TY - Generic
T1 - Rights, Systematicity, and Misinformation
Y1 - 2024
A1 - Matthew MacDonald
AB -
"The ethical impacts of technology can be understood, in part, by examining how it bears on human rights."
In this discussion paper by Matthew MacDonald, Technology & Human Rights Fellow ('22-'23), he discusses the dangers of new technology, misinformation, and how they intersect with human rights. "...It is possible for rights to evolve over time, and for new rights to emerge, in response to changes in the “systematicity” of significant hazards. Hateful misinformation is one hazard which is growing increasingly systematic as a result of technologically-driven changes to the infosystem. This motivates carefully re-examining the limits of an established right (the right to free speech), and seriously evaluating the case for a new right (a distinctive right against misinformation)," he writes.
Read the full paper here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/24_macdonald_rightssystematicitymisinformation.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Game Over: The Unintended Consequences of Video Game Moderation
Y1 - 2024
A1 - Albert Fox Cahn
A1 - Evan Enzer
AB - Online video games are social networks, afflicted with the same speech moderation questions as other social media platforms, like Meta and Twitter, including rampant abuse, harassment, and misinformation. Without effective self-regulation, the United States and other countries have sought to regulate gaming’s messages, content, and user experience. However, video games are not passive media players consume. They are an interactive medium steered by users’ participation and speech. Video games are much more like interactive worlds, like virtual reality platforms, seeking to bring work, parties, dating, play, and everyday life online. If governments choose to regulate video games, they must balance legitimate content moderation needs with the rights of Free Speech, Free Expression, and Free Association. Governments should enact legislation that empowers users’ freedom, like strong privacy and anti-government surveillance laws, instead of restrictive laws to prohibit categories of speech in video games.
Read the full paper here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/24_foxcahn_enzer.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Does AI Understand Arabic? Evaluating the Politics Behind the Algorithmic Arabic Content Moderation
Y1 - 2024
A1 - Mona Elswah
AB - Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to be integrated into various domains and industries. Over the years, social media companies have utilized AI technologies to moderate users’ content, personalize recommendations, and optimize overall user experience. While machine learning models have been found effective in identifying and addressing harmful and violent content, a mounting number of concerns were raised regarding the bias and discriminatory decisions made by these models when applied to non-English content.
In this paper, Mona Elswah (Technology & Human Rights Fellow '22-'23) zooms in on the AI-powered content moderation by Meta’s Facebook in relation to managing Arabic content. She argues that the Arabic content is subject to “inconsistent moderation,” meaning that some content will be over-moderated, while other content will be left untouched despite violating the platforms’ standards. These inconsistencies have limited users’ ability to engage in meaningful political debates in the region. Put simply, Arabic-speaking users are now uncertain whether their content will be deleted or kept by the algorithm. This type of unclear and inconsistent moderation has led to a social distrust towards AI tools and applications among Arab Internet users.
Read the paper here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/24_elswah.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Making a Movement: The History and Future of Human Rights
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - In 2023, the international community celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The creation of such a document—its mere existence—must count among the greatest achievements in human history.
In recognition of this anniversary, the Carr Center’s latest publication, Making a Movement: The History and Future of Human Rights, delves into the past, present, and future of the human rights movement, evaluating its successes and failures, and presenting potential areas of progress.
Throughout the publication, you’ll read pieces from 90 Harvard faculty, fellows, and affiliates as they evaluate the intersection of the UDHR and global human rights with the themes of racial justice, transitional justice, economic equality, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, security, migration, changing political systems, climate change, advancing technology, and more.
Read the publication.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/making_a_movement.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Provocations for Human Rights & Technology
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Sebastián Lehuedé
A1 - Ella McPherson
A1 - Sharath Srinivasan
AB - Breaking from big tech, civic activists, and human rights advocates working with technology are envisioning data, platforms and intelligent systems aligned with pluralism and solidarity. These experiences are inspiring valuable reflections not only for those working at the intersection of technology and human rights but also for anyone who wants to challenge the technological status quo. In this set of six provocations, projects carried out by the Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CGHR) at the University of Cambridge provide valuable insights. An examination of concrete examples, such as an anti-racism witnessing platform and a public health citizen data initiative in Eastern Africa, surfaces seemingly mundane issues involved in technology design that connect with longstanding concerns for the human rights movement. Such reflections become especially provocative when combined with deep insights stemming from critical race, feminist, and decolonial approaches to digital design, data, and AI. More specifically, these provocations suggest the urgency of: (1) resisting the frenetic pace of technology development through slow tech; (2) favoring communicative instead of extractive approaches to data creation; (3) acknowledging the ambiguity of voice in data interpretation; (4) designing platforms that enable bottom-up critiques; (5) embracing the burden and privilege of data creation and interpretation; and (6) creating data with care, i.e., in a way that nurtures the communities and territories that make data possible in the first place.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/23_provocations-web.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Technology Dependence & Racial Inequality: Theorizing “Design Thinking” on Human Rights
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Nnenna Ifeanyi-Ajufo
AB - The exacerbation of racial inequality through the design of technologies remains an understated way in which the evolution of digital technologies impacts our human rights. As we continue to consider the impacts of modern technology on our human rights in areas such as privacy, freedom of expression, etc., we must also increasingly consider the interaction between digital technologies and forms of racial inequality. We continue to see how people of certain races are subjected to prejudicial consequences and outcomes of the design and deployment of digital technologies. This makes it relevant to examine a racial (in)equality perspective of advancing a “human rights by design” agenda for digital technologies. The conversations about racial inequality and digital technologies have also not specifically centered the discourse from a dependence perspective. This gave cause for the paper which links the development of digital technologies to thoughts about dependence through examining the racial inequality and discrimination discourse that has emerged because of the development and deployment of digital technologies. Perhaps racial inequality is also exacerbated by dependence on digital technologies developed in settings and cultures that give little recognition to the need to include all races in the design and deployment of digital technologies. Thoughts about the obligation of tech companies to imply key human rights standards such as non-discrimination and equality in the design stages of digital technologies further provides a background for the elaboration of the idea that “design thinking” can promote tech designing in a manner that incorporates safeguards against racial discrimination based on human rights standards.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ifeanyi-ajufo.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - On the Role of Solar Geoengineering in Combatting Climate Change: Harvard University vs. Indigenous Voices
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Mathias Risse
AB - In 2021 the Saami Council asked Harvard to suspend research related to stratospheric aerosol injections, a form of geoengineering. Their intervention raises far-reaching questions regarding the appropriateness of geoengineering as a response to climate change, but also regarding the status of indigenous voices in this debate. I make two main points. Firstly, it behooves us to engage indigenous voices as a way of addressing one type of moral corruption in climate change, namely that only voices from the present can engage on what to do about it. Absent actual representation of future generations, engaging with the ecological stance typically associated with indigenous groups (who display remarkable commonality in this regard) is the best we can do. Secondly, while critics rightly associate geoengineering with the mindset that caused climate change, it still seems wise to continue research into stratospheric aerosol injections. But advocacy in this domain has performative dimensions and itself might trigger reactions and counter-reactions. So, taking this stance entails follow-up obligations to ensure geoengineering is not used to defeat efforts at emission reductions.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/23_risse_geoengineering.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Automation Anxiety and a Right to Freedom from Automated Systems and AI
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Ziyaad Bhorat
AB - Rapid advances in AI have created a global sense of urgency around the ways that automated systems are changing human lives. Not all of these changes are necessarily for the better. On what basis, therefore, might we be able to assert a right to be free from automated systems and AI? The idea seems absurd, given how embedded these technologies already are and the improvements they have generated in contemporary life when we compare with prior periods in human history. And yet, there are good grounds for recognizing a general entitlement to protect at least three important human abilities: i) to work; ii) to know and understand the source of the content we consume; and iii) to make our own decisions. Understood comprehensively, a right to freedom from automated systems and AI could mean that individuals and communities are presented with alternative options and/or leverage to keep them from losing these abilities long cherished in the history of human development. Such a right does not call for dismantling the technological age, but rather designates what we ought to contest and protect in a world with a precarious dependence on technology.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/23_discussionpaper_bhorat.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Carr Center 2022-23 Annual Report
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
UR - carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/carrcenter_annualreport_2023_hi-res.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - A Radical Reckoning with Cultural Devastation and Its Aftermath: Reflections on Wub-e-ke-niew’s We Have the Right to Exist
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Mathias Risse
AB - Wub-e-ke-niew’s enormously unsettling book We Have the Right to Exist presents a version of indigenous philosophical thought as an alternative way of being human in the world that creates profound insights in times of ecological crisis and technological disruption. He also confronts especially his White American readers with a blistering assessment of centuries of cultural devastation with ongoing effects on contemporary society. His messages are radical, and some of them are potentially divisive within the Native-American community because most Native Americans are not actually indigenous in terms of Wub-e-ke-niew’s standards. His views are very much worth reflecting on, and much of what he has to say about the consequences of the conquest and about the possibilities offered by Native American thought do not depend on these divisive views. His insights about Western civilization connect to internal criticisms articulated by thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Latour and so make his text an excellent entry point for genuine engagement between Western and indigenous thought.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/23_mathias.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - The Evolution of the Global Human Rights Movement: A Three-Decade Perspective
Y1 - 2023
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - Kenneth Roth gave a lecture at the JFK Jr. Forum, discussing the evolution of human rights work, the strategic challenges and opportunities facing Human Rights Watch over the decades, and the future of human rights.
Roth's talk, co-sponsored by the Carr Center and the Institute of Politics, additionally featured an introduction by Mathias Risse (Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy), additional comments from Kathryn Sikkink (Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy) and was moderated by Sushma Raman, the former Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. A complete recording of the event is also available online.
Read the transcript of his lecture here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/rothforum.pdf
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - The Critical Human Rights Issues of 2022: Year in Review
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - As 2022 draws to a close, the Carr Center and its affiliates are reflecting on events and issues around the world that continue to shape our approach to protecting human rights. As new developments unfold in the political, social, economic, and technological spheres, the strategies by which we protect our fundamental rights must continue to evolve and adapt to our changing world.
To honor International Human Rights Day this year, we are examining several of the top human rights issues the United States and the world have faced in 2022, including challenges to democracy, racial equality in the US, the Russia-Ukraine War, Iran’s women’s rights movement, and more. Comments from several of our Carr Center faculty and fellows identify how these issues can be better addressed to lay the groundwork for a better world.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/human-rights-challeges-2022.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Can We Move Fast Without Breaking Things? Software Engineering Methods Matter to Human Rights Outcomes
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Alexander Voss
AB - As the products of the IT industry have become ever more prevalent in our everyday lives, evidence of undesirable consequences of their use has become ever more difficult to ignore. Consequently, several responses ranging from attempts to foster individual ethics and collective standards in the industry to legal and regulatory frameworks have been developed and are being widely discussed in the literature. This paper instead makes the argument that currently popular methods of software engineering are implicated as they hinder work that would be necessary to avoid negative outcomes. I argue that software engineering has regressed and that introducing rights as a core concept into the ways of working in the industry is essential for making software engineering more rights-respecting.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/22_voss.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Not My A.I.: Towards Critical Feminist Frameworks to Resist Oppressive A.I. Systems
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Joana Varon
A1 - Paz Peña
AB - In the hype of A.I., we are observing a world where States are increasingly adopting algorithmic decision-making systems altogether with narratives that portray them as a magic wand to “solve” social, economic, environmental, and political problems. But in practice, instead of addressing such promise, the so-called Digital Welfare States are likely to be deploying oppressive algorithms that expand practices of surveillance of the poor and vulnerable; automate inequalities; are racist and patriarchal by design; further practices of digital colonialism, where data and mineral extractivism feed Big Tech businesses from the Global North; and reinforce neoliberal practices to progressively drain out social security perspectives. While much has been discussed about “ethical”, “fair,” or “human-Centered” A.I., particularly focused on transparency, accountability, and data protection, these approaches fail to address the overall picture.
To deepen critical thinking and question such trends, led by case-based analysis focused on A.I. projects from Latin America that are likely to pose harm to gender equality and its intersectionalities of race, class, sexuality, territoriality, etc, this article summarizes some findings of the notmy.ai project, seeking to contribute to the development of feminist frameworks to question algorithmic decision-making systems that are being deployed by the public sector. The universalistic approach of human rights frameworks provide important goals for humanity to seek, but when we look into the present, we cannot ignore existing power relations that maintain historical relations of oppression and domination. Rights are not universally accessed.
