakeholders and codified into law.

Protest scholars are more focused on the social struggle for equality and the fight for rights. Human rights evolve and forms of injustice and suffering change, requiring the development of new rights and new campaigns for equality. They are often suspicious of international human rights law and institutions, since, according to protest scholars, these bodies can be co-opted by elites.

The final group in Dembour’s analysis are discourse scholars. Discourse scholars hold that human rights exist because they are talked about. They also point to the power that human rights language has gained especially as a tool for expressing political ideologies and aspirations. Importantly, they note that human rights language and human rights laws are just as open to interpretation and misuse as any other kind of law. It is discourse scholars who often highlight the implicit neo-colonialist underpinnings of some human rights efforts and agendas.

Regardless of discipline, or school of thought in Dembour’s typology, the one thing that all human rights scholars seem to agree on is that they matter. Yet, the reasons why human rights matters differ for different groups of scholars, policymakers, and activists. Natural scholars, for example, hold that human rights matter because they exist. Deliberative scholars hold that rights matter because societies have decided, through philosophical, political, and legal processes throughout history, to commit to these standards. For protest scholars, human rights matter because they offer pathways of resistance and emancipation. For discourse scholars, human rights matter because we talk about them and how we talk about them affects political realities.

This plethora of understandings and approaches to human rights provides insight into the different approaches to and assessments of vernacularization as a method for spreading and translating human rights across diverse cultural and political contexts. Such diversity of opinion on what human rights are and why they matter points to the possibilities for vernacularization to potentially foster understanding across these different perspectives. It also suggests, however, that translation or vernacularization of human rights is a process that must and indeed already does, take place everywhere — within and outside of academia, international institutions, NGOs, states, corporations, and amongst rights bearers themselves. This already challenges the bulk of existing research on vernacularization, which has thus far suggested vernacularization of human rights takes place between international norms and institutions and culturally diverse local communities. Before delving further into these critiques, however, let us first unpack in more detail what vernacularization is and how it has been studied in relation to human rights.

Understanding Vernacularization

Vernacularization refers to the processes by which ideas from transnational origins migrate to smaller communities (Merry 2006). Sally Engle Merry (2006) is credited with first applying the term to describe processes by which international law has been modified and applied in diverse local communities, with particular attention for the migration of women’s human rights (Merry 2006; Levitt et al. 2012). Vernacularization focuses more on the practice of human rights, a focus adopted by anthropologists explicitly to bypass the universalist-relativist debate that plagued international human rights agendas, particularly in the 1990s (Merry 2006; see also Goodale 2018). This anthropological approach privileges how human rights are lived, embodied, enacted, and experienced in people’s everyday lived realities, over and above how they are debated in parliamentary hearings, enshrined in national law or codified in public discourse through politics and the media. By focusing on how human rights are practiced and experienced, the emphasis shifts away from endeavors to demonstrate the normative value of human rights to instead explore the impact of human rights on small communities in situ (Merry 2006). As Levitt et al. (2012, 127) learned through their research, “human rights are malleable, subject to different interpretations and meanings that activists apply to particular problems in specific situations.” Levitt et al. (2012) offer a predominantly sympathetic analysis of how vernacularization empowers activists to pursue the realization of human rights in the everyday lived realities of the communities in which they work, with less concern for whether these actions result in political or legislative change within formal institutional settings. Yet, as they note in other contexts and as other researchers have also highlighted, vernacularization can also be problematic and contribute to interpretations of human rights that actively exclude certain groups and communities from their realization. Doffegnies and Wells (2021, 10–11), for example, describe how in the context of Myanmar, “human rights” were negatively incorporated into anti-Muslim protests and demonstrations, positioning human rights and the institutions that promote them as supporting terrorism.

