That journey continues, but after hope-based workshops with many of you and other activists all over the world that pointed to themes of community, care and compassion, I felt I had enough of a lead to work with Fine Acts to put out a call to artists to help us visualise what it looks like to not only enjoy human rights, but also to do human rights — as “A Brilliant Way of Living our Lives”.

The result is Reimagining Human Rights, an amazing collection of works that you can explore below, and adapt for your own use. This is just a first step: the goal of this project is to start trying to articulate human rights in a way that builds support for the cause, speaking to the values we need more of in future.

Reimagining Human Rights seeks to draw upon the the creative power of artists globally to illustrate human rights as a positive collective good from which all of us benefit, not just something that is violated, destroyed, or abused.

Anyone can use these art works under a creative commons license to make the case for human rights.

We need a new visual vocabulary for human rights

Too often, the image that accompanies communication about human rights shows their absence or abuse — barbed wires, handcuffs, chains, prison bars or boats at sea. But we also need to show people what we are working for, including the outcomes and behaviour that we want to associate with the phrase “human rights”.

I have spent the last two years asking human rights activists to draw what the world would look like if they succeed, and talk about human rights as a metaphorical tool people can use to make change happen. It is not easy! That is why we have commissioned more than 40 artists around the world to help come up with new visual ways to represent the cause of human rights (you can also contribute existing works to the collection).

Human rights is about cultivating communities

Monique’s work is remarkably similar to an idea I have seen activists around the world try to express when talking about how they think their societies should look.

Human rights is about cultivating communities where we treat each other the way we want to be treated ourselves. To make the case for better laws and policies, human rights communications should also show people how we hope society will appear once those changes have happened.

If populist strategies seek to divide us by stirring crisis, conflict and controversy, then counter strategies must avoid feeding these outcomes, and instead cultivate cooperation, community and culture.

If we want a world where there is more empathy and compassion, more community and togetherness, more kindness and understanding, we must also promote those values right here, right now.

Celebrating community not only shows people the better future human rights are trying to create, it simulates exactly that kind of behaviour for others to copy.

Human rights is about what we have in common

How do you create empathy and unity between people without giving them an “other” to unite against? The point of human rights is the “human”, more so that the rights. You can have entitlements because you are a citizen of a country, but human rights are for you because you are also a citizen of the world.

We need to activate humanity in the the way people think of their own identity. After all, only by acting together as a human family can we overcome challenges like climate change.

Human rights is about cultivating the humanity in everyone

Human rights has to be about more than a list of entitlements and abuses: it has to be about how we treat each other.

We need to talk about a greater standard for who we and our leaders behave: acting with humanity.

To paraphrase Hannah Arendt, the world must find something sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.

By Alice Sachrajda & Thomas Coombes

How can civil society groups and charities apply narrative work in practice? Based on our work with migration groups in the UK during the pandemic, we believe a crucial step is more narrative synergy between organisations that share the same values. Scroll right to the end for practical steps and more information about how you can get involved in collective narrative change.

Have you ever looked closely at a detailed painting and then slowly stepped back to see the picture take shape and come alive before your eyes? It’s a magical feeling when the smaller component parts complement each other and align to create a unified whole. This is what happens with an intricate mosaic, where small individual tiles collectively merge to create an image that is striking to behold.

The same synergistic principle applies to narratives. We communicate by sharing our messages and stories, but it is their accumulation over time that form lasting, memorable narratives. When we communicate strategically we need to think not just about how we craft our own message, but also how we are adding to a greater whole and strengthening shared narratives in the process. In short: to be strategic we need to be synergistic.

As the Narrative Initiative writes:

“What tiles are to mosaics, stories are to narratives. The relationship is symbiotic; stories bring narratives to life by making them relatable and accessible, while narratives infuse stories with deeper meaning.”

Elena Blackmore, writing for PIRC, has also used this metaphor to powerful effect where she writes perceptively about #BlackLivesMatter and the response that is required to change harmful narrative mosaics:

“This is the narrative mosaic of white supremacy and it comprises hundreds of years’ worth of tiles of violent history. We can understand a narrative in this way: as a ‘coherent system of stories’.”

If communications work is about crafting the right kinds of words, visuals and feelings to get a message across, then strategic communications is about stepping back and thinking about the big ideas, attitudes and behaviours we want to shift. This means thinking not just about promoting the work of our own organisation, but choosing the right stories to tell about what is happening in the world today. This means communications based more around moments than on campaigns.

These reflections are based on recent work with Unbound Philanthropy and Migration Exchange during the pandemic. We have been working to help activist groups apply narrative messaging around Covid-19 produced by communications experts such as Anat Shenker-Osorio, PIRC, Frameworks Institute and IMIX to their daily work. And we have been having deep conversations about narrative change through our Narrative Working Group (NARWHAL) convenings, curated by Phoebe Tickell.

Covid-19 - an unfolding story that hasn't been written yet. How can we shape the narrative?

Thinking of narratives as mosaics leads us to collective communications strategy

If a narrative is a mosaic, our communications must build it up tile by tile.

Every day is a new opportunity to find new tiles to add. These tiles can be planned and created by your organisation. They might also come from an ally or from grass-roots supporters.

Creating new, striking narrative mosaics requires as many people as possible offering up the same sorts of ideas, creating images that bring to life our shared values and exchanging stories that reflect our worldview.

We have designed a messaging house to help guide this process, drawing on the idea of a Larger Us developed by Alex Evans at the Collective Psychology Project as a way of articulating what unites groups working on human rights, environment, poverty, racial justice and others in common cause.

This messaging house contains simple “common sense” ideas that we can all repeat over and over again, and bring to life in stories, videos, drawings and graphics (find out more about the messaging house by scrolling down to the practical steps below).

We use a messaging house applies the mosaic principle because rather than asking every group to use shared branding or slogans, we instead invite everyone to inject a little bit of the spirit of our shared worldview into their work.

Applying mosaics-thinking to our communications strategies is crucial if we want to change narratives.

Getting the wording of our messages right is important, but communications is often about more than words: it is about images, stories and emotions stirred by cultural products.

More Than Words

Five principles for creating narrative mosaics with strategic communications

There are five principles we’ve learnt from mosaic-making that help us to get to the heart and soul of strategic communications. We explore and unpack each of these principles in more detail, below:

• Principle 1: We need to unite around shared messages that capture the spirit of our communication. It takes many different tiles to make a mosaic. If all our tiles relay conflicting messages, our tiles will simply form a blur from which no narrative emerges. Only by constantly reinforcing a complimentary, shared worldview with stories and frames on a daily basis can we make our narrative salient enough to stand out.
• Principle 2: We need to capitalise on key moments that arise — tapping into the zeitgeist, rather than purely relying on engineering the focus. Mosaic-makers innovate all the time. We need to be open to raising up what works and what resonates in response to key moments.
• Principle 3: We need to build up powerful bonds of reciprocity. Building a mosaic is about elevating and building on motifs that work, and generating new, iterative content as a result. Reciprocity builds strong supportive networks, helps to further the message of a Larger Us and demonstrates that we are making progress together.

• Principle 4: Apply the rule of thirds. There is sometimes magic to be found in placing the subject off-centre, resisting the urge of pushing problems to the front and centre.
• Principle 5: We need to accumulate multiple stories and messages. Mosaics are created by adding together multiple smaller parts, some of which are plain and reinforcing, peppering our communications with bursts of creative inspiration. Sometimes we need to experiment many times over to hit upon a powerful message that truly resonates. Everyone can add their tile to the narrative mosaic, even by retweeting another post or asking your supporters share some positive news.

Principle 1: Uniting around the spirit of shared worldviews

Andamento is the ability to capture the mood and ‘feel’ of the overall piece, described as follows by one mosaic expert:

“Never mind the design — a design is a design — but pay attention to what is going on in the background of a mosaic and it is there that you will find the melody, the choreography, the spirit of a mosaic.”

The same applies in our strategic communications: Messages are important, just as the design helps to create the overall picture; but it is also vital to capture the ‘andamento’ i.e. the spirit or the overall ‘feel’ of the piece. This is about more than just crafting and framing our words and projecting them out to all who will listen. Instead, it’s about working together, collectively, to achieve a bigger, shared objective: It’s about making our communication fizz with energy and sing out in symphony.

The message of ‘a Larger Us’ needs to be at the heart of our strategic communications work. It is more than just a design feature; it is the ‘andamento’ — the spirit that should pulsate through all our communications.

Many campaigns start from a ‘them and us’ frame, and there is power in mobilising people to join a side who share a common enemy or opponent. But we are not as polarised as we might think. The vast majority of us are kind, well-meaning individuals who can unite around shared, transcendental values built on love, kindness and care that need to be at the heart of all our messaging if we want them to be more powerful factors in our politics.

The team at PIRC has done tests showing that thinking the best of human nature helps support for social change. Rutger Bregman, author of HumanKind, reminds us of the goodness of human nature and warns us that pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy:

If you look at empirical evidence then you find that assuming the best in other people gets you the best results.”

Covid-19 has taught us that we are all in this together. If we want to highlight just how marginal extremists really are, we must proportionately balance stories of extremism with those that show we are part of a Larger Us, rather than a ‘them and us’.

While we have to counter the threat of extremists, calling them ‘the opposition’ or ‘the other side’ gives credence to what is a minority view, worthy neither of these terms, nor of a dominant place in our mosaic.

Elevating the voices of those who share and express the message that we are united, connected and hopeful is kryptonite to extremists who seek to divide us.

Principle 2. Thinking in moments, rather than campaigns

Signature campaigns are one way to change narratives, but small, daily stories that capture people’s attention and create a “word of mouth” buzz are vital tiles that add to narrative mosaic. Rather than international theme days and other planned events, these stories and content are relevant to the spirit of the times. On social media these are known as “moments”.

Moments have the added benefit of authenticity. Moments are not just a condensed part of a news cycle, they are something happening in people’s lives. Campaigns, by contrast, are something we plan inside our organisations. Moments can be an influential figure like the footballer Marcus Rashford taking a stand on a principle like free meals for children from poor families over the summer holidays or K-Pop stars ruining a Trump rally. Or everyday people doing something that gets people talking, like banging plates on their balconies during Covid_19. These moments tend to capture the zeitgeist of a particular time, and reveal something we already know or feel about ourselves and our societies.

The significance of moments is that they act like a spark in a tinderbox. They ignite passion in people and can often be the precursor to political or policy change, and in some cases can go on to create powerful movements, as we saw with #MeToo, #TimesUp and more recently with #BlackLivesMatter. We need to be ready to spot and amplify these moments when they arise. This means finding unusual allies, acknowledging the power and influence of public figures and recognising the significance of popular culture in catalysing social change.

We also need to sustain these moments and make sure that changes are woven into the fabric of our systems and structures. In particular, we each have a a duty to ensure that racial justice is woven into our conversations about narrative change.

Principle 3. Building up powerful bonds of reciprocity

Behavioural scientists often remind us of the intense power of reciprocity. It is one of the strongest social norms we have in our society. As Matthew D. Lieberman, author of Social: Why our brains are wired to connect, reminds us:

“If someone does you a favor, you feel obligated to return the favor at some point, and with strangers we actually feel a bit anxious until we have repaid this debt. This is why car salesmen will always offer you a cup of coffee.”

We can use this intuitive need to reciprocate with one another in our communications. If you want others to elevate and share your work, start by doing the same for others.

No one organisation can make a narrative salient by itself.

Even if you can secure coverage in a big news outlet, or the support of a celebrity influencer, it takes sustained repetition of ideas across multiple channels and platforms to achieve salience. We all need to share each other’s stories and content for it to have a chance of impacting how people think, feel and behave.

Organisations, activists, artists and other people who share common causes can together create and source content that contributes to our narrative mosaics. This is about reciprocity: we all need to repeat each other’s ideas for them to become “common sense” narratives that people internalise and share. No organisation can, or should, try to produce this flow of content themselves, nor should they think they can distribute that content wide enough on their own. When we see something that reinforces our shared ‘Larger Us’ worldview from another messenger, we should flex every comms muscle we have to make it seen and talked about.