Feminist theories and practices are important tools to acknowledge the existence of the political structures behind the deployment of technologies and, therefore, are an important framework to question them. For this reason, they can serve as a powerful instrument to imagine other tech and other worlds based on collective and more democratic responses to core societal challenges, focused on equity and social-environmental justice.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/22_varon.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Online Platforms & Mental Health: A Policy Proposal
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Maria Carnovale
A1 - Samuel A. Ramirez
AB - In recent years, there has been growing concern regarding the unintended mental health impact of online platforms and whether they might be driving a public health crisis, especially among children and teens. There is emerging evidence that spending too much time on digital platforms—like gaming sites, online pornography sites, and social media—can be associated with negative mental health effects such as depression and social anxiety, at least in some users. Yet most policy action and advocacy in this industry have focused on the issues of privacy and misinformation, relegating the mental health impact of digital technology as a secondary byproduct of the industry. In this paper, we provide an overview of the documented negative mental health effects associated with prolonged use of video games, online pornography, and social media. We outline the measures that have been taken to address the mental health impact of these technologies. Finally, we suggest that induced overuse is at the heart of the problem and we propose an incentive-based policy mechanism to address it.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/22_carnovale.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Future of Human Rights
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
AB - Human rights are dynamic, rather than static. The contemporary status quo emerged via a three-phase process, from conceptualization, to clarification, and to consolidation. The present is an interregnum between two significant eras, a fact which the generations metaphor does not adequately capture. The future of human rights will be shaped by how individuals and institutions engage with advances in technologies that transform and extend the mind and body. Particular attention is paid to innovation in superintelligence, social robots, and augmented humans. One implication of this analysis is that changes to the mind and body are likely to transform the subject of rights and to require the development of more a sophisticated rights ecology. Human rights scholars and advocates should engage in a proactive and ambitious program to prepare for such developments. Such efforts will ensure there are rights to clarify and consolidate in the era to come.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/22_choi-fitzpatrick.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Handle With Care: Autonomous Weapons and Why the Laws of War Are Not Enough
JF - Technology and Democracy Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Linda Eggert
ED - Joshua Simmons
AB - In spring 2013, a global coalition, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, launched with a mission to advocate for a ban on “machines that determine whom to kill.” Nine years later, almost to the day at the time of writing, no such ban exists. Autonomous weapons research is alive and well, and artificial intelligence has made it to the fore of the Pentagon’s future weapons development strategy. The latest Review Conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), a primary forum for international talks on lethal autonomous weapon systems, failed to achieve consensus on whether new international laws are needed to address threats posed by autonomous weapons technology. Meanwhile, high-tech military powers, including China, Russia, Israel, South Korea, the US, and the UK, continue to invest heavily in the development of autonomous weapon systems.
One especially widely shared worry is that AWS may not be able to comply with the laws of armed conflict. This paper warns that, though seemingly natural and ubiquitous, appeals to international humanitarian law (IHL) should be handled with care. By interrogating compliance with IHL as a criterion for assessing the moral permissibility of deployment, this paper illuminates an altogether different dimension of the debate: what criteria we should apply to begin with, as we confront the moral and legal conundrums of the increasing autonomization of warfare.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/22_handlewithcare.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Carr Center 2021-2022 Annual Report
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - The world is rapidly changing, and with it, the human rights landscape continues to shift. As these changes continue, so does the work of the Carr Center to bring human rights front-and-center into our everyday lives. Our 2021-2022 annual report highlights the Carr Center’s growing reach over the past year, thanks to the continued expansion of our programs and the dedication of our faculty, fellows, and students to human rights policy and research.
Our new research, publications, books, podcast episodes, and webinars over the course of the year—created in tandem with our faculty and fellows—have reached over 150 countries around the world, bringing the Carr Center’s mission into the homes, universities, and workplaces of thousands. To learn more about what the Carr Center accomplished during the 2021-2022 academic year, click the link below.
Read the report.
PB - Harvard Kennedy School
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/annualreport22.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Populism, Authoritarianism, and Institutional Resistance: Constitutional Courts in the Game of Power
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Justice Luís Roberto Barroso
AB - Democratic constitutionalism was the victorious ideology of the 20th century, having defeated the alternatives that appeared over the decades: communism, fascism, Nazism, military regimes, and religious fundamentalism. However, in these first decades of the 21st century, something seems to not be going very well. Some describe it as a democratic recession. This paper identifies three phenomena that underlie this historical process: populism, extremism, and authoritarianism, as well as their political, economic-social, and cultural-identity causes. Then, after an analysis of the world context, this article focuses on the Brazilian experience in recent years, narrating the threats to constitutional legality and the institutional reaction. The final part discusses the limits and possibilities of constitutional courts in the exercise of their role of defending constitutionalism and democracy.
Read the Paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/22_carr_barroso.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - A More Equal Future? Political Equality, Discrimination, and Machine Learning
JF - Technology and Democracy Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Joshua Simons
A1 - Eli Frankel
AB - Machine learning is everywhere. AI-evangelists promise that data-driven decision-making will not only boost organizational efficiency, it will also help make organizations fairer and advance social justice. Yet the effects of machine learning on social justice, human rights, and democracy will depend not on the technology itself, but on human choices about how to design and deploy it. Among the most important is whether and how to ensure systems do not reproduce and entrench pervasive patterns of inequality.
The authors argue that we need radical civil rights reforms to regulate AI in the digital age, and must return to the roots of civil rights. This paper is adapted from Josh Simons's forthcoming book, Algorithms for the People: Democracy in the Age of AI, published by Princeton University Press this Fall.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/a_more_equal_future_01.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - How AI Fails Us
JF - Technology and Democracy Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Divya Siddarth
A1 - Daron Acemoglu
A1 - Danielle Allen
A1 - Kate Crawford
A1 - James Evans
A1 - Michael Jordan
A1 - E. Glen Weyl
AB - The dominant vision of artificial intelligence imagines a future of large-scale autonomous systems outperforming humans in an increasing range of felds. This “actually existing AI” vision misconstrues intelligence as autonomous rather than social and relational. It is both unproductive and dangerous, optimizing for artificial metrics of human replication rather than for systemic augmentation, and tending to concentrate power, resources, and decision-making in an engineering elite. Alternative visions based on participating in and augmenting human creativity and cooperation have a long history and underlie many celebrated digital technologies such as personal computers and the internet. Researchers and funders should redirect focus from centralized autonomous general intelligence to a plurality of established and emerging approaches that extend cooperative and augmentative traditions as seen in successes such as Taiwan’s digital democracy project and collective intelligence platforms like Wikipedia.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/howaifailsus.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Building Human Rights into Intelligent-Community Design: Beyond Procurement
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Phil Dawson
A1 - Faun Rice
A1 - Maya Watson
AB - Cities have emerged as test beds for digital innovation. Data-collecting devices, such as sensors and cameras, have enabled fine-grained monitoring of public services including urban transit, energy distribution, and waste management, yielding tremendous potential for improvements in efficiency and sustainability. At the same, there is a rising public awareness that without clear guidelines or sufficient safeguards, data collection and use in both public and private spaces can lead to negative impacts on a broad spectrum of human rights and freedoms. In order to productively move forward with intelligent-community projects and design them to meet their full potential in serving the public interest, a consideration of rights and risks is essential.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/dawson_human_rights_and_intelligent_community_design.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Humanitarian Digital Ethics: A Foresight and Decolonial Governance Approach
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Aarathi Krishnan
AB - Just as rights are not static, neither is harm. The humanitarian system has always been critiqued as arguably colonial and patriarchal. As these systems increasingly intersect with Western, capitalist technology systems in the race of “for good” technology, how do governance systems ethically anticipate harm, not just now but into the future? Can humanitarian governance systems design mitigation or subversion mechanisms to not lock people into future harm, future inequity, or future indebtedness because of technology design and intervention? Instead of looking at digital governance in terms of control, weaving in foresight and decolonial approaches might liberate our digital futures so that it is a space of safety and humanity for all, and through this, birth new forms of digital humanism.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/krishnan.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Companies as Courts? Google's Role Deciding Digital Human Rights Outcomes in the Right to be Forgotten
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2022
A1 - Rachel Ann Hulvey
AB - One of the unwritten rules of the internet is that it was designed to never forget, a feature associated with emerging privacy harms from the availability of personal information captured online. Before the advent of search engines, discovering personal histories would have required hours of sifting through library records. Search engines present the opportunity to find immense amounts of personal details within seconds through a few simple keystrokes. When individuals experience privacy harms, they have limited recourse to demand changes from firms, as platform companies are in the business of making information more accessible.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/22_hulvey_companies-as-courts.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Black Lives Matter: Power, Perception, and Press
JF - Topol Fellow Discussion Paper
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Teresa Chen
AB - Our national reckoning with racism and police brutality, long in the making, was not inevitable. Activists and community leaders had to not only organize an effective, lasting movement against racist brutality carried out by the police but also navigate the media portrayal of the Black Lives Matter movement. The BLM movement forced the American public to see the dots and acknowledge the pattern of senseless violence carried out by the police against the black community. In so doing, the movement created the largest civil resistance campaign in American history, with millions of people across the country and around the world joining the protests.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/21_chen_topol_paper.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Looking Ahead: Human Rights Priorities in 2022
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - The global pandemic has brought to the forefront the human rights issues that millions of us struggle with each day, from economic inequality and racial discrimination to the rise of authoritarianism and the threat of new technology and rampant disinformation.
To mark International Human Rights Day, the Carr Center is looking ahead to 2022 and identifying the top four areas of concern to improve and protect our human rights: discrimination and racial inequality; impoverishment and economic inequality; accountability and authoritarianism; and technology and artificial intelligence. Throughout this publication, a number of Carr Center affiliates have commented on these themes, identifying the main areas or challenges that must be focused on in 2022 to lay the groundwork for a better world where human rights are made central to our everyday lives.
Read the paper.
PB - Harvard Kennedy School
CY - Cambridge, MA
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/2022_looking_ahead.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Peru’s Indigenous and Rural Grassroots Civil Resistance Against the Extractive Sector
JF - Topol Fellow Discussion Paper
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Mayumi Cornejo
AB - Peru is a resource-rich country where mining dominates the extractive industry. In fact, the mining industry — which has around 200 active mines throughout the country and 48 mining projects worth $57.7 billion in investment currently under development — accounts for 10% of Peru’s GDP and 60% of its exports. This creates an incentive for the government to protect and promote mining investment, many times at the expense of the interests of local communities. Therefore, it’s no wonder that some of the most visible social conflicts in Peru over the last two decades have been related to extractive industries.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/cornejo_topol_02.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Grappling with the Rise of Right-Wing Populist Movements in Europe
JF - Topol Fellow Discussion Paper
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Michelle Poulin
AB - Right-wing populist movements, which incorporate right-wing political theory and populist modalities, have become increasingly prominent and mainstream over the past decade, both in the Global North and Global South. European far-right populism shares many commonalities with other regional populist movements, but also has its own set of distinct methods, risks, and uncertainties.
This discussion paper by Michelle Poulin, Carr Center Topol Fellow, will outline the unique characteristics of European far-right populist movements, the ways in which countries’ 20th century histories have influenced current day populist politics, and the online and offline organizational strategies that have helped right-wing movements influence the successes of right-wing political parties in recent years. It will also examine the rise of Germany’s far-right populist movement and the social factors that may have led to it.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/michelle_poulin_topol_paper.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Human Rights Implications of Algorithmic Impact Assessments: Priority Considerations to Guide Effective Development and Use
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Brandie Nonnecke
A1 - Philip Dawson
AB - The public and private sectors are increasingly turning to the use of algorithmic or artificial intelligence impact assessments (AIAs) as a means to identify and mitigate harms from AI. While promising, lack of clarity on the proper scope, methodology, and best practices for AIAs could inadvertently perpetuate the harms they seek to mitigate, especially to human rights. We explore the emerging integration of the human rights legal framework into AI governance strategies, including the implementation of human rights impacts assessments (HRIAs) to assess AI. The benefits and drawbacks from recent implementations of AIAs and HRIAs to assess AI adopted by the public and private sectors are explored and considered in the context of an emerging trend toward the development of standards, certifications, and regulatory technologies for responsible AI governance practices. We conclude with priority considerations to better ensure that AIAs and their corresponding responsible AI governance strategies live up to their promise.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/nonnecke_and_dawson_human_rights_implications.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Conflict, Militarization, and Exploitation of Indigenous Land and Resources
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - The 2021 Indigenous Women Convening for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation Conference brought together Indigenous scholars and female leaders from seven Indigenous socio-cultural zones around the world. Together, they shared stories of war and conflict in their territories and discussed collective ways of ideating Indigenous conflict resolution and peacemaking processes.
