Graduate School of Social Sciences
Master Thesis Political Science - Specialization Track: International Relations Master Thesis Research Project: Transnational Advocacy and Policy-Making Supervisor: Dr. Conny Roggeband Second Reader: Dr. Jana Krause
Student: Miriam Siefen (12356158)
Word count: 25.657 (excluding footnotes, bibliography, appendices)
Master Thesis by Miriam Siefen
Transnational Advocacy at the United Nations:
The Framing of Women’s Rights at the
Human Rights Council.
June 2019
(Source: own presentation)
Women's
Rights
Status Family Tradition Human Rights Society RoleAcknowledgements
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Conny Roggeband, for mentally and creatively supporting and guiding me throughout the process of creating and writ-ing this Master thesis. Her own research background about the topic of gender equality helped enormously to gain the needed insights into the debates and discussions.
I would also like to thank my parents and express my profound gratitude for their continuous support. I would not have been able to accomplish this program, this thesis and this degree without their care, love and devotion. Thank you for always being there when I needed you. Thank you for supporting me and for providing me with the much cherished guidance that I needed.
Last but not least, I would also like to thank all of my friends, my aunt and my brothers for their continuous encouragement and their valuable advice. I would also like to acknowledge their efforts to make sure that I was balancing the writing and resting periods.
I can truly say that without the support I have experienced, this journey would have been much harder.
Miriam Siefen
Table of Content
List of Abbreviations ... iv
List of Figures ... v
1. Introduction ... 1
2. Theoretical Framework ... 4
2.1. Situating the Research Problem ... 4
2.2. The Actors ... 11
2.3. The Research on the Contestation of Women’s Rights ... 13
2.4. The Research on Women’s Rights Defenders ... 15
2.5. Lobbying Strategies and Criteria ... 16
3. Research Design ... 20
3.1. Access to Material and Required Data... 20
3.2 Methods for the Analysis and Gathering the Data ... 20
3.2.1 Process Tracing ... 20
3.2.2 Advocacy-Coalition-Framework... 23
3.2.3 Critical-Frame-Analysis ... 25
4. The Resolutions ... 27
5. Analysis ... 29
5.1. Results of the Analysis: Advocacy-Coalitions and Framing ... 31
5.1.1. 21st session ... 35
5.1.2. 26th session ... 39
5.1.3. 27th session ... 48
5.1.4. 29th session ... 54
5.2. Linking the results together ... 59
6. Conclusion ... 66
iii
Appendices ... 92
I. Appendix I: List of Member States and their Regional Group ... 92
II. Appendix II: List of chosen Actors ... 95
III. Appendix III: Traditional Values (see UNHRC/RES/21/3) ... 97
IV. Appendix IV: Protection of the Family (see UNHRC/RES/26/11) ... 99
iv List of Abbreviations
ACF Advocacy-Coalition-Framework
ACPD Action Canada for Population and Development ADF ADF International (Global Partner of the
“Alliance Defending Freedom”)
AI Amnesty International
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women
CFA Critical-Frame-Analysis
CFI Center for Inquiry
CIPSV Charitable Institute for Protecting Social Victims
CRR Center for Reproductive Rights
CSW Commission on the Status of Women
ECOSOC United NationsEconomic and Social Council
ERILGF European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Foundation
EU European Union
ICC International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross IHEU International Humanist and Ethical Union ISHR International Service for Human Rights
IPHRC OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission
IO International Organization
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
v
UN United Nations
UNDGACM United Nations Department for General Assembly and Conference Management
UNHRC United Nations Human Rights Council
UNHRC/RES United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution UNHRC/Report United Nations Human Rights Council Session Report
UNHROHC United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner WHRIA Women’s Human Rights International Association
List of Figures
Figure 1: UN regional groups (Defenders)... 32
Figure 2: UN regional groups (Disputers) ... 33
Figure 3: Actors in 21st HRC session ... 35
Figure 4: Actors in 26th HRC session ... 40
Figure 5: Actors in 27th HRC session - Special Panel ... 49
1 1. Introduction
How is human rights lobbying conducted at the United Nations (UN)? This question encapsu-lated my overall interest but was too general to study, so further specification was needed. The UN is an intergovernmental organization, where several states and political entities are working closely together to preserve international peace and security (see UN 2019a). When studying such an international organization (IO), academia is referring to this as diplomatic studies, as it is a
“… self-conscious study of, or research into, interactions and relationships between entities with standings in global politics (primarily sovereign states and international organizations) that are intended to reduce conflict and promote cooperation” (Wiseman 2011, p. 6).
As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) from 1948 stated in article one that “[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (UDHR 2019), the UN has been working since then to fulfill and uphold this declaration. Since the Cold War, the opportunities of lobbying at the UN for non-state actors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been growing (see Bogert 2011, p. 169) and these actors have gained more and more importance in global governance over the years (see Wiseman 2011, p. 14; see further Cooper/Hocking 2000; Leguey-Feilleux 2009). This led me to assume that the UN has devel-oped into a meaningful platform.
“Whether as a site or actor, the [UN’s] … role in world affairs is made possible by the reality of being at the center of global governance – the sum of laws, norms, politics, and institutions that define, constitute, and mediate relations between citizens, societies, markets, and states on the world stage, the wielders and objects of the exercise of international public power” (Thakur 2011, pp. 249-250).
Thus, (international) NGOs, human rights advocates and civil society use the “platform” UN to lobby human rights and build transnational coalitions to influence this institution and its policies. So all in all, it seemed justified to study the UN and lobbying as one part of my re-search, but what role did my interest in human rights have in that regard?
The framework of human rights is very broad and entitles different kinds of rights, so it was necessary to specify my interest and main focus of my paper in that regard. I chose to concen-trate on women’s rights, as they are part of the wide-reaching framework of human rights and until today they are amongst the most contested rights. As women’s rights are arguably very complex, because of the various implications of these particular rights, they seemed to be an excellent choice and therefore represented the second part of my paper.
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Women’s rights have been contested ever since the women’s rights lobbyists started to advocate for these rights in the 1920s (see Keck/Sikkink 1998, p. 168). Despite this contesta-tion, the topics of gender equality and women’s empowerment have slowly become an integral part of the human rights framework, which has developed extensively from the 1979
Conven-tion on the EliminaConven-tion of DiscriminaConven-tion against Women (CEDAW) until the late 1990s (see
Keck/Sikkink 1998). The contestation of women’s rights, however, seemed to have gained more and more ground and importance over the last decade (see Chappell 2006; Sanders 2018). This has become particularly visible in the resolutions on “traditional values” (UN-HRC/RES/21/3) and “protection of the family” (UNHRC/RES/26/11; UNHRC/29/22) that have recently been adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
These resolutions challenge the gender equality norms (in the family sphere for exam-ple), which are favored by the women’s rights advocates (see ibid.). In general, gender norms are recognized characteristics and ideas
“… about how men and women should be and act. … [They] are the standards and expectations to which gender identity generally conforms, within a range that defines a particular society, culture and community at that point in time” (UN WOMEN 2019a).
