Since 1996, New Tactics in Human Rights has strengthened the work of human rights advocates and defenders around the world.

By providing resources and training in strategic thinking and tactical planning. The organization has supported thousands of activists with resources tailored to the unique context in which human rights take place around the world. The voices you just heard were of our two guests today, Doug Johnson and Nancy Pearson. 

Doug has for the last 12 years been a lecturer in public policy at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to this, Doug was the executive director of the Center for Victims of Torture for nearly 25 years, during which time he helped establish the first treatment center for victims of torture in the United States. He’s been involved with various human rights and public advocacy groups and movements going all the way back to his time as a student, including helping organize boycotts against Nestle in the 1970s. In 1996, as the executive director of the Center for Victims of Torture, Doug led the founding of the New Tactics in Human Rights program. 

Our second guest for today is Nancy Pearson, current training manager of New Tactics in Human Rights. Nancy has over two decades of experience working with the Center for Victims of Torture’s New Tactics in Human Rights program as both a training and project manager. During this time, she managed the development of the new tactics website, which helps connect human rights defenders and advocates around the world to a variety of tools and resources. Prior to her work with New Tactics, she had experience in social work and international advocacy and has been an active community organizer for the entirety of her decades-long career. 

You’re listening to the Human Rights Chat podcast by the New Tactics in Human Rights program at the Center for Victims of Torture. 

My name is Noah Biasco, an intern at New Tactics for Human Rights, and I’ll be your host for today’s episode. Today, we’ll be discussing with Doug and Nancy the history of New Tactics in Human Rights and their advice for those looking to start and develop their own human rights organization.

I want to thank you both so much for being here today, and as human rights are being rolled back, not only in the United States, but across the globe, rights defenders face unprecedented challenges, and it’s essential to reflect on how we build movements, create organizations and advocate for human rights. And in this context, I’d like to discuss with you the history of New Tactics in Human Rights. How it began, the hurdles it has faced, and the valuable lessons that can be learned from its groundbreaking work. So, Doug, I’d like to start with you. New Tactics in Human Rights originated as a project under the Center for Victims of Torture.

What was the original inspiration behind New Tactics, and how has your experience and work shaped the way you think about how the human rights movement uses tactics?

Doug: First of all, I would say I don’t think that we’re in unprecedented times. That certainly we’ve had a long period where human rights has been increasingly respected. When I began working at human rights in the late 60s and early 70s, things were very tough, and consequently, there was a great deal of need to explore and experiment with ways of moving things forward. But I believe that in that process, the human rights community kind of settled into a set of working assumptions about how human rights would be protected. Primarily the building of law, especially international law, treaties, and so forth, to create a standard by which governments could be measured. And then the question is, when, as inevitably happens, they miss meeting those standards, how to put pressure on them to do that? And that was largely exposure, “information politics,” what Kathryn Sikkink calls [it]. And some people like the term “naming and shaming” as a form of tactic. 

So, how did new tactics begin, I would say one thing in my formation was in the 70s and 80s, I ran an international boycott against Nestle for its promotion of infant formula. And there developed a split in the international movement when we made a settlement with Nestle in the United States, and especially with many national organizations working on the boycott, and especially the unions. The assumption always was that we would have a negotiated ending based on very concrete measures. But for many of the groups in Europe and elsewhere, the boycott was simply symbolic. It was a way of, as they would characterize it, speaking truth to power. So when the boycott ended with an agreement, there was a lack of imagination throughout the world on what would happen next. How would you continue to put pressure on Nestle and on the other organizations, the other companies in the field, if the boycott wasn’t there? This was very troubling for people. It was troubling for me that the imagination wasn’t there. Particularly because I was now stepping out of the campaign, moving to Argentina, and not in a position to provide the same level of leadership I had on the boycott. And still to this day, I find that our tendency when we think about corporations is to think, oh, let’s do a boycott. I resisted the idea of the boycott in the first place because of experience. I knew these were very, very hard to organize successfully. And as it happened, during the period of the Nestle boycott, there were 120 other boycotts in the United States. So when you see something so repeated, it’s either because it works perfectly well or because there’s a lack of imagination. So that was one thing that seeded the ground for me, of concern about how we think about tactics. 

The second arose from the time I was in Argentina, and I worked with a human rights organization there that was pushing for the trials of the people who were involved in torture and disappearance. I happened to be there in 1985 when the military juntas were on trial, and the group I worked with was the major human rights group of Argentina, and I worked with them on the creation of a database identifying torturers. It was quite exciting and interesting, and a push forward. There was a great deal of sense within the Human Rights community that the right thing to do was to push forward prosecutions. We left in December. Shortly thereafter was the first coup against the Alfonsín government. And a month later another coup, as the lower level military people who were the ones on the list for prosecution by the human rights groups reacted to this and scared the population into submission, if you will. So that they passed several laws that really violated the spirit of human rights and of the Nuremberg principles. In truth I was, I was shocked at that. But it wasn’t until I arrived at the Center for Victims of Torture and started interacting with the clinicians there that I began to think about how torture had a long-term impact, not only on the victims, but on the communities. And as I thought about that, as I returned to Argentina, shortly after I came to CVT, I began to realize how, how there was a lack of understanding of the the effects and on the need to prepare a community to be brave, to take risks, to fight, to develop solidarity for this inevitable struggle. That started me really thinking how complex the problems were. Rather than a direct attack, we needed to be thinking about more comprehensive approaches to resolving. 

And then I think the third thing that influenced my search was that a number of the traditional human rights groups did not get the importance of this work, of thinking, well, this is “band aid.” Mostly, I think there was a great deal of fear in the human rights groups that, oh, “medical care that’s going to suck up all of the money available for human rights, and we won’t have any for legal work” and everything else they decided to do. And so what impressed me was how difficult it was for them to begin thinking of how a new institution, a new approach like CVT could add to the repertoire of our repertoire. And it’s because everyone has their own repertoire, and they do it independent of everyone else, so there wasn’t a sense of collaboration and excitement about new things happening. 