The event was organized by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy; the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights; the Scholars at Risk Program; and the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender, Justice, and Peace. Co-sponsors included the Center for the Study of World Religions; the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; the Harvard College Writing Program; HUNAP; Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative; and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The event was moderated by Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB Director of Research and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Shelly Lowe, Executive Director of the Harvard University Native American Program. Opening remarks were provided by Raquel Vega-Duran, Chair of the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights, and Sushma Raman, Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
This publication features the 10 speakers of the conference and their profound statements on the state of human rights and peacemaking in their respective Indigenous zones.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/indigenous_women_convening_2021.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Power of Choosing Not to Build: Justice, Non-Deployment, and the Purpose of AI Optimization
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Annette Zimmermann
AB - Are there any types of AI that should never be built in the first place? The “Non-Deployment Argument”—the claim that some forms of AI should never be deployed, or even built—has been subject to significant controversy recently: non-deployment skeptics fear that it will stifle innovation, and argue that the continued deployment and incremental optimization of AI tools will ultimately benefit everyone in society. However, there are good reasons to subject the view that we should always try to build, deploy, and gradually optimize new AI tools to critical scrutiny: in the context of AI, making things better is not always good enough. In specific cases, there are overriding ethical and political reasons—such as the ongoing presence of entrenched structures of social injustice—why we ought not to continue to build, deploy, and optimize particular AI tools for particular tasks. Instead of defaulting to optimization, we have a moral and political duty to critically interrogate and contest the value and purpose of using AI in a given domain in the first place.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/zimmermann_the_power_of_choosing_not_to_build.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Human Rights and the Pandemic: The Other Half of the Story
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Elizabeth M. Renieris
AB - Human rights are a broad array of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights and freedoms that are universal and inalienable, inherent to the dignity of every human being. The application of human rights to digital technologies has generally focused on individual civil and political rights, such as the freedom of expression and privacy. However, as digital technologies evolve beyond traditional information and communications technologies to increasingly mediate access to everything from healthcare to employment, education, and participation in social and cultural life, an increasingly broad array of human rights are implicated. With humanity more reliant on digital tools and technologies than ever before, the stakes have never been more apparent than during the Covid-19 pandemic. Gripped by the magical potential of digital tools and technologies and the allure of simple solutions to complex governance challenges, governments and key stakeholders have adopted an exceedingly limited view of human rights in relation to these technologies, focusing almost exclusively on a narrow set of civil and political rights while virtually ignoring threats to economic, social, and cultural rights. For those already at the margins, this has exacerbated their digital exclusion. This paper calls for a more expansive view of human rights in relation to technology governance. After contextualizing the role of economic, social, and cultural rights in relation to digital technologies, this paper examines how such rights have been largely absent from the discourse around technologies deployed in the pandemic (“pandemic tech”), as well as the consequences of that omission. The paper then explores how a recalibration of human rights in relation to digital technologies, specifically pandemic tech, could help prevent geopolitical fracturing, reorient the conversation around people rather than technology, and provide a critical backstop against the runaway commercialization that threatens the exercise and enjoyment of fundamental rights by individuals and communities.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/renieris_human_rights_and_the_pandemic.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Public Health, Technology, and Human Rights: Lessons Learned from Digital Contact Tracing
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Maria Carnovale
A1 - Khahlil Louisy
AB - To mitigate inefficiencies in manual contact tracing processes, Digital contact tracing and exposure notifications systems were developed for use as public-interest technologies during the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) global pandemic. Effective implementation of these tools requires alignment across several factors, including local regulations and policies and trust in government and public health officials. Careful consideration should also be made to minimize any potential conflicts with existing processes in public health, which has demonstrated effectiveness. Four unique cases—of Ireland, Guayaquil (Ecuador), Haiti, and the Philippines—detailed in this paper will highlight the importance of upholding the principles of Scientific Validity, Necessity, Time-Boundedness, and Proportionality.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/carnovale-louisy_public-health-technology-human-rights.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Fourth Generation of Human Rights: Epistemic Rights in Digital Lifeworlds
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - In contrast to China’s enormous efforts to upgrade its system of governance to a new technological level built around a stupefying amount of data collection and electronic scoring, countries committed to democracy and human rights did not upgrade their systems. Instead of adjusting democracy and human rights to the new technological possibilities, those countries ended up with surveillance capitalism. It is vital for the sheer survival of those ideas about governance to perform such an upgrade. The present project aims to contribute to that. I propose a framework of epistemic actorhood in terms of four roles, and characterize digital lifeworlds and what matters about them, in terms of both how they fit in with Max Tegmark’s distinction among various stages of human life and how they give rise to their own episteme and the data episteme, with its immense possibilities of infopower (vocabulary inspired by Foucault). A set of epistemic rights that strengthen existing human rights—as part of a fourth generation of rights—is needed to protect epistemic actorhood in those roles, which would be a long way towards performing this kind of upgrade. In the long run, as we progress into Life 3.0, we need a new kind of human right, the right to the exercise of genuinely human intelligence. The good news is that, to the extent that we can substantiate the meaning of human life in the uncaring world that natural science describes, we can substantiate such a right vis-à-vis nonhuman intelligent life. We must hope that arguments of this sort can persuade a superior intelligence—which is by definition, massively beyond ours, and hard to anticipate.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/risse_fourth-generation.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Carr Center Annual Report: 2020-2021
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - The Carr Center is pleased to release its 2020-2021 Annual Report. Take a look at our work, and learn how to get involved.
This past academic year has been a year like no other. In many ways, our mission and work have never felt more relevant since the Center’s founding in 1999. Our 2020–2021 Annual Report highlights the Center’s mission, people, programs, and reach over the past year. In addition to the research, publications, and books developed by our experts, the Center has utilized podcasts, live virtual events, and social media to remain connected remotely with our ever-growing audience around the world. We’d like to thank the community of people who make our work possible: the Carr Center’s faculty, fellows, staff, and Advisory Board; the students at the Harvard Kennedy School; and each of you who has joined us in this unpredictable journey over the past year.
We hope that you remain engaged with our work in the coming months. After all, human rights are not just about institutions, laws, and policies. They are about people coming together, hoping to make the world and their communities a better place—more just, more equitable, and more peaceful.
Read the Annual Report
PB - Harvard Kennedy School
CY - Cambridge, MA
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/carr_center_2020-21_annual_report.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Media Freedom and Technological Change
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Vivek Krishnamurthy
A1 - Mark Latonero
A1 - Rachel Kuchma
A1 - Elif Nur Kumru
A1 - Geneviève Plumptre
AB - The concept of media freedom developed in the 20th century alongside efforts to advance governmental transparency and accountability in democracies. Media freedom empowers journalists, enabling them to act as checks on governments and other powerful social actors, and allowing them to contribute to a democratic discourse that is fact-based and accessible. The principle also provides an analytical framework for interrogating the central role that the news media plays in democratic societies. Even so, current understandings of media freedom remain rooted in the historical postwar moment that gave rise to the concept: a period that predates the information revolution and the proliferation of new communications technologies.
Technological change has transformed the economics of the news industry and undermined the ad-supported business models of legacy media organizations. This destabilization poses a fundamental challenge to the old model of media freedom, forcing questions of who today is entitled to media freedom and whether current media freedom protections are sufficient. To ensure the ongoing relevance of media freedom, the concept must evolve to address the contemporary conditions of news production, and the new impediments to gathering and disseminating fact-based information in the public interest.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/211011-media_freedom_report-b.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Artificial Intelligence and the Past, Present, and Future of Democracy
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Located at the intersection of political philosophy, philosophy of technology and political history, this essay reflects on medium and long-term prospects and challenges for democracy that arise from AI, emphasizing how critical a stage this is. Modern democracies involve structures for collective choice that periodically empower relatively few people to steer the social direction for everybody. As in all forms of governance, technology shapes how this unfolds. Specialized AI changes what philosophers of technology would call the materiality of democracy, not just in the sense that independent actors deploy different tools. AI changes how collective decision making unfolds and what its human participants are like (how they see themselves in relation to their environment, what relationships they have and how those are designed, and generally what form of human life can get realized). AI and democracy are not “natural allies:” it takes active design choices and much political will for AI so serve democratic purposes.
Read the full paper
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ai-and-democracy.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Panel Discussion
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - May 31, 2021, marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, when a violent white mob nearly destroyed the formerly thriving and prosperous African American community in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, also known as Black Wall Street. Over 300 African Americans were killed, and thousands were displaced. Hundreds of homes and businesses burned to the ground. At the time, Greenwood, like so many African American neighborhoods and townships across the United States, was situated in a particular spatial and temporal context marked by both progress and promise, as well as violence and discrimination.
In the decades since, the Massacre was covered up, local officials obstructed the redevelopment of Greenwood, and the local chapter of the KKK became one of the largest in the US. We spoke with a group of leaders, policymakers, academics, and researchers to discuss the historical legacy of the Massacre, its effects on current-day policy and organizing debates related to racial justice, and the movement for reparations. We spoke with a group of leaders, policymakers, academics, and researchers to discuss the historical legacy of the Massacre, its effects on current-day policy and organizing debates related to racial justice, and the movement for reparations. Read the discussion.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210607-tulsa_race_massacre.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Promise and Pitfalls of the Facebook Oversight Board
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Flynn Coleman
A1 - Brandie Nonnecke
A1 - Elizabeth M. Renieris
AB - The Facebook Oversight Board recently issued its first decisions on content removals by Facebook. See what some of the Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellows had to say about the benefits, challenges, and risks of external oversight boards for platform governance and accountability.
Read the discussion.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/facebook_oversight_board.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Biden's 100 Days
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - We asked faculty and fellows from the Carr Center to share their insight on the first 100 days of the Biden Administration. Here's what they had to say.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/Biden-100-days.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Data as Collectively Generated Patterns: Making Sense of Data Ownership
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Data ownership is power. Who should hold that power? How should data be owned? The importance of data ownership explains why it has been analogized to other domains where ownership is better understood. Several data-as proposals are on the table: data as oil, as intellectual property, as personhood, as salvage, data as labor, etc. Author Mathias Risse proposes another way of thinking about data. His view characterizes data in ways that make them accessible to ownership considerations and can be expressed as a data-as view: data as collectively generated patterns. Unlike the alternatives, data as collectively generated patterns does not create any equivalence with another domain where ownership is already well-understood. It reveals how ownership considerations enter, but we must explore afresh how they do. Accordingly, he proposes a way for ownership considerations to bear on data once we understand them that way. And if we did understand them that way, the internet should presumably be designed very differently from what we have now.
Read the full paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210426-data_ownership.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Practice What You Preach: Global Human Rights Leadership Begins at Home
JF - Foreign Affairs
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - The international standing of the United States has taken a serious hit over the past four years. Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s strident “America first” foreign policy is partly to blame, but so are his attacks on democracy and human rights, both internationally and domestically. Abroad, Trump set the cause of human rights back by embracing authoritarians and alienating democratic allies. At home, he launched an assault on the electoral process, encouraged a failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and systematically undermined civil rights protections, leaving his successor to grapple with multiple, overlapping human rights crises. As if that were not enough, a host of other problems await, from the pandemic to increasing competition with China and the overall decline of American power.
Read the full article.
UR - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-04-20/human-rights-practice-what-you-preach
IS - May/ June 2021
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Rethinking the “necessary” trade-offs of distributing value to suppliers: An analysis of the profit-sharing model
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Elizabeth A. Bennett
A1 - Janina Grabs
AB - Far too often, global supply chains distribute value in ways that contribute to income inequality and the uneven accumulation of wealth. Despite a surge of innovations to address this problem—such as fair trade, corporate social responsibility, and creating shared value—the issue of value distribution persists as a pressing priority for the international development and business communities. This article puts forth a first attempt at theorizing profit sharing as a potential mechanism for more equitable value distribution in global value chains. Drawing on two in-depth, multi-method case studies of companies that share profits in the coffee sector, we develop eight theoretical propositions about the applicability and efficacy of profit sharing as a tool for redistribution. Our research suggests that profit sharing can distribute value without requiring suppliers to compromise price stability, profit maximization, value creation, or alternative economic opportunities. This conclusion challenges extant theory which asserts (based on studies of fair trade certification, direct trade, and solidarity trade) that these tradeoffs are typically necessary or inevitable. We also extend the literature on profit sharing. Extant literature examines firm-level attempts to maximize productivity and minimize dissent. We contribute by theorizing profit sharing’s fitness for redistributive objectives in the context of value chains. The implication of our findings is that, in some contexts, companies may be able to increase prices and improve income stability without requiring suppliers to compromise other economic priorities.
Read the full paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/global_supply_chains.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Human Rights Impact Assessments for AI: Learning from Facebook’s Failure in Myanmar
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Mark Latonero
A1 - Aaina Agarwal
AB - Human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) have recently emerged as a way for technology companies to identify, mitigate, and remedy the potential risks and harms of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic systems. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether HRIAs are a tool fit for purpose for AI. Will HRIAs become an effective tool of AI governance that reduces risks and harms? Or, will they become a form of AI “ethics washing” that permits companies to hide behind a veneer of human rights due diligence and accountability? This paper finds that HRIAs of AI are only in their infancy. Simply conducting such assessments with the usual methods will miss the mark for AI and algorithmic systems, as demonstrated by the failures of the HRIA of Facebook in Myanmar. Facebook commissioned an HRIA after UN investigators found that genocide was committed in the country. However, the HRIA did not adequately assess the most salient human rights impacts of Facebook’s presence and product in Myanmar. HRIAs should be updated if they are to be used on AI and algorithmic systems. HRIAs for AI should be seen as an analysis of a sociotechnical system wherein social and technical factors are inherently intertwined and interrelated. Interdisciplinary expertise is needed to determine the appropriate methods and criteria for specific contexts where AI systems are deployed. In addition, HRIAs should be conducted at appropriate times relative to critical stages in an AI development lifecycle and function on an ongoing basis as part of a comprehensive human rights due diligence process. Challenges remain, such as developing methods to identify algorithmic discrimination as one of the most salient human rights concerns when it comes to assessing AI harms. In addition, a mix of voluntary actions and mandatory measures may be needed to incentivize organizations to incorporate HRIAs for AI and algorithmic systems in a more effective, transparent, and accountable way. The paper concludes with considerations for the technology sector, government, and civil society.
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210318-facebook-failure-in-myanmar.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Documentation as Resistance Against Widespread Civilian Harm in Yemen
JF - Topol Fellow Discussion Paper
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Niku Jafarnia
AB -
The efforts by Yemeni civil society to document the harms of the war as they occur are a powerful act of resistance and are critical to advancing justice for the Yemenis against whom these harms have been perpetrated, in whatever form that justice may ultimately take.
The Yemeni Civil War broke out in 2014 following a failed political transition in the aftermath of the 2011 Yemeni Revolution. The Revolution had resulted in the ouster of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had ruled North Yemen and—after North and South Yemen joined—the Republic of Yemen, for more than three decades. However, several groups—including the Houthi movement in northern Yemen—opposed the new government that had formed under Saleh’s former vice president, now current President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. The Houthis attacked and took over the Yemeni capital of Sana’a in the fall of 2014, and several months later, Saudi Arabia responded with a military intervention to re-install the Hadi government, resulting in the civil war that continues to devastate Yemen today.
