The Adaptation of Human Rights Norms in Local Settings: Intersections of Local and Bureaucratic Knowledge in an Israeli NGO

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the anthropological discussion on the practice of human rights. Scholars have suggested that human rights NGOs working to bring transnational notions of human rights into particular local settings must compromise these notions and adapt them to the local ones in order for them to be accepted by local communities. However, this article explains how an Israeli human rights NGO departs from the universal human rights discourse, despite the fact that its clients often insist on the recognition of their universal human rights. The dynamic process of localization and the use of local and bureaucratic knowledge serve complex interests, values, and beliefs of the actors in the organization, rather than constituting a constraint. The findings of this ethnographic study suggest a more complex interrelationship between various local agents and discourses on human rights.