So that’s the groundwork for me, where I started thinking, well, if they don’t understand this, what else is being ignored? And I started collecting stories. For example, we had a visit from the president of Amnesty International Brazil, who told me this amazing story. So this young guy who was a teacher told me how excited they were, they finally could open Amnesty International. They’re meeting in his living room. But what they wanted to do was to improve the human rights in Brazil. But the problem was that Amnesty had a rule: you had to work on a first world, a third world, a second world, and you couldn’t work on your own country. And this frustrated them and made them a bit angry. They started discussing. “Now, we have to disband our Amnesty chapter so we can actually do human rights work.” And he said that someone in the group, it might have been him, said, Well, you know, we can’t do what Amnesty does. Let’s do something else. 

And they decided to do a human rights education program for police, which was unusual at that time, especially for Brazilian police. But they negotiated with the governors of the state of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, and they began this program. I think it was in three years they had 5000 policemen go through their course. So I admire a good organization, 5000, that’s pretty darn good. But I said, you know, why would 5000 policemen take an Amnesty International course on human rights? And of course, again, it was negotiated. They got credit, etc. But he said, “What we did is we opened all of our sessions by saying, guess what, Police? You’re human beings, that means you have human rights.” And they analyze the life of the Brazilian policeman through the UDHR. And then talked about being in systems of corruption, about the schools for their children, about the care of their parents, and of the other kinds of practical human issues that the human rights norms address, and how they were important to the life of police. And as they approach the end, they say, well, and police, you have a very special role, because your role is to protect the human rights of everyone. And at the end of three years, there was a measurable drop in police violence in these two states. And it was so clear that the United States Human Rights Report began to report on this phenomenon of how things had begun changing in these two states. 

So there, that’s the beginning for me, of the idea of looking for new tactics. 

As it happened, we were getting visits from people in Türkiye, from the treatment center for torture victims, that were asking for our help, the Medical Association of Türkiye. We had made arrangements for them to visit members of Congress and the State Department, and we admired their work. They asked for help, we started thinking about that, and out of that emerged this idea in my head that we should do a conference on tactical innovations. And we should do it someplace where it might make a difference. And at that point, it seemed to me, for other reasons, that the two best candidates would be Mexico, because it was in the middle of negotiations for NAFTA. And Türkiye, which was trying to get into the European Union. So the question was whether that framework would make those governments more interested in finding ways of resolving problems. 

So I spent a summer in Türkiye meeting all the political parties, human rights groups, and others, and found it a very receptive place. I remember being with one Conservative Party member talking about it, and he just said, “hang on a minute,” and he called a friend of his in the party and said: You have to hear this idea, this is really good, because it’s respectful, it’s it’s not going after Türkiye, as typically would happen, lots of people were writing reports about it, it was instead asking, “What kind of tactics would be useful in Türkiye to make changes?” So that really begins the process. We had a grant from AID to do the work in Türkiye, and do several things. One thing we did was a series of conferences on forensics for the Turkish Medical Association, because forensic doctors were required to visit prisoners, and they had a tendency to say, “he fell down the stairs.” So with the Medical Association doing intense training of what were the effects of torture, how did they look physically, and international doctors saying, “If you see this and you report they fell down the stairs, you’re committing malpractice.” And that had a big effect. And it had a big effect because then the Medical Association started innovating. They, for example, began to remove the license of doctors who misled on what happened. They removed their permission to be an official representative at international conferences and so forth. So there was an attempt for them to develop new ways of holding doctors accountable to tell the truth.

But we found out that the forensic doctors didn’t even have cameras. You should be taking pictures of wounds. They didn’t have cameras. So we bought cameras for every forensic office. This was quite interesting to see this innovation happening. And then we also sent some of our staff to do workshops and mutual learning with the treatment centers there. And the third idea was to explore the notion of having an international conference on tactical innovation. That worked well enough that we got a grant from a foundation that let us hire a staff person to begin working on this, taking all the stuff I had accumulated and organizing it and moving it forward. And we were really, really fortunate to get Kate Kelsch, who had worked at the National Endowment for Democracy and was a hard worker, a smart person, and she really then moved it forward into the project motion. Again, we aimed at a conference that has an unspecified date, because we don’t have the money for it, but that’s the beginning. 

Now, on the advice of other foundations, I set up a couple of different groups. One was a muckety mucks group, if you will. It was high-level people who would give credence to the ideas. The second was a group of human rights people, leaders from around the world, who would engage with the ideas with us, help us think about how to make this most useful to their work and to the international community. And there we recruited again a very, very interesting group, an innovative group of people to work with us. And with those two things [moving] forward, we really began to pull things together. Let me just stop, that was a long-winded answer, but that’s how it looked in my brain.

Strategy vs Tactics

Noah: Along those lines, Doug, you’ve talked about how confusing tactics for strategy is a common mistake, and one that even shaped your early work. Could you walk us through how understanding that difference changed how you approached organizing?

Doug: Yes, well, I think that for a long time we thought the Nestle boycott was a strategy, and it’s true that it is an implementation of a strategy which was creating economic disincentives. But of course, it’s a tactic to that broader aim. And that was important. Just as an example, early in the boycott, Nestle surprised everyone, and sent people from Geneva or from Switzerland to talk to us, and they wanted us to come to New York and have this meeting with them. Well, we’re all small, poor organizations. It would be hard for us to do it, and Nestle said “No, no, we’ll pay for it.” There was a great deal of conversation of, “Oh, we can’t take money from this company,” etc. And finally, I just said, you know, what we’re trying to do is disrupt their profits. If we let them pay for us. It will be the equivalent of who knows how many lost sales for the company. So again, our purpose is to raise their costs. And consequently, the question of whether or not we would be corrupted by being taken to New York at their dime was, in some ways, rather silly. 

