From human rights documentation towards arts-based interventions: NGO collaborations with artists and the reimagining of human rights

This article is grounded in ‘human rights practice’ and explores innovations in human rights approaches–specifically arts-based innovations–in the context of multiple contemporary crises, and in particular populism’s assault on truth. Assumptions underpinning human rights truth-telling–that the truth and knowledge are the foundations for change, and that the law and reporting are vehicles for change–are increasingly being challenged. The article argues that the arts add value to emerging human rights strategies in three ways: broadening truths and telling more diverse stories; reaching new audiences and opening spaces for engagement; and imagining alternative futures and narratives. Further arguments made in the article include the assertion that reports remain important as a source of legitimacy and credibility, bestowing ‘inherited legitimacy’ on other outputs (arts, social media); that collaborations between NGOs and artists seek to protect the core or foundation of human rights work (testimony, reports); and that further conceptual and practical work is needed to address a new landscape of denial (‘flipped’ denial, denial of the category of truth itself, narrative denial). These arguments draw on interviews with Israeli NGOs, conducted prior to the war beginning in 2023, but the arguments are of broad relevance to human rights research and practice.