Within the literature that explores how human rights concepts travel across different contexts, there is an important distinction between processes of translation and those of vernacularization. As Levitt et al. (2012, 130) describe it, translation is about communicating something so that it can be understood. Translators, as far as possible, do not interfere in the original meaning of words and concepts. They merely endeavor to make the original meaning of the concepts understood in a different language or register. By contrast, vernacularizers “exercise agency, purposefully combining elements of the cultural repertoire already in place with specific pieces of what is circulating so that they are comprehensible and useable in a particular context” (Levitt et al. 2012, 130, emphasis added). Put crudely, translators make concepts understood, vernacularizers make them relevant. This distinction is contested or at least blurred by other scholars (see, for example, Setiawan 2013), seeing translation as part of the process of vernacularization, rather than a separate and distinct approach. Either way, the emphasis within vernacularization is on fusing transnational human rights concepts with local ideas and philosophies and applying them in ways relevant to the specific issues at hand and the affected populations.

Agents of Vernacularization

Much existing research on vernacularization focuses on the work of human rights activists and advocates. Yet, as Doffegnies and Wells (2021) make clear, vernacularization is undertaken by all kinds of actors and stakeholders across diverse political contexts. Thus, for researchers interested in considering the role of vernacularization in fostering commitment to human rights in general, and to certain rights, such as FoRB, in particular, it is imperative to consider who the agents of (different kinds of) vernacularization are in different contexts. The next section provides an overview of different types of vernacularization processes undertaken by human rights activists and advocates. Yet a significant gap exists in our knowledge of different types of vernacularization undertaken by other actors, such as political elites, government agencies, the military, corporations, and the media. All these actors shape the public (national and international) discourse of human rights. Consequently, understanding how these actors vernacularize different rights and how varieties of vernacularization can result in competing and contradictory understandings of rights norms and their application is an essential component of analyzing how rights travel and become embedded and accepted (or not) in different contexts. Thus, there is still much more to be discovered regarding how different actors and agents make meaning of human rights across different societal, political and economic sectors, as well as across different cultural contexts.

Varieties of Vernacularization

Processes of vernacularization differ across social, cultural, political, and historical contexts, dependent on the avenues through which concepts travel, how they are interpreted and appropriated, and by whom. They also differ within those contexts depending on the rights that are being vernacularized. In their work on women’s rights, Levitt et al. (2012, 127–129) identify three different types of vernacularization of women’s rights. The first is the “imaginative space of women’s rights” specifically, rather than human rights in general. The global discourse of women’s empowerment, emancipation, equality, and protection offers aspirational and inspirational possibilities for community women’s rights organizations, without the need to explicitly refer to rights themselves. In certain contexts, this can be politically and strategically advantageous due to the political baggage rights talk can carry, associated with neo-colonialism, Western dominance and cultural imperialism (Gruell and Wilson 2018; Doffegnies and Wells 2021). This approach could be described as vernacularization of the ideological, imaginative, and discursive repertoire of human rights.

The second type of vernacularization Levitt and her co-authors highlight is the vernacularization of ideas. Human rights discourse is used to mobilize women’s organizations to address issues that they may not have previously engaged with. Levitt et al. (2012) describe work by Indian women’s rights groups that draw on human rights discourses to explicitly engage with sexuality rights, as opposed to remaining focused primarily on equality rights. The vernacularization of ideas also enables connection of women’s rights groups and organizations with issues that at first glance may not seem to be connected specifically with the rights of women, yet which inevitably impact women’s daily lived realities. The right to FoRB offers an example here, since global feminist movements often emphasize secularism (Merry 2006) and see women’s emancipation from religion as necessary for their full equality. Yet barriers to women’s full participation in and practice of their religion is also a women’s rights issue (Petersen 2020).

The third type of vernacularization Levitt et al. (2012, 128) identify is the articulation of core women’s rights concepts in locally appropriate ways and putting them into practice. This third type of vernacularization focuses mainly on how women themselves adopt these core concepts, incorporate them into their own conceptions of self and self-worth, and the practices they engage with to claim those rights from their surrounding community. Levitt et al. (2012) describe women in Lima, Peru making use of street plays and community celebrations as spaces in which to actively and explicitly articulate ideas of women’s rights, advocate for their recognition and educate others in the community about them.

