The severity of abuse may be be less important than a nation's policy relevance to the West, the ability of journalists to investigate freely, and attention from rights activists.
References
1.
BobClifford. The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Argues that the Western media and non-governmental organizations bestow attention on an isolated number of deserving cases.
2.
Hafner-BurtonEmilie M.TsutsuiKiyoteru. “Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises,”American Journal of Sociology110 (2005):1372–1411. Uses statistical methods to argue that while global human rights treaties do not have an independent effect on abusive governments, mobilization by global civil society activists can make a difference.
3.
RonJamesRamosHowardRodgersKathleen. “Transnational Information Politics: Human Rights NGO Reporting, 1986–2000,”International Studies Quarterly49 (2005):557–587. Argues that the volume of Amnesty International country reporting is shaped by actual human rights conditions as well as other factors, including previous reporting efforts, state power, U.S. military aid, and a country's media profile.
4.
Human Security Report: War and Peace in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2005), available online at http://www.humansecurityreport.info/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1. Review of the methods used to measure the human cost of violence, including a discussion of the Political Terror Scale.
5.
The Websites of the world's two largest human rights organizations, Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org) and Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org), contain a wealth of information on human rights conditions in dozens of countries.