So, the question began to be as we thought about, how do we put economic pressure together? We had to start thinking of other ways than a traditional consumer boycott that would cost them funds. An example was, they wanted to start a Rusty Scupper restaurant in Baltimore and another one in Denver. And there, our local chapters did everything they could to disrupt each level of approval that they needed to move forward. One of which was having a liquor license, because by Maryland law, you had to be a moral person in order to get a liquor license. And so, you know, “Gee, this company is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of babies. How could you call that moral?” So, basically, looking at their supply chain and disrupting that was as effective for creating the economic pressure. 

So the strategy was [to] create economic pressure, the boycott and other things were tactics toward that end. 

Now why that was important, I know that I got invited by Gene Sharp to be a fellow at the Einstein Institute. Gene was really the person who did the first serious, broad study of non-violent tactics, and Gene used to say, “No, no, it’s strategy, we have to emphasize strategy.” And I would say to Gene: “Yes, we have to emphasize strategy, but if people only have two or three tactics, they’re building their strategy on that. So we can’t separate the two.” Why? Because tactics are the vehicle for implementing strategy. So the important components of the creation of a strategy is identifying your target, who or what is responsible or capable of making the change that you want. The tactic is your estimated pressure or leverage that you can create to get that person to do what you want. And the third component is timing, and that means many things, especially as I was teaching strategizing to my students at the Kennedy School, it was number one: thinking about the calendar that exists and where are events happening that you can take advantage of that would make the implementation of your tactic most effective. 

But the other important element, which has been largely ignored within the human rights movement and in social change in general, is the need to collaborate between organizations. None of us have the power that we need to make major structural changes, and this is something that came very clear to me when, when I developed the tactical mapping approach. Groups tend to use their tactics on their target, on their timeline, with no expressed attempt to coordinate their efforts with others so that you could develop a 1-2-3-4 punch as opposed to one, right? So the other notion of timing is it’s important in the creation of coordination of action with others, with your allies. So strategy is a cumulative decision that involves the selection of your target, the selection of your tactics, and address[es] the question of timing and coordination.

Balancing Mission and Malleability

Noah: So in that story of the origins for the Center for Victims of Torture and the New Tactics in Human Rights Program, you mentioned a few ideas, movements, and methods that were especially informative for developing New Tactics and its mission. And what stood out to me was how broadly you were willing to look for inspiration. Would you have any advice for any new organization for how to balance a clear mission with the kind of malleability that you brought to New Tactics and a certain willingness to draw from different tactics and sources?

Doug: Well, the mission is setting your long-term purpose, and you want to stay within that, but constantly think about how do I get there? And that, by nature, involves not a leap, but a series of steps that you begin to build expertise, that you begin to develop organizational support and power, and as you move forward, defining steps that you believe take you in the direction that you want to go. And if you imagine again, Marshall [Ganz] has a very nice way of explaining a strategy, it begins with taking what you have, in other words, what your resources are, to get what you need, to get what you want. What you want is movement towards your mission, but to go from what you have now, you need more than you have now. And so your first steps are, figure out, how do I get what I need that get[s] me closer to what I want? This makes sense, and that is important. Because often people think about making a strategic plan, and it’s very pie in the sky things. And I’ve certainly gone through that in my life of people making wonderful plans, but not addressing the question of what resources do we have to get there and under what time frame do we have to get there. 

So strategic planning, as opposed to strategizing, is a dialog between where you want to go and what capacity you have to get there. And it also means that whenever you’re building the idea of what you want to do, it’s a question of what’s my program that moves me forward, but what’s my investment in the organizational capacity to get to a stage where I have more resources to do this on a bigger scale, or to move into the next stage. So very important, as Lawrence Freeman says, is to recognize that we work through stages, and we can only imagine so far with any reasonable security. So we might have a mission that we want to accomplish over a reasonable period of time, 25 years. Do we do that in five, five-year plans, or do we do it in 25 one-year plans, or some mix of the two, recognizing that we’re projecting, we’re guessing, what will be available to us, what we can do. We’re constantly strategizing our life. How do we cross the street, etc. So balancing that notion of keeping our eye on where we want to go, but recognizing what resources we have available to get us there. I spent a number of years teaching with a couple of the guys who were leaders of the Otpor campaign against Milošević. And one of the things that they said, that when you think about the selection of tactics, you have to ask yourself, how does it affect my target, or how does it build my resources? And if it’s not doing one of those two, it’s not worth doing. So as we think about the many tactics that can be available, we want to, again, balance those. We don’t do a tactic just because it sounds cool, unless we can project what kind of influence it really has. Either in pulling in resources so that we can get to the next stage or affecting our target and the way we want it to affect them. 

From Project to Program

Noah: I really like that idea of building a strategy through smaller steps, kind of matching the mission to the moment, and kind of pivoting from there. I’d like to talk about that kind of development in general. So Nancy, what were some of the biggest hurdles you encountered while turning New Tactics from a temporary project into a long-term program, and how did this transition end up having an impact on the organization and how it was perceived?

Nancy: A project is intended to be something that’s more short-term, or something that’s tied to grants, things like that. New Tactics was a project for more than 10 years, 11 years, and there was, I would say, some rubs in there in terms of how New Tactics was seen within the Center for Victims of Torture because of that, that we were a project. There was a time that was, actually, in 2011 when there was so much, of course, going on in the world. The time of the Arab Spring. New Tactics and CVT had already been working in Jordan, in the Middle East North Africa region since 2009 and really making great headway. We were at a cusp point where the project had about a three-month funding gap, and by bylaws of CVT, if the project isn’t able to sustain itself, it needs to be shut down. And so we knew we were getting a grant that was three months down the line and a significant grant. But we didn’t have that bridge money, and so in that time frame, I had to be planning for the shutdown of the project while we were still trying to raise funds to bridge that gap. 