Since then, it has been deemed the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” Though the Hadi-led Yemeni government and the Houthi-led insurgency are the central parties to the conflict, more than a dozen countries have provided support to one of the sides. Most importantly, a Saudi-led coalition of countries (the “Saudi Led Coalition”), including the U.S., is backing the government, while Iran is providing support to the Houthis. The respective resources of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other countries have contributed to the high rate of civilian casualties, the millions of people at risk of starvation, and the widespread violations of International Human Rights Law (IHRL) and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in the Yemeni conflict. In spite of this, no party to the conflict has transparently addressed the number of civilian casualties, nor the broader violations of IHL and IHRL, resulting from their operations, and have instead denied their role in the harms being perpetrated against Yemeni civilians.
Read the full paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/civil_resistance.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - How To Save The Amazon: The Reasons Why a Living Forest is Worth More than a Cut-Down One
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Luís Roberto Barroso
A1 - Patrícia Perrone Campos Mello
AB - This paper highlights the importance of the Amazon for the global ecosystem, the retreat and the advance of deforestation in the area located within Brazilian territory, as well as the rising trend of environmental crimes, with special attention afforded to illegal logging, land grabbing and unauthorized mining activities, including in indigenous reserves. The article enumerates the governmental public policies that were successful in containing the destruction of the forest, and the setbacks they have suffered in recent times. The final part describes the forest exploitation models adopted thus far, which have had limited economic and social impact, and presents an alternative, currently under discussion, which combines the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the forest’s bioeconomy. The text also identifies contributions that international stakeholders can offer to forest conservation efforts, such as financing mechanisms (REDD+) and sustainability certification requirements by markets that consume Brazilian exports and by financial institutions when evaluating companies who develop activities in Brazil’s Legal Amazon (BLA).
Read the paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210310-amazon.pdf
IS - 2021-011
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - International Womxn’s Day
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Carr Center
AB - In recognition of International Womxn’s Day this year, we spoke with faculty and fellows across the center and asked them to share their insight on one question: What do we need to focus on in the coming year to fully realize the rights of womxn and girls around the world? Learn what they had to say.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210307-womens_day.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Privacy, Personal Data, and Surveillance
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Privacy has always been one of the most precarious rights of American life because it lacks clear protections in the U.S. Constitution. The right to privacy is under attack in this moment in our history like no other previous moment. Privacy defenders are attempting to fight a two-front war, as increasing incursions are made by private industry and government law enforcement.
Read the paper.
See the full Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities Series.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/privacy.pdf
IS - 016
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Hate Crimes
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - The Department of Justice began prosecuting federal hate crimes cases after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Thus, the literature on hate crime is new, though rapidly growing. The first American use of the term “hate crime” emerged during the Civil Rights Movement in the second half of the 20th century. The term typically refers to bias-motivated violence. But the variation in hate crimes laws and data collection policies per state has created disparities in protection against hate crimes, which leaves people vulnerable depending on where they live. Without proper hate crime statutes and data collection, it is difficult to know the true nature and magnitude of the problem of hate crimes in the United States. In order to allocate resources and deter future hate crimes, law enforcement agencies need to understand the problem at hand.
Read the paper.
See all issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities Series.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/hate_crimes.pdf
IS - 015
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Religious Freedom
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - The complicated relationship of religion and government predates the founding of the United States. The Founders grappled with this dilemma for years before compromising on the final language of the First Amendment. Even then, the issue was far from settled: the US has struggled since its founding to reconcile the right of religious freedom with the reality of governing a pluralist democracy with an increasingly diverse population.
Today, a struggle over the scope of religious freedom is taking place in politics, the courts, and across American society. Claims of religious freedom are increasingly receiving preferential treatment in both political discourse and in the courts when religious beliefs come into conflict with other rights. That is particularly true for women’s reproductive rights and the rights of individuals to non-discrimination on the basis of their sexual identity.
At the same time, a controversy has emerged over the meaning of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, in which recent Supreme Court cases have pitted the prohibition on establishment of religion against the right of religious free exercise. The central question over religious rights today is how to strike an appropriate balance between rights when they come into conflict. This question has troubled the American Republic since its formation.
Read the full paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/religious_freedom.pdf
IS - 014
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - We Need a Racial Reckoning to Save Democracy
Y1 - 2021
A1 - Megan Ming Francis
A1 - Deepak Bhargava
AB - The crisis of American democracy that burst into view on January 6 is rooted in our country’s long history of racism. To begin the work of repair, President Biden issued executive orders undoing many of the policies of the Trump administration and breaking new ground, like ending private prison contracts and embedding racial equity analysis in the federal bureaucracy. As important and welcome as these actions are, they are not enough. A crucial mistake recurs in American history: trying to move forward without reckoning honestly with injustice. We have an opportunity to break this pattern of forgetting. Remembrance and repair are not just morally necessary—they are the keys to saving our fragile multiracial democracy. Here we offer a plan to undertake that vital work.
Read the article.
JF - The Nation
UR - https://www.thenation.com/article/society/racism-discrimination-education-democracy/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Freedom of Speech and Media
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - The First Amendment guarantees some of the most fundamental rights provided to Americans under the Constitution. The right to free expression is a foundational tenet of American values. In fact, it was the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press that provided much of the basis for the revolution that led to America’s founding. The First Amendment provides broad protection from government censure of speech, although limitations on some forms of published or broadcast speech, such as obscenity and hate speech, have been allowed.
As the traditional public square governed and protected by federal regulation moves online to spaces governed by private corporations, the rules for how speech is both expressed and censored are also changing. How should legal protections for speech adapt to these new tech-powered, private forums? This chapter will explore the current landscape of free speech and the associated information landscape as well as the threats that they face.
Read the full paper.
See other issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/free_speech.pdf
IS - 013
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Gun Rights and Public Safety
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - In March 2018, hundreds of thousands of young people walked out of school and marched on their local statehouses and on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to advocate for stricter controls on gun sales and ownership. The March for Our Lives was initially organized by students at Margery Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a school shooting had killed 17 students. Collectively, the marches were the largest-ever protest against gun violence, and one of the largest protests of any kind in American history.
The growing consensus over the need for some “common-sense” gun laws to regulate the sale and ownership of firearms stands in sharp contrast to the incendiary rhetoric of the National Rifle Association, which has sounded the alarm in recent years that Democrats are coming to “take away” guns or institute a national registry of firearm ownership. Indeed, the reasonableness on both sides of the debate implies that there is a middle-ground that can be achieved to limit gun violence in the United States, while still allowing for responsible ownership of firearms for hunting, sport shooting, and personal protection.
Read the article.
See the full Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/gun_rights.pdf
IS - 12
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Criminal Justice and Public Safety
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Starting with the Nixon administration in the early 1970s, and gaining steam throughout the next decade, the prevailing view on criminal justice was that “tough on crime laws make crime rates go down.” That sentiment was predicated on the notion that criminals were not being sufficiently punished for their offenses, and that sentences must be increased—including mandatory minimums and “three strikes laws”—both to remove criminals from communities, and to deter others from committing crimes. The incarceration rate more than tripled between 1980 and its peak in 2008, from 310 to 1,000 prisoners per 100,000 adults—some 2.3 million people in all. Today, the United States leads the world in incarceration, with a rate more than 4 times that of comparable democracies in Western Europe.
Reform of the criminal justice system must take into account each stage of the process, respecting the due process rights of individuals throughout their interaction with the system while at the same time bringing criminals to justice and improving overall public safety.
Read the paper.
See other issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/criminal_justice.pdf
IS - 011
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Immigration
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210201-immigration.pdf?m=1612490014
IS - 10
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Equal Access to Public Goods and Services
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - A right of equal access to public goods and services is rooted in the rights to ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ With these rights, the Declaration of Independence asserts the concept of equality as a founding principle, while nearly a century later in the nation’s “second founding” after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution goes further in guaranteeing equal protection of the law. These documents create the principle from which a right of equal access is derived, including access to education, health care, housing, and environmental protection.
Throughout American history, the concepts of liberty and equality have been intertwined but also conflicted.
Current trends within public education, health care, housing, and environmental protection reflect burgeoning disparities in opportunity. Public policy in recent years has centered around the promotion of macroeconomic growth but has done little to guarantee individual and societal well-being, reinforcing the focus of the private sector on maximizing shareholder value, often at the expense of employees and consumers. These policies have exacerbated the inequality of access to public goods and services, such as health and education, among significant portions of the population, who lack the agency and the opportunity to sustain themselves. It is critical that the United States responds to the public health and economic crises by protecting liberty, equality, and securing equal access to public goods and services.
Read the full paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210202-equal_access.pdf?m=1612312875
IS - 009
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Disability Rights
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2021
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Nearly 61 million Americans have a disability, making the group the country’s largest minority. Individuals with disabilities cut across race, gender, and sexual orientation. Since people with disabilities are disproportionately older, they have also made up an expanding share of the general population as the U.S. population has aged. Unlike other more fixed identities, any person can become disabled at any time, due to severe injury, illness, trauma, pregnancy, or simply aging. In fact, while only 11% of people under ages 18 to 64 reported having a disability in 2017, 35% of people ages 65 and over reported having one, illustrating the fluid nature of disability status.
Disabilities include a range of conditions, both visible and invisible, and including physical, mental, and cognitive impairments—all of which require different types of protection against different types of discrimination. These complexities make understanding and advancing disability rights more challenging. Moreover, people with disabilities continue to face challenges as a result of policies that affect them both directly and indirectly. Renewing rights for people with disabilities requires both reinstating and extending equal protections, and affirmatively expanding accommodations to better allow them to participate meaningfully in all aspects of society.
Read the full paper.
See other issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities project here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/200120-disability_rights.pdf?m=1611267234
IS - 008
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Racial Discrimination
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2020
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, his action honored a decades-long struggle by grassroots activists and dedicated political leaders to ensure national protection for racial equality. With the landmark agreement, Johnson fulfilled his promise, expressed in his first State of the Union speech earlier in the year, that “this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined”. The historic legislation sought to eliminate racial discrimination on the federal level in broad categories including employment, education, voting, and public accommodations. The Civil Rights Act paved the way for other major federal laws outlawing discrimination in more targeted areas, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
Over half a century later, the promises of the Civil Rights Act are threatened by sustained efforts to undermine its protections for equal rights and opportunities across racial identities.
This issue of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series surveys the historical evolution and current status of racial discrimination within the U.S. in several key areas: criminal justice, housing, education, labor, and society at large. Next, it looks at the current status of discrimination within these five categories, including recent legislative and political efforts to weaken equal protection along racial lines. The authors provide recommendations to reinforce the government’s responsibility to uphold anti-discriminatory protections and restore individuals’ rights to equal access and protection.
Read the paper here.
Check out other issues in our Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities Series.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/reimagining-rights-racial-discrimination?m=1607470267
IS - 2020-005
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Are Rights and Religion Orthogonal?
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Richard Parker
AB - Talking about “rights” is to talk about a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy, our system of law, our ethics, and—perhaps most deeply—our identity.
One of the rights we Americans customarily consider ours is “our right to religious freedom,” which, as enshrined in the First Amendment, is not one but two important correlate rights– our individual right to worship (or not) as we please, and our collective right (and duty) to prohibit any sort of government favoritism toward (or disfavoring of) any organized religion.
In his paper, author Richard Parker weaves the history and evolution of religious freedom into the context of human rights.
Read the full text.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/parker_03.pdf?m=1606938155
IS - 2020-13
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Civic Education
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2020
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - A well-informed citizenry is essential in a democracy to preserve American values and make sound decisions in every area, from the school board meeting to the voting booth. Yet, arguably, in no other way have Americans fallen so short from what the Framers intended than in their understanding of and participation in democratic governance. A 2019 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that only 39 percent of respondents could name all three branches of government, and 22 percent could not name any. Voting rates average only 56 percent in presidential elections, and are as low as 40 percent in mid-terms, ranking the U.S. far below most other democracies in voting participation. In short, the American people are not well-informed about their own government, do not turn out to vote in high numbers, and do not engage significantly in politics and civics.
In addition to providing a set of policy recommendations, this issue of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities paper series outlines historical origins of civic education, the status of state and federal requirement, the dearth of federal funding, and the current political tensions within civic education.
Read the full paper here.
See all the issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities paper series here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/201130_civic_education.pdf?m=1606765252
IS - 2020-004
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - How are Human Rights Universal
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Eric Blumenson
AB - On the traditional view, human rights are universal because they belong to all human beings as such, solely in virtue of their humanity. In his paper, Blumenson explores the meaning of that claim and considers two reasons some people find it hard to accept. The first is the appeal of relativism. That appeal is all the greater now, when cultural diversity is more present than ever in one’s neighborhood, on television, and across the internet. It’s a short step from identifying differences in cultural values to identifying justice itself as culturally constructed. The second reason for doubt is also a response to the radically diverse ways of life in the world, but a simpler one: a belief that human rights universality is implausible. Even if there are moral universals, one might think them too few or too vague, and the settings of their operation too diverse, to generate anything as specific as human rights.
Read the full paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/06_blumenson_4.pdf?m=1606238536
IS - 2020-12
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Money in Politics
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2020
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - As Yogi Berra once said, “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” Nothing could be truer when it comes to money in American politics. In the 2000 election, candidates and outside groups spent a combined $3 billion on the presidential and congressional races. Not two decades later, in 2016, the amount spent more than doubled to a combined $6.5 billion. For 2020, forecasters project that the total amount spent on political advertising alone will reach $10 billion.
