“A life with a damaged identity obviously cannot be restored.”
 
These are the words of Doris Jakobsen, Siumut MP in the Danish Parliment, speaking on behalf of 22 children.
 
In 1951, the Danish government removed these 22 children from their homes and families in Greenland and relocated them to mainland Denmark. The children were selected and relocated with the intention of being integrated into Danish society and indoctrinated in Danish culture. According to one news source, the conductors of this experiment hoped “to create a new elite group of Danish-thinking Greenlanders and return them to take a leading role in their country’s education system.” 
 
Unfortunately, the experiment failed. The children were never returned to their homeland. Instead, they were eventually placed with foster families or adopted by Danes, where they struggled to adjust to a way of life so different from their own. Over half of the children involved in the experiment died as young adults.

(The story of the Greenland Child Relocation Project is continued here.)

The 22 Children project was created to examine one of the most important elements of human rights and humanitarian work: the workers. 

There are few lines of work in which individuals have as much responsibility in the lives of others as human rights. As the story of the Greenland Child Relocation Project clearly shows, these workers are given enormous power to shape and define the futures of communities and cultures. It therefore seems important, as we examine the issues of human rights, to consider those individuals who make these decisions.

The necessity of this investigation is intensified in the Danish context. Denmark donates a higher percentage of its GDP to humanitarian aid than almost any other country in the world. Along with the other Scandinavian countries, Denmark is considered a leading international figure in the fight for human rights. As a result, we feel it is of great importance to understand the ways in which a Danish person approaches human rights - the ways in which this approach is influenced by being a Dane. There are those who have suggested, for example, that the high living standard in the Nordic countries engenders a feeling of guilt, and that this guilt gives rise to the humanitarian impulse. In this project, we wanted to engage with this suggestion, and others like it, and see if it was true for the workers we encountered.

It has been our experience over the course of the 2010 HIA Summer Academy in Denmark - in which we have participated for four weeks - that a person’s cultural baggage and personal background can seriously affect the reasons they come to human rights work, the way in which they approach the issues of human rights, and the attempts they make to combat poverty and injustice. 

Taking these issues into consideration, we began the project with a question: Who are the Danish workers in human rights? From this, we were led to two related questions: Why do they choose to do this work? and secondly, what is the baggage - cultural, personal and academic - that they bring with them when they do it? Finally, we wanted to explore the ways in which a person’s motivations and baggage either helped or hindered the work they were trying to do.

This exploration has taken many forms: video interviews with a diverse group of humanitarian workers, written stories, photographic stories, and music, as well as reflections on our own personal experiences. We felt it was important to engage with these different media, as a part of our effort to engage with the individuals involved in this work on their own ground - to allow them to express themselves in the form in which they felt most comfortable.

To find out more about the Methodology of the project, go here.
To read more about our exploration, and some conclusions on the study, go here.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
 
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
 
It requires a certain level of charming naivete to deny that the institutions within which we function play a role in shaping us. A priest in the Catholic Church, for example, is required to perform specific functions, and he must carry out those functions in a particular way. No matter how much he wants to wear blue jeans to Sunday service and preform a fist pump rather than crossing himself, he is bound by the structure and norms of the church to act in a certain manner. 

Much as we humanitarians would like to believe that we are free of such dogma and cumbersome tradition, it may perhaps be more fruitful to admit that we too are bound by certain structures and norms. The institution of Human Rights has been called a secular religion more than once, by everyone from Søren Krarup, outspoken member of Denmark’s right-wing political party, to Holocaust survivor and acclaimed author Elie Wiesel  - though this religion is one which Wiesel heartily applauds and Krarup openly despises. Within this structure, as with all others, certain ways of behaving and working, certain possibilities and outcomes are privileged while others are not. 

One of the tendency of this field that we have noticed over the last few weeks is a predilection for propositional statements. There is a strong and important strain of universalism in human rights that makes grey area difficult; and so we tend to see beliefs presented in black and white terms. An act is right or wrong, good or bad,acceptable or unacceptable. For example: all female genital mutilation is wrong. Or: head scarves are a violation of women’s rights. Or: all indigenous cultures ought to be preserved. 

The problem with these statements is not that they are untrue. On the contrary, they speak an important truth. The problem is that they present only a partial and limited understanding of the act, practice or behavior involved. What is more, the way in which they are phrased curtails detailed, nuanced dialogue about the issue. They say: this is what is right. End of story.

