Shame, endorse, or remain silent?: State response to human rights violations in other countries

Abstract

Naming and shaming has been widely used by governments and non-governmental organizations to address human rights violations. Yet despite the prevalence of this foreign policy instrument, the question of when states publicly denounce norm-violators received relatively little scholarly attention. We examine this question in the context of China’s repression of its Uyghur minority. This case offers a unique opportunity to study not only when countries engage in naming and shaming but also when they explicitly defend or endorse rights violations. We analyze the official positions of 174 countries between 2019 and 2021. We find that while geopolitical alignment is a significant predictor of both shaming and defending, a nation’s strong trade links with China has a less straightforward effect. Similarly, while democracies are significantly less likely to defend China’s Uyghur policy, they are not more likely to denounce it. We also find that identity-related factors have a muted effect. The paper advances our understanding of a broader spectrum of government behavior vis-a-vis human rights violations in other countries, and has implications for the role of identity in inter-state shaming.