Resilience and Contagion: Invoking Human Rights in African HIV Advocacy by Kristi Kenyon (review)

Like many who teach introductory courses on human rights, I follow a unit on the historical and philosophical origins of the idea with a series of units organized around specific critiques, including the feminist, economic, and cultural critiques. By the time my idealistic and enthusiastic students are done learning about the gender and class biases built into the human rights framework and come to recognize how human rights are put in service of colonial and neoliberal projects, they are often quite deflated. I could compound the issue by asking my students to consider if we are at the “the end times”¹ or “twilight”² of the human rights era, but I prefer to stave off despair by turning to a section on health and human rights focused primarily on the compelling and inspiring work of Paul Farmer and Partners in Health.³ From Farmer, and others in the growing field of health and human rights,⁴ my students learn that the human rights framework, while it may not solve the enormous problems of illness and suffering around the world, can help to reshape the way we understand and respond to these issues and thus provides an important resource for advocates, activists, and those in need.

Kristi Kenyon’s impressively researched and richly detailed book Resilience and Contagion: Invoking Human Rights in African HIV Advocacy⁵ provides even more evidence that the human rights framework has value for those working at the grassroots to address illness and suffering. Kenyon spent more than two years interviewing one hundred forty-five people working in nine different HIV/AIDS-focused civil society organizations. Her research spanned four countries and three sub-regions in Southern Africa, and Kenyon poured over administrative documents and campaign messages; spoke with organization leaders and members, service providers and recipients; and watched, listened, and learned. The result is a tremendous amount of data and insight into why civil society organizations adopt or reject the framework of human rights. Kenyon skillfully weaves this information into a crisp and compelling narrative to show the reader how turning to the language of human rights is often a deliberate choice made in places and for reasons we might not expect.

As Kenyon reminds us, dominant narratives about human rights, like the cultural critique, tell us that rights are the irredeemable byproduct of western liberalism. That they are particularly unsuited to non-Western contexts in part because they promote a divisive form of individualism and prioritize civil and political rights over economic, social, and cultural ones.⁶ And that, to the extent that human rights language is employed in non-Western contexts, it is often the result of the influence of powerful international forces likely wealthy donors. Such a narrative suggests, according to Kenyon, that there would be little expectation of finding a thriving rights culture in Southern Africa.⁷ And yet that is precisely what she finds.

But this is a curious finding, according to Kenyon, not only because of its location, but also because the public health and development frames have long dominated the arena of global public health advocacy. That organizations choose human rights as the primary or at least equally important language of advocacy prompts Kenyon to wonder why. Does it have to do with the origins and history of the organization? With its mission and focus? With its leadership and structure? With the source of its funding or its relationship with other local, national, and/or international entities? Is it a question of local context or institutional culture? Does it have anything to do with what organization personnel and recipients of care think rights are and can or should do? Kenyon asks these questions of all nine organizations under investigation and the answers she finds help shed light on and in some cases fundamentally challenge what have become some of the most well-known and well-rehearsed criticisms of human rights.

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