Fortunately, myriad NGOs, charities and movements do not need to agree to the exact same talking points, slogans and hashtags. But they can articulate a shared vision and basic values they are working towards. All the different stories, reports and other outputs can then reinforce our shared idea of how the world works and should be. In other words, we can agree what we want the mosaic to look like, and then create tiles of our own that contribute to it, in our own different ways.

Principle 4. Give your subject space to breathe

Artists often work to a ‘rule of thirds’ principle, and mosaics are no exception. The act of off-setting the subject paradoxically helps to give it greater prominence. We can learn from this principle in our communications work. By off-setting we give our subject room to breathe.

Mosaic-makers create impact by moving the main focus of the design at least one third of the way towards the edge. Communicators can learn from that by not always pushing political divisions and social problems to the fore, but letting them sit slightly to the side of more personal and multi-faceted stories, in which the people affected by problems are not defined solely by them. This draws the audience in, touches them on a more emotional level and allows them to feel empathy, rather than pity, for the people we want to support. People who have moved to a country generally want to be seen as people, not as migrants or refugees. Make the audience care about the person first, and then invite them to relate to the situation.

In the new series New Neighbours about newcomers to Europe and the people who welcome them, the story is about the emerging relationships. The issues are there but they are not foregrounded, allowing alternative possibilities to become apparent.

Principle 5. Accumulation of stories

As George Lakoff teaches us, if your communication is based on narratives you disagree with, you risk reinforcing these negative narratives. He encourages us to make the moral case for our positions with the same values that we want to activate in all audiences, built on empathy, responsibility and hope. We know that critiquing stereotypical stories only reinforces them, that we need a flow of surprising stories that create a mosaic of tolerance and appreciation for others. In today’s media environment we can elevate myriad voices and empower people to tell their story, their way.

It’s the accumulation of different stories that makes a narrative. We should think of our communications outputs as tiles that need to be true to the spirit of the mosaic that is our narrative and our values, rather than a single canvas that needs to be perfected like a masterpiece. You cannot fit the whole mosaic on one tile, and not every story needs to capture every aspect of an issue.

We can share one story of a successful refugee, one story of a migrant who is helping out, just getting by with help from the community, and another who is grateful, if that is the emotion they themselves want to express. We also need stories of people who are not on the move, but are welcoming to those who are. Just as individual tiles need to be true to the spirit of a mosaic, we can be guided in selecting these stories by our own values, basic ethical guidelines and a desire to let people speak for themselves.

Practical steps for a mosaic-movement approach to narrative change

Step one: Agree on simple messaging

The first step is a set of shared messages, leading with the same values. The specifics of our messaging may vary for different audiences and contexts, but there are universal ideas and values that we all identify with. Articulating these will help us to respond to what is happening in the world today — to “message this moment” in the words of Anat Shenker-Osorio.

That is why we designed a simple messaging house to describe the ‘Larger Us’ messaging that ties together the values underlying migration work with other causes like climate change, social and racial justice and equality and inclusion.

We find this format of the messaging house helpful because it focuses attention on one, predominant umbrella message (in this case a Larger Us) and then explores three sub-messages that help to strengthen the overall proposition.

A messaging house focuses your communications on the ideas you want to get to get across, rather than reacting to the loudest voices or being derailed by cynical questions. It is built around our values so it can be applied to any issue or situation, keeping you “on-message”, as well as “on-narrative”. The fact that we are all connected to one another as human beings is just as important a principle to climate change as it is to migration and racial justice.

Do take a look at the messaging house and see how you can apply it to your work. There is even a blank version you can use to adapt and apply the ‘Larger Us’ messaging to your own communications. We are happy for it to be an iterative tool and we welcome you to use it and add your comments, adjustments and input.

Step two: Organize content creators

Messaging is the starting point, but we need more than words to reach a mass audience. We need to elevate the actual stories happening in the world today that illustrate our messages without needing to use our jargon.

To that end, we can organise our supporters to be our chief storytellers. You can send them this simple cheat sheet to explain what kind of stories they can tell. That way, when they see a moment, for example, of cooperation between communities, they can take out their phone and tell the story themselves on social media. You can then elevate the best ones.

Creative artistic content can also bring our messages to life in emotive ways that may resonate with people the way political messages do not. A creative brief for cultural creators can inspire the people who can paint more beautiful tiles for our shared mosaic. For example, you can give artists and designers who want to support our cause this creative brief to articulate what you stand for, but leave them the creativity to bring those values to life in their own authentic way.

During the pandemic, for example, Fine Acts commissioned artists around the world to create small, simple works of art that would inspire hope, inviting people to print them into posters and sharing on social media. They are now curating works in support of Black Lives Matter.

Uplifting illustrations promote hope during the coronavirus pandemic

Dancing Fox has a new project called “We were made for these times” combining art and stories that help us imagine a better world. To make people believe in the things we are calling for, we need the help of creative people to help them visualise what society will look like after our solutions are in place.

Step 3: Gather and curate stories

When we see a moment that reinforces our shared narrative, we need to get people talking about it. And we also need to ensure that we have a diverse range of people telling and sharing their stories. Getting news media to cover those stories is a crucial step, reaching new audiences and giving them credibility. But once we secure that coverage, we need people to share that news story. Getting the media hit is only half the work, we have to push it out on social media to drive “word of mouth” buzz around it if it is to become a salient “moment” that grows our narrative mosaic.

Newcastle asylum seeker delivers food parcels on his bike to support refugees

It is on all of us to work together to build the mosaic. There are two basic things you can do to play your part:

You can add stories you think will build up the ‘Larger Us’ mosaic in this story bank, whether you see them in the news or hear about them happening at grass-roots level.

For example, the Relationships Project has created the Spirit of Lockdown storybook to gather “the moments when we’ve noticed one another, as we have seldom noticed before.”

The Moment We Noticed

You can share stories that are already in the story bank, as well as stories you see from other activists and organisations, through your personal and organisational social media channels. You can use this messaging.

Step 4: Salience via distribution

We want as many people as possible to see the videos produced for the Britain Connects and New Neighbours series because they encapsulate the idea of ‘a Larger Us’. We should be sharing them through organic social media posts, sending it to others to ask them to share as well and even buying ads of our own to make sure more people who are likely to share them further also see them. That is how positive narratives around migration will become salient.

If you have the resources, you can also run social media adverts to make sure people see and share the stories, running ads to these audiences we feel are most likely to share positive migration stories. Erica Chenoweth has written that successful non-violent civil disobedience requires activating only 3.5% of the population. We can use that same principle in trying to target the stories we want shared to those most likely to spread the word.

Ask your supporters, friends and allies to add tiles of their own. You can use mail-outs and whatsapp groups to ask them to share on-message stories with their friends. We can have a greater impact encouraging a wide community of people to share the same sorts of stories. The smallest, simplest small stories from their daily lives are all small stones that make up the mosaic.

An implication of this approach is that we also focus audience research on our closest supporters, not just persuadables or extremists. Our base, after all, are the people most likely to articulate our narrative to other people and bring it to life through their actions.

About - The Peoria Project

In summary, civil society and charities need to be better at working together to make the most of the resources we have at our disposal to get the message out. In the words of The Narrative Initiative we need to “connect a narrative “nervous system” of collaborators.”

Are the press releases, tweets and videos we put out every day contributing to a shared mosaic, or are we simply all tiling our own bathrooms? If we want to change narratives, we can start by working together, particularly at the level of communications team. For example, the network of the people who actually run the social media accounts of the world’s biggest international NGOs set up earlier this year by Valeriia Voshchevska and Dante Licona is a perfect space to achieve reciprocity in our communications.

What happens next?

We can all work together to share values of empathy, kindness, equality, inclusion and solidarity. We can do this through a list of ‘Larger Us’ social media influencers who all agree to regularly share stories that are on-message. We can funnel stories to this list by getting grass roots organisations and cultural groups to see this as a resource when they want to elevate their work.

As a first step for building narrative reciprocity, we have created a common global space for anyone who wants to build ‘Larger Us’ narratives. If you are interested in our ideas, please share your thoughts below or get in touch here. We look forward to hearing from you!

From megaphone to mosaic was originally published in The Tilt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2019 was a big year for me as I left my job to set up hope-based communications. These campaigns encouraged me to believe that change requires making people believe change is possible. These videos also show that stories do not necessarily need to be happy to be hopeful, but they do need to be unapologetically sincere and emotional to resonate in this age of fear, anger and social media overload.

Above all, what these ads all have in common is the thing most missing in today’s politics: simple, everyday humanity.

Dublin Bus (1): The Long Road to Pride

“They are the ones who fought for our right to be who we are.”

I am just about ready to forgive Dublin Bus for their unforgiveable policy of not giving change on buses in the 1990s.

After their story of Proud Dads taking their LGBTQI kids to pride last year, this ad tells the struggle of older people who suffered in the closet through years of stigma.

This ad starts heartbreakingly sad which makes the outcome at the end so tear-jerkingly beautiful, from the cruelty of intolerance to the beautiful humanity of acceptance.

Indeed, this ad on its own tells the story of the wonderful transformation Ireland has undergone from Europe’s most socially conservative countries when I was born there in the 1980s to one of its most socially inclusive.

Not to be missed is the key turning point of the story, the solidarity of young activsts with the old, the intergenerational solidarity.

“You shouldnt look at life as a journey, you should look on it as a dance.”

Dublin Bus (2): Freedom of the City

“As much as I’ve always been aware of people’s disability, I’ve never once noticed it. It’s always been the person that I’ve worked with.”

Dublin Bus plucked the heartstrings not once, but twice thanks to this brand new ad celebrating one of their staff who helps people with disabilities use the bus. But really it is an ad celebrating people who care in a truly empathic way, in a way that allows people with disabilities to live lives of freedom.

Cory Booker: We Will Rise

“In America we have a common pain, but what we are lacking is a sense of common purpose.”

Cory Booker is hanging in there in the Democratic Primary but I hope his message of radical love does not get overlooked if he ends up dropping out. He launched his campaign with this uplifting, upbeat and optimistic ad. I love how he uses the marching band to match his determined tone. He is not afraid of big ideas and bold optimism.

TV2: all that we share — connected

“It’s easy to mind your own business. It takes a little more effort the mind the community.”

TV2 had one viral hit with their All That We Share ad in 2017, applying an exercise about group identities drawn from psychology and neuroscience.

They released a sequel in 2019 playing with the six degrees of separation ideas, in which they thread the lives of a group of people together, one by one until the final stories reveal a poignant message about refugees.

This video provides a blueprint for making the case for migration: not as a divisive issue but as part of a wider vision for a society where we accept that we are all connected, and therefore all need to care for each other.

The Intercept — A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“We stopped being so scared of the future. We stopped being scared of each other. And we found our shared purpose….The first big step was just closing our eyes, and imagining it.”

What does change look like? AOC shows how we can pass a Green New Deal, and what it would look like if we did. Putting forward big bold ideas changes narratives. 2019 started with people criticising the ambitious policy, but it has ended with the European Commission making it a major policy priority.

The challenge climate communications needs to tackle is not complacency, it is despondency. People need to see change is possible. In This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein writes about how promises of a bright green future, and practical steps to actually start creating viable renewable energy sources in northern Europe, offered a way forward:

“What this part of the world has clearly shown is that there is no more potent weapon in the battle against fossil fuels than the creation of real alternatives.”

Honourable mention goes to the European Greens who embraced hopeful messaging to make the case for a greener, more caring Europe for their European Election campaign (none more so than MEP Magic Magid’s ever-inspiring campaigning).

Thomas Coombes on Twitter

3 campaign lessons from #GreenWave: 1. Positivity- push a message of hope and a vision for the future (see video). 2. Principles- stay true to your values (eg humane migration). 3. Passion- have inspiring, authentic candidates (like @MagicMagid!) https://t.co/2vwiEaplNB

Renault: 30 Years in the making

I enjoy showing this ad to a group of activists without telling them that it is a car ad. While one might be tempted to feel cynical about companies embracing ‘purpose’, right now we need all the allies to promote tolerance and empathy we can get.

Hopeful videos do not need to be happy: sentimental, poignant tones with a heartfelt resolution can be emotionally restorative. After all, what else is joy if not a positive resolution that follows sadness, like sunshine after rain?

Nike: Birthplace of Dreams

“I want them to believe in themselves, but the most important is that they love one another. We want to build a human before we can build an athlete, before we can build a leader.”