These ideas are adopted very early on in life and by that “… a life-cycle of gender so-cialization and stereotyping [is being set-up]” (ibid.). Thus, contesting these norms means chal-lenging the equality of women and men, and in particular the role equality within the family.
This particular development has spurred the recent interest of scholars who have been trying to explain this change, the newfound success of the actors involved and their favored strategies (see Chappell 2006; Roggeband 2019; Sanders 2018). Among academia there are various reasons and explanations for the difference in influence and the importance of lobbying, from the different actors and the emergence of networks and coalitions to the influence of these actors and their access to the institution and the various success and failure cases of lobbying (see Brown et al. 2011; Chappell 2006; Keck/Sikkink 1998; Roggeband 2019; Sandholtz/Why-tock 2017; Tarrow 2005). Yet, as all of this attention has been mostly focused on the opposing actors and their activities, it seemed that there has been a lack of research for the other side, so on the women’s rights lobbyists and on how these actors engage with the new actors and how they respond to the contestation to women’s rights. Nevertheless, both sides of actors are linked together, simply because they react and respond to each other and participate in the same meet-ings.
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Therefore, I addressed this gap by answering the following research question: Which
processes led to the adoption of the resolutions on “traditional values” (UNHRC/RES/21/3) and “protection of the family” (UNHRC/RES/26/11; UNHRC/29/22) at the United Nations Hu-man Rights Council? In answering this, I also have been able to answer which strategies the
defending and opposing actors used and how women’s rights have been defended and contested. Consequently, I structured my thesis in the following way: First, I presented a description of the UN and its institution working on human rights, meaning the Human Rights Council, to grasp the possibilities and limits of women’s rights lobbying at this body. Furthermore, I pro-vided an explanation of the development of human rights lobbying and in particular of women’s rights lobbying. In the next step, the main argument of my paper was outlined and the theoretical background and current debates described. Next, I explained my research design, which in-cluded the methods and criteria of analysis, as well as the data required for answering the re-search question. In the following chapter, the analysis was conducted. My findings indicated that the actors, while all using a human rights framework, presented very different interpreta-tions of this framework by reflecting and contrasting values and belief systems. Finally, I sum-marized my findings in the conclusion and additionally provided examples for future research.
4 2. Theoretical Framework
2.1. Situating the Research Problem
Since the year 2009, women’s rights are being heavily disputed at the UNHRC. Several reso-lutions have been adopted that challenge gender equality principles, a woman’s right of equality in the family and the issues of violence against women in the private (family) sphere, as well as reproductive rights and health (see UNHRC/RES/12/21; UNHRC/RES/16/3; UN-HRC/RES/26/11; UNHRC/29/22; Chappell 2006; Raday 2015a; Roggeband 2019). These rights are under the scrutiny of the international community, which for this paper is composed of states and governments, in particular of the Member States of the UN, as well as of research-ers, lobbyists and women’s rights NGOs.
The resolution that started this whole debate in 2009 was titled with “[p]romoting human rights and the fundamental freedoms through a better understanding of traditional values of human-kind” (UNHRC/RES/12/21) and stated that
“… all human rights are universal, indivisible, interrelated, interdependent and mutually rein-forcing, and that all human rights must be treated in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis, and that, while the significance of national and regional particu-larities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, all States [sic!], regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, have the duty to pro-mote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms” (UNHRC/RES/12/21).
It argued further that “… all cultures and civilizations in their traditions, customs, reli-gions and beliefs share a common set of values that belong to humankind in its entirety …” (UNHRC/RES/12/21). The discussions that led up to a subsequent resolution all revolved around understanding and better including traditional values into UNHRC resolutions.
Thus, the new resolution that followed in 2011 “… called for [a] reinterpretation of human rights in accordance with traditional values” (Raday 2015a). Furthermore, this resolution intro-duced the notion of family into the debate, as it stated
“… the important role of family, community, society and educational institutions in upholding and transmitting these values, which contributes to promoting respect for human rights and in-creasing their acceptance at the grass roots” (UNHRC/RES/16/3).
UNHRC Member States and other UN institutions heavily criticized this statement, as they feared that a new understanding and the implementation of these values into the resolutions would “… undermine [not only] the universality of human rights [, but also the right of women
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to gender equality and individuality] …” (Raday 2015a). Frances Raday, who was the
Chair-Rapporteur of the Expert Group on Discrimination against Women,1even referred to a
state-ment, in which NGOs declared that “[i]nternational human rights law must take primacy over traditional values, and not the other way around” (ibid.).
In the following years, discussions about the importance of traditional values and inter-national human rights law took place and the discrepancies between the actors were most evi-dent in the debates about how to best protect families. The UNHRC resolutions on the “protec-tion of the family” all center on this idea of promoting and implementing more tradi“protec-tional values into the resolutions and everyday family life (see UNHRC/RES/21/3; UNHRC/RES/26/11; UNHRC/RES/29/22).
While the adoption of all these three resolutions has attracted some scholarly attention (see Roggeband 2019; Sanders 2018), so far an analysis of the process and the arguments that led to the adoption of these resolutions that challenge these gender equality norms has been lacking. In this thesis, I attempted to reconstruct the processes and gain knowledge about the participat-ing actors and their lobbyparticipat-ing strategies, so about the two central “vehicles” that would provide me with information to answer my research question. Therefore, the literature I studied focused on two core topics: firstly on the actors, their strategies and their coalitions, and secondly on the outcome of the lobbying activities, so the success and the influence of actors. With that in mind, I was able to formulate the following sub-questions that would guide the structure of my theoretical framework and overall research:
o Which actors proposed these resolutions and how did they frame their arguments? o Which actors opposed the adoption of these resolutions and how did they frame their
arguments?
o What explains the outcome of these framing contests?
Nevertheless, before I ventured deeper into the discussions about women’s rights, gender equal-ity and the arguments, I first looked into the development of human and women’s rights lobby-ing at the UN and also into the platform where this lobbylobby-ing occurred, meanlobby-ing the United Nations Human Rights Council. Understanding how lobbying at the Council is conducted, and what the possibilities and limitations to lobbying at this institution are, has been especially im-portant because the UN is an intergovernmental body that “… provides unique opportunities to
1 Frances Raday was also a former member of the Advisory Committee to the Commission for Equal Opportunities
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actively influence global norm and policy development and promote change at national levels” (Hannan 2013, p. 74).