The problem, for us, with this approach is that it ends the story and we want the story. That is not to say that we want a surface-level explanation that will be taken to justify a potentially terrible act. Rather, we want to understand the act. Why does this happen? Who are the actors involved? What is their motivation? And, importantly, how do their motivations and principles differ from our own? Is this act wrong because I am imposing my personal, socio-historically engendered norms on others? Or is something taking place which can and should legitimately be opposed? And, finally, whose interests am I counting as important in this case, and why?

These are not easy questions to ask, and they are even less easy to answer. What is more, they tend to give rise to answers which are difficult to summarize, objectify, quantify or operationalize. The answers to these questions are not of immediate use to an efficient and well-oiled bureaucracy. But perhaps it is exactly for this reason that we ought to be asking them. It is comfortable and easy to hide behind the guise of objectivity when passing a moral judgment on another human being, or when making a decision regarding the future of a group of people. But we believe that the ease of objectivity does not change or hide the fact that, in the end, it is individuals who make these decisions and pass these judgments. The guise of objectivity may ultimately be a hindrance, rather than an aid in the making of effective and informed decisions. Let us look at the individuals, then, and ask these questions.


At the beginning of this project, we were given an assignment: write an article on an issue faced within Danish society. When we hit upon this particular topic, we immediately ran into a problems - we faced a severe shortage of strong propositional statements as to the conclusions our investigation would yield. Too many questions, not enough answers.

We have decided, after probably an unnecessary amount of thought and consideration, to avoid the pervasive proposition. We have noted throughout the course of this project the importance of an open and inquisitive mind when approaching another culture. We feel that we ought to try and understand them on the grounds of theirnorms of rationality, rather than our own. And bold declarative statements about a broad and diverse group of people inevitably miss the detail, the exception, the nuance. 

And so, throughout the course of our project, we have attempted to begin with the question - How does a person’s cultural baggage affect the way in which they carry out human rights work? - and go from there. Given the time constraints and the vast amount of data available, we have been able to present a very small snapshot of a much larger picture. We hope that the interviews, videos, questionnaires and pictures presented have provided some insight to the issue, even in the absence of a comprehensive conclusion. 

In spite of the absence of this comprehensive conclusion, we feel that the questions themselves - the act of asking and beginning to answer these questions - is of tantamount importance.

Kathryn Olp

I am a senior at the University of Montana in Missoula, majoring in Political Science, International Relations, and Philosophy. I’ve had wonderful opportunities nto pursue my studies and my interests in international law and development; both inside school and out, through classes, summer study programs, and internships (including one at the British Insitutte of International and Comparative Law in London last summer). Recently I have been working with Forward Montana, a local political organization that seeks to involve young people in politics and progressive issues.

Linda Lapina

I come from Riga, Latvia but moved to Copenhagen, Denmark when I was 18. I am a Master’s student of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen. As an exchange in the Netherlands last semester, I had the opportunity to take courses on Cultural diversity and Language, Culture, and Identity. Apart from my studies I have been a volunteer at the Youth Red Cross with children of asylum seekers and ethnic minority women who have suffered honour- related violence, as well as working on a short-term psychological counceling. These experiences have deepened my interest in minority studies, integration, intercultural and group dynamics, processes of categorization (such as “us/them”) and action research on these topics.

Ulla Gade Bisgaard has studied French, international studies and sociology. At the moment, she works at the think tank Cevea. From 2007 to 2010, she was the director of Humanity in Action Denmark. Ulla has been working in numerous projects in Denmark and abroad with a special focus on women’s and children’s rights, including as a Program Officer for UNICEF in New York and Dar es Salaam.

*What were your personal motivations in choosing this line of work? 

I knew early on in my studies that I wanted to work in human rights; and especially in equal opportunities and anti discrimination. I moved very purposefully in that direction through relevant internships: The Council of Europe/Directorate for Human Rights (Strasbourg) and The European Women’s Lobby (Bruxelles) and student jobs: The UN World Social Summit in CPH 1995 and The Danish Women’s Council. In my spare time as a student, I was involved in European student organisation and participated in many European and International student conferences on Human rights, European education, intercultural communication, democracy and anti discrimination.

