Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the question of community-based legitimacy for advocacy organizations, with particular attention for the role of community spokespersons who come to act as intermediaries between communities and advocacy organizations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses community-based legitimacy for advocacy organizations through the lens of community intermediaries. Where advocacy organizations seek to represent rural, remote or otherwise marginalized communities, spokespersons emerge who take on an intermediary role between these organizations and the broader community. These persons are selected by the organizations as spokespersons, or put forward by their own communities based on reputation, skills or eloquence.

Once community spokespersons engage in frequent travel, participate in public forums and obtain an international network, their ability to represent and respond to the needs of other community members is altered. Meanwhile, they face a range of challenges. Increasing demands are made on them from various angles, and they need to balance their community activities with daily occupations and family commitments. Moreover, their prominent position as community representatives puts them at risk of repercussions by government and private actors who seek to silence local dissent, resulting in frequent threats, arrest and detainment. Such newly acquired positions, in short, come at considerable individual costs.

This paper is based on research conducted with organizations and community members in Ghana and Kenya, as well as interviews with Netherlands-based advocacy organisations to explore their existing policies and practices and their aspirations in assessing community-based legitimacy through the role of community intermediaries. The primary methods used are participant observation, interviews and focus-group discussions between 2018-2022 (Kenya) and June-July 2023 (Ghana), complemented with participatory research methods to create science comics depicting the experiences of communities and their representatives in relation to advocacy organizations.