After their Emmy-winning Dream Crazy ad with Colin Kaepernick, Nike doubled down on its policy of celebrating diversity and inclusion, most recently and notably with this ad with Caster Semenya.

While in Germany, they tell the story of German boxer Zeina Nassar who fought to be allowed to compete while wearing a hijab.

These ads are a lesson in breaking down barriers.

Don’t just criticize stereotypes, blow them away with completely different ways of seeing people.

Care International ran a campaign fully imbued with that spirit for Women’s Day this year.

CARE (care.org) on Twitter

Women everywhere are strong. They make the world a better place. They are everyday heroes. Join CARE and fight for women and girls around the world. Sign the pledge and put the #HerInHERO! #March4Women https://t.co/xpVP80jZGJ https://t.co/CK54Dcqsoe

HONOURABLE MENTIONS — positive and hope-based campaigning in 2019:

Gillette — The Best a Man Can Be

Gillette started the year with an ad offering an alternative vision of manhood post-metoo, a repudiation of toxic masculinity. They were attacked on the right and scorned for hypocrisy and insincerity — unjustly in my opinion — on the left.

But they followed up with another story which goes a long way to prove their sincerity, in which transgender man Samson Bonkeabantu Brown tells the story of his first shave, but also a story of parental accceptance of their son’s difference.

The tone of Gillette’s ads stayed true to that “Best a Man Can Be” message throughout the year, ending with this story of a man caring for an aging father in a way that made me think of Odysseus and Laertes.

The Guardian — Hope is Power

Kudos to The Guardian for embracing hopeful messaging this year.

While not quite reflected in the tone of their (laudable) focus on “climate crisis”, the paper explained that they wanted to inspire their readers to action:

“The campaign highlights the Guardian’s purpose to not only hold power to account, but to explore new ways of doing things, bringing new ideas to the table and giving people the facts to challenge the status quo.”

Anistia Brasil: Brazil is for everyone

Finally, a quick shout-out to my comrades from Amnesty International in Brazil for their first intentionally “hope-based” videos in calling out Bolsonaro’s anti-human rights agenda.

Thomas Coombes on Twitter

A fair Brazil is a Brazil for everyone" @juremawerneck launches #BrazilforEveryone, @anistiabrasil's response to Bolsonaro's human rights-unfriendly agenda. #BrasilParaTodoMundo https://t.co/vJtfw1utzz

If you want to tell stories like this, take the hope-based pledge and spread the word!

About hope-based communications: Hope-based communications is a simple approach to social change that involves five simple shifts anyone can make:

• What you are against to what you stand for
• From fear to hope
• From problem to solution
• From threat to opportunity
• From victims to heroes

Hope, not fear: A new model for communicating human rights

About me: I set up hope-based communications to be a global community of people who want to do social change communications differently, using positive values-based messages that make the case for the world we want to see. Find out more about hope-based communications at www.hope-based.com.

For me, the job of a human rights communicator is to create empathy for other humans in my audience. You need to get attention for the story, but also let people tell their story themselves. How do you get the balance right?

To answer that question, Catherine Murphy and I, together with many great colleagues across the Amnesty International movement, produced these Living Guidelines for Ethical Communications earlier this year, and made them public on the organization’s website.

Rather than dos and don’ts, we tried to develop a series of prompts social change communicators can use to evaluate their content.

As we become conscious of framing and narrative, we need to become even more conscious of the context we give our stories, the role characters play in them and whether we are doing enough to hand control of narrative to the people involved so that they have agency over how their story is told.

Another challenge particular to hope-based communications is using positive emotions like humour, optimism, anticipation and joy to talk about social change issues across different parts of the world while being careful to neither make light of suffering nor offend people who do not share your worldview.

Above all, Catherine and I wanted to help people in one context, very often the global north, who want to talk about the situation in another part of the world in way that gets attention but respects people involved.

Speaking to multiple audiences about sensitive subjects is delicate: it is best to start by staying true to your organization’s core values, so we built these principles around the six core values in the Amnesty International statute.

Let us know what you think!

1. International solidarity — stand with people, not on their behalf

The best storytelling makes the protagonist the hero, not the storyteller themselves.

Sometimes we try to shock people in order to grab attention. Are we using shock tactics in a way that risks degrading, dehumanizing or insulting the people we are trying to stand in solidarity with, which only perpetuates the underlying problem?

The solution is to involve the people you are talking about in your content. What changes do THEY want to see? Be a platform for their voice to be heard.

Ask yourself: Have I asked the people represented what they think of my content? Have I let them speak for themselves, rather than speak on their behalf?

My best friend is facing deportation to Afghanistan. Here's how we are fighting back.

2. Effective action for the individual — empathy not sympathy

Human rights is not about handing out aid or charity, it is about people acting together to build bridges so that people recognize the things we have in common, and show what people can achieve by acting together. Tell stories that reinforce that message of common humanity, putting forward an alternative to division into groups or hierarchies.

Give people a stake in making things better. We mirror the emotions we see in the people in front of us. Content that is sarcastic, sardonic, intentionally offensive, shocking or aggressive is likely to make your audience feel cynical and frustrated. It also carries an added risk of audiences shutting out your message or inadvertently reinforcing the message you are trying to parody. Think through the full emotional journey you want your audience to go. Once the initial shock or offence has worn off, what do you want them to feel or think next? There is increasing evidence showing that human beings are more likely to change their minds when positive emotions are triggered.

Show togetherness not victimhood: Your audience should stand in solidarity with them not come to their aid. People want empathy and understanding, not pity.

As Brene Brown says, there is a big difference between empathy and sympathy:

“Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection.”

Because often when people are facing a challenge or dealing with a difficult situation, they aren’t looking for a magic response that will fix everything. They may be looking for someone who can help them feel like they aren’t alone in solving the problem. They may be looking for someone who has been through a process or challenge before. They are definitely looking for a connection, and that’s what empathy is all about.

Ask yourself: Am I seeking to cause offence or shock just to get attention or am I proposing constructive action?

3. Universal & Indivisible — use symbols that unite, instead of those that divide

Try to use universal symbols and values, showing what humans have in common instead of what separates them into groups.

Try to use universal symbols that remind people what we have in common, not those that highlight what keeps us apart. We can reflect the diversity of our societies through the prism of shared values.

Let’s create and celebrate new ideas about groups to replace stereotypes, rather than mocking them and thereby inadvertently reinforcing them. Surprise people with fresh alternatives instead of shocking them with outrage.

As they say at ICPA:

“Issues divide, values unite.”

Ask yourself: Have I considered how people of different races, genders, cultures, classes and other backgrounds will respond to my content?

4. Independent & Impartial — criticise conduct, not the person

We should live by our values when convincing people to act by them.

This means taking people up on their conduct not their person: Play the ball, not the player. Talk about what politicians should be doing to live by our values. Criticise their failure to do so. Focus on their actions and words. Don’t criticise the person, their appearance or their ability. For example, do not engage in body shaming.

We leave the door open to politicians to do the right thing, so use carrots as well as sticks. Be clear that we criticise the actions of authorities and leaders, not entire countries and not entire groups of people who live there.

There is a wider challenge here. Can we have empathy for those we disagree with?

If we want to create a world with greater empathy (which is how I define a world where human rights are enjoyed by all), we need to show more empathy ourselves, even towards people we disagree with. Indeed, you could argue that the only way to strengthen your empathy muscle to practice it where it feels hard to.

“When they go low, we go high.” — Michelle Obama.

Ask yourself: am I criticising political conduct, rather than the politicians themselves?

5. Mutual respect — laugh with people, never at them

Comedy is a powerful tool to trigger empathy and engagement but how do you laugh with, not at people?

We want to see all people treated with respect so we should not, in our position of authority, replicate the practices we do not support even in jest or parody. If you use images of violence, sexualised images or any other content that implies transgression, are you using it for the sake of shock or transgression, or because of a need to bring the content to light? Beware the risk of encouraging copycat behaviour and reinforcing stereotypes: just because it happens does not mean you need to shed a light on it without a strategy to stop or replace it with different behaviour.

Humour is a powerful tool for making an emotional connection and introducing new ideas or worldviews. But humour draws on culture, so it is very subjective. Always check if other people share the joke. Laugh with people, not at them. A big warning signal is if the subject of humorous content is less powerful than you. If our strategy requires we punch, punch up not down. Better yet, don’t punch at all.

Caty Borum Chattoo is doing ground-breaking work demonstrating the role of humour in stimulating empathy. If that is the case, then human rights communicators must find a way to use light-hearted, humorous content to build support and solidarity between people, shifting away from the sardonic or sarcastic tone we usually use to highlight hypocrisy that angers us.

In a world full of overwhelming suffering, finding a tasteful way to mobilise humour and comedy to respond may be the biggest challenge of all for dedicated social change communicators.

Ask yourself: Is my use of humour making it easier to relate to another’s experience, or trivialising that experience?

6. Global coverage — speak to shared values

I think this is last point about stepping down from the moral high ground and speaking more transparently about the values that drive us. We need to reflect the diversity of our societies and communities, but as human rights communicators we also believe in shared humanity and a certain level of universality in the human experience.

it’s important to look critically at whether our content reflects the diversity of groups affected by an issue or our societies and whether we are privileging certain voices or groups.

To create effective long-term change, we have to transform how people see the world. This is the time to transform the understanding of power that has oppressed women and LGBTI people in all parts of the world.

Ask yourself: Am I showing the world through the prism of our values? Am I repeating harmful stereotypes when I could be replacing them instead?

Conclusion — for now

These guidelines are a living document so Amnesty International made them public.

In a world full of different contexts and cultures, much is subjective. But if you believe that somethings are universal, we must strive to identify universal values that we an all adhere to. Far from solving this challenge, we see this is as starting a conversation.

The article below, excerpted from a case study I wrote for the Innovation Report produced by JustLabs and the International Civil Society Centre, tells the story of hope-based comms so far. If you want to help me write the next chapter, get in touch at www.hope-based.com.

Populist politicians are known for pushing the boundaries of acceptable speech: making “politically incorrect” statements, or “telling it like it is”. In doing so, politicians get free publicity and shift the “Overton window” of what is considered “common sense” in public discourse. In other words, they frame the debate and control the narrative.

Using these techniques, well-planned campaigns can shift formerly unthinkable and radical ideas into what become regarded as sensible and popular, to the point that the pressure for them to become policy becomes irresistible.

So if strategic use of narrative can help bring about cultural and societal change, why not aim for a 2030 where politics is built on kindness, gender equality, a sustainable approach to the economy and a worldview built on “empathy and responsibility to care”?

Why we cannot fight fear with fear

Populists are comfortable being criticised by “elite” institutions like civil society organisations (CSOs). Too often, entering into open debate or conflict with them feeds the “us vs them” narratives on which they thrive. When the messaging of CSOs simply reacts to political or world events, it allows others to set the terms of debate. This relegates civil society to the role of reacting rather than making the case for their own values. As cognitive linguist Anat Shenker-Osorio says, good messaging is not about saying what is popular, it is about making popular what needs to be said.

Taking control of the narrative is also important for ensuring the tone of public discourse is conducive to progressive values and policies. A sense of crisis, scarcity and conflict is the perfect breeding ground for populism. A sense of certainty, abundance and shared humanity promotes empathy and taking responsibility to care for one another. Research from Hope Not Hate has found that people who are more optimistic about their own lives tend to hold more liberal views than those who feel pessimistic.

To counter the climate of fear and division that populists are trying to create, CSOs need to cultivate a welcoming terrain of hope and empathy for people who desire a constructive alternative. Research by More in Common in 2018 found an “exhausted majority” of Americans across the political spectrum wanting to move beyond division and polarisation in order to “create trust and connection […] around what unites them”.

This means talking less about “fighting” and more about “building”. It means countering dehumanisation with compassion and positive, authentic stories about minority groups with which audiences can empathise.

Why hope?

Hope-based communications is a simple methodology that proactively and explicitly promotes the values and solutions we want to see in society.

It focuses on creating a climate of togetherness and empathy to avoid being side-tracked by responses to populist frames and narratives. Moving beyond a vocabulary of facts and rational arguments, it encourages greater consideration of the emotions and ideas that CSOs need to activate in target audiences, putting forward an alternative vision of how things could be and how to get there.