There’s a simple reason for this exponential rise in political expenditures: the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment to preclude the regulation of many aspects of campaign finance. That decision in 1976 first opened the floodgates of contributions to political campaigns.
"Nowhere is money felt more than in the explosion of spending by outside groups to elect and influence candidates in the past decade, which have simultaneously increased amounts while decreasing accountability."
In this issue of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S. paper series, the authors outline how the bipartisan use of money in politics undermines the democratic process.
Read the full report.
See all the issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities paper series here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/201118_money-in-politics.pdf?m=1605799361
IS - 2020-003
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Voting Rights
Y1 - 2020
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - After more than a century of expanding the voting rights of previously disenfranchised groups, the American electoral system today is confronted by political and legal maneuvers to curtail the hard-won rights of these same groups, ostensibly in the name of combating fraud and regulating voting, but actually to change the outcome of elections.
"Political campaigns to suppress or dilute votes corrode democracy, frustrate the popular will, and stimulate polarization."
Attacks on the integrity of the electoral system are not new. Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century dominant political forces suppressed voting by African Americans and other minorities, women, immigrants, and young people. Manipulation of voting in the 20th century included racist suppression of African American votes, first by Democrats and later by Republicans. These practices are blatant examples of the vulnerability of the electoral process to partisan manipulation and the necessity of reform to safeguard voting rights, especially among these vulnerable groups.
In his timely addition to the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilites in the U.S. paper series, authors John Shattuck, Mathias Risse, and team outline the expansion of the vote through history, the disproportionate impact of voter suppression, and propose a set of policy recommendations accordingly.
Read the full report.
See all the issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities paper series here.
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/201105_votingrights_converted.pdf?m=1605554762
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Carr Center Annual Report: 2019-2020
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - The Carr Center is pleased to launch its 2019-2020 Annual Report. Take a look at our work, and learn how to get involved.
This past academic year, we’ve seen significant economic anxiety, political uncertainty, and public health failures besiege communities and societies around the world. We’ve also witnessed acts of solidarity and kinship—the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the United States, the rise of social movements holding authoritarian leaders to account, and communities offering mutual aid to vulnerable people impacted by the pandemic.
We hope that you remain engaged with our work in the coming months. After all, human rights are not just about institutions, laws, and policies. They are about people coming together, hoping to make the world and their communities a better place—more just, more equitable, and more peaceful.
Read the Annual Report
PB - Harvard Kennedy School
CY - Cambridge, MA
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/CarrAnnualReport_2019-2020.pdf?m=1607193698
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Black Lives Matter protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful, our research finds
JF - The Spokesman Review
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Jeremy Pressman
AB - When the Department of Homeland Security released its Homeland Threat Assessment earlier this month, it emphasized that self-proclaimed white supremacist groups are the most dangerous threat to U.S. security. But the report misleadingly added that there had been “over 100 days of violence and destruction in our cities,” referring to the anti-racism uprisings of this past summer.
In fact, the Black Lives Matter uprisings were remarkably nonviolent. When there was violence, very often police or counterprotesters were reportedly directing it at the protesters.
Read the article.
UR - https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/oct/20/erica-chenoweth-and-jeremy-pressman-black-lives-ma/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - AI Principle Proliferation as a Crisis of Legitimacy
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Mark Latonero
AB - While Artificial Intelligence is a burgeoning field today, there is a growing concern about the mushrooming of proposed principles on how AI should be governed.
In his latest Carr Center discussion paper, fellow Mark Latonero posits that human rights could serve to stabilize AI governance, particularly if framed as an anchor to guide AI usage that could avert both everyday and catastrophic social harms.
Read the full document here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/mark_latonero_ai_principles_6.pdf?m=1601910899
IS - 2020-011
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Defunding the Police Might Leave Americans More Surveilled and Less Secure
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Sushma Raman
JF - Foreign Policy
UR - https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/25/defunding-the-police-might-leave-americans-more-surveilled-and-less-secure/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Dangerous Science: Might Population Genetics or Artificial Intelligence Undermine Philosophical Ideas about Equality?
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - This paper was prepared for an interdisciplinary conference on Gefährliche Forschung? (Dangerous Science?) held at the University of Cologne in February 2020 and is scheduled to appear in a volume of contributions from that event edited by Wilfried Hinsch and Susanne Brandstätter, the organizers, and to be published by de Gruyter. The paper delves into the question proposed to me—might population genetics or artificial intelligence undermine philosophical ideas about equality—without locating the context of this debate or offering a preview of its contents. The first section discusses the ideal of equality, the next two talk about genetics in the context of responses to racism, and the remaining two speak about possible changes that might come from the development of general Artificial Intelligence.
Read full text here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/risse_dangerous_science_5.3.pdf?m=1597599675
IS - 2020-010
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Mass Incarceration and The Future: An Urgent Need to Address the Human Rights Implications of Criminal Background Checks and the Future of Artificial Intelligence
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Teresa Y. Hodge
A1 - Laurin Leonard
AB - 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.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/CCDP_2020-009.pdf?m=1595005129
IS - 2020-009
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Transitional Justice in Colombia
Y1 - 2020
A1 - The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - 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.
PB - Harvard Kennedy School
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/202005_colombia_consultation_web_copy.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - From Rationality to Relationality: Ubuntu as an Ethical and Human Rights Framework for Artificial Intelligence Governance
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Sabelo Mhlambi
AB - 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.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2020-009_sabelo_b.pdf
IS - 2020-009
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - You Purged Racists From Your Website? Great, Now Get to Work
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Joan Donovan
AB - Joan Donovan explains that the covid-19 infodemic has taught social media giants an important lesson: they must take action to control the content on their sites.
For those who follow the politics of platforms, Monday’s great expulsion of malicious content creators was better late than never. For far too long, a very small contingent of extremely hateful content creators have used Silicon Valley’s love of the First Amendment to control the narrative on commercial content moderation. By labeling every effort to control their speech as “censorship,” these individuals and groups managed to create cover for their use of death threats, harassment, and other incitements to violence to silence opposition. For a long time, it has worked. Until now. In what looks like a coordinated purge by Twitch, Reddit, and YouTube, the reckoning is here for those who use racism and misogyny to gain attention and make money on social media.
Read the full article.
JF - Wired
UR - https://www.wired.com/story/you-purged-racists-from-your-website-great-now-get-to-work/?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_source=hkstwitter
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Future of Nonviolent Resistance
JF - Journal of Democracy
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
VL - 31
UR - https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-future-of-nonviolent-resistance-2/
IS - 3
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - Attacks on the Press Track a Democratic Backslide
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Sushma Raman
AB - According to Sushma Raman, freedom of press is eroding around the world - including in democratic countries.
The recent conviction of the journalist Maria Ressa in the Philippines for “cyber libel” has brought into sharp relief the global deterioration of press freedom. Across the world, fundamental freedoms of association, expression, and assembly are under threat. A recent report from Civicus found that twice as many people live under repression today as a year ago. Although much of that is due to diminishing freedoms in countries whose governments have long been known for their heavy hands, an increasing number of attacks on the media have come in places where press freedom was once enshrined.
Read the full article.
JF - Foreign Policy
UR - https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/29/press-freedom-decline-attacks-george-floyd-protests/
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Megan Ming Francis
AB - The Black Lives Matter protests have been shaking up not just conversations about policing, but also almost every industry — including journalism. As Washington Post media reporters Paul Farhi and Sarah Ellison wrote this weekend, “Like the nation itself, news organizations across the country are facing a racial reckoning, spurred by protests from their own journalists.”
Read the article.
JF - The Washington Post
UR - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/15/white-press-has-history-endangering-black-lives-going-back-century/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Reimagining Reality: Human Rights and Immersive Technology
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Brittan Heller
AB - This paper explores the human rights implications of emergent technology, and focuses on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and immersive technologies. Because of the psychological and physiological aspects of immersive technologies, and the potential for a new invasive class of privacy-related harms, she argues that content creators, hardware producers, and lawmakers should take increased caution to protect users. This will help protect the nascent industry in a changing legal landscape and help ensure that the beneficial uses of this powerful technology outweigh the potential misuses.
In the paper, Heller first reviews the technology and terminology around immersive technologies to explain how they work, how a user’s body and mind are impacted by the hardware, and what social role these technologies can play for communities. Next she describes some of the unique challenges for immersive media, from user safety to misalignment with current biometrics laws. She introduces a new concept, biometric psychography, to explain how the potential for privacy-related harms is different in immersive technologies, due to the ability to connect your identity to your innermost thoughts, wants, and desires. Finally, she describe foreseeable developments in the immersive industry, with an eye toward identifying and mitigating future human rights challenges. The paper concludes with five recommendations for actions that the industry and lawmakers can take now, as the industry is still emerging, to build human rights into its DNA.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2020-008_brittanheller.pdf
IS - 2020-008
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - The Floyd Protests Are the Broadest in U.S. History — and Are Spreading to White, Small-Town America
T2 - Washington Post
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Lara Putnam
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Jeremy Pressman
AB - Erica Chenoweth discusses the Floyd protests and its impact on law, social policies, and the 2020 elections.
Across the country, people are protesting the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and demanding action against police violence and systemic racism. National media focuses on the big demonstrations and protest policing in major cities, but they have not picked up on a different phenomenon that may have major long-term consequences for politics. Protests over racism and #BlackLivesMatter are spreading across the country — including in small towns with deeply conservative politics.
JF - Washington Post
UR - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/06/floyd-protests-are-broadest-us-history-are-spreading-white-small-town-america/?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_source=hkstwitter
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Examining the Ethics of Immunity Certificates
JF - Carr Center Covid-19 Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Carr Center
AB - Carr Center faculty and fellows examine the human rights implications and legal ramifications of introducing widespread immunity passports. In this latest issue, hear from Mark Latonero, Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center and Research Lead at Data & Society, Elizabeth Renieris, a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center and founder of hackylawyER, and Mathias Risse, Faculty Director at the Carr Center.
Read their discussion here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/005-covid_discussion_paper.pdf
IS - 05
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - George Floyd and the History of Police Brutality in America
T2 - Boston Globe
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Kadijatou Diallo
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - Kadijatou Diallo and John Shattuck discuss the history of racist policing and violence against African Americans in the U.S.
The horrific death, captured on video, of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck, spotlights the longstanding crisis of racism in policing.
To understand the protests that have erupted across the United States, one needs to understand the deeply troubled history of policing and race. Police brutality, racial discrimination, and violence against minorities are intertwined and rooted throughout US history. Technology has made it possible for the level and extent of the problem finally to be publicly documented. The anger expressed in the wake of Floyd’s killing reflects the searing reality that Black people in the United States continue to be dehumanized and treated unjustly.
JF - Boston Globe
UR - https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/01/opinion/george-floyd-history-police-brutality-america/
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - George Floyd and the history of police brutality in America
T2 - Boston Globe
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Kadijatou Diallo
A1 - John Shattuck
JF - Boston Globe
UR - https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/01/opinion/george-floyd-history-police-brutality-america/
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Media Coverage Has Blown Anti-Lockdown Protests out of Proportion
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Lara Putnam
A1 - Tommy Leung
A1 - Jeremy Pressman
A1 - Nathan Perkins
AB - Erica Chenoweth explains that anti-lockdown protests are smaller than portrayed, but the media is amplifying their message.
In the last few weeks, protests against state lockdowns and social distancing measures have seized national headlines. The wall-to-wall coverage might give the impression that what we’re seeing is a powerful grassroots movement in the making. But research we just conducted on protest attendance and media coverage shows something different: This massive media coverage has in fact been out of proportion.
A comprehensive look at the social distancing protests reveals that they have been small in terms of both the number of participants and locations. As one official in the administration of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) tweeted about a protest in Annapolis on April 20, “There were more media inquiries about this than there were participants.”
Read the full article.
JF - Vox
UR - https://www.vox.com/2020/5/10/21252583/coronavirus-lockdown-protests-media-trump
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Submission to the Commission on Unalienable Rights
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Gerald L. Neuman
AB - The Charter of the Commission on Unalienable Rights includes the objective of proposing “reforms of human rights discourse where it has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.” This mission statement has prompted concern among some observers that the Commission is being asked to redirect U.S. human rights policy in ways that would be self-defeating and would create serious damage to international cooperation for the protection of human rights. In his address, Neuman addresses the claim that there are too many human rights; the protection of diverse sexuality; the equal priority of economic/social rights and civil/political rights; the usefulness of “natural law” at the international level; and the question of privileging freedom of religious conduct over other human rights.
Read the full paper here.
Gerald L. Neuman is the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law, and the Co-Director of the Human Rights Program at HLS. He teaches human rights, constitutional law, and immigration and nationality law. His current research focuses on international human rights bodies, transnational dimensions of constitutionalism, and rights of foreign nationals. He is the author of Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders and Fundamental Law (Princeton 1996), and co-author of the casebook Human Rights (with Louis Henkin et al., Foundation Press).
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/CCDP_007.pdf
IS - 2020-007
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Smart City Visions and Human Rights: Do They Go Together?