It turned out, I think, to be a really positive time frame, because we set up virtual focus groups with different people that we had partnered with, that we had provided small grants to, that were part of our training network. Really asked people, what did they see was the value of New Tactics in Human Rights to their own work? What did they see as the resources that they would want to see preserved or continued? So we found different organizations that were willing to curate the resources, the things that we house on our New Tactics in Human Rights website. But they said, “You do something that’s unique that none of the rest of us do, and some of that is how you convene, how you help to train people on strategy and tactics. How you think about sharing innovations with people in a way that sparks different ideas for us. That is something that’s not part of our missions. It’s not something that we do.” And I think those kinds of testimonials, so to speak, were quite moving to the board, and so the board was saying they didn’t want to jettison New Tactics. And at the same time, the bylaws demanded that it could not fund it with general operating funds, because it was a project. 

Fortunately, our wonderful development folks and Doug and Pete Dross particularly, were able to get that three months of bridge funding to help us continue. And that really put us then into an entirely different direction in terms of resources that we had to be doing our work in the Middle East and North Africa and continuing that process.

But I think, you know, as a, as other organizations think about their own work, that difficulty of going project to project to project is not unique to New Tactics or the Center for Victims of Torture as an organization. 

And I think that’s always one of the challenges that you know, so many funders, you know, provide funds to an interesting project, but not to the sustaining of the actual staff people and the resources that you need to just continue the work on the day to day basis. 

And, you know, there’s been lots of discussions in, you know, foundations that fund human rights work for how they might be able to do that better. New Tactics has had an incredible foundation that has provided what we call just general operating funds for New Tactics in Human Rights. And that has also allowed us to be more creative, take more chances about the kinds of things that we’re doing and the innovations that we do within the project. And I can’t say enough about how pivotal that can be for an organization to have that so-called luxury, because it is so rare to get that within nonprofit organizations. And Doug, I don’t know if you want to add something to that.

Doug: What I’d say is that for New Tactics in particular, there was a certain amount of indulgence of me by the board to do this. The argument I made, which eventually became accepted, was that our mission called on us to work to end torture. So that’s a long-term goal. The strategy is, how do you get there? And certainly the tools we developed, like the tactical mapping and the tactics we were exploring, was arguably that. But as with any kind of thinking and strategizing about how you’re going to achieve your mission, you accept there’s certain limits. There’s certain approaches that you have to take and you invest in. And so by the time, I’d say, after the conference, which was very successful, the board had pretty well swung around of thinking about New Tactics, not as a project, but rather as a as a systematic approach that we would be taking toward that part of our mission, which is contributing to the end of torture and building other human rights groups as a necessary part of that effort. 

I think it’s important that people recognize that in strategizing, you have to both be clear about what you will do, but also what you won’t do, what’s extraneous, what takes up resources. 

And by 2006, the board was very convinced that New Tactics was going to be an important part of what CVT would be known for and would accomplish in the world, because that is how we would address that part of our mission over time.

I also would say there was a continued building, as Nancy said, of relationships based on the good work that they had done on creating the conference, the resources and so forth, the fact that they had secured funding three months down the line actually made it easier to find the funds for the bridge, because what people don’t want to do is is keep funding something and be responsible for funding something forever, and especially if there’s no creativity. Nancy and the team had already proved that there was a future. We just needed a bridge to get there, and that made it relatively easy. In fact, one donor gave enough for six months. But based on that realization, there’s a future here, there’s a demand here, this is going to be great. We just need the bridge. So that’s also when you’re running an NGO, what you have to do is constantly be realistic and seek resources. This is what we need to get, what we want over time. So I think New Tactics has developed into much more than I had hoped for over time, but it’s it’s due to the fact, personally, I think it’s due to Nancy, but I know they’ve been other directors as well, but she, she brings history, longevity, creativity to the process and that has been essential.

Nancy: Oh, thanks, Doug, one thing that I wanted to add, just in terms of what you were talking about, in terms of what you do or you don’t do. You know, kind of that base framework that we really brought people together about in terms of sharing their tactics was in terms of, “Is your long-term goal really looking to prevent an abuse?” Right, the prevention aspect. “Is it trying to intervene in long-standing discrimination and abuses that have been there? Is it trying to restore those that have been abused or suffered from violations and restoring those communities and individuals? And is it trying to promote human rights cultures and communities?” And that for one organization to do all four of those takes significant resources. 

And so helping people to really think about, what is that primary thing that they’re trying to do related to human rights work, and then thinking about how creative can we be in terms of getting what we want, right? 

And I really have always appreciated that kind of aspect of grounding your strategy in that piece, right, because then you can be creative about who are your targets, what are the tactics that you’re using, and how can you be creative about those in terms of that timing and collaborations that you’re talking about, and helping people to then think about what we don’t do, who does do that, and how do we collaborate, then together to maximize the way in which we’re doing that work? 

And I think for New Tactics, I mean, like you are talking about, all of it has been based on collaborations. It’s never been just New Tactics all by itself. It’s always been, who do we need to bring to the table about this? Who needs to be taking the lead about that? How do we support? Where can we be the leader? Where do others support us? And I think that piece about helping people to also think about sometimes your journey together is shorter, sometimes it’s longer, right? That people sometimes, especially in the human rights work, if organizations don’t always stay together and think the same, somehow, that sense of betrayal or that, you know, people aren’t with us, without thinking about… Different organizations have different missions. So how far does their mission and our mission take us together in what we’re doing? And that then we can part amicably and come back again together when we want to do something in the future. That it doesn’t need to break the relationships, and how to keep on building those relationships in positive ways.

Noah: I think that really shows how foundational support and belief is for innovation, and that leads into something that I think both of you have emphasized, the need for creativity and imagination in human rights work. This comes up often in your work, especially you say, when traditional tactics fall short…

How can human rights groups foster a kind of imaginative thinking, especially when working within rigid institutions or funding structures?