Vernacularization and FoRB

Some of these techniques have also been noted amongst organizations and activists engaged in the promotion of the right to FoRB. Specifically, the articulation of core concepts related to the right to FoRB in locally appropriate ways is crucial for how community NGOs seek to promote respect for religious difference and the right to FoRB. This concern occurs in addition to the challenges noted in relation to other rights, such as women’s rights, and human rights in general, concerning their association with “Western” neo-imperialism and as culturally incompatible in non-Euro-American contexts.

A key problem that plagues the right to FoRB, highlighted in scholarly research, is the difficulty of defining precisely what is meant by “religion.” It is important to note that articles of law themselves in general do not provide definitions of this term, leaving it open to interpretation. This is not the problem that most analysts are concerned with, however. The problem is that within most legal contexts, there are already implicit assumptions circulating about what “religion” means and these implicit culturally, historically, and politically informed assumptions inform the decisions that are taken by courts and by legislators regarding what does and does not count as religion and where and how it is permitted to be practiced (Beaman 2013; Sullivan 2005; Maddox 2010). As implicit, unconscious, unspoken assumptions about the nature of religion, they are difficult to challenge and contest.

In addition to these general challenges with the concepts of “religion” and “belief,” context-specific problems also have to be navigated, including how the idea of “freedom” in relation to religion is understood within some contexts. In Cirebon, Indonesia, for example, members of local organization Fahmina observed during interviews that promoting freedom of religion or belief is complicated by the emphasis on religious plurality and diversity that often accompanies efforts to promote FoRB. Reference to such terms is likely to trigger misunderstandings and tensions. Where “freedom” means individual choice of religion and entails individual expression of this freedom, promoting pluralism and diversity is viewed by community members with suspicion, because it is understood as promoting a plurality of beliefs within a religious community or tradition, rather than a plurality and diversity of the different communities themselves. Social cohesion and stability, for many community members, are a matter of religious conformity in terms of both belief and practice. Promoting pluralism and diversity as an individual capacity of choice in matters of religious orientation is seen as contradictory and disruptive to this social cohesion and stability (Gruell and Wilson 2018, 96; Gruell, Wilson, and Azam 2016). Thus, they described a need to “break down” the language of FoRB to make it more accessible and useable, which activists from Fahmina organization do through applying locally embedded concepts instead. Use of these local concepts follows closely from Fahmina’s overarching interpretation that “human rights are about becoming fully human, being good to yourself and to others” (Gruell and Wilson 2018, 96). Specifically, Ngaji Rasa (I am you, you are me) and Silaturahmi (gathering) feature prominently in Fahmina’s approach, because these concepts and principles are also deeply embedded in everyday life in Cirebon. They reflect Fahmina’s emphasis on building relationships across socially constructed divides (such as religious identities) through direct encounter and through recognizing the shared humanity in one another.

Similarly, in Gujarat, India, staff and volunteers working on a project on Freedom of Religion or Belief described during interviews how they changed all references to the project to “Alliance for Justice and Peace.” The term “belief” is almost never used, because, according to the interviewees, in India “belief” is associated with superstitions like black magic and is thus unhelpful to mention in the field. They discuss “religion” internally within the organization but do not mention “religion” at all externally. Mentioning religion, according to AJP, is counter-productive and risky, and has the potential to undermine their goal of improving the situation for religious minorities. Instead, Alliance for Justice and Peace (AJP) utilize the concept of uthna-baithna (literally “getting up-sitting down”) to also place emphasis on the importance of building relationships. This recognition is further facilitated by focusing on issues of shared concern within communities, such as food, sanitation, healthcare, education, and employment, issues that are not directly or explicitly connected with religious identity, yet where discrimination based on religious identity may be endemic (Gruell and Wilson 2018, 97).