Hope-based communications started with a spontaneous blog post on Medium, then evolved into a simple informal checklist — inspired by Greenpeace’s Seven Shifts storytelling strategy — circulated internally within Amnesty International and inviting colleagues to ask themselves questions about their work.

Hope, not fear: A new model for communicating human rights

I first shared it within Amnesty Interantional as an optional framework to use. But as I started giving talks at conferences it received so much interest from other civil society groups that I developed the idea and published it as a freely available open source methodology, which I continue to evolve from one workshop to another.

I am now setting up the hope-based communications as some sort of consultancy/intiative/collective to spread the world across the social change sector.

I am still working on my plan for what comes next, but what I know is that I want to share this idea, not own it.

Five shifts for better narratives

Hope-based communications involves carrying out five simple shifts that can lead to some dramatic changes in thinking.

1. From problems to solutions: ·· What do we want to see happen? ·· How would your solution work in practice?

2. From threat to opportunity: ·· Have you shown people the opportunity for change? ·· How can human rights make things better?

3. From “against” to “for”: ·· What is the alternative to the abuses we are exposing? ·· What wider principles are at stake? ·· If authorities applied your solution, what values would they be living by?

4. From victims to heroes: ·· Who can our audience side with in this story? ·· Are your protagonists relatable: are their motivations clear, their hopes expressed, their values shareable?

5. From fear to hope: ·· What positive emotion can people feel — or anticipate feeling in the future — by connecting emotionally to this story?

Such shifts can reframe conversations. For example, instead of sounding the alarm about biodiversity loss, how might one promote a policy that will achieve biodiversity gain?

Above all, focusing on allegorical stories that show your values in action and reinforce your narrative is a necessary prerequisite for making the best use of new technological tools that enable precise targeting of content to different audiences.

Hope-based comms in action

Anistia Brasil — “Brasil for Everyone”

When opposition to civil society groups became a feature of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s profile, any aggressive counter-mobilisation risked being labeled as “radical” activism. In response, Anistia Brasil applied the hope-based communications approach when launching its first report about human rights under Bolsonaro. The Brazil for Everyone campaign focused on a positive unifying message that promoted diversity and gave voice to marginalised communities in a calm, welcoming atmosphere. They simply say “I am here”.

Amnesty International USA — A longer table

Populists have turned the issue of migration into a powerful recruitment tool, framing it as a “crisis” where borders are “violated”, rousing fears of invasion and unwanted social change. At first, civil society responses highlighted the scale of the crisis, which unwittingly fueled populist politicians who staked their campaigns on stability and security. Yet Amnesty International USA ran a campaign that celebrated positive behaviour. By depicting Americans welcoming newcomers, the organisation reframed the migration narrative around stories of “welcome” instead of “crisis”.

The Longer Table campaign focused on images of Americans and newcomers coming together to eat: the most universal human communal activity that exists. It also promoted authentic stories by asking supporters to organise local community events, thereby bringing people together to replicate the campaign imagery in reality. Crucially, this messaging offered genuine opportunities for supporters feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the “crisis”, encouraging them to become part of the solution.

Amnesty International New Zealand — Messages of Hope

In response to the Christchurch mosque shootings in May 2019, Amnesty International New Zealand emphasised what it “stands for”, rather than sending a reactive message “against hate”. Its “Messages of Hope” campaign invited supporters to send messages of solidarity to the directly affected community. Over 10,000 messages were sent, and the organisation posted a selection of them on billboards across the country, promoting healing and togetherness rather than division.

Putting the humanity in human rights

Another case study in the JustLabs/ICSC report looks at how Amnesty International applied hope-based thinking to human rights itself, testing new positive ways of talking about human rights. You can read that case study here.

Amnesty International on Twitter

We're all so different, but our common humanity binds us together. https://t.co/bSUSPjsDAx

New narratives for human rights

That’s why I am reading a book from every country in the world, from A to Z, to find the best world literature that you have never heard of.

Jamaica

Patricia Powell — Me Dying Trial (1993)

Setting: A poor, rural Jamaican community in the 1970s/1980s.

What it’s about: In another classic from the Caribbean Writers Series, a talented young woman from a poor community strives to thrive against all the odds: domestic violence, disdain of the upper-classes, cultural expectations and poverty.

It starts with schoolteacher Gwennie’s illicit romance, which contrasts badly with the abuse of her husband Walter, the worst sort of husband, drinking, not working, beating her, chasing away any friends she might have, belittling her and. keeping her down and then pleading with her to return when she tries to leave. But Gwennie is a character who resists:

“Don’t make sense spend your life with a man who only out to beat you have to death. It don’t spell sense a tall.”

But Walter is not a one-dimensional villain, and Gwennie remembers the man she first met:

“Him certainly not the man she marry. The man she marry used to sit up at night until late, telling her childhood stories and his plans for them future together. Him used to buy her a record or a book now and again, bring the children out to amusement parks, picnics, shows. Now him the complete opposite. What happen to Walter, what happen? Him don’t want her to have have anykind of spare time a tall to herself. Morning times she wake up, make breakfast, tidy herself and the children and leave for shcool. Afternoons, she come home, cook, mark papers, if she have time she do a little washing or sewing. Then is time to go to sleep.”

Eventually Gwennie leaves for good and “lives in foreign” — migrating to the United States to be a domestic worker, a better way to support her children than being a teacher n Jamaica.

Me Dying Trial is also a story about class and what could have been. Gwennie’s story does not have to end in migration: she is passionate about social reform and union meetings. She has the potential to transform her community. But conservatism and violence force her to leave.

The story also follows the lives of her children and how they deal with an abusive father and an absent mother. It is a book of sad silent partings and quiet, merciful reunitings.

Why you should read it: The lives of Powell’s characters feel so real and authentic, yet completely original. Like Rudi, the eldest son who looks after his mother, supports his siblings and stands up to his violent father, all the while bravely exploring his homosexuality and leaving the create his own life in the United States when his mother fails to accept him for who he is at the end of the novel:

“I used to give Daddy the money Mama send once a month, like damn idiot. But then me stop for him wouldn’t buy Jeff shoes for school or give me money for the house. Him probably used to pay off his debts with it. Then him start to spite me. Wouldn’t pay any of the big bills. Everything fall down on me shoulders. One whole month them cut off the lights and Daddy wouldn’t turn it back on.”

Or the relationship between the talented Peppy, who will never know her father and grows up with her aunt, hardly knowing her mother. She also makes tough decisions, including leaving the aunt who raised her on her deathbed, while the aunt sends her adopted daughter away with the admonishment to seek a better life:

“New Green don’t ahve any future to give you, only baby and marriage, hungry-belly and poverty. I want you to have more. I want you to turn lawyer, or teacher or doctor, even businesswoman. I don’t want to see you with New Green boys, all them give you is hungry-belly and plenty chilreden.”

The book tells us little about life in the States, but is a vital perspective on the conditions that drive people to move to other countries to seek freedom and opportunities denied them at home.

Read it if you liked: Augustown by Kei Millar, which feels somehow twinned with this book.

Rating: **

Japan

Michio Takeyama — The Burmese Harp (1948)

Setting: Burma at the end of the Second World War.

What it’s about: A pacifist book about the human cost of war. A troop of Japanese soldiers tries to survive the end of the war. One mythical member of their troop, Corporal Mzushima, saves them by blending into to the Burmese community and eventually disappears. As they live in a prison camp, they catch glimpses of him transformed into a buddhist monk.

Eventually we discover that the heroic figure has taken on a spiritual task: burying the thousands of Japanese solidiers abandoned by his retreating army, those sick and wounded soldiers who either died or committed suicide when left behind:

“The explosions of grenades were frequently heard in the fields and forests after retreating Japanese troops had passed by. The local villagers knew it. “Ah, another one has killed themselves” the villagers would think to themselves.

How many tragedies happened in this way that they were never reported, never told…they were simply forgotten completely.”

Why you should read it: Burmese Harp is an antidote to the stereotype of Japanese soldiers as manic kamikazes. Here they are human, often gentle characters, trying to survive and rediscover their humanity through communioin with nature, music and spirituality.

“Carrying out this war was certainly criminal, but those young men brought here to fights, and have died, of what were they guilty? English or Japonese, all these soldiers are above all men, and their souls have now left this world.”

The soldiers constantly debate philosophy and politics, sing and play instruments, and meekly surrender to English soldiers and work to help bury the dead of both sides.

Read it if you liked: Any books about the sorrow of war. Giving a lead character the gruesome, Herculean task of burying the dead for whom nobody else will take responsibilty is also present in Maaza Mengiste’s excellent Beneath the Lions Gaze.

This book is an excellent counterpoint to Joseph Conrad’s bitter tale of humanity lost in jungle. In Burmese Harp, the soldiers find humanity in the darkness of the jungle, and in the final scenes, instead of hearing Charles Marlow deliver the chilling story in a boat bobbing in the darkness, the Japanese captain reads a spiritual letter from the corporal turned buddhist monk, who refuses to return home until he has scene to all the fallen soliders.

Rating: *

The best book from Japan: I also enjoyed Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen, about her boyfriend and his transexual mother who take her in. The mother is tragically killed. The story is airy and whimsical but the romance is tiresome.

I was disappointed with a reissue and new translation of 1908 ‘tale’ The Miner by Natsume Soseki, who proudly insists it is not a novel. I respect any writer who tries, like George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier, to bring to light the dreadful conditions down in the mine, but this book pulls its punches.

The excellent edition from Aardvark Bureau provides a great introduction and post-script, explaining that the story was written just after a major uprising by abused miners in a notorious Japanese copper mine, and based on first-hand testimony of conditions workers faced. Yet Soseki seems unable to look beyond his class and comfortable Tokyo milieu enough to sympathise with their plight. He sees through the eyes of Tokyo dandy fleeing a failed romance, and is more interested in modernist reflection on small details and psychological exploration of the bourgeois character.

“First I had run away from home, set for the possibility of dying. That had changed in the second stage to a desire to go where there were no people. Then along came the third stage: a determination to work.”

The poor people who need to work to earn a living, are presented to the reader as dishonest, unscrupulous and mean. The miners he encounters are treated, and often described, as brutal savages.

Half the book is taken up with his journey to the mine. The descent into the dark is gripping,

“Far off, I heard a clanging sound…It was not a sound from a world where north, south, east and west meant anything.”

It would have been more powerful if it came with more respect for the people who endure it for more than a day. In the end, the lack of compassion in writer and protagonist turns it into a sort of Tripadviser review.

The story ends absurdly with the protagonist becoming a bookkeeper, whose role is to tot up all the charges being deducted from miners’ salaries – so instead of winning their respect, they know “went out of their way to butter me up”. The terrible conditions, the exploitation are just features to be detailed briefly like natural phenomena.

Jordan

Fadi Zaghmout — The Bride of Amman (2015)

Setting: Contemporary Amman

What it’s about: A really original book follows the life of four young women and a homosexual man, trying to find their way in a conservative, patriarchal society.

The women have different ways of dealing with the pressures and expectations of society. One complains of a mother who doesn’t want her to wear a veil, lest it should reduce her chances of getting married.

Another is brought to meet a potential suitor:

“I am the ball being knocked back and forth, which they are at liberty to dissect and scrutinise.”

Zaghmout brings a wry wit to dissect ubrane Jordanian society, and doesn’t hold back when criticising its hypocrisy, and pointing out how fragile and artificial are the norms that justify traditions:

“Every male member of the family see himself as a sentry guard, watching us like hawks, ready to pull us up at any time we cross their red lines that dictate how we can and can’t behave.

Honour is something fragile, prone to being shattered. And yet, bizarrely, it is also flexible, and the men knead it like dough into whatever shape suits them and helps them exert their control over the women.”

Why you should read it: For the fearless way Zaghmout takes on the repression and violence that lies behind conservative societies that impose conformity. This excerpt is a particularly powerful account of the challenges faced by the LGBT+ community in the Arab World today:

• from "The Amman Bride"
• Fadi Zaghmout: Jordan’s blogger turned novelist

Iceland

Sjon — Moonstone (2013)

Setting: Iceland at the end of the First World War

What it’s about: A mysterious boy flits about Reykjavik during the Spanish Flu epidemic. It is a surrealist painting in writing.

