Using long-form oral history, this chapter explores two decades in the career of an individual, the American transnational advocate Winifred Armstrong. Armstrong was an unofficial African affairs consultant for John F. Kennedy and political economist for the American Metal Climax mining company, who managed to operate inside organs of American empire as both an advocate for nationalist claimants and as a connector to spheres of US political and economic interests. By focusing on a single individual enmeshed in global networks of anticolonialism and resource extraction, this chapter deepens and complicates narratives of progressive national liberation, neo-imperialism, and the role of the corporation in decolonization.

This chapter investigates the shifting politics of humanitarianism, and the way that decolonization processes and related ideologies influenced the evolution of human rights and humanitarian norms. It explores these issues by returning to the debates of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts, which took place in Geneva in four sessions from 1974 to 1977, resulting in Additional Protocols I and II to the Geneva Conventions and the elevation of wars of national liberation to the status of international conflicts. The Conference was remarkable for the participation of thirteen national liberation movements. Their participation attests to the importance of decolonization ideologies and the influence of supporters of decolonization – both those seeking independence and, crucially, newly independent states themselves – in international forums. The chapter assesses how concepts of national liberation were deployed and understood during the Conference, in order to elucidate how humanitarian and human rights ideas and practices interacted with the politics of decolonization.