Lobbying at the United Nations Human Rights Council
The UNHRC consists of 47 Member States who serve a term of three years and are elected through a majority vote of the UN General Assembly (see UNHRC 2019f). They can be re-elected at any time but can only serve as members of the Council two terms in a row (ibid.). The UN clusters its Member States into five regional groups, meaning the African Group,
Asia-Pacific Group, Latin American and Caribbean Group, Western European and other Group,
and Eastern European Group.2 The General Assembly determines the UNHRC Council seats for each regional group by “… equitable geographical distribution” (ibid.). Therefore, the fol-lowing number of seats have been assigned to these regions: “African States: 13 seats [,] … Asia-Pacific States: 13 seats [,] … Latin American and Caribbean States: 8 seats [,] … Western European and other States: 7 seats [,] … Eastern European States: 6 seats” (ibid.).
All states that are not a member of the UNHRC are allowed to participate in the debates and sessions as Observer States; they can provide insights and give statements but they do not have the power of voting (see Mission Switzerland 2014).3 Furthermore, NGOs are also allowed
to participate in the sessions as Observers and can address the Council and its members. In that regard, the United NationsEconomic and Social Council (ECOSOC) stated in 1996 in its reso-lution 1996/31 (see ECOSOC/1996/31) the rules and guidelines regarding the consultation with and the participation of NGOs in the policy processes of the UN. The Council declared its decision with the following explanation: According to ECOSOC there was a
“… need to take into account the full diversity of the non-governmental organizations at the national, regional and international levels, [and that the UN needs to acknowledge] … the breadth of non-governmental organizations' expertise and the capacity of non-governmental or-ganizations to support the work of the United Nations …” (ECOSOC/1996/31).
2 See Appendix I for a list of the Member States and their respective regional group (see UNDGACM 2019).
3The United Nations Human Rights Council 2019 is composed of these Members States: “Afghanistan [,] Angola … [,] Argentina … [,] Australia … [,] Austria … [,] Bahamas … [,] Bahrain … [,] Bangladesh … [,] Brazil … [,] Bulgaria … [,] Burkina Faso … [,] Cameroon … [,] Chile … [,] China … [,] Croatia … [,] Cuba … [,] Czechia [sic!] … [,] Democratic Republic of the Congo … [,] Denmark … [,] Egypt … [,] Eritrea … [,] Fiji … [,] Hungary … [,] Iceland … [,] India … [,] Iraq … [,] Italy … [,] Japan … [,] Mexico … [,] Nepal … [,] Nigeria … [,] Pakistan … [,] Peru … [,] Philippines … [,] Qatar … [,] Rwanda … [,] Saudi Arabia … [,] Senegal … [,] Slovakia … [,] Somalia … [,] South Africa … [,] Spain … [,] Togo … [,] Tunisia … [,] Ukraine … [,] United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland … [,] Uruguay …” (UNHRC 2019g).
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After the adoption of this resolution, the lobbying principles and guidelines had been set and NGOs were officially able to participate in the sessions and lobby at the UN.4 The
UNHRC has declared on its website the various opportunities for NGOs and other actors to participate in the policy processes for human rights:
“NGOs in consultative status with … ECOSOC can:
o attend and observe all proceedings of the Council with the exception of the Council delibera-tions under the Complaints Procedure;
o submit written statements to the Human Rights Council; o make oral interventions to the Human Rights Council;
o participate in debates, interactive dialogues, panel discussions and informal meetings; and o organize ‘parallel events’ on issues relevant to the work of the Human Rights Council”
(UNHRC 2019c).
All of the abovementioned events take place within a session of the HRC and these sessions end with a General Debate and resolutions on the various important topics.5 That means that
the resolutions can be seen as the result of all of the conducted meetings, panels and discussions, and thus represent the outcome of a sessions policy process.
Regarding the institutional rules of participation, every participant who would like to address the others during any of these gatherings has to notify the UNHRC Secretariat in advance of the meeting. Furthermore, the speaking time for participants varies according to their status: During most of the meetings, Member States are allowed to present their views in three minutes, whereas NGOs, Observer States, and other organizations will have two minutes to speak (see Mission Switzerland 2014). This speaking time, however, may also vary between the different meetings, meaning that the time to speak during panels might be different from the allowed time during interactive dialogues.
Historical Background of the Human Rights Framework
I have mentioned human rights numerous times so far, but what exactly are human rights? Ac-cording to the UNHRC,
“[h]uman rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever … [the] nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour [sic!], religion, language, or any other status. …
4 With this resolution the Council also created a Council Committee on NGOs (see UNHRC 2019c). This
Com-mittee can be consulted and functions as a mediator between NGOs and the UN, but it is also “… responsible for regular monitoring of the evolving relationship between non-governmental organizations and the United Nations” (ECOSOC/1996/31).
5 “The Human Rights Council holds no fewer than three regular sessions a year, for a total of at least ten weeks.
8 [A]ll [are] equally entitled to … human rights without discrimination. These rights are all inter-related, interdependent and indivisible” (UNHROHC 2019a).
These rights are universal and are assured by international law, thus declared through several international treaties and declarations. “International human rights law lays down obli-gations of … [g]overnments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups” (ibid.). As stated in the preamble of the UDHR in 1948, the UN is responsible to fight for and ensure the world’s obedience to human rights, because “… [the] recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (UDHR 2019). Furthermore, the declaration clearly argued that “… a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest im-portance for the full realization of this pledge …” (ibid.).
Nonetheless, this understanding has not always been present in the international com-munity. “… [T]he idea that states should protect the human rights of their citizens [can be traced] back to the French Revolution and the U.S. Bill of Rights, but the idea that human rights should be an integral part of foreign policy and international relations is new” (Keck/Sikkink 1998, p. 79). Before the Second World War, it appeared that politicians, as well as scholars, have not paid much attention to “… the concept of human rights …. Although many were deeply concerned with democracy and freedom, they did not use the language of human rights to defend them” (ibid., p.83). As the researchers Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have described in their work, it seemed that Franklin Roosevelt was among the first people to include the topic of human rights in his political work in 1941 (see ibid.) According to the literature, Roosevelt was inspired by a British author named Herbert Wells, who
“... launched a spirited public debate [in 1939 as an] … effort to draft a new declaration of the rights of man that would clarify the war aims of the Allies by expressing ‘the broad principles on which our public and social life is based’” (ibid.; furthermore the quote in the quote was cited after Smith 1998).
