Intactivism and Human Rights Gatekeeping

To what extent have intactivists sought to "pitch" their ideas to the human rights mainstream? This question needs to be unpacked somewhat. Clifford Bob defines gatekeepers as both powerful UN agencies and NGOs at the center of networks and also human rights intellectuals.

Arguably, however, there are also core and peripheral actors among human rights intellectuals. A better way to think of "intellectuals" as gatekeepers is to look not at individuals but at information hubs on human rights such as scholarly journals or websites. Two important ones are Human Rights Quarterlyand Journal of Human Rights; and scholarly associations such as the International Studies Association's Human Rights Section. One observation about the anti-circumcision network is that they seem to have made relatively little effort to use such outlets as a platform for promoting their analyses of the human rights implications of circumcision. Rather, the movement organizes its own scholarly symposiums and produces conference proceedings in which they retain copyright to papers published. By collecting papers and then preventing activists from publishing them elsewhere, the movement has inhibited mainstreaming of its cause throughout the human rights movement.

The movement has sought to engage both the UN and human rights NGOs over the years. In particular, Steven Swoboda of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child and a colleague attempted to push the issue both through Americas Watch (which later became Human Rights Watch) and Amnesty International. According to Swoboda, presentations were made at both the national and regional Amnesty chapters in the US in the 1990s, and a letter was also sent to the Amnesty secretariat in London. In each case the organizations were largely dismissive, citing limited resources and issue priorities.

Similarly, Swoboda traveled to Geneva in 2001 as a NOCIRC representative (ARC did not have consultative status at the UN) to make a presentation to the UN Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. Their written statement to this body is, to my knowledge, the only official UN document on record affirming the male child's right to bodily integrity. Some countries were more sympathetic than others, particularly Sweden; but ultimately no reference to the issue was made in documents coming out of the Subcommission.

Intactivists have had a particularly difficult time linking this issue to the parallel work being done with respect to female genital mutilation. When they approached the Special Representative to the UN on Harmful Practices Affecting Children and Women, for example, they were told specifically that this only dealt with harms affecting women and the female child. (Their written statement to the UN Subcommission in part requested that this mandate be reconsidered.) I was told that many FGM groups were hesitant to join the coalition, although in recent years this appears to be changing, partly as a result of an ongoing dialogue between the groups.

In general, the dismissiveness from the human rights mainstream reported to me by intactivists is similar to the response I received when raising this issue in focus groups of human security practitioners. Such practitioners invoked parental rights, cultural rights, religious rights, and state sovereignty to justify inattention to the issue; they dismissed it as a low-priority concern; they objected to comparisons with FGM and worried that attention to male circumcision would divert attention away from FGM; or they cited health benefits of circumcision and compared it to vaccination. A few laughed outright. Today, as Debra DeLaet details in this paper, the issue remains largely taboo within the human rights community.