The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy serves as the hub of the Harvard Kennedy School’s research, teaching, and training in the human rights domain. The center embraces a dual mission: to educate students and the next generation of leaders from around the world in human rights policy and practice; and to convene and provide policy-relevant knowledge to international organizations, governments, policymakers, and businesses.

 

News and Announcements

Yanilda Maria Gonzalez Making a Movement

Making a Movement: Yanilda María González on Police Violence Against Racialized Communities

March 18, 2024

In her essay for the Carr Center's latest publication, Making a Movement: The History and Future of Human Rights, Yanilda María González discusses one of the most pervasive racial justice challenges: continued police violence against racialized and impoverished communities. 

... Read more about Making a Movement: Yanilda María González on Police Violence Against Racialized Communities
See all announcements

Latest Publications

Mass Incarceration and The Future: An Urgent Need to Address the Human Rights Implications of Criminal Background Checks and the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Mass Incarceration and The Future: An Urgent Need to Address the Human Rights Implications of Criminal Background Checks and the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract:

Between 70 and 100 million Americans—one in three— currently live with a criminal record. This number is expected to rise above 100 million by the year 2030.

The criminal justice system in the U.S. has over-incarcerated its citizen base; we have 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prison population. America became known as the “incarceration nation” because our prison and jail population exploded from less than 200,000 in 1972 to 2.2 million today, which became a social phenomenon known as mass incarceration. And along the way, there was a subsequent boom in querying databases for data on citizens with criminal records.

Once a person comes in contact with the U.S. criminal justice system, they begin to develop an arrest and/or conviction record. This record includes data aggregated from various databases mostly, if not exclusively, administered by affiliated government agencies. As the prison population grew, the number of background check companies rose as well. The industry has grown and continues to do so with very little motivation to wrestle with morality, data integrity standards, or the role of individual rights.

This paper address the urgent need to look towards a future where background screening decisions and artificial intelligence collide.

Read full paper here. 

 

: Teresa Y. Hodge & Laurin Leonard | Jul 17 2020
: Examining a future where background screening decisions and artificial intelligence collide.
Last updated on 08/04/2020

Transitional Justice in Colombia

Citation:

The Carr Center Human Rights for Policy. 7/13/2020. Transitional Justice in Colombia. Cambridge: Harvard Kennedy School. See full text.
Transitional Justice in Colombia

Abstract:

President Juan Manuel Santos and Carr Center faculty reflect on the Colombian peace process.

In April 2019, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School hosted a faculty consultation on the integrated system for truth, justice, reparation, and nonrepetition, created as a result of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas in 2016. President Juan Manuel Santos and Carr Center faculty called upon leading voices in the field of transitional justice to share perspectives on the Colombian peace process and to formulate recommendations. The discussion was organized into four sessions focusing on the main components of the peace process: reparations, justice, truth, and nonrepetition.

See full text.

Spanish version of the report can be found here.

: Carr Center | July 13 2020
: President Juan Manuel Santos and Carr Center faculty reflect on the Colombian peace process.
Last updated on 07/13/2020

From Rationality to Relationality: Ubuntu as an Ethical and Human Rights Framework for Artificial Intelligence Governance

From Rationality to Relationality: Ubuntu as an Ethical and Human Rights Framework for Artificial Intelligence Governance

Abstract:

What is the measure of personhood and what does it mean for machines to exhibit human-like qualities and abilities? Furthermore, what are the human rights, economic, social, and political implications of using machines that are designed to reproduce human behavior and decision making? The question of personhood is one of the most fundamental questions in philosophy and it is at the core of the questions, and the quest, for an artificial or mechanical personhood. 

The development of artificial intelligence has depended on the traditional Western view of personhood as rationality. However, the traditional view of rationality as the essence of personhood, designating how humans, and now machines, should model and approach the world, has always been marked by contradictions, exclusions, and inequality. It has shaped Western economic structures (capitalism’s free markets built on colonialism’s forced markets), political structures (modernity’s individualism imposed through coloniality), and discriminatory social hierarchies (racism and sexism as institutions embedded in enlightenment-era rationalized social and gender exclusions from full person status and economic, political, and social participation), which in turn shape the data, creation, and function of artificial intelligence. It is therefore unsurprising that the artificial intelligence industry reproduces these dehumanizations. Furthermore, the perceived rationality of machines obscures machine learning’s uncritical imitation of discriminatory patterns within its input data, and minimizes the role systematic inequalities play in harmful artificial intelligence outcomes.

Read the full paper.

: Sabelo Mhlambi | July 8 2020
: Tech Fellow Sabelo Mhlambi explores how the Sub-Saharan African philosophy of ubuntu reconciles ethical limitations of artificial intelligence.
Last updated on 08/04/2020
See all publications

 

“The Carr Center is building a bridge between ideas on human rights and the practice on the ground. Right now we are at a critical juncture. The pace of technological change and the rise of authoritarian governments are both examples of serious challenges to the flourishing of individual rights. It’s crucial that Harvard and the Kennedy School continue to be a major influence in keeping human rights ideals alive. The Carr Center is a focal point for this important task.”

 

- Mathias Risse