‘Human Rights…But for the Majority’

The Appropriation and Subversion of the Human Rights Agenda by Right-Wing NGOs in Malaysia

Dados Bibliográficos

ID17819477
AutoresNicholas Chan (0000-0002-6018-2833, Australian National University, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume12
Fascículo1
Páginas1-26
Data de publicação2023-04-24
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoTRaNS Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2051-364X • E-ISSN: 2051-3658
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/trn.2023.1
OpenAlexW4366830498
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas59

Scholarly treatments of the human rights agenda tend to posit civil society organisations (CSOs) as its defender and the state and mainstream political actors as its violators. Even when raising the problem of an ‘uncivil society’, the literature labels these CSOs as reactive and hostile to the human rights agenda they perceive as ‘Western’ and ‘foreign’. I argue that these treatments of the issue overlook another phenomenon: the emergence of CSOs that adopted the language of human rights and participated in its formal processes yet subtly redefined, subverted, and undermined the core commitments of the human rights agenda. This paper discusses such developments by referencing right-wing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Malaysia that redefined the parameters of the human rights agenda to undercut state commitments to protect religious freedom, sexuality rights, and gender minorities. Through actor and discourse tracing, this paper illustrates how right-wing Islamist NGOs employed a novel two-pronged strategy that no longer openly repudiated the human rights agenda but continued to erode, eviscerate, and reformulate its contents and principles. The first prong involved institutional measures of ‘getting in’ to gain legitimacy by participating as a stakeholder within local and international human rights processes. The second prong encompassed social strategies of ‘pushing out’, whereby actors and their networks mobilised populist pressure to expose, ostracise, and subvert established human rights norms, institutions, and actors

Appropriation · Civil society · Human rights · International human rights law · Law and economics · Legitimacy · Mainstream · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Right to property · Sociology · Subversion · Asian Studies and History · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Religion, Society, and Development