I guess the reason why I have chosen to focus so much on women’s rights during my studies and work life, has been a prodound belief in equal rights and the value of equal opportunities, not just between the sexes but also for minority groups. I belong to the first generation of girls in Denmark that were born into a time, where exactly equal opportunities for boys and girls became a reality and was practiced as a belief. During the 70s and 80s, when I grew up, the Danish school system was marked by new times, new types of paedagogics and it was a period marked by women’s lib movements. We girls were brought up to believe that we had equal opportunities with the boys…and a lt of us became quite disapointed with time as we realised this was not the realities of adult life that was still marked by a lot of structural inequality both in rights and opportunities. With time, I then became more and more interested in the history of women’s lib and then by the rights and life conditions of women in other parts of the world. My work with the Council of Europe, the European Women’s Lobby, then the Danish Women’s Council and later the UN provided me with a chance to become very knowledgable in the field. I feel very lucky and thank full for having had all these chances for working in the field!

*Do you feel like you accomplished what you set out to do (to some extent)?

Yes, I feel quite accomplished in some ways as I have been so priviledged as to have worked in the fields that interested me to a large extend, but I also still feel I have a long way to go. I worked successively for 8 years on human rights,and then I have had a period where I did not work in the field. HIA gave me the chance to get back to work on human rights, and I have found ways to use my knowledge and pass it on to students that I hope will feel inspired to work in the same field!

Human rights, and especially the rights of women and children, are my core interest, and I will always want to return back to that field. It is however not always possible to get a job within the field that you wish…In my present job I do not work directly on human rights, and I miss that.   

*Do you feel that your motivations have changed over time?

For a long time, I felt that my 3 year long employment with the United Nations in New York and Dar es Salaam (1999-2002) where the ultimate accomplishment for me workwise in relation to what I aspired to as a student. Since then,  I have moved a long way professionally and personally, and today I have other kind of aspirations work wise than 20 years ago as a young student - or even 10 years ago when I worked with the UN. Today, I place a lot of value on getting to work with inspiring and knowledgable people, learning new competencies and acquire new insights into topics that interest me. I enjoyed a lot working with HIA for that reason, and it was also the reason why I chose to move on into the think tank world.  

*Can you tell of a time when you noticed your cultural, personal or academic background influencing your work? Do you feel that this influence was a hindrance or an aid in the work you were trying to accomplish?

I think it is important to be aware that it is exactly a mix of the personal, the professional and the academic that provides you with job opportunities and influences the ways in which you work. 

Personally I am an extrovert and apparently a highly trustworthy person that easily builds networks and creates projects with partners. I like to work in teams, but also thrives when I lead. This has lead me into management and leadership positions very easily. I am culturally sensitive, respectful of others but also straightforward and honest. Professionally, I have found that my analytical abilities, my ease with writing reports and also my ability to facilitate group work and group processes has lead me into project management, where all of those skills are essential in formulating goals, setting priorities and coordinate the tasks. This coupled with an ability to  carry out strong background analysis, is a way to get influence on the development and later implementation of projects in a workplace. 

You always have to try and identify your strong sides, and the build on them and face your weaknesses so that you may minimize them. Personal development is key in todays work place! 

Ali Sufi is a Master’s student of public administration at Roskilde University and the vice chairman of the New Danish Youth Council (Nydansk Ungdomsråd). He works as a role model in the integration project RISEcph in Copenhagen municipality. Ali Sufi is also a rap artist and organizes workshops, using music as a way to facilitate awareness and social responsibility among youths in Copenhagen area. 

Click here to hear some of Ali’s music.

*Can you tell about the event or moment that first sparked your interest in human rights in a Danish context?

I think that if you want to understand why I am working with human rights, you have to understand my background. Both of my parents were militants – they fought first against Shah regime in Iran and then against the Khomeini regime. I was born during a time when there was an armed struggle against the Khomeini regime, so we had to move to Iraq, and even in Iraq, both of my parents were part of a militant group. I came to Denmark during the first Gulf war and lived with an Iranian foster family. My mother arrived in two years, and my father arrived four years after I came. That way, it was a part of my personal heritage to focus on human rights.

To begin with, I was primarily focusing on human rights in Iran. Later on, I became more attached to Denmark, and started doing that in Denmark. From that perspective, it was more natural for me to focus on ethnic minorities both in the jobs that I got and the personal experiences that I had with people.

*In some of your songs, you focus on the issue of representation. Could you tell a bit more about that?

If you look at the New Danish Youth Council, which I am the vice chairman for, all of us are very strong with regards to resources, cultural, and personal capital. A lot of the people living in Danish society who are having trouble integrating are not people with social, cultural and educational capital like us. That’s why we have to reconnect with the people who are actually having the problems and focus on how we have to act in order to bridge this gap of representation. 

*Working with minorities in Denmark, can you tell a little bit more about how your own minority background has influenced the work that you do?

