Whose Stories Do They Tell? : An analysis of the creation of the concept of victim in the reports by Human Rights Watch and Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation

Abstract: Transitional justice emerged as an integral part of state- and peacebuilding processes during the same period as the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This created a market for human rights promotion in which non-governmental organizations were perceived as experts. Although transitional justice is a well-researched area, few studies have analyzed the production of knowledge by non-governmental organizations in this field. The aim of this study is to bridge this research gap by analyzing how two non-governmental organizations – Human Rights Watch and Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation – create and use the concept of victim in their reports. The reports were analyzed in two steps, based on qualitative content analysis. The first step was to code the material based on theoretical assumptions and the content. The second step was to create a narrative which was the base for the theoretical analysis of the material. The analysis centers around three key concepts: cosmopolitanism, representation and the subaltern. This theoretical framework is created based on the two scholars Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Ulrich Beck. The analysis shows that both organizations are creating a space in their reports, a cosmopolitan reality, in which they are legitimizing their own work. The creation of different subjects, such as victim, is also done in relation to this space. In other words, the organizations create the concept of victim to suit their own world-view and rationale.