These actions by Wells and Roosevelt, amongst others, ensured the start of a lengthy discussion about human rights and what it means to be human. Especially after the end of the Second World War, international organizations, NGOs and civil society movements for exam-ple, now worked even harder to pressure governments and states to think about the topic of human rights and not only democracy, international law and sovereignty (see Keck/Sikkink 1998). The influence of NGOs had been quite successful at the time at of the UN Conference in San Francisco in 1945, because they “… played a pivotal role in securing the inclusion of
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human rights language in the final UN charter” (ibid., p. 85). Therefore, a few years filled with more lobbying activities later, the UN published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by that marked it’s starting- and also stand-point in the fight for human rights. Thus, a “… series of international human rights treaties and other instruments [have been] adopted since 1945 [and] have expanded the body of international human rights law” (UN 2019b).6
The researchers Longman and Zähringer described that “[m]odern human rights are distin-guished by their combination of a moral commitment to human dignity with a legal structure delineating individual rights” (Longman/Zähringer 2011, p. 133). However, Philip Alston – the
Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights at the UN - reported that human rights
nowadays are facing a major challenge, as actors begin to withdraw from key principles of human rights (see Alston 2017; UNHROHC 2019c). Reasons for this, as argued by Alston, are the threats to democracy caused by populists and the growing issue of inequality, the rejection of international institutions and the disregard of the international rule of law, as well as the diminishing role of the civil society (see Alston 2017). The author appealed to human rights advocates and claimed that they “… need to urgently rethink many of their assumptions, re-evaluate their strategies, and broaden their outreach, while not giving up on the basic principles” (ibid., p. 268). As the human rights framework also includes women’s rights, one could assume at this point that Alston’s claim could also be of significance to women’s rights lobbyists. This means it was necessary to look into literature and research on the debates on women’s rights.
The Development of Women’s Rights Lobbying
Looking at these specific rights in depth, meant defining them first. “A fundamental principle of the United Nations Charter adopted by world leaders in 1945 is ‘equal rights of men and women’ …” (UNHROHC 2019b). The conclusion from this is that “[g]ender equality is at the very heart of human rights and United Nations values … and [that] protecting and promoting women's human rights is the responsibility of all … [s]tates” (ibid.).
At the World Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993, the framework of “… women’s rights are human rights …” (Joachim 2003, p. 254) was presented to the international system, therefore giving the women’s rights advocates and their opposing lobbyists a platform
6 “They include the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), the
Interna-tional Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), the Convention on the Elim-ination of All Forms of DiscrimElim-ination against Women (1979), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), among others” (UN 2019b).
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to lobby women’s rights as part of the human rights frame and especially target the UNHRC. This, of course, does not mean that the women’s rights lobbyists have only been actively lob-bying since 1993 – they have been around ever since the 1920s in various coalitions and with different successful outcomes –, but instead it demonstrated that until this particular conference, the recognition of women’s rights has had limited success. By using the already existing and wide-reaching framework of human rights, the distinction between these two rights concepts could be minimized. In regards to this, Jutta Joachim stated that “[t]he linkage of women’s rights and human rights was a powerful frame for mobilizing an international constituency. It resonated with people in different cultural contexts” (Joachim 2003, p. 259). This resonation and wide-reaching recognition is an essential part of successfully lobbying women’s rights. In that regard, Sanders argued that women’s rights “… are affirmed in multiple UN treaties with high ratification rates, as well as in declarations and initiatives that enjoy extensive rhetorical support from the international community” (Sanders 2018, p. 274).
However, it wasn’t until the year 2006 that the United Nations Human Rights Council was created (see UNHRC 2019a) and specifically tasked with the “… promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe” (ibid.). As mentioned above, the human rights framework consists among other concepts also of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The re-searchers Marla Htun and Laurel Weldon reported that “[g]ender is the mechanism through which ‘women’ and ‘men’ and ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ come to be known as legitimate conceptual concepts” (Htun/Weldon 2018, p. 5). Gender can be seen as a social construct that puts one gender against the other, which creates a sort of competition for the status of gender. They additionally argued that “[g]ender … situates men and women in unequal relations of power, often (or combining) with other institutions to uphold patterns of status hierarchy and economic inequality” (ibid.).
Thus, women’s rights activists have aimed to successfully lobby these notions to achieve gender equality in every aspect of life. Htun and Weldon previously mentioned some problem areas of gender inequality; nevertheless there are several other aspects – “… some groups of women face compounded forms of discrimination -- due to factors such as their age, ethnicity, disability, or socio-economic status -- in addition to their gender” (UNHROHC 2019b) – and various problems that women in this world encounter:
“Laws and policies prohibit women from equal access to land, property, and housing[;] Eco-nomic and social discrimination results in fewer and poorer life choices for women, rendering
11 them vulnerable to trafficking[;] Gender-based violence affects at least 30% of women glob-ally[;] Women are denied their sexual and reproductive health rights[;] Women human rights defenders are ostracized by their communities and seen as a threat to religion, … [honor] or culture[;] Women’s crucial role in peace and security is often overlooked, as are the particular risks they face in conflict situations” (ibid.).
To deal with these discriminating features, the UNHRC and various other United Na-tions Human Rights bodies are working together to make sure that women’s rights are not being neglected. To effectively do this, actors need to understand all the implications that can occur
when these gender equality norms are being challenged. Thus, they need to comprehend “… [the] social structures and power relations that frame not only laws and politics but also the
economy, social dynamics and family and community life” (ibid.).
All in all, since the establishment of the UNHRC (see UNHRC 2019b), resolutions on the right to work (see UNHRC/RES/34/14), the right to a nationality (see UNHRC/RES/20/4), the role of freedom of opinion and expression in women’s empowerment (see UN-HRC/RES/23/2), and resolutions on the elimination of discrimination against women and girls (see UNHRC/RES/35/18) and on the elimination of violence against women and girls (see UN-HRC/RES/38/5) have been adopted in the Council.
2.2. The Actors
As two of my sub-questions focused on the participating actors, I looked into this next. I have been referring to the women’s rights actors and their opponents numerous times so far, but who are they exactly? In general, these are the states and governments, who are represented in the UNHRC, and civil society and non-state actors, as well as NGOs. These actors are either de-fending or disputing women’s rights. For my research, I clustered the dede-fending actors as the women’s rights network and the disputing actors as the counter-network, and I referred to them as such throughout my paper.
I used the concept of defending and disputing networks, based on Keck and Sikkink’s (1988) classic concept of transnational advocacy networks. These networks are composed of actors who share the same motivation and beliefs; they “… interact with each other, with states, and with international organizations …” (Keck/Sikkink 1998, p. 1). The authors argued that “[m]ore than [any] other kinds of transnational actors, advocacy networks often reach beyond
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policy change to advocate and instigate changes in the institutional and principled basis of in-ternational interactions” (ibid., p. 2). These arguments about the shared motivation and the no-tion of advocacy networks have been especially important in the context of my study.
When researching networks and therefore actors with the same beliefs, one also had to be aware that in order “… [t]o influence discourse, procedures, and policy, activists may engage and become part of larger policy communities that group actors working on an issue from a variety of institutional and value perspectives” (ibid., p. 3). Again, the notion of value had to be kept in mind, as the resolutions challenge gender equality norms; and where norms are a matter of discussion, values play an important role.
Based on the research of Chappell (2006), Roggeband (2019) and Sanders (2018), I was able to determine that in the discussions about traditional values and how to best protect families, the two sides of actors are grouping themselves by either traditional and conservative beliefs or by being more open-minded and progressive.