I think it hasn’t been that much that I am Iranian, but more the fact that I have met a lot of ethnic minorities in Denmark. The first seven or eight years that I lived in Denmark I primarily had Danish friends, but then at the age of eighteen, nineteen I started differentiating more, hanging out with Iranians at first. Then I moved from Aarhus to Copenhagen, and moving enabled me to come into contact with more ethnic minorities. From then on, I started a process of being integrated into ethnic minority culture, and the more I got integrated into that segment of society, the more involved I became. I was hired as a consultant at a school, where I had to help decrease the large numbers of dropouts among the group of ethnic minority students. I also focus on minority issues in the rap music I make. All of this has influenced how I work with ethnic minorities.

*You mentioned earlier you belonged to the more resourceful people with ethnic minority background…

Yes, I think so, because the foster family I grew up with in Denmark was middle class. And in Iraq, even though my parents were militants and I didn’t really live in a family, we got good education there. This is what I mean by cultural and educational capital that I could use in order to advance in Denmark. And later, being from a family that cared about my education made it easier for me – they directed me in the right direction. 

*And then as you said people that you represent don’t have the same background…

Yes, but I meet them in my everyday. I meet them when I am giving concerts; I meet them when I am at work. I do a lot of volunteer and social work.

*The way I understand it, your (cultural and educational) capital can help you in many ways, but can that also be a hindrance for your work?

It can be a hindrance if people don’t identify with you, if you don’t know how to address them properly. That’s something that I am very aware of and focus a lot on. The way I address, the way I talk to ethnic minorities. I am trying to compensate for this gap that you are talking about.

*During the time you have been working with ethnic minorities in Denmark, has your motivation changed?

What do you mean, changed?

*You told about how in the first years you mostly had Danish friends and then that changed as you were growing up. Maybe you didn’t do that much voluntary work before the age of eighteen, nineteen, but…

Yes…first, I was politically active, and I started being politically active at the same time that I was starting my differentiation process, meeting ethnic minorities. At first, I didn’t focus on ethnic minorities, I focused on social inequality. In many ways, I am still doing the same, still following social issues. I focus more on integration issues than I did before. It is a deliberate choice that I made later on when I got the job and experiences that I told you about. 

Mandana Zarrehparvar is educated as a social worker, holding a bachelor’s degree in social sciences and a master’s degree in globalization and integration. In 1998, she helped found the Danish Borad for Equal Treatment and has just been elected as Chairperson of Equinet, the European Network of Equality Bodies. She is the director of Equality and Diversity department at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and interested in areas of inclusion and active participation of all citizens of society.

*Can you tell about the event or moment that first sparked your interest in human rights in a Danish context?

I don´t remember a particular moment - I have - as long as my memory serves me right - been on the weak and vulnerable peoples’ side. In Denmark my interest was sparked due to a culmination of different circumstances - my own personal experiences, through my work as interperter seeing how refugees got treated at times and the general  attitudes of people towards the so called migrants. 

*What were your personal motivations in choosing this line of work?

The desire to make a change and work with in an area that I believed in and that had meaning to it. 

*Do you feel like you accomplished what you set out to do (to some extent)?

Yes - definitely (to some extent). 

*Do you feel that your motivations have changed over time?

No - not really. I still want to fight for the rights of people who are vulnerable and I still want to work to make things better - even if it just a small change.

*Can you tell of a time when you noticed your cultural, personal or academic background influencing your work, with a special focus on the Danish context? Do you feel that this influence was a hindrance or an aid in the work you were trying to accomplish? 

I always use my self - both my cultural, religious and academic background - not to forget many years of experience. These are my competencie and this is me - and people I work with or come into contact with feel who I am. some like it - some dont - that is life. I am who I am.  What is important for me is to be aware of my own bias and prejudices and not to have them influence my judgement or my handling of my work and meetings with people. 

Steven Sampson is a Copenhagen-based docent in social anthropology at Lund University. He has been working as a consultant in Romania, Albania, Bosnia and Kosovo on building civil society, administration reforms, human rights and democratization. His research interests include export of democracy and “Global morality”, and at the moment he is focusing on the anti-corruption industry. Steven is an Aid-nograph and his favorite country is “Aidland”.

*Could you present some of your criticisms of the “rescue industry” – the people working with developmental aid and human rights?

It is a general point in social sciences that people’s intentions often don’t match with reality. Very often, we go out there with good intentions, and we are unable or unwilling to see the realities in which we work and unable or unwilling to see our own position. This is a general problem; it’s been around for several thousand years. In social science terms, it would explain many things if everyone was just evil, stupid, or opportunist. The real problem is: how do people with good intentions, people who are smart, people who want to do good still screw up?