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Tina Kempin Reuter
AB - Over half of the world’s population lives in cities today. According to the latest predictions, more than two thirds of all people will inhabit an urban environment by 2050. The number and size of cities has increased over the last decades, with the highest projections for future growth in the Global South. As cities continue to expand, so does their impact on policy generation, as political players, as drivers of states’ economies, and as hubs for social innovation and cultural exchange. Cities are important actors on the national and international stage, with mayors’ conferences, city grassroots organizations, and urban citizens driving the search for today’s most pressing problems, including climate change, inequity, migration, and human rights concerns. Many have expressed hope that “cities [will] deliver where nation states have failed.” Organizing this ever-growing, dynamic human space, enabling people from diverse backgrounds to live together, addressing the spatial and social challenges of urban life, and delivering services to inhabitants are challenges that cities have struggled with and that continue to dominate the urban policy agenda.
Read full text here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/CCDP_006.pdf
IS - 2020-006
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Urgent Need to Transfer Vulnerable Migrants from Europe’s Largest Migrant Hotspot
JF - The BMJ
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Jacqueline Bhabha
A1 - Vasileia Digidki
AB - Humanitarian organizations are being denied entry to Moira, one of Europe's largest migrant camps. Jacqueline Bhabha addresses steps to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Lesvos, the small Greek island notorious as Europe’s primary landing point for forced migrants from Asia and Africa since 2015, confirmed its first COVID-19 related death on 30 March. Testing across the island quickly confirmed 10 cases among the local population, spreading fear of an uncontrollable outbreak in the densely and overcrowded migrant and refugee camps on the island.
We were expecting this news. One of us is a Lesvos native. Both of us have worked on its refugee crisis for several years. We are painfully familiar with the conditions facing the refugee and migrant population on the island, and the particular dangers they currently pose. Although Greece responded more promptly to the pandemic outbreak than other southern European countries, thus controlling the spread of the virus and achieving one of the lowest rates of infection in Europe, this commendable past conduct does not assure a safe and healthy future. In fact, despite the efforts, on 21 April it was revealed that a total of 150 asymptomatic refugees living in an accommodation facility in a small town in southern Greece tested positive for COVID-19.
Read the full article.
UR - https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/04/24/the-urgent-need-to-transfer-vulnerable-migrants-from-europes-largest-migrant-hotspot/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - In a Global Emergency, Women are Showing how to Lead
JF - The Washington Post
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Zoe Marks
AB - In her latest op-ed for the Washington Post, Zoe Marks tackles topics of female heads of state, and the tensions between gender stereotypes and women's exceptionally strong performance against the pandemic.
Read the full article here.
UR - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/21/global-emergency-women-are-showing-how-lead/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Global Pandemic Has Spawned New Forms of Activism – and They’re Flourishing
JF - The Guardian
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
A1 - Jeremy Pressman
A1 - Felipe G Santos
A1 - Jay Ulfelder
AB - We’ve identified nearly 100 distinct methods of nonviolent action that include physical, virtual and hybrid actions
Erica Chenoweth and team have been collecting data on the various methods that people have used to express solidarity or adapted to press for change in the midst of this crisis. In just several weeks’ time, they've identified nearly 100 distinct methods of nonviolent action that include physical, virtual and hybrid actions – and they’re still counting. Far from condemning social movements to obsolescence, the pandemic – and governments’ responses to it – are spawning new tools, new strategies, and new motivation to push for change.
Read the full article from The Gaurdian.
UR - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/20/the-global-pandemic-has-spawned-new-forms-of-activism-and-theyre-flourishing
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Questions, Answers, and Some Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
AB - The “3.5% rule” refers to the claim that no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event. In this brief paper, author Erica Chenoweth addresses some of the common questions about the 3.5% rule, as well as several updates from more recent work on this topic.
Four key takeaways are as follows:
- The 3.5% figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements. It is not necessarily a prescriptive one, and no one can see the future. Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future.
- The 3.5% participation metric may be useful as a rule of thumb in most cases; however, other factors—momentum, organization, strategic leadership, and sustainability—are likely as important as large-scale participation in achieving movement success and are often precursors to achieving 3.5% participation.
- New research suggests that one nonviolent movement, Bahrain in 2011-2014, appears to have decisively failed despite achieving over 6% popular participation at its peak. This suggests that there has been at least one exception to the 3.5% rule, and that the rule is a tendency, rather than a law.
- Large peak participation size is associated with movement success. However, most mass nonviolent movements that have succeeded have done so even without achieving 3.5% popular participation.
Read the full paper.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/CCDP_005.pdf
IS - 2020-005
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Reimagining Social Movements and Civil Resistance during the Global Pandemic
JF - Carr Center Covid-19 Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Salil Shetty
A1 - Matthew Smith
AB - Carr Center faculty and fellows outline how social movements and civil resistance can take shape in a time of social distancing, and how these efforts are more important than ever in holding governments accountable.
We interviewed Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs, Erica Chenoweth, Senior Carr Fellow Salil Shetty, and Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights, Matthew Smith, to discuss how social movements and civil resistance efforts are changing shape in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read the full paper here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/200416_covid_discussion_paper.pdf
IS - 04
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - The Pandemic Needs a Global Response
T2 - The New York Times
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - As the coronavirus crisis erupts worldwide, the world's most powerful international institution, the UN Security Council (UNSC), is reeling.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has described the pandemic as one of the most important challenges the United Nations has faced since its creation. Several coordinated multilateral efforts have been put in place between the WHO and the UN, and the UNSC, the body that centralizes all the efforts of the United Nations on international peace and security and addresses global crises like the one we are experiencing. However, today, when the world faces the greatest threat of our time, the Security Council is missing. It is time for the Security Council to rise to this crisis. The Dominican Republic, which currently holds the presidency of the UNSC, has a historic opportunity to lead global efforts against the Coronavirus and mitigate its repercussions on world peace and security. The Dominican Republic should its position to unify the Council around a presidential statement calling for a coordinated global response as the first step in Council action. If the presidential statement is framed in a forward-looking manner, they can perhaps get permanent members on board, making it possible to take stronger action in the future.
There is a need for a decisive declaration that calls for working together could make all the difference: legitimatize recent General Assembly decisions, reinforce the authority of the secretary-general, and strengthen the efforts of specialized UN agencies to save lives. This presidential statement should first endorse Secretary-General Guterres' call for a worldwide ceasefire in all conflicts around the globe. The Coronavirus hit the developed world first, but it can ravage war-torn regions even more. A functioning global ceasefire can help ensure that medical personnel has safe and unhindered access to the sick in these areas. Without it, the disease will exponentially spread. Civil society groups and even some warring parties are responding positively to the Secretary General's proposal, but so far, the Security Council has had nothing to say. Without Security Council backing, other warring parties may not lay down their arms. Now more than ever, we need unity and leadership from the Security Council. The security of the world and the legitimacy of the Security Council depends on the capacity of its members, including the small, to assume the responsibility for our shared future.
This article has been translated from its original text in Spanish.
JF - The New York Times
UR - https://www.nytimes.com/es/2020/04/15/espanol/opinion/coronavirus-onu.html?smid=tw-share
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Fierce Urgency Of Now: Closing Glaring Gaps In US Surveillance Data On COVID-19
JF - Health Affairs
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Nancy Krieger
A1 - Gregg Gonsalves
A1 - Mary T. Bassett
A1 - William Hanage
A1 - Harlan M. Krumholz
AB - In order to have a robust understanding of the impacts of COVID-19, data on racial, economic, and gender inequities must be collected.
It is insufficient to ask simply whether the virus is or is not present. Social data about who is infected are crucial for responding to needs now and will allow for better estimation of the likely spread and impact of COVID-19, the toll of which will be measured not only in deaths but also in the second-order, socially disparate spill-over effects on people’s economic well-being and safety. Real-time fast journalistic reporting and advocacy groups in the US and other countries are pointing to the critical importance of racial/ethnic, economic, and gender inequities to shaping COVID-19 risks. In the past week, calls for data on COVID-19 by race/ethnicity have been issued by leading politicians, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Ayana Pressley, the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, and by journalists. Why aren’t the public health data documenting these risks available?
Read the full article.
UR - https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200414.238084/full/?utm_content=buffer71221&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer&
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - How the COVID-19 Era Will Change National Security Forever
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Samantha Power
AB - Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN shares her thoughts on structural changes needed in a "post-COVID" world.
History shows us that seismic events have the potential to unite even politically divided Americans behind common cause. In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has already taken more than seven times the number of lives as terrorists did in the 9/11 attacks, but the outpouring of solidarity Americans have shown for one another has so far not translated into more unity over government’s proper role at home or America’s proper role abroad. Indeed, the virus struck in an era of the most virulent polarization ever recorded—an unprecedented 82-percentage point divide between Republicans’ and Democrats’ average job-approval ratings of President Trump. And so far that gap appears only to be widening, while internationally, political leaders are trading recriminations rather than coordinating the procurement of medical supplies.
But the shared enemy of a future pandemic must bring about a redefinition of national security and generate long overdue increases of federal investments in domestic and global health security preparedness.
JF - Time Magazine
UR - https://time.com/5820625/national-security-coronavirus-samantha-power/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Upholding Non-Discrimination Principles in the Covid-19 Outbreak
JF - Carr Center Covid-19 Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Jacqueline Bhabha
A1 - Laura Cordisco-Tsai
A1 - Teresa Hodge
A1 - Laurin Leonard
AB - Carr Center faculty and fellows discuss how we can employ principles of non-discrimination to address the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on our most vulnerable communities.
In our third Covid-19 Discussion Paper, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Jacqueline Bhabha; Technology and Human Rights Fellows Laurin Leonard and Teresa Hodge; and Carr Center Fellow, Laura Cordisco-Tsai, outline how Covid-19 disproportionately impacts the world's most vulnerable communities. From prison populations to survivors of human trafficking, "Vulnerable communities often are not positioned to ensure their human rights are preserved in times of a crisis—they are often a historical afterthought."
Read the full text here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/200410_covid_discussion_paper.pdf
IS - 03
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - This Won’t End for Anyone Until It Ends for Everyone
T2 - The New York Times
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Samantha Power
AB - The U.S. is walking away from international organizations, and the world's most vulnerable are facing the consequences.
Close to 370,000 infections and nearly 11,000 deaths in the United States. Nearly 10 million Americans filing unemployment claims. Unimaginable heartbreak and hardship, with worse to come. Given this still-developing emergency, and the fatal inadequacy of the U.S. government’s domestic preparedness and response so far, it is very hard to focus on the devastation that is about to strike the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.
But if President Trump doesn’t overcome his go-it-alone mind-set and take immediate steps to mobilize a global coalition to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, its spread will cause a catastrophic loss of life and make it impossible to restore normalcy in the United States in the foreseeable future.
JF - The New York Times
UR - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-united-states-leadership.html?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_source=hkslinkedin
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Viktor Orban’s Viral Authoritarianism
Y1 - 2020
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - Countries around the world are restricting freedom of movement, however, Hungary is taking it one step further.
The global pandemic claimed its first democracy on March 30 when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won approval from his parliament to rule Hungary indefinitely by decree. Orban’s new powers give him unlimited authority to fight the coronavirus by suspending parliament and all future elections, overriding Hungarian law and imprisoning persons found guilty of the new crimes of “violating a quarantine” and “spreading false information.”
Democratic governments all over the world are undertaking temporary emergency measures to address the pandemic crisis, but none are as sweeping as Hungary’s. Temporarily restricting freedom of movement and prescribing social distancing are reasonable limits on civil liberties aimed at containing the virus. But the Hungarian case demonstrates how the public-health crisis can be used as an excuse to promote authoritarianism far beyond the current emergency.
JF - The American Prospect
UR - https://prospect.org/coronavirus/viktor-orban-viral-authoritarianism-hungary/
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Coronavirus Presents Bonanza for Kleptocrats
T2 - The Boston Globe
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Mark Wolf
A1 - Richard J. Goldstone
AB - In order to keep kleptocrats accountable, an International Anti-Corruption Court must be established.
Very little is certain about the coronavirus, and we are only judges, not prophets. However, we can confidently predict that the response to the pandemic will be a bonanza for kleptocrats — an opportunity for the corrupt leaders of many countries to further enrich themselves.
Governments are poised to provide trillions of dollars to counter the pandemic, without even the usual, often ineffective, safeguards to assure that the funds are properly spent. The coronavirus will, therefore, provide additional compelling proof that the world needs an International Anti-Corruption Court to punish and deter kleptocrats who enjoy impunity in the countries they rule.
JF - The Boston Globe
UR - https://www-bostonglobe-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/04/opinion/bonanza-kleptocrats-time-coronavirus/?outputType=amp
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Ethical Use of Personal Data to Build Artificial Intelligence Technologies: A Case Study on Remote Biometric Identity Verification
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Neal Cohen
AB - Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have the capacity to do a great deal of good in the world, but whether they do so is not only dependent upon how we use those AI technologies but also how we build those AI technologies in the first place.
The unfortunate truth is that personal data has become the bricks and mortar used to build many AI technologies and more must be done to protect and safeguard the humans whose personal data is being used. Through a case study on AI-powered remote biometric identity verification, this paper seeks to explore the technical requirements of building AI technologies with high volumes of personal data and the implications of such on our understanding of existing data protection frameworks. Ultimately, a path forward is proposed for ethically using personal data to build AI technologies.
Read the paper here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/200228_ccdp_neal_cohen.pdf
IS - 2020-004
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Ethics of Surveillance Technology during a Global Pandemic
JF - Carr Center Covid-19 Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Vivek Krishnamurthy
A1 - Bruce Schneier
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Three experts on cyberlaw, security, and AI discuss how governments and businesses might ethically employ surveillance and AI technologies to address Covid-19.
We interviewed Bruce Schneier, Security Technologist and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Carr Center Fellow Vivek Krishnamurthy, and Carr Center Faculty Director Mathias Risse on the ethics and responsibilities of using AI and surveillance technology amidst a global pandemic.