Levitt et al. (2012, 131) also observed this strategy in their research on women’s rights. They discuss the emergence of comoderes populares, or communal dining rooms/canteens in Peru in the 1980s. These rooms met an immediate physical need of women and their families, yet were also spaces in which women were able to explore the sources of poverty, hunger, inequality, and injustice in Peru, and educate and empower themselves to claim their rights. This suggests that for human rights to matter in small places close to home, in local community contexts, they need to make a material difference in people’s daily lived realities, their health, wellbeing, and dignity, and that of their family and the community around them. How those human rights come to matter, however, varies almost infinitely, and changes over time, alongside shifts in (geo)political discourses and priorities (Levitt et al. 2012, 129).

A further similarity across vernacularization of women’s rights and the right to FoRB appears to be the use of imaginative space of human rights in general, as opposed to drawing on the imaginative space of either FoRB or “religion” or “women’s rights.” Levitt et al. (2012) observe women’s rights organizations drawing on “the momentum and power provided by the backdrop of global discourses of human rights,” rather than necessarily rights themselves, to promote women’s rights. In the context of FoRB, local NGOs draw on the aspirational register of human rights, such as Fahmina’s assertion that “human rights are about becoming fully human” to describe their work, rather than discourses explicitly connected with “religion” or FoRB. Thus, the right to FoRB, respect for religious diversity and difference, become knitted together with broader narratives and imaginaries about human rights and about the nature, value, and meaning of what it is to be human. In both cases, the use of this vernacularization strategy enables activists to sidestep complex and controversial debates, such as what counts as “religion” (Gruell and Wilson 2018), which minorities have access to FoRB and which do not (Nelson 2020) or whether the push for women’s rights and equality is an indigenous, grassroots, bottom up movement or a conglomerate of ideas imported from the West, imposed top down and inconsistent with local values (Levitt et al. 2012).

Yet, in sidestepping these fundamental disagreements, there is the risk that processes of vernacularization do not achieve any kind of deep, long-lasting change that ensures that rights become embedded in local social and political cultures. This risk forms part of what Merry and Levitt (2019) refer to as the resonance dilemma. They argue that the ease with which human rights norms are adopted and embraced depends on the extent to which they resonate or can be presented as resonating with the local historical, cultural, and political context, a point also highlighted by An-Na’im (1990) with reference to compatibility between international human rights and Islamic law. The closer a human rights norm is or can be presented as being to existing socio-cultural and political norms, the more readily it will be adopted. Conversely, the less familiar the idea or norm is, the more resistance it is likely to be met with. At the same time, the more familiar an idea, the less likely it is to produce significant, fundamental change, whereas new norms that initially clash with existing values will arguably produce more fundamental, permanent change in the long run. In the face of this dilemma, activists have to decide on the kind of change they want to see and how long they want to take to achieve.

Merry and Levitt (2019) use the example of domestic violence to demonstrate the point. They discuss two different community approaches in Hawaii to ending domestic violence, one directed by public authorities and one directed by a Pentecostal Christian community. In the program approach adopted by public authorities, they sought to challenge the power structures and inequalities in women’s relationships with men that were bound up with instances of domestic violence. Explicit efforts were made to address the sense of entitlement to beat and discipline their wives that some men in the community felt, and shift the understanding of domestic violence to a criminal act. In contrast, the approach adopted within the Pentecostal Christian community sought to foster consensus that domestic violence was unacceptable through presenting it as something that occurred because of sin or demon possession, causes that originated largely outside the individual and immanent social structures. This approach, while resonating with the norms and belief frameworks of the community and helping to reduce the acceptability of domestic violence, largely left structural gender inequalities in place. The first of the two approaches not only addressed the problem of domestic violence but also offered opportunities for women to activate and claim rights and equality in other areas of gender relations. The second approach, however, while highlighting that domestic violence is a serious problem and should not be allowed to continue, did little to disrupt gender hierarchies or prevent the future occurrence of domestic violence.