He lives in the shadow of the city, prostituting himself to sailors and suited businessmen alike.

Also see: Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl’s Illska — sadly only available in French and German.

Rating: *

India

Upamanyu Chatterjee — English August (1988)

Setting: Newly-independent India

What it’s about: An optimistic, naive Indian civil servant arrives in a backwater town with grand plans to bring the fruits of independence, only to get bogged down in corruption, tribalism and bureaucracy.

Why you should read it: For the loneliness of the young civil servant trying to do good and identify with his country, whose disappointment by becoming a slacker, watching porn and smoking pot.

Read it if you liked: This is Evelyn Waugh meets Hanif Kureishi, with a bit of the spirit dissolute spirit of Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis or The Graduate.

Rating: *

The best books from India? My list:

Untouchable — Mulk Raj Anand, for a bottom-up view of the politics of Satyagraha.

The Inheritance of Loss — Kiran Desai, for a cross-generational exploration of what is lost, and gained, across generations of migration between societies, lands and cultures.

A Train to Pakistan — Khushwant Singh, for the “google street map” view of communities breaking apart under the pressure of partition. It is almost sociological in the way it explores how cynical politics can drive wedges and create bitter conflict between groups where previously none existed, making it a universal warning about the ever present dangers of identity politics.

The Golden Gate — Vikram Seth, for its charming rhyming verse.

Indonesia

Eka Kurniawan — Man Tiger (2004)

Setting: A poo rural community in post-colonial Indonesia.

What it’s about: A mysterious murder is gradually explained through the often violent dramas of two families.

Man Tiger has been labelled as a supernatural novel in the vein of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but you feel Kurniawan is at his most passionate with the pastoral descriptions of the community. Almost more in the spirit of Thomas Hardy, the pivotal murder is almost more of an excuse to tell the story of the society that gave birth to it.

The most powerful moments are thoroughly domestic, and the worst suffering that inflicted by family members upon each other, particularly the physical and emotional domestic violence of the father of the killer with the tiger inside, Margio. A key moment in the formation of Margio is when they move from a shack to a new town, the father promising them a new and better life:

“The had reached the outskirts of town, an avenue of beautiful houses. They had yet to see their new home, but at this welcome sight, at the glistening coloured fences embellished with ornate ironwork, bright lights, and mailboxes, Margio started to get excited…But instead of stopping here they turned into an alley so narrow the cart almost couldn’t get through…The cart trundled more slowly than ever, more shakily, past densely packed shacks and untended gardens, all previously hidden by the bright houses they had passed.”

They arrive at a house that “a fallen coconut could flatten” which “looked somber and smelled of death, damp and misery”.

Also powerful: the stoic resistance of Margio’s mother, Nuraeni, to domestic violence. When her husband’s attempts to renovate the house fail, she takes over the concrete garden and starts planting flowers. At first, they bloom into a wonderful garden, “putting any flower shop to shame”, but Nuraeni has a different, bitter vision, telling her daughter that the flowers are for her funeral, allowing the greenery to take over and spoil their home:

“The yard, which they had imagined a beautiful garden adorning their little house, was now a jungle, with blooms popping up every which way…The garden became indistinguishable from dense undergrowth, and Margio started to call it a wilderness. The leaves either withered or jostled each other for life…Within two years, no one could see the facade of the house; it as covered entirely by shimmering green leaves…Dead plants fertilised the soil, and the rest thrived.”

As in the garden, so in love and in humanity, raw nature refuses to be controlled, and wildness lurks, ready to overtake the thin layer of civil order.

This is a circular novel grand in its scope despite being limited in geography. Its remains rooted within the life of two families in their small community, but the camera pans broadly within this small panorama, viewing the same period of events from different angles, so that by the end we view the violent murder that it starts with from a completely new perspective.

Read it for: The extremely subtle evocation of the violence that lies deep in humanity, and particularly in Indonesia — the scars of which the book makes only vague allusions: the Japanese occupation, a war of independence of the Netherlands, which was then followed by a brutal genocide of left-wing people.

The best books from Indonesia: Eka Kurniawan is touted as the heir to Pramoedya Ananta Toer, but I found his tetralogy about an Indonesian nobleman and journalist under Dutch colonialism prosaic and one-dimensional, almost like a Tintin story.

Read it if you liked: Salman Rushdie, Adolfo Bioy Casares, John McGahern.

Iran

Mahmoud Dawlatabadi – Thirst (2014)

Setting: the Iran-Iraq war

What it’s about: Is a soldier still human? That is the question that hangs over my books from both Iran and Israel.

In Thirst, a tank of water stands between two sets of soldiers, Iranian and Iraqi. The narrative eventually forms a mirror between the two sides. Meanwhile, the writer himself is struggling to finish the story of the two soliders and the water tank because a prison camp head is coercing him to fabricate war propaganda. The two wage a witty war of words in between scenes from the battlefield.

Mahmoud Dawlatabadi probes our assumptions. As two soldiers argue in a trench about how to treat their prisoner, one explains to the other why they can do their duty and kill soldiers, but not a human being:

“It’s quite simple, sir. Soldiers are different from human beings. You can’t see a soldier’s face from far away.”

Why you should read it: For the interlacing of millenia of Persian and Mesopatamian history into modern conflicts (“What truce? We’ve been on the offensive or defensive for centuries”) and the subtle probing of the nature of humans in conflict, ancient and modern.

The dual narratives of ‘the author’ and story was risky, but works as an ode to the power of writing, as when the author ponders his plot:

“The author immediately fell to wondering whether his pen might even be able to prevent the prisoner’s death.”

Mahmoud Dawlatabadi tells us the author is a man “smitten with words” in reference to a 17th century poen “when a person who is smitten by words is given a pen, he will not stop writing even if threatened by a blade’.” Which is essentially the theme of this book.

This dedication to the word, to truth, is contrasted to a disdain for weapons of war, which gives the sense of urgency that a way must be found to overcome ancient divisons once and for all:

“Ever since the invention of lead bullets along with a device from which they could be fired in order to kill people, human beings have become nothing but statistics and can hardly be called ‘people’ anymore. And consequently, honour, kindness and humanity are now redundant concepts. For this new invention can be aimed and fired at anonymous individuals known as ‘targets’”

Rating: **

Iraq

Abbas Khider — The Oranges of the President (2010) & Letter to the Aubergine Republic (2013)

Setting: Iraq under Saddam Hussein

What it’s about: Abbas Khider is an Iraqi refugee who writes in German. He writes about the repression of the Baathist state and the pain of exile.

In Letter to the Aubergine Republic, we follow a letter that a refugee working in Libya tries to get smuggled back to his family in Iraq. Every stage of the journey is a chapter introducing new characters on the smuggling route — taxi drivers, truck drivers, cafe owners and policemen — and their lives. In a sinister finale, it is revealed that the secret service actually control the entire route in order to control exiles.

In The President’s Oranges, a young man tries to live an ordinary life under a brutal regime, but is arrested (he doesnt know what for) and tortured, and eventually takes flight into exile. While charming anecdotes show that shoots of daily life can always survive (the hero forms a touching and symbolic friendship with a dove handler — the memory of which is interspersed through the story of imprisonment), Khider reminds us how quickly hope can be crushed under dictatorship.

The title comes from the moment when prisoners desperately hoping for an amnesty on Sadaam Hussein’s birthday get oranges instead.

Why you should read it: For the everyday courage of ordinary people undertaking small but dangerous acts of resistance, much in the spirit of Vaclav Havel’s power of the powerless. At the end of Oranges, two refugees escape from Iraq one says:

“Although I am very happy to have brought my family to safety, I just want to spit on everything. On my home. On the Baathists. On America. On the Arabs. On the Allies. On all of humanity. And on God, that layabout who never gets off his ass”

“Let’s spit together then.”

We spat on the ground, and went on our way.

It is also a reminder of the pre-Arab Spring world of Qaddafi, Mubarak and Sadaam Hussein.

Also read it for the powerful voice of a political refugee who settled in Germany and made it his home in a way many more have since then. In these deeply autobiographical books he speaks on behalf of all refugees, and all victims of repressive states.

PUBLISHERS: PLEASE TRANSLATE THESE BOOKS!!!

Rating: *** (strongly recommended for anyone learning German).

Ireland

Colm Toibin – Brooklyn (2009)

Setting: Early 20th century New York City and Ireland

What it’s about: A young Irish woman, Eilis, builds a new life abroad, but the bonds of home are hard to unwind from. In many ways this feels like a sequel to one of the great Brian Friel plays about Irish immigration, Philadelphia, Here I Come, where a young man remembers all the events that led to him leaving home on his last day in the country.

Toibin has an exceptional gift for bringing characters to life through the small hardships they learn to overcome. Eilis struggles to master the boat journey, until a more travelled woman teaches her the ropes. By the end it is Eilis mentoring another young girl.

Why you should read it: For the experience of the immigrant, defined as much by the land they leave behind as the one they arrive in.

The defining moment of the book is when Eilis is tempted to stay in Ireland, and not to continue her new life in America. Returning to Ireland and treated with more respect, the staid community seems more open until she is reminded of the reality — the small-mindedness and cruelty, at which point she immediately decides to return, though the price is a heartbroken mother:

“”I’ll go down and get Joe Dempsey to collect you in the morning. I’ll ask hi to come at eight so you’ll be in plenty of time for the train.” Eilis noticed a look of great weariness come over her. “And then I’m going to bed because I’m tired and so I won’t see you in the morning. So I’ll say goodbye now.”

This review in the LRB sums up Toibin’s writing style by calling it “the grandeur of the commonplace”.

LRB · Liam McIlvanney · The Coldest Place on Earth: Colm Tóibín's 'Brooklyn'

The best book from Ireland? It is very challenging to pick one writer, let alone one book, from my home country. Obviously Ulysses is one of the most important books of the 20th Century, but while it is steeped in Dublin it is also a book about everyman. I am choosing Colm Toibin instead because I am constantly surprised by how people have not heard of him — one of the finest, most sensitive and powerful writers alive today. His body of work is broad and wide-ranging, so I recommend starting with probably his most well-known work, Brooklyn, since it highlights his ability to create a bond between reader and character

Flann O’Brian’s The Third Policeman is the funniest novel I have ever read. It is a mind-bending fantasy set in the west of Ireland that manages to mock everything else in Irish literature.

But Colm Toibin is not only Ireland’s finest living writer, the number of simple, everyman characters that he has breathed life into makes him the best Irish writer ever. Toibin plants his characters in your mind like seeds, and under his pen they bloom, watered carefully with the minutae of everyday life.

In his short story collection, Mothers and Sons, for example, a widow who has been a housewife most of her life discovers independence by opening a chipper on the main street of her small time.

Rating: *** — I wanted to highlight Colm Toibin over writers like John McGahern and Flann O’Brian because I am constantly shocked to meet people, even from his county of Wexford, who have not heard of him, even though he is one of the most beautiful, emotive living writers today.

Israel

Shani Boianjiu – The People of Forever are not Afraid

Setting: 21st century Israel

What it’s about: What happens to everyday, precocious teenage women who grow up in a war zone and join the army? Sparse, powerful writing takes the reader into a wholly original perspective through the interweaving, wholly personal, experience of three female soldiers, weaved into the major upheavals and conflicts of 21st century Israel.

Just like Mahmoud Dawlatabadi, Boianjiu’s characters struggle to maintain their basic humanity against the conformity of army life and military orders. So when Lea is manning the checkpoint, she cannot help but see people, not danger as the army wants:

“…I would still only notice what I happened to notice. This was because I couldn’t realize I was a soldier. I thought I was still a person.”

And when reservists are called up:

“They wore green, they had guns on their backs, but they weren’t soldiers. they had beards, long hair, jobs in factories, jobs elsewhere, mortgages, wives, children.

Reservists, they went fast in that war – not the fastest, but they went fast.”

As army life starts to grind Lea down, we see more humanity, not less. When she goes out to the desert to urinate behind a dune and a civilian follows her to hassle and harangue her, he does not “catch her with her pants down”, but the patch of wet sand stands between them:

“When I lowered my eyes and stood without words, I saw that the fruit flies swarmed over the wetness”

Boianjiu describes the transitions to adulthood and the struggle to regain basic feeling in civilian life in completely unique ways. When Lea reaches the end of her service she struggles to imagine the future:

“She guess she must want a family or to get into a good school, but she guessed it from the data around her. She did not feel the want herself.”

