Abstract
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, as in other highly restricted environments, there are major problems with employing human rights discourse to pursue change. Local proponents of human rights have been subject to intense harassment, intimidation and repression at the hands of the regime. They also face internal challenges around leadership, organisation and capacity. One way of addressing these problems is to work towards grounding human rights work in Iran within a ‘theory of change’: that is, the strategic linking of a goal or concept (the theory) with the mechanisms or methodologies that are designed to deliver on the promise of the goal or concept (the change). Building on work by Paul Gready and Wouter Vandenhole (Human Rights and Development in the New Millennium: Towards a Theory of Change. Routledge, 2014) on agents of change and their key entry points, this chapter explores two distinct approaches to change in Iran: the political reform movement, exhibiting a top-down/inside-track approach; and the women’s movement’s One Million Signatures Campaign, exhibiting a bottom-up/outside track approach. The authors consider a series of fundamental factors put forward by Rosalind Eyben et al. (Development in Practice 18, no. 2: 201–12, 2008) underpinning the development of a theory of change: objectives, targets, strategies, constraints, roles, relationships and context.
Parts of this chapter have been published in Rebecca Barlow and Shahram Akbarzadeh, ‘Agents of Change and Human Rights in Iran: Towards a Theory of Change’, Journal of Human Rights Practice (forthcoming 2018).
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Notes
- 1.
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966); Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990); Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006).
- 2.
Shirin Ebadi, interview with Rebecca Barlow, 7 July 2007.
- 3.
See the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) series of reports of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Geneva: UNHRC, 2012–2017), accessed 6 November 2017, http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?m=183.
- 4.
Paul Gready and Wouter Vandenhole, ‘What Are We Trying to Change? Theories of Change in Development and Human Rights’, in Human Rights and Development in the New Millennium, ed. Paul Gready and Wouter Vandenhole (Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 1.
- 5.
Wouter Vandenhole, Corinne Lennox, Paul Gready and Hugo Stokke, ‘Some Cross Cutting Issues and Their Policy Implications’, in Human Rights and Development in the New Millennium, ed. Gready and Vandenhole, 273.
- 6.
Gready and Vandenhole, ‘What Are We Trying to Change?’, 3.
- 7.
Rosalind Eyben, Thalia Kiddler, Jo Rowlands and Audrey Bronstein, ‘Thinking About Change for Development Practice: A Case Study from Oxfam UK’, Development in Practice 18, no. 2 (2008): 201–12.
- 8.
See Ali Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change (London: Chatham House, 2006); Said Amir Arjomand, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
- 9.
Maysam Behravesh, ‘Iran’s Reform Movement: The Enduring Relevance of an Alternative Discourse’, Digest of Middle East Studies 23, no. 2 (2014): 274–5.
- 10.
Mohammad Ali Kadivar, ‘Alliances and Perception Profiles in the Iranian Reform Movement, 1997 to 2005’, American Sociological Review 76, no. 8 (2013): 1074.
- 11.
Iran [newspaper], cited in ibid.
- 12.
Hayat-e No [newspaper], cited in ibid.
- 13.
Neshat [newspaper], cited in ibid.
- 14.
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, ‘The Pluralistic Momentum in Iran and the Future of the Reform Movement’, Third World Quarterly 27, no. 4 (2006): 666.
- 15.
Kadivar, ‘Alliances and Perception Profiles in the Iranian Reform Movement’, 1074.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Behravesh, ‘Iran’s Reform Movement’, 266.
- 18.
Arjomand, After Khomeini, 94.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
‘Iran’s Guardian Council Vetoes Power Challenge’, ABC News, 26 January 2004, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2004-01-26/irans-guardian-council-vetoes-power-challenge/125162.
- 21.
Ali Akbar Dareini, ‘Iranian Guardian Council Vetoes Key Bill’, Intelligencer, 8 May 2003, http://www.theintelligencer.com/news/article/Iranian-Guardian-Council-Vetoes-Key-Bill-10567444.php.
- 22.
Arjomand, After Khomeini, 93.
- 23.
Kadivar, ‘Alliances and Perception Profiles in the Iranian Reform Movement’, 1075.