Activists and advocates working for the advancement of the right to FoRB often navigate similar choices. The Alliance for Peace and Justice (AJP) in Gujarat, India, for example, has chosen to focus their work on the more general group of “people excluded from development,” rather than on religious minorities and violations of the right to FoRB. AJP are aware that discrimination and exclusion of people from development projects and access to other human rights often take place based on religious identity. Yet explicitly focusing on FoRB and religious identity generates more hostility and opposition from the surrounding community than focusing on the exclusion of people from economic, social, cultural, and political development. To have a higher chance of increasing people’s economic and political inclusion, AJP focus on addressing the symptoms of this discrimination, rather than its root causes. Indeed, members of the Muslim community in Gujarat who participated in interviews voiced opposition to openly asserting injustice against the Muslim minority and solely asking for recognition of their rights, saying, “Relations are everything, asking for rights will only lead to conflict.” Implicit in this statement is the ongoing power imbalance between the Muslim minority and Hindu majority — the Muslim community are “asking” for their rights. To avoid conflict, it is better to maintain relations. Yet, as in the example of the Pentecostal church in Hawaii, it is difficult to see how approaching the pursuit of minority rights in this way will contribute to addressing the underlying problem of inequality between the different communities. While some aspects of the lives of religious, particularly Muslim, minorities in Gujarat may be materially improved in the short-term, they will continue to exist precariously at the margins of society unless and until the more fundamental issue of discrimination based on religious identity can be addressed (Gruell and Wilson 2018; Gruell, Wilson, and Azam 2016). This is not to suggest that there are right or wrong choices when it comes to human rights vernacularization. The point here is rather to highlight the very significant challenges and dilemmas faced by activists and advocates, the choices open to them and that, whichever choice they make, there will be both advances and setbacks when it comes to the realization of rights in the everyday lives of people in the communities in which they work.

The Trajectory of Vernacularization

The inequality between groups within communities echoes another problem in vernacularization, which is the inequalities amongst different actors within the transnational human rights sector. This is most evident in the direction of travel that vernacularization takes. Most research on vernacularization of human rights focuses on the ways transnational ideas are modified, adapted, and implemented in community contexts. Vernacularization is a term applied to processes already taking place amongst human rights organizations and activists. Significant emphasis is placed on the agency of local actors who choose when, how and why to interpret, combine, refashion, and apply transnational human rights ideas with indigenous wisdom and concepts. These processes are by no means smooth or uncontested. They involve “constant interaction and exchange between ideas, practices and technologies circulating within … transnational social fields” (Levitt et al. 2012, 130). There can be multiple vernaculars and vernacularizers, resulting in competing and at times contradictory interpretations of human rights (Goldstein 2013), something that Dembour’s analysis also highlights. This suggests that, ultimately, human rights are in a continuous process of interpretation and contestation.

Nonetheless, the underlying assumption in much of this literature is that conceptual modification moves predominantly from global to local, not the other way around. Transnational human rights concepts are adapted and vernacularized into local indigenous frameworks and made relevant for local contexts and issues. Yet these community adaptations and modifications are rarely taken up with the broader transnational discourse. Further, vernacularization literature implies that a broadly untroubled consensus exists within transnational human rights discourses. In practice, however, the contestation amongst states that takes place on the battlefield of human rights is, at least in part, connected to (claims of) irrelevance to national contexts, Western domination of transnational human rights frameworks and institutions, and the taint of neocolonialism.

There has thus far been little exploration of whether, and if so how, local vernacular is potentially adapted and introduced within transnational contexts. The presence of “ubuntu” in global human rights and peace and conflict transformation conversations, a philosophy made famous by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, is perhaps one example. Latin American liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor is potentially another. What difference might it make if such vernacularization of local language and concepts takes place, if words such as ubuntu, ngaji rasa or silaturahmi were picked up and utilized in global human rights discourses and forums?

A number of considerations arise with this idea of “vernacularization in reverse.” The first is the potential for cultural misappropriation in utilizing community-grounded concepts in the abstract discourse of transnational human rights. Second, there exists the very real potential that the presence of terms more relevant and more intelligible in specific cultural and community contexts may add to existing confusion or debate about certain human rights within global discourses. The existence of multiple terms and concepts within the transnational discourse could contribute to the watering down or modification of human rights laws and norms which, in turn could threaten or weaken their power and effectiveness. Merry and Levitt’s (2019) description the vernacularization of women’s rights and attention for gender-based violence in a Pentecostal Christian Church in Hawai’i (discussed above) also highlights this problem. Further, however, given the already existing competition over how to interpret the language of the rights that already exist, introducing still more terms and concepts to the international discourse could make consensus, commitment to and realization of international human rights even more challenging.