Why you should read it: The deeply poetic way the normal preoccupations of a teenage woman is magnified by the mostly monotonous, sometimes terrifying experience of military service. The strength of these stories is how they thrive in the everyday. These are everyday women leading what is for Israelis everyday lives, but Boianjiu brings them to life with brilliantly sardonic turns of phrase, and pure attitude:

“Maybe trouble isn’t something you do, it is something you are.”

And these three women are trouble, for themselves and others.

Also read this book for the way Boianjiu finds beauty in the mundane, everyday detail of military life:

“On her way back to the caravan, grasshoppers were catching their reflections in the gasoline pools that had formed from all the weapon cleanings, and plunging into them.”

Nor does she shy away from the dark side of Israeli society, human trafickking, marital violence and racism are dealt with subtly but directly.

For example, the little hints of the racism against Jews from North Africa, are not overpowering, and the characters do not let them dominate their story:

“There was one cook, the oldest of all the soldiers, a twenty-seven-year-old man from a kibbutz in the desert who used to make ha-ha-angry jokes at Mom all the time and say her skin was dark as an old chocolate cake or shit, and that she should not be allowed in his dining room because it was a health risk either way, and who gave her kisses on her neck and hard-boiled eggs he had left over.”

Shani Boianjiu Writes the Good Stuff

Books you should read from Israel: I feel that I have never felt the voice, the attitude, the “wait a minute” cool of everyday Israelis more than in Boianjiu’s writing. Look beyond Amos Oz and David Grossman and read this.

Two other mentions: Assaf Gavron’s satire on colonies in the Occupied Territories The Hilltop and Yishai Sarid’s redemption tale of an Israeli spy, Limassol.

Read this if you like: Colm Toibin, Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy, Jospeh Heller’s Catch 22.

Rating: ***

Italy

Leonardo Sciascia — The Day of the Owl (1961)

Setting: Sicily

What it’s about: An investigator tries to track down a mafia murder through a see of complicit silence. Sciascia excoriates a society in thrall to the mafia with a loving sense of humour for a parade of darkly comic, stoic Sicilian characters.

Why you should read it: This is more than a detective story, it is a story of politics and culture. We see Sicily through the eyes of an urbance northern investigator, who uses charm to try to untangle the web of silence, only to uncover deeper conspiracies.

The best book from Italy? There are so many Italys, so many novelists, notably Primo Levi and Italo Svevo. Honorary mentions for Cesare Pavese’s The Political Prisoner and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic story of a Sicilian noble family in decline, The Leopard. For Italy’s modern working class — Silvia Avallone’s Steel. For actually learning Italian, Alessandro Baricco’s dreamy romance Silk.

Ivory Coast

Gauz — Debout-payé (2015)

Setting: Modern Paris, seen from the perspective of African immigrants

What it’s about: Paris and its consumer meccas seen through the eyes of the security guard, from people shopping the sales in cheap shops to posh-perfume stores on rich streets, written as if a glossary.

This detached observation puts the quirks of modern life under the microscope:

FROM ONE SHOPPING CENTRE TO ANOTHER: Leave Dubai, the city-shopping centre, and come to PAris on holidays to stuff your bags on the Champs-Elysees, the street-shopping centre.

That colourful story dovetails with the story of west African immigrants in the early 1970s, charting the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in politics. We see the euphoria of the migrant who achieves financial independence and a steady job, and the disillusion of being a second-class citizen. The novel begins with Congolese, Ivorians, Malians, Guieans, Beninois, Senegalese “etc” queueing for job interviews, each with their own accents and styles — an internationalism too often lost to western stereotypes.

Why you should read it: Gauz is an exciting young new writer from Cote d’Ivoire. He has a unqiue style and a sharp political voice delivered with style and a sense of humour. This timely book injects with humanity the people that Europe would rather not see, making it essential reading.

The best book from Cote d’Ivoire? The most well-known book from the country is Allah is not obliged by Ahamdou Kourouma, telling the story of the civil war that ravaged the region in the 1990s from the perspective of a child soldier.

Rating: **

In 2017, my own approach to communications has completely changed. Having spent the last few months diving into the latest studies from cause communicators in the USA, and studying audience research about human rights around the world, I have realised that human rights communication needs to be about hope and opportunity, not fear and threat.

Forty years ago today, on 10 December 1977, Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. At the presentation, the Nobel Committee spoke of Amnesty’s work on torture, the death penalty and, above all, its unique role in supporting prisoners of conscience:

“Amnesty has shone a torch of hope into his cell, maybe precisely when its inmate is sunk in the depths of despair and degradation.”

Today, the human rights movement needs to shine that torch of hope on the whole world.

Yet too often the communication of human rights organisations gives more reason to be angry and pessimistic than hopeful.

As Amnesty International posters read, quoting a Chinese proverb, “It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

Amnesty UK on Twitter

Human rights are not for a select group of people - they're for everyone, everywhere. We'll always campaign for rights for all.

If you put all the new audience research together, it seems that every time we curse the darkness and trigger fear, not hope, we are losing people. We need to light more candles.

Why human rights cannot thrive without hope

The human rights movement has focused on exposing violations of international human rights law, naming and shaming governments and companies who step out of line.

Can we continue to rely on “Name & Shame” strategies at a time when politicians are shameless?

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is that focusing on laws and their implementation alone is not enough. As George Orwell wrote in his 1945 essay Freedom of the Park:

“The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public
opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether
they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general
temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in
freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law
forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will
be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”

Another thing we have learned in the era of fake news, narrative truth and political bullshit, facts are not enough either. Especially since telling people they are wrong can actually reinforce their opinions if it conflicts with their values and beliefs. This is called ‘confirmation bias’ and people who talk about it warn us that we need to use emotions and facts together to win hearts and minds.

On their own, even stories are not enough if we are not careful about the way we tell them. Studies into ‘psychic numbing’ show that as soon as you start talking about more than one person, your audience struggles to maintain sympathy for the protagonists.

So to win public opinion, we need to make human rights popular. To do that, we need more than laws, facts and stories.

Instead of mobilising shame, we need to mobilise hope.

The findings of linguists and psychologists working with focus groups in the United States show that we have to trigger positive emotions that win over persuadable audiences, the undecided people in the middle of debates who are trying to make up their minds, conflicted by the different arguments they hear, based on their values, their beliefs and their understanding of the world around them.

How does a movement whose job is exposing terrible human rights abuses every day adapt to rise to this challenge?

This refugee’s story changed the way I think about human rights today

There is a story that sums up where we are in the world when it comes to human rights.

It is about a refugee called Sara.

One day the secret police came for her and her family. So Sara and her husband fled, hiring a smuggler to take them across the mountains to the border.

After a gruelling trek, the passeur took them to the border, but it was blocked by a high fence topped with barbed wire. The authorities had closed the border and were sending her kind away, back to the fate that awaited them.

Sara was pregnant, and while her husband lost courage and prepared to turn back, the life she was carrying gave her the energy to start climbing. Her hands and legs were bleeding, but she persevered and he had to follow her. Once she was in the country, the border guards felt they could not deport a pregnant woman.

So they took her to a police station where she filled out asylum papers with her husband, who, in the space on the form asking why they were seeking asylum, wrote: “Because I am a Jew”.

The year was 1942, and Sara Dawidowicz had just fled France and the Gestapo, crossing the Alps into Switzerland. She spent the war in a refugee camp just east of Geneva, while her husband worked in a labour camp. She gave birth during that time.

If she hadn’t survived, I would not be here today. Sara was my grandmother.

A story of sorrow? Or a story of hope?

Like most people who work in human rights, this is not easy for me. Because of my family history, I have a fundamentally negative way of seeing the world, and that has affected the way I communicate.

Until now I have seen my grandmother’s story, and the fact that almost all the rest of her family were murdered in concentration camps, as a reason to view the world negatively.

But as human rights defenders today look at the situation in countries like Egypt and Turkey with despair (quoted in an excellent book making the case for hope by Kathryn Sikkink), and as we learn more about the power of positive communications, I have realised I can now see the story of my family differently.

I still see it as a story of sorrow. But now I also see it as a story of survival against all the odds. A story of resilience. A story of hope.

Even in that darkest time of all, there was hope. People survived. So there must be hope now. And here I am today, thanks to Sara’s refusal to lose hope.

The fact that Sara’s story sounds like it could be set in 2017 tells us everything we need to know about the state of world today.

So you can understand why Amnesty International’s annual report this year talked about “a more divided and dangerous world”.

We must stand up to the politics of demonization

Is that the right message to make human rights popular?

The work from cognitive linguist and communications expert Anat Shenker-Osorio suggests that this might not be the right approach in the long-term. She says that talking about fear and danger makes people more conservative and defensive.

You only make people more open to rational and empathetic responses by making them feel safe. Instead of negative emotions like anger and fear, we need to trigger determination, empathy and hope.

Here are four steps to communicating positively about human rights to win the battle for public opinion.

Step 1. Hope, not fear

Understanding how our communication affects people begins with basic science about the brain.

Fear and threat trigger primordial base defensive instincts in the brain, which leads to defensive political impulses. Safety and calm however, encourage the upper parts of the brain, generating more empathy and welcoming political instincts.

So when human rights people talk about “a more dangerous world” we are triggering a fear response. Every time we trigger that fear response, we are losing. I have been doing that my whole career!

Genius communicators Robert Perez and Amy Simon have written in detail about applying neuroscience to cause campaigns. They talk about getting people away from the “downstairs brain” — the primordial ‘fight or flight’ instincts — and into the “upstairs brain” where they can feel empathy for others.

Michelle Obama hit the mark in more ways then one when she said:

“When they go low, we go high.”

We are starting to understand the direct political ramificaitons this has. A French survey showed that voters who predominantly felt fear and anger voted for anti-immigrant candidates Francois Fillon and Marine le Pen, while those who were enthusiastic voted for progressive candidate Emmanuel Macron. ​

It is hard, but we must find ways to trigger positive emotions: empathy, joy, determination and solidarity instead of fear, threat and anger.

Look at attitudes to refugees. If you ask people if they are worried about refugees, they will say yes. But when people come face to face with a refugee they want to help — it’s just human nature. And when Globescan asked people if they believed people fleeing war and persecution had a right to asylum, people not only said yes: they said that their governments should do more to help.

Tirana Hassan on Twitter

New @amnesty survey finds people are more willing to accept refugees than govs give credit for. #refugeeswelcome

Many were willing to take refugees into their own home. Human instincts are in the right place, it is emotions that get in the way. If we talk about crisis and people get scared, and seek security of a defensive, unwelcoming policy.

At Amnesty International we’ve run our own focus groups where people said that they do not understand refugee’s motives and feel overwhelmed by the sense of crisis and scale. They do not know how the problem can be solved, so they turn away from it.

The way people make decisions is always a mix of rational and emotional. It is up to us to break down their barriers to hearing us — their lack of awareness of an issue, their lack of trust in the people talking to them, their sense of urgency and how relevant the story is to them, and above all, what can be done about it.

We need to make it easy for people to relate to other people. Show them a crowd, they will get scared. Show them an individual who could be them, they will be compassionate. So instead of a prisoner in jail, show a former prisoner who is rebuilding their life. Instead of a refugee at their lowest in a refugee camp, show a refugee building a business and caring for their family. Show people not just the suffering, but the other life that is possible if we do something about it.

Alison A on Twitter

'I'm a baker, I want to move to #Germany to bake bread there.' #Refugees are fleeing their homes, but they have dreams for their new lives too, and #communication should reflect that. @T_Coombes #EUHRFORUM #humanrights

So in my case, my grandmother’s story is not just one of survival, it is about the new life she built in France after the war.

And it’s a story I am continuing today.

Step 2. Change the frame

A consequence of my negative world view has been that I communicate confrontationally sometimes, seeking to attack positions that are not human rights-friendly.

If governments say human rights are a barrier to security, my instinct was to show how lacking human rights leads to insecurity. But in doing so I was accepting that the whole debate would be framed around security, triggering the fear response in our audiences, no matter whose rational argument is more convincing.