- 24.
Ibid., 1076.
- 25.
Seda-ye Edalat [newspaper], cited in ibid.
- 26.
Sharq [newspaper], cited in ibid., 1077.
- 27.
‘Khatami Justifies Years in Office’, BBC News, 3 May 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3681153.stm.
- 28.
Jahangir Amuzegar, ‘Khatami’s Legacy: Dashed Hopes’, Middle East Journal 60, no. 1 (2006): 74.
- 29.
Kadivar, ‘Alliances and Perception Profiles in the Iranian Reform Movement’, 1079.
- 30.
Vandenhole, Lennox, Gready and Stokke, ‘Some Cross Cutting Issues and Their Policy Implications’, 275.
- 31.
‘Ziba Kalam: Anyone Could Be Elected Instead of Khatami, Hashemi and Reformists Support Ghalibaf’, Entekhab, 19 September 2012, http://www.entekhab.ir/fa/news/77026/می-رای-بود-هم-تیرآهن-خاتمی-جای-به-اگر-زیباکلام-.
- 32.
Kadivar, ‘Alliances and Perception Profiles in the Iranian Reform Movement’, 1079.
- 33.
Ramin Jahanbegloo, ‘Iran and the Democratic Struggle in the Middle East’, Middle East Law and Governance 3, nos. 1/2 (2011): 131.
- 34.
‘Launching of the One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws’, Change for Equality, 27 August 2006, http://we-change.org/site/english/spip.php?article20.
- 35.
Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality: The Inside Story (Bethesda: Women’s Learning Partnership, 2009), 60.
- 36.
Sussan Tahmasebi, ‘One Million Signatures: Answers to Your Most Frequently Asked Questions’, Change for Equality, 24 February 2008, http://we-change.org/site/english/spip.php?article226.
- 37.
Tahmasebi, ‘One Million Signatures’.
- 38.
See Valentine Moghadam, ‘Islamic Feminism and Its Discontents’, Signs 27, no. 4 (2002): 1135–71; Rebecca Barlow and Shahram Akbarzadeh, ‘Prospects for Feminism in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2008): 21–40.
- 39.
Shirin Ebadi, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope (New York: Random House, 2006), 191–2.
- 40.
‘Why They Left: Stories of Iranian Activists in Exile’, Human Rights Watch, 13 December 2012, https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/12/13/why-they-left/stories-iranian-activists-exile.
- 41.
Leila Alikarami, Women and Equality in Iran: Law, Society, and Activism (London: I. B. Tauris, forthcoming, 2018).
- 42.
Tahmasebi, ‘One Million Signatures’.
- 43.
Khorasani, Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality, 56.
- 44.
Sasan Ghahreman, ‘The Campaign for One Million Signatures: A Grassroots Effort (An Interview with Sara Loghmani)’, Change for Equality, November 2006, http://we-change.org/site/spip.php?article282.
- 45.
Bahareh Hedayat, ‘Promotion of Equal Rights Discourse among Political Groups’, Change for Equality, 29 July 2007, www.we-change.org/site/english/spip.php?article124.
- 46.
Khorasani, Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality, 70.
- 47.
Ibid., 56–7.
- 48.
Campaign activist, personal communication with Rebecca Barlow, 17 November 2015. (Name omitted to protect the identity of the individual).
- 49.
See Khorasani, Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality; Alikarami, Women and Equality in Iran; Rebecca Barlow, Universal Women’s Human Rights and the Muslim Question: Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2012).
- 50.
Gready and Vandenhole, ‘What Are We Trying to Change?’, 14–15.
- 51.
Vandenhole, Lennox, Gready and Stokke, ‘Some Cross Cutting Issues and Their Policy Implications’, 293.
- 52.
Ibid., 275.
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Barlow, R., Akbarzadeh, S. (2018). Top-Down or Bottom-Up? Towards a Theory of Change for Human Rights Practice in Iran. In: Barlow, R., Akbarzadeh, S. (eds) Human Rights and Agents of Change in Iran. Studies in Iranian Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8824-7_1
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