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Abstract
How can international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) stop human rights abuses? Recent scholarship on “naming and shaming” strategies have revealed some conditions which can effectively lead to improvements in human rights practices (Murdie and Davis 2012; Hendrix and Wong 2012; Bell, Clay and Murdie 2012; Murdie 2014). Less robust is the understanding of direct engagement strategies such as partnering with governments and grassroots movements. Systematic examination of a broader range of strategies and the various ways in which non-governmental organizations frame human rights abuses is necessary to understand how INGO activities affect local communities. What are the different strategies INGOs have at their disposal? How do they select their strategies and issue framing? How effective are these various framings and strategies? My dissertation answers these questions by studying INGO issue framing and strategies in the context of forced, early, and child marriage (CEFM). Using original survey data from 31,639 international non-governmental organizations, I find that organizations who select the feminist framing of child marriage are most successful at lowering rates of child marriage when compared to their development frame or legal frame counterparts. I supplement this analysis with qualitative techniques to add to one of the first cross-national quantitative studies of CEFM.