In today’s posts, both Marc Gustafson and Esther Sprague point to the evolution of activism on Darfur from being focused on generating noise (what Gustafson terms “awareness campaigns”) to calling for specific policies (what Gustafson calls “advocacy campaigns”). Certainly when it comes to the SDC I see this transition as a struggle which played out […]

Q2: Is citizen advocacy at its most effective when it generates maximum “noise” on an issue , or do citizen advocates need to attach particular policy prescriptions to the noise they make? Marc Gustafson: There can be no framework for measuring the efficacy of advocacy groups. Some are successful because they bring awareness to typically […]

Q2: Is citizen advocacy at its most effective when it generates maximum “noise” on an issue , or do citizen advocates need to attach particular policy prescriptions to the noise they make? Esther Sprague: I became a Darfur activist because a friend of mine, Mamer Kuer Ajak, was concerned about reports he was hearing concerning […]

Hi everyone A series of interesting posts are coming up this week from Ruth Messinger, Nasredeen Abdulbari, Esther Sprague, Marc Gustafson, Erin Mazursky, Eric Reeves, Alex de Waal, John Norris and Jill Savitt on the question of  whether citizen advocacy at its most effective when it generates maximum “noise” on an issue , or whether […]

Hi everyone Below are the first posts in the “questions for the advocacy community” conversation I’ll be running on this site over the coming weeks. As more contributions come in, I’ll probably start commenting, but I would also love to hear what you think. In the posts on Q1, KTJ Scott and Alex de Waal […]

Q1: Can pressure from citizens ever add a foreign policy issue to the list of traditional national interests? Or can citizens only impact the sense of urgency around an issue that was already a traditional national interest to start with? Alex de Waal: Let me briefly look at two recent examples of how citizens’ activism […]