But now that we know the wrong emotions turn people against our position, it becomes crucial to set the terms of the debate, and change the narrative so that we are talking not about threats, but the society we want to live in.

We cannot depend on “government x is doing bad things and violating human rights” as a narrative. People believe everyone should have rights, but they usually have a superficial understanding of issues. Human rights are not a prism through which they see the world and interpret world events.

Even when people believe human rights are important, it only occupies a small part of their value systems. We need to frame narratives to show people how the most basic, fundamental values that matter to them are at stake.

That is why the most successful progressive campaign of the 21st century has been marriage equality, which reframed a debate from one around discrimination and rights denied to one built around love, equality and family.

Daren Nair on Twitter

Marching in #PrideInLondon today with @AmnestyUK to send a message to the world, #LoveIsAHumanRight no matter where you are!

This less political, more personal and human framing makes it easy for celebrities, sportspeople and the general public to get on board. It makes it easier for even people who believe gay marriage is against their religion to empathise with a gay couple who love each other and just want to live together.

If the LGBTQI movement made unprecedented gains by replacing the “right to marry” message, what does that mean for the rest of human rights movement? Maybe we need to focus more on the human, and less on the rights. (and here I am indebted to Anat Schenker-Osorio’s mind-blowing cognitive linguistics — buy her book!)

Maybe we need to talk more about human rights as a verb, not an inactive, object noun at the end of the sentence that people are granted or entitled to. We may not have the right words yet. But let’s talk instead about you being able to be who you are, say what you believe in, love who you want to and live a free life.

Step 3. Our vision

If we are going to frame the debate the way we want, we need to get better about articulating what we are fighting for.

Rep. Keith Ellison on Twitter

Of Messaging, Friend just said "good messaging is not about saying what's popular; it's making popular what needs to be said." I like this.

We need to show people a credible vision of what a world where human rights are enjoyed by all looks like. At first, this will feel naive. But why would people join us if we do not tell them what we are for and not just against?

We need to show what we are for with positive images. No more bars and nooses. Images of nooses remind people of their own mortality, which makes them more likely to listen to politicians promising to be tough on crime.

When we talk about justice, we need to show an image of justice. An image of hands gripping bars is an image of injustice.

The best piece of writing about communications is the first. In 1922, in his seminal book Public Relations, Walter Lippmann wrote about The world outside and the pictures in our heads:

“In order then that the distant situation shall not be a grey flicker
on the edge of attention, it should be capable of translation into
pictures in which the opportunity for identification is recognisable…Pictures have always been the surest way of conveying an idea, and next in order, words that call up pictures in memory.”

It is easy for populists to get voters to hark back to the past because we can all summon a picture of it in our heads. It is a lot harder to paint a picture of the future. But we have to try.

In 1988, when Chile held a referendum on whether to keep General Pinochet in power, the opposition made the brave their decision to run a campaign based on a positive vision for the future, rather than the horrors of the regime.

Learning from Chile, human rights ad campaigns must show what we stand for not just issue by issue, but a world where everyone is born free and equal.

Human rights organisations need to make communicating positive emotions a strategic priority: we need to find and share stories that make people feel safe, secure, compassionate and, above all, joyful.

If we listen to the world’s leading cause communicators like Anat Schenker-Osorio, Robert Perez and Amy Simon, moments of joy are as important as the worst moments of sadness and anger.

Amnesty International’s internal research shows that human rights are often seen as heavy and political, making it hard for everyday people to open up, take it in, and get involved. They need to see what we are fighting for, moments of pure joy like the moment that DRC activists Fred and Yves went free after a long campaign.

Evie Francq on Twitter

The moment we have all been waiting for; #FreeFred #FreeYves #Larmesdanslesyeux https://t.co/7Ct1RwzVkX

This has fundamental implications for how human rights organisations work. We need more research into communities thriving because they have respected human rights. We need stories of positive change, of prosperous and stable communities, police forces who protect their people, of diversity and tolerance.

We need to tell a story about human rights change that is relevant, believable and ultimately successful.

30 times hope overcame fear this year

Step 4. Faced with dehumanisation, we have to re-humanise

The potential for demonisation to undermine human rights is really scary. Artificial intelligence can be used to serve up social media ads to people based on their personality, a power that, in the wrong hands, can be abused to stoke fear and distrust of minorities.

We do not have to accept that people are divided according to race, ethnicity or nationality.

People do see themselves as human first, as a survey of millenials by the World Economic Forum showed earlier this year. As the WEF survey said: “Young people feel they are united simply because they exist in the same world together. Both as individuals and as a collective, they share similar concerns and desires. For them, their race is the human race.”

So the findings from neuroscience and HeartWired are a timely reminder that human rights work needs to be about building up a sense of common humanity. In a short speech calling for European governments to welcome in the Vietnamese Boat People in 1981, Michel Foucault defined human rights as the right and duty of citizens everywhere to confront governments anywhere with the suffering they cause:

Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes, Médecins du Monde are initiatives which have created this new right: the right of private individuals to intervene actively and materially in the order of international politics and strategy

But this right will only be useful if people are willing to act on it.

How a French philosopher nailed why human rights matter

How do we cultivate these better angels of our nature? Telling people their views are wrong or racist doesn’t work. So what do we do? We take them on a journey. We show them other people just like them overcoming their unconscious bias, their fears and qualms, and changing their minds.

One lesson here is that the people telling persuadable audiences stories should not always be experts, activists and survivors of abuses, and certainly not celebrities, but everyday people just like them who have gone on a journey that the audience can also take.

That is why the most powerful and successful Amnesty International video in years simply showed refugees and locals staring in each other’s eyes for four minutes.

This is not just about buying ads and educating people. It is about getting better at listening to people. Fake news and the politics of demonisation are dangerous because they use personal data to target messages to prey on people’s emotions and personalities.

We have to understand where people are at emotionally, how they feel, what they are worried about, so that we can bring them to a place where they can empathise with others and slowly open up to their fellow human beings

We need to hold discussions and debates to understand their hopes and fears. We need to use focus groups — even if they are just a group of your friends — to see if our narratives make sense and the words we use trigger positive emotions.

If people can be made to fear and hate others that they have never met, then why can’t they be encouraged to love and support them instead?

Zadie Smith put this challenge beautifully in an essay On Optimism and Despair written just after the election of Donald Trump in 2016:

If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world — and most recently in America — the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.

A checklist for positive communication

A Silver Linings Playbook

Just to be clear: human rights organisations still need to investigate and expose abuses. But when we present our findings, we need to talk about opportunities as well as threats, solutions as well as problems.

Opinion | How to Win an Election

Whenever you communicate, ask yourself the following questions:

— Are you talking about what you are FOR, or what are AGAINST?

— Are you campaigning for a SOLUTION, or against a PROBLEM?

— Are you warning about THREATS, or highlighting an OPPORTUNITY?

— Are you telling people they need to be angry and afraid, or that there is a reason for hope and determination?

— Are you telling people what to think, or telling them how you came to your conclusion so that they can make the same journey?

— Are you talking about victims, or everyday heroes?

This is going to be hard for a movement of people, who like me, are determined to make sure that the worst abuses never happen again, that injustice must be exposed and broadcast to the world. Our duty in the human rights movement is not just to expose abuse, but also to offer people hope. We need to show that we can make things better together.

The darker the world, the brighter the candle seems to shine. The deeper the despair, the greater the value of hope.

Human experience will always speak louder than any campaign - podcast

Haiti

Rene Depestre — Le Mât de cocagne (1979)

Setting: An imaginary island dictatorship loosely based on 1970s Haiti.

What it’s about: A former politician and opposition leader reduced to hard times enters a local pole-climbing competition to challenge a dictator.

A satirical take on Haitian dictatorship with a heartfelt celebration of the individual spirit.

Rating: *

Honduras

Horacio Castellanos Moya — The Wrestler and the Servant

Setting: 1980s civil war era El Salvador

What it’s about: A “stories collide” tale in a violent El Salvador: a wrestler turned goon drives around doing the junta’s dirty work while revolutionaries riot in the street, a maid tries to find her bosses’ abducted son while her own grandson joins the resistance.

Why you should read it: For the stark laying bare of the casual brutality of a group of secret policemen.

The best book from Honduras? Moya was born in Honduras, but lived and sets most of his books in Salvador. Its quite hard to find novels from Honduras translated into French or English!

Read it if you liked: Salvador

Rating: *

Hungary

Magda Szabó — The Door (1987)

Setting: Late Communist Hungary.

What it’s about: A domineering maid enters the life of a writer, who gradually peels away the secrets of her life.

Through the book, the author tried to “draw together the true co-ordinates of her being”.

The cleaner, Emerence, wuietly runs the small world of the neighbourhood, maintaining a gravitational pull on the community around her:

“The front porch of her flat was like a telex centre”.

When the author adopts a dog, it immediately obeys the cleaner first.

The best book from Hungary? I was not quite ready for the raw pain of Imre Kertesz’s books about the Shoah, but there is a darkness behind the character of the cleaner, Emerence, the dark history of Hungary. Did she profit from the misery of others? The insinuation is that she stole the possessions of deported Jews, that she sided first with the Nazis, then with the Communists. The author is haunted by:

“the thought of helping herself to the contents of someone’s shattered and abandoned home.”

Imagining Emerence hoarding the possessions of those who never came back, “still fresh with all their associations” she reflects bitterly on Hungary’s dark past:

“One had to respect those animal-lovers who had watched without regret or protest as the sealed cattle-wagons rolled into the distance — the malicious rumours that there were people locked inside were so obviously lies.”

When she visits the town Emerence the cleaner comes from, she again reflects on the unseen history behind every sight:

“I stood gazing at the trees lined up in rows like soldiers, contemplating the memories the land must hold, with so much blood, so many dead, and all their dreams, all that failure and defeat. How could it bear to go on producing, with a burden like that?”

Why you should read it: For its reflections on the nature, and legitimacy, of art and the artist class. We start with the fear that the cleaner has a dark past, but by the end we see that she is the only honest person in a degraded society that has buried its past the way the cleaner locked up some mysterious past behind the door of her house — and challenges the hypocrisies of the author’s own class.

“She saw our names on the books, She returned them to the shelves duly dusted…

“She was forever putting questions to me that no writer, journalist or reader can answer: how did a novel come into existence out of nothing, from mere words? I couldn’t explain to her the familiar, everyday magic of creation.”

You will like it if you liked: Zorba the Greek, Ionesco’s The Rhinoceros

Rating: *

There is an incredible amount of great literature, telling important stories, that will never make it onto the shelves of your local bookstore or the pages of your newspaper. I am reading one book from every country in the world, in alphabetical order, to see what we are missing. For the G’s, the highlight comes from Grenada.

Note: Im going for a Michelin Star style rating system: * = a good book worth reading, ** = a great book you really should read, *** = an absolute masterpiece that will leave you feeling tingly all over.

Gabon

Janis Otsiemi — African Tabloid (2016)

A police drama set in contemporary Libreville combines corruption (“a national sport”), cybercrime and political intrigue.

It paints a raw portrait of the city, with the police officers fighting internal politics, investigating revenge porn, cheating on their wives and extorting taxi drivers to make ends meet, with a generally cynical outlook on life, such as when complaining that they will never be able to extradite a criminal from France:

“Human rights is bullshit invented by the Whites to get us by the balls.”

A sort of West African Big Easy.

Rating: *

Honorary mention: Alpha, a graphic novel from Belgian-Gabonese writer Bessora, in which an Ivorian man crosses the Sahara and the Med to reach his family in Paris.

Alpha: Abidjan to Gare du Nord

Gambia

Dayo Forster — Reading the Ceiling (2015)

Setting: Modern Gambia & London

What it’s about: Three different iterations of one woman’s life: a successful international professional, a traditional wife, and a struggling single mother.

All three stories end incomplete and open-ended, in each case with the tragic death of her mother, with whom she endures strained relations.

“A life beginning has many paths before it; but older people — women like my mother — they can only see the path that brought their lives to the now.”

While the stories take her in different directions, the relationships she has with lovers and family members, dominate each one. Whether she embraces modernity or tradition, she faces the same struggle to establish independence and fulfilment.

Read it if you liked: Elena Ferrante.