Read their full discussion, here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/200402c_covid_discussion_paper.pdf
IS - 2
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Experiences of Trafficked and Sexually Exploited Boys Transitioning From Shelter Programmes Into the Community: Findings From a Longitudinal Study
JF - National Children's Bureau
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Laura Cordisco-Tsai
A1 - Vanntheary Lim
A1 - Channtha Nhanh
AB - Laura Cordisco Tsai examines the experience of transitioning back to life in the community for boy survivors of trafficking and sexual exploitation.
This article explores the perspectives of Cambodian boys who have experienced human trafficking and sexual exploitation on their experiences transitioning out of shelters and re‐entering the community. We used an interpretive phenomenological approach to analyse 81 interviews and narrative summaries of interviews drawn from Chab Dai's 10‐year longitudinal study with survivors in Cambodia (n = 22). Themes included: minimal involvement in planning for re/integration; conflicted feelings about life in the community; challenges completing school and securing employment; importance of community‐based services; unfulfilled expectations; violence in the community; and a desire to return to the shelter.
UR - https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12376
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - “May You Rise to It”: A Love Letter to Students in an Unprecedented Time
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Timothy McCarthy
AB - In a letter to his students, Timothy McCarthy calls for a serious commitment to compassion.
My dear students,
Let me say this first: I love you — and I hope all of you are somewhere safe right now.
I know this doesn’t find any of us well. This global pandemic has profoundly upended our lives and livelihoods and routines and responsibilities, to say nothing of our capacity to work and dream together to build a better world. The corona crisis has catapulted us into complete chaos, accompanied by a disorienting mix of emotions: fear and despair, anxiety and anger, uncertainty and longing, concern and compassion. If you are like me, you’re experiencing all these things at once on any given day. As one friend put it: “I didn’t realize I could have so many mood swings before my first cup of coffee.” As a historian, I rarely use the word unprecedented — after all, almost everything has some kind of precedent — but I dusted it off last week and have been using it more and more with each passing day. History will have time to take full account of this moment, but first we must survive it.
JF - Medium
UR - https://www.gse.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/faculty/images/timothy-mccarthy-112362.jpg
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Examining the Coronavirus from the Lens of Human Rights
JF - Carr Center Covid-19 Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
AB - Three Carr Center faculty share their take on the global pandemic with an eye towards human rights.
The Carr Center will begin a regular discussion series outlining how the pandemic intersects with specific human rights domains. In our introductory paper, Mathias Risse, Kathryn Sikkink, and Timothy Patrick McCarthy discuss the importance of human rights in a pandemic situation. In addition to describing how we can balance individual rights with those of the larger community, they also situate the current pandemic within historical contexts, and within a larger backdrop of our current digital age.
Read the full document here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/200326d_covid_discussion_paper.pdf
IS - 01
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Remarks Before the Commission on Unalienable Rights
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Martha Minow
AB - In her address to the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights, Martha Minow discusses the meaning and implications of human rights.
"Please accept my thanks for the invitation to speak with you and for your service on this important effort. Grappling with the meaning and implications of human rights is a task that no one generation can complete; comprehension, validation, and commitment require investment of renewing thought and action even though human rights are described as self-evident and eternal. In fact, the reasons why individual nations and even individual people subscribe to notions of human rights vary enormously—and range from idealism to realpolitik—as do their justifications and rationales, which sound in such competing registers as religion, social contract, nature, utility, and game theory. As I will explain, respect for the dignity of each person offers a core basis for human rights in both substance and in attitudes of respect and civility even when we disagree. Your admirable effort to trace ideas about human rights to deep histories and understandings of eternal truths should underscore the importance of engagement with other nations and multinational convenings as we all face unprecedented challenges to human dignity."
Read full address, here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/CCDP_2020-003
IS - 2020-003
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Rights and Responsibilities in the Coronavirus Pandemic
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Touching on points from her newly published book, The Hidden Face of Rights: Towards a Politics of Responsibilities, Kathryn Sikkink urges the global community to place responsibility on all actors to uphold human rights during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Building on the work of Iris Marion Young in her posthumous book, Responsibility for Justice, in The Hidden Face of Rights, I argue that all actors socially connected to structural injustice and able to act, need to take action to address the injustice. One problem with the word responsibility is that people often use it in the common legal meaning focused on who is to blame or liable. This is what Iris Young has called backward-looking responsibility or the “liability model.” She focused on political responsibility that is forward-looking. This kind of responsibility asks not “who is to blame,” but “what should we do?” Forward-looking responsibility is necessary to address the Coronavirus pandemic and to think about what we should do in the world after the pandemic. I also draw on Max Weber’s idea of an ethic of responsibility in Politics as a Vocation to stress that it is not enough to act with good intentions. We also need to have done our research about the most effective way to act so that our actions have the impact we seek.
This framework is useful in the context of the Coronavirus crisis because it involves both a range of rights and responsibilities of many actors. Our right to health, but also rights to liberty, freedom of movement, to education, to information, to food and shelter are all at stake. As countries ramp up exclusionary travel and border policies, some of these rights may be imperiled, and governments need to strike a balance between protecting the health and respecting human rights, as the WHO Secretary General recognized in his briefing on March 12. A quarantine is a legitimate state policy in times of health emergencies, but the state must attend to the rights of individuals caught in the quarantine to adequate health care, food, and shelter.
JF - OpenGlobalRights
UR - https://www.openglobalrights.org/rights-and-responsibilities-in-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Why the AI We Rely on Can’t Get Privacy Right (Yet)
JF - VentureBeat
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Neal Cohen
AB - Neal Cohen analyzes why AI technologies fall short on privacy. While artificial intelligence (AI) powered technologies are now commonly appearing in many digital services we interact with on a daily basis, an often neglected truth is that few companies are actually building the underlying AI technology.
UR - https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/07/why-the-ai-we-rely-on-cant-get-privacy-right-yet/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Human Rights and Social Order: Philosophical, Practical, and Public Policy Dimensions
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - In his recent discussion paper, Mathias Risse reflects on the 2019 protests in Chile from a a standpoint of political theory and the human rights movement.
This paper was written in preparation for a talk at the Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) in December 2019. Risse was invited to reflect on the widespread and often violent protests that had occurred in Chile during the last three months of 2019 from a standpoint of political theory and the human rights movement. Key themes in this paper include the necessary conditions for the legitimacy of a government and the role of human rights (and the equal or unequal value that such rights may have for different people) in that context; a distinction between policy-based and legitimacy/justice-based protests and one between persuasive and non-persuasive means of protest, and how they apply to highly economically unequal societies in general and to the situation in Chile in particular; some considerations directed at protesters as they think about expanding non-persuasive means of protest to include destruction and violence; some considerations exploring the responsibilities of the government of Chile under these circumstances; and finally some thoughts drawing on the adaptive-leadership approach on current challenges for Chilean politics.
Read the article here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/200228_chilepaper_web.pdf
IS - 2020-001
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - Genocide’s Straw Man
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Matthew Smith
AB - Matthew Smith challenges a claim that human rights organizations are to blame for the Rohyinga Crisis.
Smith is co-founder and CEO of Fortify Rights and a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. His recent article for the Mekong Review challenges Benjamin Zawacki's claim that human rights organizations are responsible for the Rohyinga Crisis.
The Rohingya genocide in Myanmar has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than a million civilians, shocking the conscience of humanity and making the Rohingya a household name. A variety of individuals and institutions are responsible for the egregious situation, including the Myanmar military and police, civilian political elite, and extremist civilians, but in “Humanitarian Breakdown” (in the February 2020 issue), Benjamin Zawacki lays blame in a most unusual place: at the feet of the international human rights movement.
Read the full article.
JF - Mekong Review
UR - https://mekongreview.com/genocides-straw-man/
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - College Students Don’t Turn out to Vote. Here’s How to Change That
T2 - Los Angeles Times
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Kathryn Sikkink maps out a plan to encourage voter turnout among college students.
College students have traditionally voted at one of the lowest rates of any group in the United States. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In the 2018 midterm election, the voting rate at U.S. colleges and universities more than doubled from the previous midterm, jumping from 19% in 2014 to 40%. That increase was 7 percentage points higher than the increase in voting rates among all Americans.
JF - Los Angeles Times
UR - https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-30/college-students-dont-turn-out-to-vote-heres-how-to-change-that
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - Can Facebook’s Oversight Board Win People’s Trust?
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Mark Latonero
AB - Technology & Human Rights Fellow, Mark Latonero, breaks down the larger implications of Facebook's global Oversight Board for content moderation.
Facebook is a step away from creating its global Oversight Board for content moderation. The bylaws for the board, released on Jan. 28, lay out the blueprint for an unprecedented experiment in corporate self-governance for the tech sector. While there’s good reason to be skeptical of whether Facebook itself can fix problems like hate speech and disinformation on the platform, we should pay closer attention to how the board proposes to make decisions.
JF - Harvard Business Review
UR - https://hbr.org/2020/01/can-facebooks-oversight-board-win-peoples-trust
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Women's Rights
JF - Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States
Y1 - 2020
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB -
“I want to be remembered as a woman … who dared to be a catalyst of change.”
- Shirley Chisholm
In 1972, Shirley Chisholm made history as the first African American woman to seek a nomination from a major political party as a candidate for President of the United States. Prior to her campaign, Chisholm served in the House of Representatives for seven terms, co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, served on the House Rules Committee, and introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation. Despite those accomplishments, her presidential campaign was marked by discrimination, as she was barred from participating in primary debates, and was allowed to make a single televised speech only after she took legal action. While Chisholm’s presidential campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, she nevertheless opened up many doors for women in politics, and in equal rights more broadly. Since then, women have been appointed to the Supreme Court, led major House and Senate committees, and served as Secretary of State.
This issue of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series analyzes the current state of women’s rights in the U.S., and proposes policy recommendations designed to advance them.
The paper examines how identity influences women’s experiences and provides historical context on women’s rights; assesses the current state of women’s rights in the areas of employment, education, poverty, domestic violence, health, and civil society; and offers policy recommendations that are designed to advance women’s rights moving forward.
Read the full paper.
Discover other issues in the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities series here.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/210119_womensrights.pdf?m=1611072395
IS - 006
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - "I Feel Like We Are People Who Have Never Known Each Other Before": The Experiences of Survivors of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Transitioning From Shelters to Life in the Community
JF - Forum: Qualitative Social Research
Y1 - 2020
A1 - Laura Cordisco Tsai
A1 - Vanntheary Lim
A1 - Channtha Nhanh
AB - Journal article by Carr Fellow Laura Cordisco Tsai analyzes how survivors of sexual exploitation transition back to life in their communities.
In this article, we explore the experiences of survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Cambodia as they transition from living in trafficking-specific shelter facilities to living in the community. We analyzed data from Chab Dai's Butterfly Longitudinal Research (BLR) project, a 10-year longitudinal study with survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Cambodia utilizing a prospective panel design. We present findings from our analysis of 236 interviews and narrative summaries of interviews conducted with survivors between the years 2011 and 2016 (n=79). An interpretive phenomenological approach was used to understand survivors' experiences during this transition. Themes included: conflicted feelings about life in the community; difficulties completing school and securing employment; violence in the community; limited follow-up; unfulfilled expectations; feeling loved like a family member in the shelter, but abandoned in the community; vulnerability in the community due to dramatic differences between shelters and the community; and varied experiences with case closure. We underscore the importance of understanding and listening to the voices of survivors about their experiences in the anti-human trafficking sector and discuss implications for the design and implementation of services for survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Southeast Asia.
VL - 21
UR - http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/3259
IS - 1
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - From Unalienable Rights to Membership Rights in the World Society
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy launched an ambitious initiative in the fall of 2019 to advance the renewal of rights and responsibilities in the United States. The initiative aims to develop research and policy recommendations around six broad themes of concern: democratic process; due process of law; equal protection; freedom of speech, religion, and association; human sustainability; and privacy.
In the most recent Carr Center Discussion Paper, Mathias Risse looks at the Pompeo Commission as a jumping off point to reexamine the distinction between natural law, natural rights, and human rights in the modern day.
Download the full paper.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/UnalienableRightsToMembershipRights.pdf
IS - 2019-009
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - On Trade Justice: A Philosophical Plea for a New Global Deal
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Risse, Mathias
A1 - Gabriel Wollner
AB - This novel account of trade justice makes ideas about exploitation central, giving pride of place to philosophical ideas about global justice but also contributing to moral disputes about practical questions. On Trade Justice is a philosophical plea for a new global deal, in continuation of, but also at appropriate distance to, post-war efforts to design a fair global-governance system in the spirit of the American New Deal of the 1930s. This book is written in the tradition of contemporary analytical philosophy but also puts its subject into a historical perspective to motivate its relevance. It covers the subject of trade justice from its theoretical foundations to a number of specific issues on which the authors' account throws light. The state as an actor in the domain of global justice is central to the discussion but it also explores the obligations of business extensively, recognizing the importance of the modern corporation for trade. Topics such as wages injustice, collusion with authoritarian regimes, relocation decisions, and obligations arising from interaction with suppliers and sub-contractors all enter prominently. Another central actor in the domain of trade is the World Trade Organization. The WTO needs to see itself as an agent of justice. This book explores how this organization should be reformed in light of the proposals it makes. In particular, the WTO needs to endorse a human-rights and development-oriented mandate. Overall, this book hopes to make a theoretical contribution to the creation of an exploitation-free world.
