Human rights discourse for a people without rights: visual narratives as documentation of human rights violations in Palestine

It is argued that visual narratives can be documentary of reality via the direct record of events or the construction of meaning using varied visual means. Since advocacy organisations abide by international law, they enjoy some power that enables them to name and shame violators of human rights. This study discusses how Palestine is visually narrated in the work of three organisations, namely B’Tselem, Visualising Palestine (VP) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), which claim their own narrative approach to human rights in the Palestinian context.

To achieve this, it framed within principles from narratology and socio-narrative theory to explain how narrative can be understood from a human rights perspective. Visual narratives as semiosis is then taken as the frame of analysis to discuss human rights narratives in static, dynamic and interactive forms.<br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31 December 2028</i>.<br><br><br>