A human rights activist ensures that people everywhere have their natural rights that they are entitled to. As human rights movements have been gradually gaining more attention, it is important to spread awareness of human rights to the younger audience. The younger audience are the new generation that have the ability to reflect upon the mistakes and pitfalls that a human rights movement can fall into. There are many problems human rights movements face, as well as ensue, that can cause for the campaign itself to be ineffective.

One of the largest problems the human rights movement faces is whether it is a western tool used to dominate non-western nations. When traditional views differ between a non-westernized country and a westernized country, civilians in the non-westernized country feel that the western world is imposing its beliefs onto them. The ongoing debate on Female Genital Mutilation has revolved around the problem of the western world’s imperialistic behavior. The human rights campaigns have become Eurocentric, and thus human right advocates face a challenging task of trying to respect the culture of the nation and making sure that their movement does not come off as imperialistic, whilst trying to stop any human right violations that may be occurring. However, it seems that the human rights movement works for the western world as a way to show off the western countries’ power and authority as “saviors.”

Makau W. Mutua, a Kenyan-American professor of law, states in his writings that the human rights movement plays into the Savages Victim Savior (SVS) metaphor, where the western countries act as saviors, and constitute the people they are helping as victims. Usually these human rights campaigns portray the country where the victims live as the savage, an evil and barbaric being. Playing the SVS metaphor can be detrimental to a movement. A famous human rights campaign that plays into the SVS metaphor is Kony 2012. The Kony 2012 movement clearly depicted America as the only power that can stop the evil that is occurring in Uganda. This false sense of superiority causes for advocates in the western world to become arrogant and overconfident. One of the pitfalls that a human rights movement can fall in is arrogance. When advocates of a movement begin viewing themselves as heroes, they become too overconfident and lose focus, which can cause several mistakes. The advocates also lose the main point of a human rights campaign, which is to help people retain their natural rights that have been violated.

Showing Americans as the saviors creates a hierarchy and causes them to think that they do not need any help from the nation that they are helping. However, domestic partners are a key aspect to a successful human rights movement. Domestic organizations know how the country’s political system works and many aspects of the nation that America may not know. Therefore, the false representation of saviors causes for Americans to think of the domestic partners as inferior. From the KONY video, it seems as if the people in Uganda are simply allowing for all the atrocities to occur and that their government is not doing anything. Once again, by showing the Ugandans as victims, it creates a sense of inferiority which can be ineffective in a human rights movement.

These depictions of the western world versus the non-western world once again establish the elitist point of view the western world retains. This sense of superiority causes for the human rights movement to only focus on a particular audience. Non-western countries tend to be places where human rights violations are focused on. When people in America think of human rights violations, they often think of places such as Africa or the Middle East. This is as a result of the SVS metaphor. Because western countries have created a title of being the elite and the saviors, they act as if they are untouchable and that no human rights violations occur within the western world. America is known for being the land of the free and a country where human rights are upheld. However, many violations occur within America. For example, the overcrowding of people in jails in California is a human rights violation. Furthermore, America’s treatment of minorities as well as non-citizens shows that America is not always the savior in the SVS metaphor. Often times, more minorities such as African-Americans are arrested rather than whites. According to Human Rights Watch, “Whites, African Americans, and Latinos have comparable rates of drug use, but are arrested and prosecuted for drug offenses at vastly different rates. African Americans are arrested for drug offenses, including possession, at three times the rate of white men.” This clearly goes against a person’s right to equality in law. America has also violated many human rights abroad because of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the military to detain people in the U.S. that are suspected terrorists without a trial. Unfortunately, these human rights violations are not as focused upon by the American government since it would ruin the reputation that America has built as a powerful human rights advocate.

Another particular pitfall that human rights movements tend to fall in is narrowness. Often times a human rights campaign focuses too much on one particular goal that other problems that may be occurring are ignored. In an UNICEF campaign to lower child mortality rates, the organization handed out nets, vaccinations, and other medical supplies to combat malaria in 2001 till 2005. UNICEF focused on providing the necessary equipment to save children’s lives. However, it failed to provide medical workers or people who are knowledgeable in the medical field to help treat the sick children. Jennifer Bryce from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said that “the lives of many children with pneumonia, diarrhea or malaria could have been saved if a trained community health worker had been on hand to provide correct treatment." Therefore, the places where UNICEF focused on such as Benin had a 13 percent drop in the number of child deaths, but other places that were targeted by the Benin government and not UNICEF had the death rate drop by 25 percent. UNICEF was adamant on providing the necessary tools to aid sick children, but ignored the fact that health workers were needed to treat patients. Because the campaign became too focused on one aspect, they became narrow-minded and made movement less effective.

Human rights are moral rights that people should be entitled to such as the right to live, equality in law, freedom of speech, and so on forth. It is the duty of human right activists to help others retain their rights that other powers such as the society or the government has violated. While governments often focus more on legislation and power, morality is ignored. Unfortunately, the human rights movement is a modern concept that is not perfect. Some people think that human rights movements are a ploy by the western world, while some movements fail to succeed because of their usage of the SVS metaphor or they become too focused on one aspect of their campaign. It is up to the human rights activists to try to stray away from these problems that arise during a human rights movement in order to produce a successful human rights campaign.