Oh, I totally agree about the use of Amnesty International's reports, but what I'm arguing for is the use of these other (for Western countries, especially non-

Oh, I totally agree about the use of Amnesty International's reports, but what I'm arguing for is the use of these other (for Western countries, especially non-Western) external perspectives in order to allow for some reflection on the systems and mechanisms we have in place. There's a lot of theory (and practice!) on the power of having an external "shock" to the system on allowing for the reflection required for good governance practices[1], and I don't think human rights governance should be any different. As for your other point, if what the Turkish government says about Greece is true though, does it matter the source? Sure, some claims can be extremely biased, but if (to make up an example) n people actually are locked up without trial per year, then that's a factual statement that can be addressed. In these cases, we need to strip back the propaganda and look at the facts :) [1] If you're interested in a lot of work on reflexive governance theory & practice, there's an EU project that has done a lot of work on it here: http://refgov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/ http://refgov.cpdr.ucl.ac.be/