Introduction - 'Responsibility to the Story'

Should human rights researchers prioritize the needs and wishes of victims in their outputs and advocacy? Should different ethical norms apply to victims and perpetrators? Can innovative quantitative research methods, successfully making the case for violations of economic rights, end up undermining the human rights cause by eclipsing the voice of the individual? Can the requirement of informed consent from victims be waived when dealing with secret detention or people who have been sentenced to death? Do organizations and institutions require fixed ethical rules governing research, more flexible guidelines, or can they rely on fostering reflective practice and field-based mentoring? Such questions reverberate in the world of human rights practice, but rarely benefit from a systematic and coherent discussion. This Special Issue aims to begin to fill this gap. The Special Issue is entitled ‘Responsibility to the Story’.1 It follows a conference hosted in September 2009 by the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York (UK), in collaboration with Amnesty International, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and Panos London. The aim of the conference was to explore some of the ethical issues that arise when working with human rights-related testimonies and stories, across a range of professional and practitioner communities (human rights practitioners, development and humanitarian workers, film makers, museum and memorial specialists, and academics from disciplines ranging from anthropology to communication studies). This Special Issue asks the same question, and addresses a similarly diverse audience: what responsibility do we have to the stories we hear, process and tell?2