Doug: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to recognize that organizations have limits, and when they do develop a tactic or a method or a system that is effective, the internal pressure is to figure out how to do that better, more efficiently, so that you could do it more often. You can engage more people, you can provide care for more people, and so forth. So the organizational logic is to strengthen what you know how to do. And so the question of trying to take a risk on doing something else, I think, comes from a realization that what you know how to do is not enough to resolve the problem, and sometimes it takes a crisis to do that. But I’m also thinking, two things: when I did my classes with students, the assignment was for them to choose a human rights issue and to propose a strategic approach toward moving it forward on some level. One thing that became very clear, is that when students wanted to solve the whole problem, you know, immigration into the United States, ending the Myanmar junta, or something, that they tended to fall on generalities of how you would approach doing it. So we’ll do a media campaign. What’s the media campaign? We’ll do this. We’ll do that. And they were sort of falling back on the tactics that people thought they knew.

On the other hand, people who developed a very narrow approach, like, we’re going to free this political prisoner, we’re going to do that, tended to be more creative in the tactics they use. They realize, oh, well, we do that, but we could do it so much more. We could admit other things to approach this problem. That was very enlightening to me as a new professor. And so it, of course, encouraged me to try and push people to separate, understand their mission, but separated into steps, right? What are you going to do first in order to get you there? Then there would be more creativity. So again, it has to do with, we have a problem, a very specific problem. Let’s brainstorm how we’re going to approach it. That also meant not approaching it with one thing. 

“But how do we move our thinking from finding the perfect tactic to creating a package of tactics that work together, that address different parts of the system, so that they reinforce each other? 

And also, because you really don’t know, you can guess when you, you select a target, you select a tactic. You’re guessing how they’re going to react. Maybe they don’t. And so it’s good to have something else in play at the same time. So think about packages instead of instances.

Nancy: Can I add something there, Doug?

Doug: Oh, please do. 

Nancy: Because one of the things for me that that so attracted me about wanting to be a part of New Tactics In Human Rights within the Center for Victims of Torture, coming at it as a social worker, and looking at it from, you know, community based social work, community organizing social work and that social work has always been grounded in systems theory was the tactical mapping tool, right? It was like this was a different way to be thinking about systems theory that helped people to look at that huge array of human beings and institutions that are involved in a specific problem that you’re trying to address. 

And that, to me, the beauty of doing a tactical mapping process is that everybody has human relationships. Everybody in the room.

It’s like it does not exclude anybody, and that you find sometimes the most incredible relationships emerging about who people know and how they know them, and how they have potential access to them to get what you want with something right. 

And so for me, that aspect of getting people to first brainstorm that big array of relationships that are there, and then thinking about, what is it that we need and that we want to do, to be able to then figure out who those targets might be. And then being able to brainstorm, okay, how much are they in terms of our allies to our opponents? And what kinds of tactics might be then effective in helping them to move in our direction, or helping them to not do something that we don’t want them to do? Right? So to me, that piece about bringing that foundation into the way in which people can think about their relationships, to brainstorm about tactics. And then I think you know what we got from people after the International Symposium is they loved all the tactical ideas, and they didn’t know how to put them together, right? So that piece about strategy and I think that development of what became our strategic effectiveness method, that five-step method for people about also involving people in the process of thinking about it. Because some people are really good at the big picture strategy thinking. Some people are really good at the tactical thinking. But oftentimes they don’t know how they do it together.

And I think for us, it was trying to just get people in the room to talk about it, so that it became more clear about, “What is it that we’re trying to do? Why are we trying to do it?” And then being able to bring those creative minds together to think about it in ways that brought more people in and helped you to see where you might find those collaborations. Or where you might find the people who would contribute to your campaign or what you were doing in different ways. Even if they didn’t want to join your organization or movement, they might have had skills that they were willing to contribute because you asked them.

The influence of technology in human rights work 

Noah: I think that’s really insightful thinking in systems, finding the pressure points, building relationships into your strategy. But now I want to dig a little deeper into how these challenges can show up in today’s political climate. There’s been a huge development in technology since the founding of New Tactics in Human Rights, mass internet, social media, surveillance, misinformation. Can you maybe speak to the way in which these factors influence how New Tactics or other human rights organizations operate in our contemporary moment? 

Nancy: Wow, yeah, that’s really big. I guess at the very base, I would say that what New Tactics has done in terms of opening space for people to share about their experience and the tactics they use. For example, we were able to bring people in the Middle East from five different countries, ranging from very, very authoritarian governments to those that were sliding from more democratic processes into more authoritarianism, but bringing them together to talk about that. How are they being surveilled? What are the tactics government is using in terms of personal targeting, organizational targeting, community targeting, what are the ways in which technology, not just the surveillance, but in terms of banking systems and things like that, were being used. And how people could share how they were protecting themselves or how they were looking at those processes. And being able to bring into that conversation how do we take care of ourselves? The pressures on us as human beings, the mental, emotional, physical toll that that brings to people.

And I think that’s one of the other pieces that New Tactics in Human Rights brings. Because our parent is the Center for Victims of Torture, that we know, we understand, the cost of doing human rights work. And that I’m always astounded by the level of trust that people give us when they come into the space because of that. But yes, I would say it’s all the more ways in which people need to be sharing with each other. Because governments are learning from each other, just as we’re learning from each other. And so it’s really important for us to continue to develop and share ways in which we answer to the new technologies that are coming in. And I think, you know, as we look at artificial intelligence and the misinformation and disinformation, and how do you know what’s true or not true? And so much of that continues to fall on human rights activists to be speaking truth to power, as Doug said previously. Doug, things that you want to add?

Doug: That was a pretty good answer. One of the key elements is that CVT/New Tactics is not going to be the expert on that or on anything other than the process. And what’s important is to seek out the people who are creating and put them in touch with each other so that they can build off of each other’s strengths. And then we can document it and make it available to others in their conversations. 

That expertise is out there, the experiments are out there, the mistakes are out there. We need to learn from all of them.