*Does this problem have to do with awareness – might awareness building help with some of the problems we currently encounter?

It has to do with the individuals’ awareness of the system they are working in, of the structure and the bureaucracy, and the ability of the individuals to say to themselves: “What I am doing just can’t work. They didn’t give me enough time to do this, they didn’t give me enough resources to do this.” In these cases, it’s better to say, “No” than to do harm by trying to do a project in two weeks when you know it takes 6 months.

So there is an awareness issue, and then there is the fact that everybody has their own career path and their own relationship to their employer, especially people working in the humanitarian field. They all have CV’s, and they all want to make them look better, so very few people decide to get out.

*Some criticisms of humanitarian work are based on the notion of cultural background- that people go out in the world being Danish or Western in general, and then try to implement Western standards of what is “good”. Do you have a comment on this?

There is a problem because there are many reasons one could say being Danish is an obstacle for doing something, or being Western, and I could give you a hundred reasons on why being Danish and being Western is an advantage. Many people have used “the cultural explanation” to explain why things go wrong. I was hired on several consulting projects as the “cultural expert”, and when I found out that the problem with the project was not the culture of the people we were working with, but the structure of the project, I basically was removed.

I don’t think the problem is necessarily “the culture”, and I’ll explain why. Take a look at certain other kinds of projects, let’s say smuggling human beings from Kurdistan to the streets of Copenhagen. You are smuggling drugs, you have to cross like 11 borders, you have to bribe officials… Many different kinds of groups have to work together- Kurds, Turks, Albanians, Ukrainians, Romanians – all the way up to the traffickers. For some strange reason, all of these people are able to cooperate together, regardless of all their cultural differences – groups who hate each other, even wage war against each other. And they haven’t been to any courses in cultural understanding, there haven’t been internal SWOT strategy sessions. What brings them together is a common interest in making money. And for some reason, these projects with smuggling succeed very well. You have to begin there, with this kind of a “mafia model”.

When there is a common interest, the cultural factors seem to disappear. And then we have to look at development, at how can the different groups, let’s say a Danish consulting unit and a West- African village, how can they make a project work together? In my opinion, what they have to do is think like mafia- what is the common interest? How do you get a public project and a private, personal project to work together? And in the few instances where you can do this, the cultural problem falls away.

*What I hear you say is that there has to be more emphasis on the structure- not the individuals’ backgrounds but the structure that they make by working together.

Structure and common interest. You have to identify what people really want. Not what WE want them to want, but what THEY really want. The real problem, of course, comes when they want things that we don’t want them to want. Then somebody has to make a decision — if you’re in a village, let’s say in Afghanistan, and all the men want to have a road for their trucks and the women want to have a well so they can get water, and someone has to decide about these things, then of course the common interest becomes: whose interests are going to be valid, and that becomes a political question. Humanitarian people and development people don’t like to work with politics, they don’t like to admit that they have power. Instead, they like to talk about “partnership” and “solidarity”, but clearly, we are the ones who have the money, they don’t. We evaluate them, they don’t evaluate us.

There is a political aspect, a power aspect to this. This is one thing where I might say the Scandinavian aspect is that there is a Scandinavian shyness or inability or nervousness in talking about power, in talking about differences. Scandinavia is very famous for the notion that everyone should be equal. Inequality is seen as bad, we don’t want to talk about it and want to get rid of it. There is power in development that is inherently political, politically relevant. There are differences in power - some people have it, some people don’t have it. And that’s what you have to face, face the music.

Many people working in the development industry who have good intentions are often unable or unwilling to deal with this, and they’re therefore accused of being naïve. In the worst case, some money or the project that they have gets corrupted because people with other interests take it and use it. Life is unfair, life is hard, and you have to realize what’s going on.

*So you would say that the Danish emphasis on egalitarian society can make it harder to work with human rights issues abroad?

The Danes fail to realize that people have interests and they can be ruthless in pursuing those interests, and this is what daily life is also about, it’s not simply about cooperation.

There is a famous anthropological article on why Denmark has so many “foreninger”, so many associations. Some people say this is a sign of a high civil society, but the other explanation could be that Danes are actually not very good at cooperating - when you get into a conflict with someone, you make your own association. This is why every little town has ten badminton clubs and twenty bridge clubs, because they can’t get it together. This illustrates the Scandinavian problem with conflict.