Rating: *

Georgia

Alexandre Qazbegi — The Prose of the Mountains (1880s)

Three novellas set in the 19th century Caucasus. A rich man becomes a shepard and experiences first-hand the humiliation and extortion the other shepards suffer at the hands of the police and border guards and are harried by bands of Cossacks.

Part of the strong Central European Classics series from the Central European University. Good for depiction of Russian colonisation and deportation of Chechens that resonates today.

Bad for simplistic, macho “man of the nature” characters who come out with lines like “A Chechen woman falls in love slowly and with hesitation, but once she is in love, she is in love forever”.

Rating: *

Germany

Hans Fallada — Alone in Berlin (1947)

Setting: WWII Berlin

What it’s about: An ordinary German man begins a solitary resistance after his son dies on the eastern front. Based on a true story, Otto and Etta Hampel undertake a unique and eventually pointless act of resistance when their son dies on the Eastern Front.

It is essential to understanding life under dictatorship — a society riven by fear, deception and self-loathing.

It only recently came to the attention of the English-speaking world, which in turn triggered renewed interest for it in Germany.

Why you should read it: It is a searing excavation of the petty corruption and cynicism that thrived underneath the brutality of fascism. The main plotline is almost secondary to the cast of callous and comical lowlifes that are thrown up through the telling of the Hampels — from gestapo officers to crooks and the neighbours obsessed with taking over the flats of Jewish neighbours.

Time and time again, the venal and petty trump decency. At one point, one of these scoundruls unwittingly helps the gestapo uncover a communist network hiding potential victims from the Nazis.

The world described by Fallada is not just tense and terrifying, it is the apotheosis of the “low, dishonest decade”. Fallada strips away any semblance of order or strength in the Reich.

Rating: **

Ghana

Amma Darko — Beyond the Horizon (1995)

Harrowing short novel about domestic abuse and human trafficking.

Mara begins the book as an innocent, naive girl in a village, whose family arrange a prestigious marriage with a petty official. This begins a litany of mistreatment in a city slum. She continues to believe the best of her husband, even when immigrants to Germany and then, two years later, brings Mara to join her. Only when he forces her into prostitution does she, alone and abandoned by any human solidarity, eventually realise the depth of his betrayal.

Rating: *

Greece

Nikos Kazantzakis — Land and Freedom (1953)

Setting: Ottoman Empire Crete, 1889

What it’s about: A realistic and sometimes ironic portrait of a community divided by conflict, the resistance fighters who take to the hills, the authorities and the few who attempt to keep the peace.

It is unsparing in its criticism of the atrocities and hypocrisy on both sides, but gives enough redeeming grace to both sides. At the end, it questions whether stubborn bravery is a good quality or a barrier to peace.

Rating: *

Grenada

Jacob Ross — Pynter Bender (2008)

Setting: A poverty-stricken sugar cane plantation in 1970s Grenada.

What it’s about: The story of a poet as a young man. A boy is born blind. When he recovers his sight he sees with a special ludicity, and discovers poetry in old discarded papers of his uncle. The first half of the book is his encounter with the nature around him and his gradual discovery of family secrets. In the second half, the wider world creeps in, as a repressive government sends soldiers to play cat-and-mouse with a young generation determined to challenge the exploitative status quo.

This is the story of how the boy breaks centuries-old cycle of poverty — the first in his line to learn to read and go to school. As his teacher tells him, it took him more than a hundred years to get to the school, and he didnt start the walk, and he is destined to leave behind and forget those who made his progress possible — “the riots and the burnings and the jail”.

He grows up in a community further-impoverished by mechanisation of the sugar cane plantation. Machines replace the men, so the men emigrate for work. Pynter grows up with his mother, aunts and grandmother. Men are fleeting, violent, influences.

“The talk of women taught Pynter Bender one thing: men walked…

…The women spoke of it as if it were an illness — a fever that men were born with, for which there was no accounting and no cure. It could come upon them anytime, but more likely halfway through the harvesting of the canes in April — those months of work and hunger that Old Hope called the Stretch, when the children were thinnest.”

The most powerful episodes fall at the beginning of the second part, when the exploitation of the cane workers is laid bare by the sight of the workers returning from an exhausting day’s work:

“The long grey line of men and women dragging their shadows behind them like an extra weight, with the dust of the old cane road frothing around their feet”.

Why you should read it: It is the ultimate post-colonial novel, with the brutality and suffering of past eras laregly unspoken and unavoidably present. It is a major addition to a long tradition of beautiful Caribbean post-colonial writing, where young protagonists struggle against legacies of oppression and the choice between trying to make their way in a society structured against them or immigrate.

The spirit of a young generation changing the way things are is set early on when the boy who was born blind but regained his sight helps his father prepare to lose his:

“Pynter loved this time of quietness, when the last of the evening light poured into the room and settled like honey on the bed…But a shadow crept into these moments…Their father was going blind…Pynter saw it approaching the way night crept down the slopes of the Mardi Gras [mountain]. He saw it wrap itself around the old man like a caul and settle him back against the canvas chair….And so Pynter taught the old man not to fear the coming darkness.”

It is also a deeply poetic ode to the power of reading. Just as the boy who was blind but now sees helps his father manage the descent into blindness, so the boy comes back from school and teaches his aunt to read and write in a beautiful passage about the transformative power of literacy:

“She’d been writing all her life and did not know it…if writing was nothing more than making marks that meant something, then all the women in Old Hope were writing without knowing it.”

After she writes her name for the first time, she lifts her head “as if she’d just emerged from under water” and holds the paper that “crackled in her hands like firewood” and when she steps out side, Pynter hears “her pretty laughter rising, bright and rapid like light over fast water”.

Rating: ***

Guatemala

Francisco Goldman — The art of political murder (2007)

1998: Bishop Juan Gerardi, relentlessly pursuing accountability for human rights abuses committed by the military during a 30-year civil war, is murdered in his home.

Who did it? This is a work of political, investigative reportage written by a novelist — so it reads with the intensity of a novel.

It unravels the dark entrails of a powerful military establishment, stripping away the layers of a conspiracy. It is a roller-coaster ride: guilty verdicts are handed down, then challenged by a media that seem dead set against the case.

As small steps towards justice are taken, Goldman reveals what the story is about: “This is how a country changes” but also warns that another moment of triumph may never come again.

The heroes are the investigators, judiciary and human rights activists who doggedly pursue justice despite very real threats and intimidation. A judge who lives under police protection has the last word:

“I gave up my own freedom so that other people can have justice — so that other people can be free to say what they believe.”

Rating: **

Guinea

Tierno Monénembo — The Black Terrorist (2012)

Setting: Wartime eastern France.

What it’s about: French villagers find a solider (based on a real person, Addi Ba) from Guinea hiding in the woods after escaping from German captivity. He builds a resistance cell only to be betrayed to the Gestapo (who call him “The Black Terrorist”).

The tale is mostly told to the man’s nephew 70 years later, as the villagers finally seek to recognise his bravery. Bit by bit, the story of a resistance cell and its eventual betrayal is revealed.

But it is also a book about how small French towns dealt with their demons after the war (and why not, after all, have this story told by a writer from one of France’s old colonies which in many ways liberated it). As one of the French narrators says, the towns that didn’t see acts of revenge at the Liberation, “but a wall of silence and bitterness, where we fall back on Jesus Christs and time for the curse to finish its work.”

Why you should read it: It brings to life the disgracefully undocumented role of colonial soldiers in liberating France. The soldiers who fought for France in Vietnam, Algeria, in the trenches in ’14 and the cavalry in 1870:

“sent off every time with a kick in the arse, with lungs bloody and legs missing; mugs, low in the ranks, missing from the citations and the monuments to the dead, and with that, a nest-egg ten times less than their white colleagues.”

But Monenembo has French people tell the story to the hero’s nephew from Guinea, mostly full of admiration but also betraying their stereotypes about the tirailleurs senegalais — who actually hailed from all over Africa despite their name:

“From Guinea, from Congo, or Chad, for us, all the tirailleurs were senegalese. All Blacks on the planet as well.”

Monenembo has one of the contemporary French villagers who is narrating to the nephew point out the irony of African soldiers resisting while so many French collaborate:

“What a strange moment, the war! Black resistance fighters, French traitors, Germans who love Berlioz, Baudelaire, and Beaujolais, policemen allied with outlaws. Who was the victim, who the executioner?

One could betray his brother, give up a friend to be deported to Germany, for a ration ticket or a kilo of potatoes.”

In this dynamic, Addi Bâ was

“this unknown man from the African forest who came to fight when the Whites had thrown down their arms and made peace with the enemy.”

The best book from Guinea? Tierno Monénembo dominates Guinean literature, writing about France, French colonialists in Guinea, the history of Guinea, and Guineans in Cuba.

This one is not set in Guinea, but there is a conscious effort to compare the life of the rural French village to one in Guinea, giving a deep humanity to the story.

Another book from Guinea, Mariama Barry’s three-volume autobiography documents life under the communist dictator Sékou Touré, but the linear narrative makes it a dull read, sometimes punctuated by shocking scenes, like when the teenage girl comes to school early to find a dissident hanged.

Rating: **

Guinea-Bissau

Abdulai Sila — The Ultimate Tragedy (1995)

Setting: C20th Guinea-Bissau under Portuguese colonial rule

What it’s about: It is an old-fashioned Greek tragedy in a colonial setting, where a doomed heroine (Ndani) flees her traditional society to avoid a curse only to meet it in colonial society. She survives abuse, sexual violence and force marriage only for the man she falls in love with to be unjustly deported to a prison colony for challenging a white official (“because whites always get revenge”).

Similar to the book I read for Benin, there a hint of mysogyny in the plot where a good or powerful man is brought down by his loyalty to a “cursed” woman. The saving grace is that it is not really the traditional curse but the cruel nature of colonial rule that dooms the heroines husband — a school teacher who dreams of leading an independence movement.

In the first half of the novel, Ndani is taken in by a Portuguese family — poor at home but now empowered in the colony. Tellingly, she mishears Ndani’s name, assuming she is a Dania, which she considers a communist name. When the Mistress discovers religion (and her role in saving Africans’ souls) she suddenly treats Ndani with more respect, which is met with shock and suspicion, and she remembers her stepmother’s advice:

“A housegirl should always be cautious, always know her place.”

Despite this reprieve, she is soon raped by the Portuguese husband — a colonial administrator — and forced into marriage with a Guinean community leader (a ‘regulo’) who scorns and challenges the coloniser but finds himself weakened by the marriage. Thus ends another challenge from a local figure who had refused to bow to the colonialists:

“The majority of whiles who came to Guinea were poor whites. They came to make a new life in Guine because they had nothing in the Metropole. If they cam from the north, they were fishermen. If they were from the south, they were also fishermen. If they were from the centre, they were peasants, they scrubbed potatoes or picked grapes to make wine. When they came to Guine, they forgot all this and thought people didnt know. But the Regulo knew.”

Ndani leaves the community elder for a teacher, who also plans to oppose the Portuguese, only to be goaded into punching one of them, which leads to his deportation for life on a prison island. Ndani waits for him by the sea every year, until he comes no longer.

Why you should read it: This book does for Portuguese colonialism what George Orwell’s Burmese Days (and his accompanying essay, Shooting an Elephant) did for British rule in South Asia: it lays bare the inherent weakness of the coloniser that means only violence — and the support of local elites — can maintain their rule.

It also handles the full spectrum of coloinial racism from the casual everyday treatment of house servants to the violent, ruthless, bullying repression of anyone who challenges white power.

Read it if you liked: Burmese Days.

Guyana

Beryl Gilroy — Frangipani House (1986)

Another classic from Heinemann’s Caribbean Writers Series. An indomitable matriach struggles against the confines of a nursing home. Eventually her strong spirit triumphs over the institution that would subdue her, particularly the matron, who shouts at her as if her voice has been “starched and lef tin the sun to harden”.

The home is a place where time stands still, and memories are confused.

Read it if you liked: One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Rating: *

Pick of the bunch:

Pynter Bender: What starts as a lyrical, even wistful, story in an impoverished cane village transforms into a powerful political novel about young people’s choice between confronting corrupt societies or emigrating.

• A book from every country — F
• A book from every country — E
• A book for every country — D
• A book for every country — B
• A book for every country — A