U.S. Actors Should Collaborate More Responsibly with the Global South
The idea of a “Global North” and a “Global South” divides the international stage between two sets of actors. The Global North refers to those actors coming from European and North American countries that are generally wealthier than those situated in the “Global South.” By contrast, the Global South consists of actors in Latin American, African, and Asian countries. Some experts argue that, in collaborating with the Global South, the Global North tends to overreach in pursuit of its interests and sideline the interests of its southern partners. However, other experts note that Global South actors can also benefit from collaborating with the Global North to share information and exercise international pressure that would otherwise be unavailable.
Boston University’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) actively pursues strategies that aim to engage in the latter dynamic. Across its multiple projects, the IHRC strives to establish collaborative relations with our partners. Such is the case of the current project we implement with the Fundación para la Justicia y el Estado Democrático de Derecho [Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law] (FJEDD). FJEDD is a non-governmental organization (NGO) headquartered in Mexico with offices across Central America, and its mission is to help vulnerable groups ensure their rights are protected.
Though it works on multiple fronts, the IHRC partnered with FJEDD in its efforts to ensure that migrants who disappear in transit to the United States, and their families, have access to justice. FJEDD directly collaborates with and aids collectives of families of missing migrants. To contribute to these efforts, during several years, the Clinic worked to document the crisis of migrant disappearances. In 2015, the Clinic commenced its investigation of disappearances, conducting fieldwork in Mexico and composing a report on disappearances across Mexico and Central America. Subsequent clinical students later carried out similar investigations in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Finally, in 2020, the Clinic completed its report, which argued that one of the best ways to help victims of disappearances would be to improve Mexico’s Foreign Support Mechanism [Mecanismo de Apoyo al Exterior] (MAE). The MAE was itself the result of advocacy by FJEDD and the family collectives that integrate relatives of disappeared migrants. It was designed to allow Mexican consulates and embassies across Central America to accept reports of disappearances and assist families with investigations, identifying remains, and acquiring reparations such as financial assistance.
As a follow-up to the report, in September 2021, the Clinic students and supervising attorney met with FJEDD to discuss the next steps in the project. Having concluded the report, our partners suggested that we meet with the family members of those who disappeared to summarize the Clinic’s report and receive their feedback. We immediately began to prepare a workshop for this purpose. Within our team, I was then tasked with the primary responsibility of planning the event’s logistics. I had a detailed agenda ready a week later, which included the substance of the reports and its findings. Thinking the substance of the workshop was all accounted for, I swiftly turned to prepare invitations. Fortunately, our supervising attorney reminded me that we should check with our partners before setting anything in stone. As it turned out, our team then realized that the agenda had not provided FJEDD with an equal time to speak. Though this oversight was a seemingly minor aspect of the workshop, I noticed some parallels with other scenes where the Global North acts in ways that inadvertently marginalizes the Global South. I immediately changed the agenda before sending it to our partners.
I realized that, despite our efforts to implement a collaborative approach in our work, I had failed to do so. Though the workshop was our partners’ idea in the first place, and they would also be the ones to coordinate with the family collectives, I had unwittingly neglected to give them equal speaking time. Thankfully, after making the changes and incorporating FJEDD as an active organizer of the workshop, I remained vigilant for any other cases of erasure or overreach on my part. For example, as soon as our partners expressed concern that the relatives of disappeared migrants may not feel comfortable speaking in small breakout rooms, we changed the “question and answer period” accordingly.
This experience as a clinical student showed me the importance of adopting and sustaining a collaborative approach with our partners throughout all stages of a project. It gave a concrete and direct example of the challenges that scholars point out when they speak abstractly about Global North-Global South relations. This practical insight demonstrated that a collaborative approach is crucial not only to guide our broad efforts to address large human rights crises, as the IHRC seeks to do in all of its projects, but also to the routine and concrete things that our work requires — such as the organization of this workshop.
The collaboration between the IHRC and our partners abroad, between the Global North and South, has been critical to the success of our strategies. As some scholars have noted, more collaboration between such regions allows for the sharing of resources as well as developing more effective strategies and approaches to complex problems. For example, meeting with the victims of disappearances was an important step for the IHRC to share the output of several years of collaboration, and also to remain accountable, listen to the families’ thoughts, and receive feedback on the IHRC’s work. However, that space for collaboration must be created and preserved through everyday transactions that many may view as insignificant. Even “small” details, such as my forgetting to allocate equal speaking times, are opportunities that can either engender sustained cooperation or reproduce the criticisms brought against the Global North.
In my classes on human rights law, I have learned how imperative it is that U.S. actors, constituting the Global North, collaborate more responsibly with the Global South. My experience in the Clinic later revealed that such a collaborative approach must exist not only in big decisions or abstract approaches but also in the concrete and smallest details of our work. Actors from the Global North could overreach at any time. Thankfully, our clinical supervision, our teamwork, and the sharing of ideas and constructive criticism allowed our team to carry out an informative and engaging workshop with our partners. I am immensely honored to have played a part in furthering this relationship.
David Andreu is a student attorney with Boston University’s International Human Rights Clinic. David is part of the Migrant Disappearances team, focusing on the human rights violations endured by missing and disappeared persons migrating from Central America to the United States, and their families.