This is also why peace and conflict research was basically born in Scandinavia – they believe that all conflicts can be solved if people just talk to each other. Well, some conflicts can’t be solved that way. People simply have different interests, and even in the developmental field, people have to realize that there are different interests out there and that that can get rather dirty. People don’t like to deal with this, they’re not trained for it, and they don’t have the skills to deal with it. Therefore, they often want to cover it up in order to avoid making decisions and creating conflict, something which nobody likes.

“A life with a damaged identity obviously cannot be restored.” 
 
These are the words of Doris Jakobsen, Siumut MP in the Danish Parliment, speaking on behalf of 22 children.  
 
In 1951, the Danish government removed these 22 children from their homes and families in Greenland and relocated them to mainland Denmark. The children were selected and relocated with the intention of being integrated into Danish society and indoctrinated in Danish culture. According to one news source, the conductors of this experiment hoped “to create a new elite group of Danish-thinking Greenlanders and return them to take a leading role in their country’s education system.”
 
Unfortunately, the experiment failed. The children were never returned to their homeland. Instead, they were eventually placed with foster families or adopted by Danes, where they struggled to adjust to a way of life so different from their own. Over half of the children involved in the experiment died as young adults.

Not surprisingly, pressure has been placed on the Danish government in recent years to issue a formal apology, and to compensate both the victims and their families. Though the Danish Social Democratic Party sympathized with the demands, calling for an investigation into the matter, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has refused to capitulate, choosing instead to refer to the matter as an “unfortunate incident” in relations between the two countries.

Rasmussen’s refusal to acknowledge the severity of this atrocity is not merely an unfortunate incident - it is a symptom of a larger problem, one that pervades Danish sentiment regarding its history with Greenland. It is a problem that can be seen in what Finnish author and political scientist Mai Palmberg refers to as “Nordic excepetionalism” - a belief that the Nordic countries are happily free of the “cultural oppression, economic exploitation and political repression” that has occurred in other European countries. According to Palmerg, “They appear to be exceptions to the rule of Western prejudice, racism and paternalism towards the non-whites of the world.”

In many ways, the belief in this exceptionalism is justified. The Nordic countries currently top the list of humanitarian aid donors.

They are also the most effective responders to calls for humanitarian aid of any region in the world.

But too strong a belief in Nordic exceptionalism  may cause a blind eye to be turned to the less obvious, more implicit ways in which “prejudice, racism and paternalism” can and do crop up in Danish society. Mai Palmberg has shown, for instance, that Africans are largely portrayed in Danish schoolbooks as inexplicably hostile and war-prone, or as passive victims in need of a Western savior. Over the course of the last twenty years, Palmberg has studied texts from both elementary and high schools, and has noted three distinct prejudices towards Africans that are common throughout the texts:

1. The view of development aid as saving Africa, positing outside donors as the agents, not Africans.
2. Descriptions, which appeal to pity not solidarity, and which, through descriptions of anonymous people in misery, reduce the possibilities for positive identification.
3. Descriptions, which make the reader feel guilty rather than protesting against injustices, and expressing a willingness to act to change them.

These so-called “new prejudices” differ from the old racism in that they do not explicitly link race or ethnic background with specific characteristics (such as intelligence, culture or civilization). Rather, they reinforce the notion of a cultural evolution, in which the more evolved Western states benignly guide the global south towards the path of progress. And in this way they can be seen as a kind of implicit racism: they reinforce a belief that the Nordic countries have discovered the “right way” of doing things, while other cultures still lag behind.

“These Children are understimulated, without any experiences”:
The negative effects of new prejudice in Denmark

The effect of this line of thinking on immigrants in Danish society has both studied and documented. Thomas Gitz-Johansen, for example, has conducted field studies in a number of multicultural Danish schools. According to the studies, it was not uncommon for Danish teachers to view the students of foreign ethnic or cultural backgrounds as culturally “deficient” and to pity bilingual children for having to live in such conditions.

In one especially telling quote, a teacher argues that “They (bilingual children) simply have a different culture. (…) Older than the original Turkish culture. It is ignorance. These children are understimulated, without any experiences. They don’t know anything. They (…) don’t get out, they don’t experience anything. They don’t know anything about the world or anything else, so…” (1)

As with the Danish schoolbooks, one can again see a clear sentiment of foreign culture as lacking or deficient, and in need of Western guidance.