So on the one hand, there are the defending actors with the view that all human beings are equal in rights and that the equality of women and men is essential (see UDHR 2019). This is supported by various NGOs and by a majority of European Union (EU) Member States and European countries. These actors see “[w]omen’s rights … [as] legitimate claims for greater parity in the well-being, life chances, and opportunities of women and men” (Htun/Weldon 20018, p. 7).
However, on the other hand, there are religious groups and more conservative actors that have a “… patriarchal view of gender relations, stressing that men and women are different and have different roles in the family and public sphere” (Roggeband 2019, p. 7). Chappell described the notion of conservative as
“… a commitment to preserving traditional relations between men and women. This entails viewing women as different from men, and as nurturers, firmly rooted in heterosexual family relations” (Chappell 2006, p. 494).
In this regard, Roggeband argued that the conservative lobbyists “… defend heterosex-ual marriage and family relationships as a divine or natural norm […] [which] motivates their struggle against the expansion of international women’s rights and gender equality” (Roggeband 2019, p. 7; see also Chappell 2006; Sanders 2018). I adopted this particular under-standing of conservative for my analysis later on, as I felt that this underunder-standing grasped the
13
beliefs of the counter-network best and I also believed it would support my research when de-termining which actor belonged to which side.
By tracing the resolutions back to their origins, I was able to discover the participating actors from both sides and analyzed their relations with the Advocacy-Coalition-Framework (ACF) by Sabatier (1988). I explained this method further in my chapters about lobbying strat-egies and my research design.
2.3. The Research on the Contestation of Women’s Rights
Louise Chappell (2006), Frances Raday (2015a), Conny Roggeband (2019) and Rebecca Sand-ers (2018) are only some of the authors researching the recent contestation of women’s rights. Roggeband argued that “[h]uman rights have become a central site of normative contestation, where both women’s rights activists and conservative actors promote contrasting interpretations of human rights” (Roggeband 2019, p. 9; see also Bob 2012; McCrudden 2015). The principle of gender equality, especially of equality in the family, as well as the general understanding of women’s rights, are experiencing this recent contestation. As I wanted to understand why res-olutions that challenge these norms have been adopted, I especially focused on the arguments of the opposing actors in my literature review, so that later on I would be able to understand what the women’s rights defenders do to counteract the opposing arguments.
The topic of family has always been a sensitive one for the UN and, in particular, the roles of the family members have been heavily debated. Several declarations and conventions, like the UDHR “… demand equality and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex” (Sanders 2018, p. 274), which also applies to the family aspect of the human rights framework. Especially article 16c of the UDHR is heavily contested amongst the women’s rights network and their oppo-nents, as it outlines that “… the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State …” (UDHR 2019).
All aforementioned authors agreed that the opposing actors, also called counter-net-work, have gained more ground and importance on the international “stage” and that they man-aged to change human rights policies (see Chappell 2006; Raday 2015a; Roggeband 2019; Sanders 2018). They, however, differ in their explanations on the strategies and the success of the actors. Raday and Chappell concentrated, for example, on the conservative and thus
disput-14
ing actors and their religious principles and lobbying, whereas Roggeband explained the emer-gence of this counter-network by linking it to processes of “… democratic backsliding and the closure of civic space” (Roggeband 2019, p. 15; see also Chappell 2006). This argument is in correlation with Alston’s idea about the threats and challenges to human rights in general (see Alston 2017). Sanders, on the other hand, researched the norm-spoiling of actors, so the actions to undermine and challenge existing principles (Sanders 2018).
All aforementioned authors additionally addressed that the counter-network also re-ferred to “… state sovereignty and the protection of traditional values” (Roggeband 2019, p. 11) in their arguments. As Longman and Zähringer also concentrated their work on the subject of sovereignty but focused more on the implications for human rights, it seemed that this “issue” was additionally of great importance for the debate and the contestation of women’s rights (see Longman/Zähringer 2011).7 The authors argued for example that “[t]he growing importance of human rights on the international stage seems to challenge one of the fundamental principles that have long undergirded the international system of states: sovereignty” (Longman/Zähringer 2011, p. 129). Chappell concluded in particular that sovereignty is defended “… in the face of the expansion of international human rights norms, especially where they are seen to conflict with traditional cultural and religious practices” (Chappell 2006, p. 513). It was especially in-teresting to see if I would be able to re-discover these arguments in the selected statements during my analysis.
All in all, this meant that since 2009, the counter-network urged the Member States to reinter-pret human rights. The disputing actors mostly had religious thoughts of a more patriarchal family in mind and wanted to incorporate more traditional understandings of family values in future resolutions (see Raday 2015a). For the counter-network, patriarchy is “… a form of power used by men to subjugate and oppress women” (Chappell 2006, p. 494). Chappell used this understanding of patriarchy in her study and explained that “… it refers to the underlying belief that women have a subordinate role to men within the public sphere and that their auton-omy within the private sphere should be contained so as to maintain traditional family forms” (ibid.).
7 The relation between sovereignty and gender equality lies with the call of some actors to have more rights and
the freedom to self-determine how a state’s society should be understood and how it should look like. This has implications for families and the understanding of how a family should be like (see Longman/Zähringer 2011; Roggeband 2019; Vinjamuri 2017).
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I used this “definition” of patriarchy because it clearly outlined the deep beliefs and arguments of the counter-network. This provided me with an idea of the type of arguments these actors used, which in turn supported my aim at explaining the reactions of the women’s rights activists. Besides, this understanding existed at least since the 1995 UN Conference in Beijing. At this meeting, the Holy See stated that they consider “… women and men as being of equal dignity in all areas of life, but without this always implying an equality of roles and functions” (Buss 1998, p. 347). The participating Iranian delegation argued at the UN Conference even further that
“[t]he concept of equality in our interpretation takes into account the fact that although women are equal in their human rights and dignity with men, their different roles and responsibilities underlie the need for an equitable system of rights where particular priorities and requirements of the woman in her multiple roles are accounted for” (UN Beijing 1995, pp. 163-164).
These opinions of the counter-lobbyists are important and have to be kept in mind for determining how the actors framed their arguments in the various Council sessions.
2.4. The Research on Women’s Rights Defenders
Before turning to the strategies the actors have at their disposal, I briefly wanted to mention a few facts about the women’s rights defenders.
In regards to the previously mentioned hierarchical thinking of some actors – mainly the counter-network – women are seen as less of a person as men, with lowerstatus and are some-times even viewed as the property of men (see Htun/Weldon 2018). In some areas of the world,
such cultural beliefs are the reason why women are devalued and are perceived to not be “… worthy of rights …” (ibid., p. 6). Consequently, Htun and Weldon argued that “[p]romoting
women’s rights involves the transformation of these patterns that designate some groups as normative and constitute others as inferior, different, or unworthy” (ibid.). With this, the authors introduced the debate about “class” and “status” of women, because “… gender equality touches upon more than the position of women relative to men. It also raises the questions of inequalities among women” (ibid., p. 12). The researchers referred in their study to the different dimensions of gender and argued that “[a]t stake is the degree to which policy recognizes the worth of certain groups, affords them autonomy … and considers their security a priority” (ibid., pp. 13-14).