Nancy: You know, I want to add that one of the things that I am really both grateful and proud about with New Tactics in Human Rights is how we have always brought that mental health perspective into the work. And how do I say, so often, burnout has been a badge of honor in human rights work. And that’s so detrimental to us being able to do the work. And I think, you know, from the very beginning, like with the New Tactics in Human Rights book, there was a chapter on the ABCs of self-care. You know, awareness, balance, and connection. And we have really pioneered that, in that sense, about bringing people together to think about, “How is your human rights work impacting not just yourself, your family, your community?” If you’re working for the betterment of your community, and it comes at the cost where your children don’t want to do this work because you were so depleted and burnt out, something’s wrong with the picture, right? And so, you know, I think back to, you know, the quote by Audre Lord, right? It’s like, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it’s self-preservation, and that it’s an act of political warfare.” Right? That they want to destroy us. And the easiest way to do that is we take ourselves out of the equation because we aren’t taking care of ourselves. 

And so by doing that self-care, we are really showing ourselves, our families, our communities, that there’s a better way to be living and to be treating each other. 

And I have always been so grateful that you know, even the processes that we do within our trainings is really trauma informed. You know, how do we reground ourselves when we’re talking about really hard problems that activates our systems and we’re, we’re in that space of trauma. Where we ourselves might have been those victims, other people we know have been. So, how do we move from, you know, thinking about the problem to thinking about the vision? If we don’t reground ourselves and help our bodies to reconnect and to be okay? Now I’m calm again. Now I can actually think about, What do I want the change to be? And then being able to keep doing those different processes about just body, mind, spirit, that you can keep on building to have a plan of action at the end that you want to work with other people on. And how do you keep on taking care of not just yourself but each other? That within our organizations we’re mindful about when somebody that we know is not doing well. And how do we support them and give them space and support to be able to remedy whatever might be happening. And I’m really, yeah, I just have to say, I’m so grateful to be grounded in that. And that, that is something that has become much more talked about and much more valued within the human rights movement.

Noah: I think that’ll be a great lead into some of our final questions about advice for advocacy organizations and individuals. But real quick before we move on, one of the things that I thought of Doug while you were speaking about the history and the inspiration for new tactics was that in the present moment, there can seem to be a lack of faith and trust institutions, particularly here in the United States, but also globally. But as you mentioned, there was influence from international human rights law on the work that you have done, specifically noting the UDHR, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can you maybe speak to…

What do you see the role of international human rights law being in the future of human rights work and advocacy?

Doug: I think it’s always going to be conflictual and less than we hope. That primarily human rights law, both hard law, treaties, conventions, soft law, resolutions, declarations are statements of norms. We’re operating on norms more than law, and it’s norms that influence behavior, ways of thinking, and so forth. 

“So it’s really important for people to recognize that since we’re operating on norms, we always have to be in a mode of convincing people it’s not enough to stand up and say, This is against the law.

And we currently have a president who could care less about that. Who also seems to care nothing for norms other than those that are self-serving. But that’s, that’s where the battle is on, appealing to norms, making norms as universal as possible. Because that’s what affects behavior and mission, for that matter. I’ve had, I don’t know how many, 100 students come and sit in my office and say, I want to do human rights work. Which law school should I go to? And I say, basically, read New Tactics. And you realize we already have lots of lawyers working. There’s so many other things that need to happen. Think about where your heart really is and invest in that. We need more forensic accountants. We need more good therapists. We need people who know how to raise money. There are so many things that are necessary in the human rights movement, but it’s all built around norms, and norms are what keep people working in the face of hard work. It’s what we care about. 

So when, again, I would make a challenge to my students about how you’re going to resolve a problem? And there was a great tendency to say, well, we’ll write a new treaty. A treaty is number one, really hard to get through. And when you get a treaty, it’s a summary of the weakest statements of what should happen, because that’s what consensus required. So is that really what’s the best you can do? There’s also a great deal of confusion about human rights. For example, my students tended to think that blocking people from coming into the US is a violation of international law, but it isn’t. In international law you have a right to leave your country. You have no right to enter another except under certain circumstances as a refugee. Most of the people who come into the country don’t meet that standard. And the people who do meet that standard, who are sitting in refugee camps, don’t have the resources to get to the border in the first place. So are we going to make a lot of human rights arguments about the people with the most resources? Or are we going to think about how to extend protection to the people who most need it. 

Is there such a thing as a climate change refugee? Well, not in international law. But does that mean we don’t work on that issue? No. Again, because it’s a question of norms and values, and can we extend those norms to others. It might mean, again, we don’t fight on whether there’s access to the United States or to other places. We do look for what are practical ways of creating living conditions for people. 

The current average time for people in a refugee camp now is 27 years. That’s shameful, untenable, and untenable.

In particular because they’re warehouses, as opposed to cities of people who themselves are being wasted when they could be tapped, if only we invested in education and institutional capacity within those camps. We took them as serious places of investing in people, rather than warehousing them. So, is that where human rights should focus its attention on these issues? There’s so many areas in which we can operate. I’ve focused myself on two issues in my life and a conscious decision, because I believe that I could make the most impact by working in one field, infant formula or torture, right? But it was always a relief to me to know other people were working on other issues so I could work more in good conscience on what I was doing, as someone else was trying to address this. And so I think what the value of human rights law is that it justifies organizing on this broad range of issues.

Beth Simmons, who was a professor at Harvard, she’s now at University of Pennsylvania, wrote a really interesting book on mobilizing for human rights, where she does the first kind of data driven analysis of the importance of international human rights treaties. Does it make any difference? Do people abide by that? And what she points out is in certain key circumstances, yes, they tend not to have very much impact on democratic countries. Why? Well, we have the capacity to organize and mobilize, but we don’t have the same needs, because many of those human rights are something we all take for granted. And in highly authoritarian countries, there’s a great deal of need, but there’s no capacity to mobilize. But where human rights treaties have tended to make a difference, were on those middle ground transitional states where there was some capacity to mobilize and there was a great deal of need. And that’s where we saw human rights law had an effect. But the other thing I really took away from her study was there was an impact of international action on making changes in countries, but only if there was a deeply organized campaign in the country itself. We in the international community can add to, but we can’t be the substitute for local people organizing themselves. So again, if that’s important, as we think of where do we invest ourselves? 