“Developed” and “Underdeveloped”:
The negative effects of prejudice in humanitarian work

This line of thinking does not merely pervade domestic attitudes about “foreigners”; it is often at play in international practices as well.  It was clearly present in the dominant development theory of the 20th century, known as modernization theory, which defined “developed” as whatever the First World countries were, and “underdeveloped” as whatever the Third World countries were not: industrialized, democratic, technological, and capitalist. In modernization theory, it was believed that these developing countries could be “brought up to speed” and happily remade in the image of Western democracies if they could only overcome certain backwards impediments in their infrastructures or economies. (2)

One of the major problems with this line of thinking, it has been noted, is that it negates the possibility of other, foreign values being counted in policy-making or being considered legitimate and important. Just as the children of Greenland were taken from their homes and forcibly removed from the values and culture that mattered to them, so too are whole communities directed like children to follow the Western way. This of course means that those people who are in the process of being “developed” have very little say in the way in which that development takes place.

The most troublesome part about this process of paternalism is that it is typically not done out of spite or mal-intent: it is done out of a humanitarian desire to help. One cannot imagine that the designers of the Greenland child relocation project set out to destroy the lives of 22 children. They very likely saw themselves as beneficent helpers, bringing much needed relief to a poverty-stricken region. The problem is that their good intentions, coupled with a lack of cultural awareness, blinded them to the potentially disastrous consequences of their actions. They failed to see that, though the persons involved in the project were from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, they were still people: human beings with a distinct context and set of values which mattered to them.


Perhaps the most tragic part of the whole affair is the fact that the Danish government refuses to acknowledge the act as a wrongdoing even to this day. Doris Jakobsen´s outcry - that a life with a damaged identity cannot be restored - was a brave attempt to call attention to this issue, and to demand that the Danish respect the values and identities of others. In response to this demand, Rasmussen stated that “I perceive it as a story we have put behind us” - a response and an attitude that only increase the likelihood that such an act may happen again.

REFERENCES

(1) Gitz-Johansen, T. (2006): Den multikulturelle skole - integration og sortering. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitetsforlag.

(Quote in original Danish: ”Klasselærer: De (tosprogede børn) har bare en anden kultur. (…) Mere gammel end den, som findes i Tyrkiet, ik’. Det er uvidenhed. Det er børn, der er ustimulerede og ingen oplevelser har. De ved ikke noget, altså. De (…) kommer ingen steder og oplever ikke noget. De ved ikke noget om verden eller noget som helst, så…”)

(2) Nustad, Knut K. “The Development Discourse in the Multilateral System.” Global Institutions and Development: Framing the World? Ed. Morten Boas and Desmond McNeill. New York: Routledge, 2004. 13-24.

*Why choose human rights?

The decision to work for human rights can quickly acquire a status of being taken for granted. One chooses a certain education and career path because one is interested into human rights, and these choices reinforce the interest in human rights, forming a self-perpetuating circle. This pattern can be seen throughout the interviews conducted for this project; it also somehow implies thinking of human rights work as something inherently good, something that does not need to be questioned or justified. 

With this project, we wanted to probe deeper by asking about personal motivations and the role of personal background in pursuing this line of work in Danish context. We also wanted to de-mystify the desire to work for human rights by showing the diverse motivations, aspirations and backgrounds of the people working in the field. Rather than draw any general conclusions, our goal was to move beyond the negative stereotypes of “the savior complex”, “naïve idealism” and “the do- gooders” as well as (we believe) the illusory notion of working for human rights as a “selfless” choice. We have tried to show that human rights work is never just about the people being helped- the disadvantaged, the deprived, the “violated”. It is just as much about the “helpers”. And yet, it is almost always the “violated” being studied, which reinforces the (im)balance of power. As Steven Sampson states: “We evaluate them; they don’t evaluate us”. This project is by no means an evaluation; yet it does attempt to direct attention to some personal stories of the people working for human rights. This handful of stories is of course not representative of the very diverse group of individuals working with human rights, but we have tried to show the degree of multiplicity by choosing respondents from diverse areas and backgrounds.

*Personal and societal sources of motivation intertwined

Almost all the stories show the blurred line between personal and societal motivations. As Sara Berthou pointed out, growing up in the Danish society can contribute to a personal sense of being privileged; for Ali Sufi and Mandana Zarrehparvar, having a minority status in Denmark becomes incorporated into their personal motivation for focusing on integration. It is interesting that our respondents generally tend to “internalize” these societal influences and view them as enabling rather than constraining when choosing a certain focus for their work. 

