Over the past fifty years, international human rights organizations have grown in numbers and resources. Today, they play crucial roles in preventing and alleviating abuses. Acting singly or in loosely formed networks, such groups as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, and the Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme undertake numerous tasks: they research and report on violations in other countries; they draw attention to abuses; they provide services and advice to threatened individuals; they apply pressure strategies such as sanctions and boycotts; and they lobby foreign governments to implement more forceful measures. More broadly, advocacy organizations and the human rights movement have proclaimed the universality, interdependence, and indivisibility of all rights (World Conference on Human Rights, 1993). But despite this ambitious agenda, there are myriad rights problems remaining in the world today, as the advocates themselves acknowledge. Why do some violations become the object of major international concern, while others do not? To what extent does the intensity of activism reflect the gravity of abuse?

In the burgeoning literature on transnational politics, a dominant theoretical perspective holds that advocacy organizations should be seen primarily as “principled” entities working to help “victims” of atrocities. This “moral theory,” discussed in detail below, suggests that international advocates facing a world of human rights problems select particular causes for activism based primarily on the gravity of the abuses they find: all else equal, the more egregious the violation, the more likely that activists will exert pressure in an effort to end it. In this view, victims spark transnational activism either directly, by appealing for support overseas, or indirectly, as international activists, moved by their suffering, take action to support them. The results are networks that grow organically, from the “bottom up,” selflessly serving the needs of the abused.