“Where can we do the most good? Do we decide to work in the worst places or in the places where we can move something forward? Those are the kind of challenges. And they’re moral challenges, as well as political challenges, that the next generation of human rights leaders has to think through.

Nancy: I’ll add to that Doug, in that even in those worst places, there are those kernels of people doing the work right, it’s like, and it’s always what that ripple effect is. And so coming back to your aspect of timing, right? When might the timing be right to come in as people external, or when the request for that support from outside comes, can be really pivotal then for what can happen internally to a country. 

And I think about just as an example of what has happened in Egypt, you know, after the Arab Spring, and just the huge shifts that have taken place. And yet, knowing that even though there’s so very little wiggle room for people within Egypt right now to do things. I continue to be astounded by what people are doing in their communities to keep building the skills for the change. And yeah, that when the timing is right, I believe people will again, you know, make those, those changes, more known. And so even as we see, you know what’s happening in this country, you know, friends, but I have in the African American community, say, you know, well, this is another 50-year cycle for us. You know, we’re getting slapped back again. You know, it’s one more round back, and it’s like, it is. It’s like, where the opposition was, they did not stop, and we didn’t stop. But where that pendulum keeps swinging. And I think it, it can be disheartening. But at the same time, it keeps inspiring me to say we have work to do. 

And it’s time to get ourselves up and start moving again in different ways, that we have to be thinking more creatively in terms of where we’re coming at the process. 

Doug: So again, I think the importance of the New Tactics approach is really defining human rights work more broadly than it was in the past. One of the things that, again, went into my thinking about this was when [Vicente] Fox became the president of Mexico and that NGOs were allowed to develop. And in a year, there were supposedly 1800 human rights organizations started in Mexico. 1800. And 5 years later, did any of them survive? Well, part of the problem is that they all defined human rights work in a very narrow way, document and denounce human rights abuses. And there was only so many resources available for that. And that was a real problem, such wasted resources when so many other things could have been done. 

I’ve had a number of Egyptian students who were involved in the Arab Spring and have returned. And one of the things they have noted was the Brotherhood came into power because they were the ones organized in the communities. And the realization that if democratic forces are going to move forward, they have to organize in the communities, and that meant that they had to think about projects with that aim. As opposed to being the brave souls who documented and denounced human rights abuses, they had to do something that was softer, something that was useful to people, that helped resolve problems, that built trust over time. And if we imposed from an international perspective, the critiques of their efforts as being not real human rights work, we’d be doing a disservice to them and to the world. So it’s really important to let them take the lead, define the risks, and we can contribute in different ways, but we won’t be the source of change in their communities. We can only help those who we believe will be the source, and again, if New Tactics can help keep the hyper critics off of their back, then we’ll be doing something useful.

Noah: I really appreciate that point about local organizing being essential and not replaceable, and it reminds me of how New Tactics really centers grassroots victories. So I like talking about that next. Nancy, could you maybe share…

A few examples where New Tactics, strategies and tactics, have led to real change, whether on the local or national level?

Nancy: I would love to just direct people to our New Tactics in Human Rights website. I’m thrilled because the website has just re-launched with lots of new features and ways in which people can use it. And in that space, there’s a place that’s called Stories and Victories that’s separate in terms of organizations and groups that have used our New Tactics in Human Rights Strategic Effectiveness Method. So specifically, those people that have applied this method to make the change. The Tactics Database is there that shows just the wide range of ways in which organizations are making change and using tactics and combination of tactics to do that. But in terms of the, the stories and victories, one of the things that I really want to come back to that you just said Doug, was how people are making that change at their community level. That is something the community themselves want, and how the community moved those forward. So there are examples of things that are, you know, small in the sense of, you know how to remove garbage out of the olive grove areas in Jordan, that the community really rose up to do, and to protect those ancient olive trees. So very small, specific community level action that was important to that community. And then one in Iraq, where it was a coalition of organizations that were working to address what happened under Daesh or ISIS in Iraq and what happened to the Yazidi community specifically. But other minority communities and particularly the violence against women, and how they were able to create a restoration law and reparations for these communities. And how that is continuing now, in terms of their distributing and working on how to be able to bring that into those communities, to help them to heal. So, from the larger to the very small. 

And to me, that keeps coming back to how you’re bringing people together. It’s like, yes, I can have an idea, and I want to bring other people together into that process to make this collective. Because as we do it collectively, we have more creativity and ways in which we do it. And those more human connections to be able to spread that. So to me, that, that is what I really want to encourage people to, you know, take a look at these kinds of cases. Because that issues are really broad, ranging from all all sorts of things, from, like I said, the environment to the issue of torture, to women’s issues, to children’s rights, to just all access to clean water, right? So it’s like, how, how do, how are we applying strategy and tactics in that step by step way that you know Doug was talking about. And that’s your influence, Doug right, on the development of New Tactics in Human Rights continues to today in terms of your inspiration and the way in which you really helped us to think about what kinds of tools could be useful. And how can these tools continue to be adapted? 

It’s like even when we first started our five-step process, each of those five steps are incredibly flexible for people to bring in their own style or way in which they figure out how they do this work.

But it also in terms of why you bring people together to do the work? And I think, to me, that’s really the core: why are you bringing people together? Because you want something to be different and change in your community, and that’s where the stories of success go.

Noah: So we were going to ask you guys for some of the biggest lessons that you have learned while helping build and develop this program. But already over this conversation, you’ve touched on a lot of the really important things, such as collaboration, packaging tactics, strategic planning. So while, I think you’ve already gotten at some of the big macro lessons. I like to bring it back, maybe to the most simple and essential starting point. 

What advice would you give to those looking to start a human rights advocacy organization or program?