Several respondents highlight the dual nature of being privileged. While it enables them to work with human rights issues, it also gives rise to concerns about legitimacy and representation. Sara Berthou admits she does not know what it means to be really hungry; Mandana Zarrehparvar says she is trying “not to forget” her years of experience regarding personal religious, cultural and academic background; Ali Sufi emphasizes the importance of bridging the social capital gap between him and the minorities he represents. In his case, educational and cultural capital have allowed him to advance in Danish society; at the same time, this means that there appears to be a gap between him and the people he is working with – students about to drop out of school or other youths who might feel rejected and marginalized by the society.

*The (im)possibility of representation

As shown above, this “gap” between the “helper” and the “helped” with regards to power and social capital can create questions on whether representation is truly possible. Can “we” understand “them”? What can we do, if “we” have never been hungry, if “we” have an education and a job, if “we” feel to a much larger degree accepted by the general society, if “we” have opportunities that “they” don’t? And if “we” can’t understand “them”, can “we” represent “them”?

These are fundamental questions in human rights, but it is obvious that they reinforce the dichotomy between “us” and “them”, the “helper” and the “helped”. Within this perspective, one does human rights work for someone, rather than with someone. These concerns about representing and understanding the group(s) one is working within are therefore less compatible with newer approaches to doing human rights work, such as the emphasis on participation, cooperation and empowerment in the rights-based approach (1, 2). From this point of view, the focus is less on representation but more on creating something together.

Another issue on this subject concerns the question of whether it at all is possible to understand another human being. Different perspectives in psychology have different answers to this question, but it is generally more common to refer to empathy and relating to others instead of understanding. The uniqueness and complexity of our individual experiences might make it impossible to truly understand anyone, still enabling us to respect their views and feelings. 

This leads to the question of whether one understands a group’s situation best by being close to it or even a part of it, or by examining it from a distance. Our research seems to indicate that these two approaches should optimally be combined. Being a Dane can be both an advantage and hindrance when working in “the big world”, as noted by Sara Berthou, Peter Elsass and Steven Sampson, just as having a minority background can be both a source of valuable experience and alienating if the people one is working with feel a “gap” of capital regardless common ethnic background.

The most important problem with the notion of representation in human rights work, though, is that it might obscure the inequality that is embedded in this work by definition. If every person in the world had equal resources, opportunities, and access to capital, then those working for human rights could just go home. Inequality in terms of resources is a precondition for human rights work, and not just in the sense that one can be working with disadvantaged groups, but also in a sense that the “helper” in fact has something to offer. Power disparity is therefore inherent in human rights work. 

As illustrated by Steven Sampson, problems start when the workers wish to pretend that these structural differences don’t exist: ”The Danes fail to realize that people have interests and they can be ruthless in pursuing those interests (…)”. From this perspective, it can be dangerous to presume that one is “representing” someone, since it might imply unwillingness to admit that one actually does have more resources, more power, more capital – both to oneself and the people one is working with.

*Personal and structural awareness

When we set out to do this project we put an emphasis on the ways one’s personal and cultural background can influence the way one goes about doing human rights related work. In the process of doing our interviews it became clear that the personal constraints we wanted to analyze as having impact comprised just one set of influences. Structural constraints could be just as important, as was underlined by Steven Sampson: awareness should not stop at how being Danish might influence one’s outlook on human rights, but also include the system one is working in. In the process of working with this project, we have thus moved beyond focusing on cultural and personal variables and more at the structures of power implicated in working with human rights.

*Selflessness?

We also hope that we have illustrated that working with human rights is by no means devoid of self-interest. Tyge Lehmann speaks about “added value”, and most respondents indicate that theirs is a line of work that offers a sense of meaningfulness and opportunity for personal development. This might be seen as a “selfish” motive, but can one remove oneself from the work that one does- and should one attempt to do this? The element of self- interest might instead be seen as a possibility to somehow bridge the gap of power between the “helper” and the “helped” by showing that it is not only “them”, but also “us” that get something out of it. Being in it because one “gets something out of it” might be a better option regarding actual results than doing it out of pity and guilt. This is the advantage of the rights-based approaches to human rights: empowerment and agency can go both ways.

REFERENCES

1. The Human Rights- Based Approach: Statement of Common Understanding. Developed at the Inter-Agency Workshop on a human rights-based approach in the context of UN reform, May 2003.

http://www.unicef.org/sowc04/files/AnnexB.pdf

1. What Constitutes a Rights-based Approach? Definitions, Methods, and Practices. UNAIDs Global Reference Group, 2004.

http://data.unaids.org/Topics/Human-Rights/hrissuepaper_rbadefinitions_en.pdf