Abstract
In conventional wisdom, human rights politics is depicted as civil society engagement centred in both advocacy and legal representation of victims at national and international levels. Such understanding overlooks human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working at the local level, confining them to a single centred role of transmission of international ideas, advocacy for change or defence of victims. Drawing on a refreshing and original depiction, the chapter provides a more textured understanding of human rights politics in light of the political intermediation approach. A full-fledged fieldwork on the defence of human rights in cases of victims of forced disappearances in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, shows that human rights organisations intermediate between victims of human rights violations and local and state government level agencies, in order to help empower victims and deploy rules and repertoires of action.
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Ansolabehere, K., de Bethencourt, P.V. (2017). The Political–Legal Representation Circuit of Human Rights Politics. In: Zaremberg, G., Guarneros-Meza, V., Gurza Lavalle, A. (eds) Intermediation and Representation in Latin America. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51538-0_8
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