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Or in other words,
“[e]ach women’s rights issue takes on a different aspect of the constellation of institutions that together comprise gender. Each issue therefore involves different actors, activates different cleavages, and motivates different types of political conflicts. Whereas ‘status’ issues involve challenges mainly to institutionalized patterns of cultural value that subordinate women, … ‘class’ issues animate the politics of redistribution and division of responsibility between state and market for social provision” (ibid., p. 16).
It was interesting to see in which regard I would be able to rediscover this particular debate in the arguments and frames of the actors during my analysis.
2.5. Lobbying Strategies and Criteria
Outlining the arguments and reviewing the literature of my topic was of course very important to understand the basic concepts of my research, but so far I have not explained how the actors, either the women’s rights lobbyists or the opposing actors, actually strategize to defend their points of view. Thus, I have focused on what strategies and tools are available for lobbying.
When analyzing different policies and policy processes, especially in a field such as women’s rights and the topic of gender equality, where various interpretations and opinions exist, it makes more sense to do so by discursive analysis (see Lombardo et al. 2009). One methodological tool of that analysis field is frame analysis, meaning “… the study of how ‘pub-lic po‘pub-licies rest on frames that supply them with underlying structures of beliefs perceptions, and appreciation’” (Fischer 2003, p. 144). According to Keck and Sikkink, the goal of the actors and their network is to
“… change the behavior of states and of international organizations. Simultaneously principled and strategic actors ... ‘frame’ issues to make them comprehensible to target audiences, to attract attention and encourage action, and to ‘fit’ with favorable institutional venues” (Keck/Sikkink 1998, p. 2-3).
Thus, frames operate on various levels and they have different “roles”, meaning they can either be used to explain a problem or outline solutions to the issue at hand. I used Verloos’s understanding of policy frames in general, because I believed it to be the most useful one for my paper. She defined “… a policy frame as an ‘organizing principle that transforms fragmen-tary or incidental information into a structured and meaningful problem, in which a solution is implicitly or explicitly included’” (Verloo 2005, p. 20).
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Additional strategies used by lobbyists have been researched among others by Sidney Tarrow (see Tarrow 2005). The author introduced the strategies of frame extension, frame bridging and frame transformation in his work the New Transnational Activism to explain the externalization of contention (see Tarrow 2005, pp. 147-149). The externalization of claims and arguments occurs when issues are blocked on the domestic level or do not receive sufficient attention and as a reaction to that, the actors seek a broader and international audience (see ibid., p. 147). Tarrow’s work is based on the research of Keck and Sikkink, as they were among the first to explain in detail the desire for the transnational perspective and the emergence of trans-national networks (see Keck/Sikkink 1998).
I aimed to identify these tactics by analyzing the statements of both the defending and the disputing actors to determine the way women’s rights are framed, defended and opposed. Nonetheless, I also examined how the disputing actors have managed to oppose the existing principles so far: It has to be mentioned that framing the issue and renaming some of the termi-nologies have been part of the successful strategies over the years. In that regard, Chappell reported that in the 90s, for example, the actors “… strongly opposed any language using a rights-based approach to sexuality” (Obando 2005; cited in Chappell 2006, p. 492). By working together with bodies of the UN, the counter-network aimed to “… contest, undermine, and, if possible, reverse the efforts of women’s rights advocates to pursue gender equality internation-ally” (Chappell 2006, p. 492). At this point, the notion of the different interpretations of women’s and human rights comes to the mind once more.
In that regard, Sanders introduced norm-spoiling, as being one of the preferred strategies of the conservative activists to oppose the women’s rights network and their favored policies. I have found Sanders understanding of norm-spoiling very useful, as she defines it as actions where the actors “… deploy a variety of tactics aimed at blocking and reversing the develop-ment and diffusion of targeted norms” (Sanders 2018, p. 273). This means that, one the one hand, the conservative and religious actors will both promote arguments and frames that defend the usual and widely accepted form of family, but on the other hand they will also act as “spoil-ers” and thus will “… [resist] the norm of gender equality” (Roggeband 2019, p.12).
Roggeband has viewed this as counter-framing women’s rights and named it as another successful option of the disputing actors. The author argued that “[c]onservative and religious actors that oppose women’s rights often refer to some specific elements of the … UDHR …” (Roggeband 2019, p. 9), like the aforementioned article 16c. Moreover, this means that “[t]hese
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human rights are interpreted in ways that oppose certain elements of CEDAW or other interna-tional conventions” (ibid.).
When studying the strategies of lobbying, a researcher will eventually come across the words and criteria such as success, influence and effectiveness.
The success of lobbyists generally has been understood as the desired outcome of their lobbying activities. However, for the case of women’s rights lobbying, Chappell argued in her research that
“[m]easuring the influence of the [women’s rights] network requires rethinking the usual stand-ards of success. Unlike other rights groups whose success is measured in positive terms, the measure here is the extent to which conservative actors have been able to defend the status quo by blocking text from inclusion in these documents” (Chappell 2006, p. 494).
With that in mind, I turned to Arild Underdal’s research and used his understanding of effectiveness. Underdal argued that the criteria of “effectiveness” pursues a goal; it is about the measurement of agreements (see Underdal 1992, pp. 227-228). “Most basically, evaluating the ‘effectiveness’ of a cooperative arrangement means comparing something … against some standard of success or accomplishment” (ibid., p. 228). Consequently, I assumed that the goal of the counter-network was to adopt the resolutions to include more traditional understandings, which also meant that the defending actors aimed to pursue their goal in omitting any words that are seen as harmful to gender equality.
Nevertheless, the question about “where does this influence occur” has arisen at this point. Underdal referred in regards to effectiveness also to behavioral changes brought by agreements, but is that all lobbyists can achieve? Thus, it seemed to be accurate to have a closer look at how influence is measured. In that regard, I found the work of Keck and Sikkink again very helpful, as they provided me with information about the five areas where transnational networks attempt to influence and seek to successfully lobby their goals (see Keck/Sikkink 1998). According to the authors, these areas of influence are
“… 1) issue creation and agenda setting; 2) influence on policy discourse of states, international organizations, NGOs and social movements; 3) influence on institutional procedures; 4) influ-ence on policy change in ‘target actors’ which may be states, international organizations [inter-national financial institutions, WTO, UN] or private actors [corporations]; and 5) influence on state behavior [so the implementation of policy]” (Keck/Sikkink 1998, p. 25).