At a cursory glance, there are few examples of such instances occurring, at least not following the reverse trajectory as Levitt et al. (2012) and Merry and Levitt (2019) identify amongst women’s rights activists. However, the Faith for Rights project initiated by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights offers an interesting case. In the Beirut Declaration which launched the initiative, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights explicitly refers to human rights and faith being “mutually supportive,” suggesting an equal footing between the two (UNOHCHR 2021, 4). In this sense, the Faith for Rights projects is an attempt to vernacularize from transnational human rights context to local faith community, and encourage conversation across religious and secular divides. The extent to which the project could be labelled “reverse vernacularization,” however, is questionable, since it was spearheaded by the UN OHCHR and it is unclear the extent to which international human rights discourse has taken up concepts and narratives utilized by religious actors and communities.

Yet substantial challenges also accompany any attempt at “reverse vernacularization”, as a recent statement by Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, demonstrates. As part of January 2022 meeting of experts focusing on the erosion of women’s rights in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Alsalem utilized concepts from Islamic law, including ikhtilafi (translated as difference of opinion in her remarks), to emphasize the compatibility between Islamic Law and international human rights standards. As she herself acknowledged in her remarks, however, there is no singular interpretation of Sharia, just as there is no singular interpretation of international human rights law. Utilizing elements of the Muslim faith in this way runs the risk of homogenizing, essentializing and instrumentalizing religious language and belief frameworks, in a manner that fails to convince the intended audience of such remarks, and that potentially exacerbates and aggravates their hostility towards the international human rights regime. In other words, vernacularization may potentially do more harm than good in some contexts.

Conclusion

The tour d’horizon of vernacularization and the right to FoRB presented in this article highlights that while vernacularization processes offer a means to address intolerance, discrimination, and exclusion on the basis of human rights, it does not necessarily achieve the broader goal of active recognition, promotion, and protection of the human right to FoRB. This gets to the heart of a fundamental dilemma for scholars, activists, policymakers, and advocates engaged in work on human rights — is the goal the recognition of human rights in law and policy, or the lived realization of human rights in people’s everyday experiences? These two goals are not mutually exclusive, indeed arguably the opposite. Yet, at the same time, a question lingers as to whether both these goals can be pursued simultaneously and, if not, which goal takes priority.

In vernacularization processes, the realization and experience of rights in people’s everyday lives takes precedence. Yet unless and until the right to experience those rights is enshrined in law — the classic Arendtian conundrum of the right to have rights — the lived realization of rights remains precarious. Even when they are enshrined in law, human rights can still be taken away. In this sense, the work of vernacularization, particularly with regard to FoRB, is part of the slow gradual process of shifts in political and legal cultures, because it does the necessary work of making human rights familiar. On its own, vernacularization is not enough. Yet in cooperation with efforts to enshrine legal and political protections, vernacularization has the potential to contribute to longer-lasting changes in structural inequalities and injustice.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Linde Draaisma. The author would also like to thank Marie Juul Petersen and Thiago Alves Pinto for their insightful, challenging, and constructive critique. All errors remain my own.

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Notes on contributors

Erin K. Wilson

Erin K. Wilson is Associate Professor of Politics and Religion at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on critical intersectional analyses of religion, secularism, and global justice, including human rights, climate change, development, and forced migration. She is the author and editor of 6 books, including The Refugee Crisis and Religion (Rowman and Littlefield International, with Luca Mavelli, 2016) and After Secularism (Palgrave, 2012).

Notes

1 There is some disagreement amongst scholars as to whether translation and vernacularization are different words for the same process, whether translation forms part of vernacularization or whether they are in fact distinct and separate processes. I begin by using them interchangeably here, in part as an entry point for those unfamiliar with the term vernacularization. The article, however, will briefly outline the debates and differences further down.