Doug: Just starting. Well, the first thing is to point out that 95% of all new NGOs fail in the first five years, so expect failure and make the most of it. Be willing to take risks, be willing to experiment, because it’ll give you a better shot on your next organization if you get some experience under your belt. But if you want to have the best approach on the assumption that you’re in the 5%. I would say be specific, be clearly useful, work on a problem that people consider to be essential, perhaps it’s life and death issues, don’t work on the fringes. But I think there’s certain kinds of issues that the left and the human rights movement have failed to provide leadership for. 

For example, crime. People have a legitimate right to be free from the fear of crime or the fear in their communities. What do we do? What kind of programs do we work on that address that I think we still don’t have a coherent immigration approach, that both recognize that there’s a need to protect people, but there’s also a need in democracies for people to define their borders and to hold their borders. We know from all experimentation about effective groups. Groups are effective, more democratic, more capable of being creative when their borders are defined, where we know who is there, and we build trust between each other on that level. So how do we recognize and support a community’s right to define itself, because that’s what a democratic culture is supposed to be, with a way of engaging in the world and thinking about responsibilities to others in this crazy world. So I’d say the first again issue is [to]…

Choose something that’s really vital, that will actually motivate you to get up in the morning, that’s more central and largely would appeal to others.

Because, as my friends from Serbia said, the movements succeed with the numbers, and the numbers are in the middle. They’re not on the fringes. So what do we do to work in the middle, to engage people to be involved in human rights work, to support human rights work? That was one of the real advantages of CVT, is that when I first got there, the local foundations were saying, Oh, this is the governor’s project. Let the governor fund it, and the foundations wouldn’t support CVT. And I had to demonstrate that Minnesota was, in fact, full of torture victims. But one of the first real successes I had at raising money was for the reconstruction of our house. And I had resistance from the staff on this, my spending my time on rehabbing a house for offices, rather than on their salaries. But the house was something very concrete, and I remember donors saying to me, well, we don’t really understand what you do, but we know you need a good, a nice place to do it. And once people donated to make the house, they felt ownership of CVT, and they became funders of the programs.

So, finding ways to let people in. I often talk about the importance of varying tactics as opening different doors and windows to different constituencies. 

That if you only are doing one thing, one tactic, you’ll only bring in people for whom they feel they can participate in that tactic. They can abide by the risks associated with it, or the costs, and so forth. But if you want to expand your numbers, have different tactics that invite a broader group of people. 

So it’s not only your mission that attracts people, it’s what you do towards your mission. And how do we think about what we do so that we can engage more people? And CVT had a great resistance at the beginning about having volunteers. And now you just can’t imagine CVT without volunteers. It took a great deal of effort to create a willingness in the organization to risk the lives of our clients with untrained community people. And yet, once it happened, it changed the nature of the organization in a very good way. But it also opened CVT to support from the community. 

I remember when Pete [Dross] and I went to lobby for the Minnesota legislature to pass a law that made our clients qualify for Minnesota’s healthcare program. Literally everyone we met, Republican, Democrat, told me either their mother or their neighbor was a volunteer at CVT. And of course, they understood and they would support it. So think about constituencies, and how to bring in constituencies as early as possible. 

And that sometimes means giving up quite a bit of power to become more powerful. When you get more people involved and helping make decisions, owning decisions, they bring in the resources that you need to get what you want, and therefore, you become more powerful. So I have no advice for a new person. Just do it. 

Noah: I think that’s an excellent way to state it. And we just had one more question: 

What are some of the ways that people can still be involved in human rights work, even if they don’t do it professionally?

Doug: Everyone’s doing human rights work all the time. When we’re kind to each other, we’re recognizing the humanity of the other. And that’s essentially what human rights is about, is the recognition of the dignity of each person. So one way we do that, of course, is we care for each other, we care for our families, care for our communities. So broadly speaking, everything is human rights work, if it’s done with that attitude. 

Certainly people can be involved in organizations to different degrees. And again, that’s why you want to as an organization, you want to set up a whole range of ways that people can participate, recognizing that if you get them to participate on the periphery, you have a better chance of moving them into a closer circle. That’s what prospecting is, is creating broad opportunities for people to consider what you do to take a step in that direction. And then it’s up to the organization to figure out how to attract them into taking more responsibility and participating more. That can be giving donations, It can be signing petitions, although that’s a rather overused tactic. I think it doesn’t really draw people in very much. I’m kind of down on internet petitions and so forth. I believe in face-to-face, skin-to-skin engagement with people.

Nancy: I’ll just add, I totally agree with you, Doug, I just had at the beginning of the month of March in recognition of International Women’s Day, but so many international days in March, wrote a blog perspective on New Tactics, Who is a human rights defender, and stating each and every one of us, all of us are responsible for that. We do it. We’re responsible for it. And just that it is in that, what you were talking before about the norms, right? 

It’s having that belief in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as that base norm of how we treat each other. 

And if we do that in our everyday lives, that is how we are advocating for human rights. Some of us do it professionally, in terms of that every single day in the work that we do. But all of us are, you know, core and key to being able to make our communities respectful of each other. In that, coming back to you know, CVTs aspect of restoring the dignity of each and every human being.

Noah Biasco: That’s a great place to end, discussing how vital ideas of dignity and kindness and generosity are to human rights work. I think it puts a nice bow on this conversation. Just want to thank you one more time, Doug and Nancy, for taking this time to speak with us. So again, we really appreciate you taking the time to share some of your insights and the things that you have learned over your decades-long careers in human rights advocacy. Once again, thank you, Nancy and Doug for being here. 

Doug: Well, I think because it’s very important for us to put a face on the next generation of people who will take responsibility and give leadership to defending these values, these norms and defending human dignity. So, thank you for your interest and desire to work in this field. We need you. 

Noah: Once again. This has been an episode of the Human Rights Chat podcast by the New Tactics in Human Rights program at the Center for Victims of Torture. You can find other episodes of the Human Rights Chat podcast on podcast streaming services, as well as on the New Tactics’ website, newtactics.org.