I had this understanding in mind when I conducted my analysis. All in all, there seemed to be a close relation between the strategies, the success, influence and effectiveness and I aimed
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to find out more about these tools and criteria with the help of the resolutions, statements and other policy papers. Moreover, I believed that these criteria would also help to answer my sub-questions on how the actors framed their arguments. Furthermore, I was convinced that when analyzing the resolutions, applying the criteria and the research methods, I would be able to explain more about the coalitions of the actors and thus, in the end, provide answers on why the controversial resolutions had been adopted.
20 3. Research Design
3.1. Access to Material and Required Data
For my qualitative research, I primarily needed the resolutions that had been adopted, as well as the reports of the respective sessions. I started by choosing the required resolutions for my analysis through desk research. This means that I looked at the academic literature and the arguments to know which UNHRC resolutions academia referred to (see Chapter 2; Chappell 2006; Roggeband 2019; Sanders 2018). This means in particular that I decided on three con-tested UNHRC resolutions, so the resolutions on the topics of “traditional values” (UN-HRC/RES/21/3) and “protection of the family” (UNHRC/RES/26/11; UNHRC/29/22). Now, the broad content of all of these resolutions has been focused on protecting the family and its members, which meant that the role of women and men, as well as the matters of traditional values, state and religion had been topics of discussion. I chose to work with these resolutions so that I would be able to understand all sides and aspects of the arguments made in these three Council sessions. I gathered the specific texts of the resolutions through the online document database of the UN. The statements, press releases, reports, amendments and a list of voting outcomes were accessed via the online database “Extranet” of the UNHRC.8 These two plat-forms provide a researcher with mostly all the necessary data and information she or he needs to understand and follow the discussions from the respective UNHRC sessions. Other materials, such as media statements and additional declarations of the actors had been accessed through their respective online presence.
3.2 Methods for the Analysis and Gathering the Data
3.2.1 Process Tracing
My aim was to reconstruct the process that led to the adoption of the controversial resolutions. Thus, I used the method of process tracing, specifically “outcome-explained process-tracing” (see Checkel 2008; Beach/Pedersen 2013; George/Bennet 2005), to trace these UNHRC reso-lutions back to their origins. As mentioned before, resoreso-lutions can be seen as the end-product
8 “The Extranet of the Human Rights Council is a community site where updated documents, statements, and
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of the UNHRC sessions, and these sessions included panel discussions, various meetings with NGOs, Working Groups or Special Rapporteurs, and a General Debate.
As “[p]rocess-tracing in social science is commonly defined by its ambition to trace causal mechanisms” (Beach/Pedersen 2013, p. 1; see also Bennett 2008; Checkel 2008; George/Ben-nett 2005), there is a lot of research on this method. “The essence of process-tracing research is that scholars want to go beyond merely identifying correlations between independent variables (Xs) and outcomes (Ys)” (Beach/Pedersen 2013, p. 1).
There is a wide-ranging consensus among the researchers that there are several forms of process-tracing. According to George and Bennett, for example, “[p]rocess-tracing involves ‘attempts to identify the intervening causal process – the causal chain and causal mechanism – between an independent variable (or variables) and the outcome of the dependent variable’” (George/Bennett, 2005, pp. 206–207). The researchers mostly agreed that
“… process-tracing has been used in a variety of ways, including both detailed narratives and case studies, where ‘at least parts of the narrative are accompanied with explicit causal hypoth-eses highly specific to the case without, however, employing theoretical variables for this pur-pose or attempting to extrapolate the case’s explanation into a generalization’” (George/Bennet 2005, pp. 210–211).
Beach and Pedersen presented in their study various arguments of multiple authors on the different process-tracing methods. For instance, they referred to Checkel and outlined his point of view: Checkel explaind process-tracing as “… the attempt to ‘trace the process in a very specific, theoretically informed way. The researcher looks for a series of theoretically pre-dicted intermediate steps’” (Checkel 2008, p. 363). I have found Checkel’s understanding of the method useful for my paper, as process-tracing helped determine the participating actors in the sessions during my research. Furthermore, Beach and Pedersen noted in regards to the “out-come-explained-process-tracing” methodology that
“… the ambition is to craft a minimally sufficient explanation of a particular outcome, with sufficiency defined as an explanation that accounts for all of the important aspects of an outcome with no redundant parts being present” (Beach/Pedersen 2013, p. 18; see also Mackie 1965).
In addition, the method also supported me in gaining information about the coalitions of the actors and even about their strategies.
Therefore, I structured my succeeding research and my analysis along the following steps: After choosing the resolutions, I looked into the reports of the respective UNHRC sessions (so into the 21st, the 26th and the 29th session) to find out what the resolution and debates had been about,
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as well as who participated in the various meetings, talks and debates. Of course, I was also interested in the outcome of the votings. On that note, as the Member States agreed in the 2011 resolution to hold a special panel discussion on the “protection of the family” in the next Coun-cil session, I have chosen to additionally research the arguments and frames of the actors and their coalition partner for the 27th Council session.
As a next step, I intensively researched within the “Extranet”-database and gathered oral statements and written communications from various participating actors. I aimed to get as many statements and communications from a variety of actors from both “sides” as possible so that I would gain sufficient material for determining the frames and arguments of these actors.
Generally, all of the debates had been labeled under the title of “… [p]romotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to develop” (see UNHRC/Report/21/2; UNHRC/Report/26/2; UNHRC/Report/29/2). However, the specific meetings with Special Rapporteurs, the Interactive Dialogues with the
Represent-atives of Working Groups, and the Special Panels in the each of these sessions are clustered
under topics such as “Protection of the family”, “Elimination of discrimination against women”, “Gender-Stereotyping”, “Violence against women”, “Integration of a gender perspective”, “Women’s human rights and participation in power and decision-making”, “Discrimination against women in law and in practice”, “Empowerment of women”, “Integration of the human rights of women throughout the United Nations system”, “Eradication of Poverty”, “Maternal Mortality, Morbidity and Human Rights” (see UNHRC/Report/21/2; UNHRC/Report/26/2; UNHRC/Report/29/2).
Furthermore, I discovered that some oral statements were made in the original language of the country, for example in Russian or Spanish, which for me meant that I had to use translation tools to understand their arguments. With the help of “Google translate” and “Deepl.translate” (see Google 2019; Deepl 2019), I managed to translate these texts and double-checked them with the English translation of the speech in the life-stream, which I accessed via the UN web-site (see UN Web 2019).
By conducting this extensive desk research and reading through each given statement, I was able to determine in a broad sense which documents might be helpful for my research and which testimonials and declarations I could omit. However, the next step was to narrow these down even more and find out exactly which statements I could use. Hence, I read through them again
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and wrote down the general words and themes that all of my chosen documents revolved around.
It is important to note that I did not want to answer the question about the arguments and frames of the actors for each adopted resolution, but I rather wanted to take all of the information gathered of the processes of these three resolutions and achieve an overview of the discussions over these years.9
On that note, I wanted to point out that in the analysis, I have first mapped some of the prominent actors according to their side and then explained their arguments and the frames that they have used during the session.
