The Human Rights Report as Discursive Genre

Abstract

This article is a case study of Myanmar, where activists adopted the international discourse of human rights in their struggle for democratic political and social change almost three decades ago, and examines the impact of this decision for the resistance against military rule. The article examines the use of human rights discourse in the struggle for democratic transformation between 1988 and 2011 rather than the ongoing political transition in Myanmar. During this period, international human rights discourse acquired dominant global status, and Myanmar became a global human rights issue. The discourse of human rights offers a framework of norms and related practices that is associated with a regime of conventions and institutions. This international regime evolved during the period under study, thereby offering different opportunities and constraints for action that affected how it would be used by Myanmar activists. The article analyzes how this discourse was used in about fifty reports published by different local organizations, in particular how different discursive techniques convey agency, how the reports provide alternative forms of truth telling and how human rights discourse produces claims for action, and hence how the human rights report has emerged as discursive genre. The study of the reports allows us to follow developments in political events in Myanmar but more importantly to assess the evolution in the reports in the context of the adoption of new tactics of struggle, new forms of organizing resistance and an evolving international context after 1988.