3.2.2 Advocacy-Coalition-Framework
As lobbying occurs within coalitions and between actors, it seemed justified to analyze and map these structures, processes and players via a network analysis. There are many different ways to study policy networks and each one focuses on a different aspect, meaning for example that one approach concentrated on the theoretical and institutional concept of the network, another researched the interactions within the policy network (see further Marsh/Smith 2000; Marin/Mayntz 1991). However, I have focused more on the latter, as the answer to my research question also relied on the relations of and between the actors, so there was a need to understand these interactions and various coalitions in-depth.
This meant that I have not concentrated on the discussion on whether these networks can be seen “… as a new form of governance … [meaning] as an alternative to markets and hierarchies” (Marsh/Smith 2000, p. 4). Furthermore, I have refrained from conducting an em-pirical network analysis and instead focused on a more discursive and qualitative analysis. The reason for this is because the answer to my research question has been based on the normative assumptions and arguments of these coalitions, which is why studying them qualitatively seemed to be more sensible. In general, it can be said that
“[p]olicy networks constitute observable and relatively stable groups of organizations formed in an alliance or coalition to promote the collective interest of all or part of the … members.
24 They do this by negotiating common interests as well as by ranking their collective priorities” (Kenis 1991, p. 299).
It was important to research the women’s rights and the counter-network and their relations with other actors and their coalitions as “[e]ffective collaboration provides enhanced potential to create momentum for achieving common goals” (Hannan 2013, p. 80). The common goal of the women’s rights advocates, for example, was to successfully respond to the contestation and lobby for more equality in the family. Therefore, I have used the Advocacy-Coalition Frame-work (ACF) by Sabatier (1988) to understand these linkages and associations. I found the re-search of Sabatier and his framework useful for my paper because the rere-searcher addressed the fundamental beliefs of the actors and the influence of these on the policy network preferences. Knoke and Kostiuchenko outlined that the
“… ACF is grounded in theories about the social psychology of personal beliefs People’s beliefs vary in their … degree of mutability, with ‘deep core’ and ‘policy core’ normative beliefs un-likely to change” (Knoke/Kostiuchenko 2016, p. 11).
In his research, Sabatier explained that the ACF
“… has at least three basic premises: first, that understanding the process of policy change -- and the role of policy-oriented learning therein -- requires a time perspective of a decade or more. Second, that the most useful way to think about policy change over such a timespan is through a focus on 'policy subsystems,' i.e. the interaction of actors from different institutions interested in a policy area. Third, that public policies (or programs) can be conceptualized in the same manner as belief systems, i.e. as sets of value priorities and causal assumptions about how to realize them” (Sabatier 1988, p. 131).
Thus, policy formulation and change are a function of competing advocacy coalitions within such policy subsystems (see ibid.), meaning that all actors, who share a common goal and are concerned about the same topics, participate in such a policy subsystem. But why have I focused on this form of policy network analysis? The reason for this is because Sabatier addi-tionally claimed that the best way to research policy change is through “… ‘advocacy coali-tions’” (Sabatier 1988, p. 139). The actors who unite in such advocacy coalitions are
“… people from a variety of positions (elected and agency officials, interest group leaders, re-searchers) who share a particular belief system -- i.e. a set of basic values, causal assumptions, and problem perceptions -- and who show a non-trivial degree of coordinated activity over time” (ibid.).
Translating this to my research meant that in order to understand the policy change, so the adoption of the resolutions, I not only needed to look at the core beliefs of the actors who par-ticipated in the resolutions and the policy processes, but also look at their activities. I was able
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to do so with the help of the minutes of meetings, position papers, reports and statements. How-ever, the intensity of the interactions of these networks and coalitions, as well as the density of the network depends not only upon successful actions but also on the issues themselves and how these topics and the arguments are framed. This is why I also used a frame analysis so that I would be able to explain more about the arguments and statements these actors made.
Furthermore, Sabatier pointed out that the ability of advocacy coalitions to influence policies also depends on the available resources of the coalition and on the level of access and resources the opposing coalitions have (see Sabatier 1998, p. 143). Nevertheless, I have not researched this further, as I believed that the information from this research would not benefit my paper in finding answers to how the actors have framed their arguments.
3.2.3 Critical-Frame-Analysis
In my theoretical chapter, I already introduced framing as a lobbying strategy and explained the way the lobbyists use this tool. According to Barbara Gray, “… [f]raming is the activity and process of creating and presenting frames” (Gray 2003, p. 11) and “… representing our inter-pretations of the world around us” (ibid., p. 12). In other words, framing is a tool that helps lobbyists and actors express their opinions on how they perceive a problem and what solutions they see for it.
For my research, I turned towards the underlying thoughts and strategies behind this and used the method of Critical-Frame-Analysis (CFA), which was introduced by Miecke Verloo and Emanuela Lombardo (see Verloo/Lombardo 2007), to research the arguments of the women’s rights network and the disputing actors. The authors themselves used this method to research gender equality and its policy variety in Europe, which is why it seemed justified to apply this framework to my similar topic of research. Verloo and Lombardo noted about their research and framework in general that
“[f]rame analysis employs elements from grounded theory, a methodology that includes the analysis of words and sentences regularly repeated along the text, of words in their context, of dimensions of ideas implicit in the texts, and of how ideas are organized in different positions within these dimensions” (Strauss/Corbin 1990; cited in Verloo/Lombardo 2007, p. 35).
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Nevertheless, my aim was not to focus on repeated words or sentences, as I looked into the various dimensions of interpretation and ideas the actors use and into their normative fea-tures. However, I did summarize the utilized words first before I continued with my analysis, simply to have gained an idea of the possible topics of interpretation. Therefore, the following explanation was even more useful for my paper:
“Frame analysis starts from the assumption of multiple interpretations in policymaking and seeks to address such implicit or explicit interpretations, in this case [for example], the concept of gender equality, by focusing on the different representations that sociopolitical actors offer about the problem of gender inequality and about the solutions to the latter” (Verloo/Lombardo 2007, pp. 31-32).
According to the authors, there are two dimensions in this analysis of the words, namely the “diagnosis” and “prognosis” dimensions (see Verloo/Lombardo 2007, p. 33). This means that researchers using the frame analysis framework of Verloo and Lombardo should pay atten-tion to these dimensions by asking quesatten-tions such as “… what is the problem [the diagnosis] [and] … what is the solution [the prognosis] …” (ibid.).
When translating this to my research, it was necessary to first identify the various the-matic approaches to the topic of gender equality in the family and the way the actors of the Human Rights Council sessions represent their arguments. The next step then was to conduct the in-depth research of the dimensions and apply the aforementioned questions to each chosen statement. Again, using Verloo’s understanding, frames are about clustering various infor-mation and giving this inforinfor-mation a name through formulating them concisely into a problem (see Verloo 2005).