PB - Oxford University Press
CY - New York
UR - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/on-trade-justice-9780198837411?cc=us&lang=en
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - India's Soft Power: Challenges and Opportunities
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Salil Shetty
A1 - Tara Sahgal
AB - Salil Shetty's recent paper for the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies explores the resources and potential of soft power in India.
The paper breaks the concept of soft power in the Indian context into two parts: state driven and non-state driven. Shetty analyzes these resources and interrogates whether India can use its soft power effectively in its quest to become a “great” power in today's world.
There has been a fairly dramatic transformation in the global power map in the last few years. Trump's America has changed the role of the U.S. in the world in a very fundamental way, pulling back from an active role in many parts of the world as well as in the U.N. and most multilateral platforms. China has come out of the closet in terms of more publically asserting its role as the second global superpower. This is most visible in its aggressive positioning in U.N. processes but increasingly portends a tectonic shift in geo-politics in all its dimensions. Europe has also been consumed by internal challenges triggered by the explosive growth of right wing populism which has resulted in Brexit and political turmoil in so many countries.
With the growth in its economy and pervasive presence in the world of internet technology and software, India has undoubtedly acquired a larger voice on the international stage in the last decade or so. The decisive second term victory of a Hindu majoritarian party brings new opportunities and challenges to India's soft power.
Little work has been done to understand the role of India's soft power, let alone factoring the contemporary realities. This paper is by no means aiming to fill this gap through a comprehensive scholarly study on this complex subject. It is a limited exploration to identify some key opportunities and challenges for India in today's context very much from a practical standpoint. We hope it will serve to trigger further research and action.
Read the full text here.
JF - Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies
UR - https://www.rgics.org/wp-content/uploads/RGICS-Paper-Indias-Soft-Power-Challenges-Opportunities.pdf
IS - December 2019
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - Legitimacy: The Right to Rule in a Wanton World
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Arthur Applbaum
AB - In this rigorous and timely study, Arthur Isak Applbaum argues that adherence to procedure is not enough: even a properly chosen government does not rule legitimately if it fails to protect basic rights, to treat its citizens as political equals, or to act coherently.
How are we to reconcile every person’s entitlement to freedom with the necessity of coercive law? Applbaum’s answer is that a government legitimately governs its citizens only if the government is a free group agent constituted by free citizens. To be a such a group agent, a government must uphold three principles. The liberty principle, requiring that the basic rights of citizens be secured, is necessary to protect against inhumanity, a tyranny in practice. The equality principle, requiring that citizens have equal say in selecting who governs, is necessary to protect against despotism, a tyranny in title. The agency principle, requiring that a government’s actions reflect its decisions and its decisions reflect its reasons, is necessary to protect against wantonism, a tyranny of unreason.
Today, Applbaum writes, the greatest threat to the established democracies is neither inhumanity nor despotism but wantonism, the domination of citizens by incoherent, inconstant, and incontinent rulers. A government that cannot govern itself cannot legitimately govern others.
PB - Harvard University Press
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983465
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - The Science of contemporary Street Protest: New efforts in the United States
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
AB - Since the inauguration of Donald Trump, there has been substantial and ongoing protest against the Administration. Street demonstrations are some of the most visible forms of opposition to the Administration and its policies. This article reviews the two most central methods for studying street protest on a large scale: building comprehensive event databases and conducting field surveys of participants at demonstrations. After discussing the broader development of these methods, this article provides a detailed assessment of recent and ongoing projects studying the current wave of contention. Recommendations are offered to meet major challenges, including making data publicly available in near real time, increasing the validity and reliability of event data, expanding the scope of crowd surveys, and integrating ongoing projects in a meaningful way by building new research infrastructure.
JF - Science Advances
VL - 5
UR - https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaaw5461
IS - 10
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Renewing Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Ralph Ranalli
AB - Americans live in a country founded on the concept of individual rights, but human rights experts say more work still needs to be done teaching people what rights actually are, where they come from, and how their neighbors’ rights intertwine with their own.
A major new initiative from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy will seek to bridge that gap, particularly in the area of how individual rights are inextricably linked to societal responsibility. The two-year research initiative is titled “Renewing Rights and Responsibilities in the US.”
Read the full article here
JF - Harvard Kennedy School
UR - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/human-rights-justice/renewing-rights-and-responsibilities-us
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Renewing Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Ralph Ranalli
AB - See the HKS article on the new Carr Center Rights and Responsibilities Initiative.
Americans live in a country founded on the concept of individual rights, but human rights experts say more work still needs to be done teaching people what rights actually are, where they come from, and how their neighbors’ rights intertwine with their own.
A major new initiative from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy will seek to bridge that gap, particularly in the area of how individual rights are inextricably linked to societal responsibility. The two-year research initiative is titled “Renewing Rights and Responsibilities in the US.”
“We want to get people to think about human rights and to remind them of their relevance,” said Mathias Risse, the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Administration and faculty director of the Carr Center. “We want to remind people of the content of the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to remind people of the significance of looking after every single person. That’s really the purpose of this initiative.”
See full article here.
JF - Harvard Kennedy School
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Deborah Avant
A1 - Marie Berry
A1 - Rachel Epstein
A1 - Cullen Hendrix
A1 - Oliver Kaplan
A1 - Timothy Sisk
AB - This comprehensive study introduces scholars and practitioners to the concept of civil action. It locates civil action within the wider spectrum of behavior in the midst of civil conflict and war, and showcases empirical findings about the effects of civil action in nine cases from around the world. It explains the ways in which non-violent actions during civil war affect the dynamics of violence.
Many view civil wars as violent contests between armed combatants. But history shows that community groups, businesses, NGOs, local governments, and even armed groups can respond to war by engaging in civil action. Characterized by a reluctance to resort to violence and a willingness to show enough respect to engage with others, civil action can slow, delay, or prevent violent escalations. This volume explores how people in conflict environments engage in civil action, and the ways such action has affected violence dynamics in Syria, Peru, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Spain, and Colombia. These cases highlight the critical and often neglected role that civil action plays in conflicts around the world.
PB - Oxford University Press
UR - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/civil-action-and-the-dynamics-of-violence-9780190056902?cc=us&lang=en
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Talks Ethics and Technology at Kennedy School
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Michelle G. Kurilla
AB - Luís Roberto Barroso, current justice of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil and senior fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School, warned that advances in technology will pose new dangers to Brazilian and American democratic institutions in a speech at the school Monday evening.
He said the development of artificial intelligence — which he called the “fourth industrial revolution” — will prompt urgent questions about the proper limits of freedom of expression on the internet, including ways to combat hate speech and fake news.
Read the full article here
JF - The Harvard Crimson
UR - https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/9/10/brazil-supreme-court-justice/
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - The Education of an Idealist
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Samantha Power
AB - In her memoir, Power offers an urgent response to the question "What can one person do?"—and a call for a clearer eye, a kinder heart, and a more open and civil hand in our politics and daily lives.
The Education of an Idealist traces Power’s distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official. In 2005, her critiques of US foreign policy caught the eye of newly elected senator Barack Obama, who invited her to work with him on Capitol Hill and then on his presidential campaign. After Obama was elected president, Power went from being an activist outsider to a government insider, navigating the halls of power while trying to put her ideals into practice. She served for four years as Obama's human rights adviser, and in 2013, he named her US Ambassador to the United Nations, the youngest American to assume the role.
Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy. Humorous and deeply honest, The Education of an Idealist lays bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life and shows how she juggled the demands of a 24/7 national security job with the challenge of raising two young children. Along the way, she illuminates the intricacies of politics and geopolitics, reminding us how the United States can lead in the world, and why we each have the opportunity to advance the cause of human dignity. Power's memoir is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism and of one person's fierce determination to make a difference.
PB - Dey Street Books
UR - https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062820693/the-education-of-an-idealist/
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Technological Revolution, Democratic Recession and Climate Change: The Limits of Law in a Changing World
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Luís Roberto Barroso
AB - Law is a universal institution that has pretensions of being ubiquitous and complete. However, in a complex, plural and volatile world, its limits and possibilities are shaken by the speed, depth and extent of ongoing transformations, its resulting ethical dilemmas, and the difficulties of forming consensus in the political universe.
This article provides a reflection on how the Law has attempted to deal with some of the main afflictions of our time, facing demands that include the needs to (i) keep the technological revolution on an ethical and humanistic track, (ii) avoid that democracy be perverted by populist and authoritarian adventures and (iii) prevent solutions to climate change from coming only when it is too late. At a time when even the near future has become unpredictable, Law cannot provide a priori solutions to multiplying problems and anxieties. When this happens, we must set clear goals for the future of humanity, basing them on the essential and perennial values that have followed us since antiquity.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_009_technology_democracy.pdf
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Trump wants to “detect mass shooters before they strike.” It won’t work.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Sigal Samuel
AB - New article on Vox highlights the work of Desmond Patton, Technology and Human Rights Fellow.
Patton, emphasized that current AI tools tend to identify the language of African American and Latinx people as gang-involved or otherwise threatening, but consistently miss the posts of white mass murderers.
"I think technology is a tool, not the tool," said Patton. "Often we use it as an escape so as to not address critical solutions that need to come through policy. We have to pair tech with gun reform. Any effort that suggests we need to do them separately, I don’t think that would be a successful effort at all.”
Read full article here.
JF - Vox
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Trump wants to “detect mass shooters before they strike.” It won’t work.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Desmond Patton
AB - New article on Vox highlights the work of Desmond Patton, Technology and Human Rights Fellow.
Desmond Patton, a Technology and AI fellow at the Carr Center, emphasized that current AI tools tend to identify the language of African American and Latinx people as gang-involved or otherwise threatening, but consistently miss the posts of white mass murderers.
"I think technology is a tool, not the tool," said Patton. "Often we use it as an escape so as to not address critical solutions that need to come through policy. We have to pair tech with gun reform. Any effort that suggests we need to do them separately, I don’t think that would be a successful effort at all.”
Read the full article here
JF - Vox.com
UR - https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/8/7/20756928/trump-el-paso-dayton-mass-shooting-ai-social-media
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Physics of Dissent and the Effects of Movement Momentum
JF - Nature Human Behaviour
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Margherita Belgioioso
AB - How do ‘people power’ movements succeed when modest proportions of the population participate?
Here we propose that the effects of social movements increase as they gain momentum. We approximate a simple law drawn from physics: momentum equals mass times velocity (p = mv). We propose that the momentum of dissent is a product of participation (mass) and the number of protest events in a week (velocity). We test this simple physical proposition against panel data on the potential effects of movement momentum on irregular leader exit in African countries between 1990 and 2014, using a variety of estimation techniques. Our findings show that social movements potentially compensate for relatively modest popular support by concentrating their activities in time, thus increasing their disruptive capacity. Notably, these findings also provide a straightforward way for dissidents to easily quantify their coercive potential by assessing their participation rates and increased concentration of their activities over time.
Read the full article here
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0665-8
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - On the Future of Human Rights. CCPD 2019-008.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Sherif Elsayed-Ali
AB - The human rights framework has had many successes in the 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, but is still relevant to today’s challenges?
In the last few years, human rights practitioners have raised the alarm on what seems like sustained attacks on human rights from some governments. But there is a bigger threat to the future of human rights: that people could see them as less relevant to their lives. My aim is to provide a constructive critique of human rights practice and messaging, together with three main proposals: 1. putting climate change at the top of the human rights agenda; 2. significantly increasing the amount of work on Economic, Social and Cultural (ESC) rights undertaken by human rights advocacy and campaigning organizations, and 3. adopting a system-analysis and solutions-based approach to human rights.
JF - Carr Center for Human Rights
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_008_future_of_human_rights.pdf
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Stop Surveillance Humanitarianism
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Mark Latonero
AB - Mark Latonero – Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow, and research lead at Data & Society – discusses surveillance humanitarianism for The New York Times.
A standoff between the United Nations World Food Program and Houthi rebels in control of the capital region is threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Yemen.
Alarmed by reports that food is being diverted to support the rebels, the aid program is demanding that Houthi officials allow them to deploy biometric technologies like iris scans and digital fingerprints to monitor suspected fraud during food distribution.
The Houthis have reportedly blocked food delivery, painting the biometric effort as an intelligence operation, and have demanded access to the personal data on beneficiaries of the aid. The impasse led the aid organization to the decision last month to suspend food aid to parts of the starving population — once thought of as a last resort — unless the Houthis allow biometrics.
Read the full article.
JF - The New York Times
UR - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/opinion/data-humanitarian-aid.html
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Reclaiming Stonewall: Welcome to the Celebration—and the Struggle
JF - The Nation
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Timothy Patrick McCarthy
AB - A new edition of The Nation examines the meaning of Stonewall.
Guest edited by Timothy McCarthy, the issue asks us, 'What still needs to be done?'
"Anniversaries are occasions for remembrance, even pride and celebration, but they should also be moments of reckoning, which offer us the opportunity to reflect critically on where we come from, where we are, and where we go from here.
To help us reckon with the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, The Nation invited a remarkable group of LGBTQ activists, artists, and academics to reflect on its many legacies. Ranging in age from 23 to 88 years old, the participants in “Reclaiming Stonewall” represent the stunning diversity of our community across generations. Combining the personal and the political, this collection of living queer histories is something of an archive of our moment, when many of us are grappling with what might be called the paradox of progress: the coexistence of important changes—in courtrooms and legislatures, hearts and minds—with seemingly intractable challenges.
As we reckon with the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, let us heed all these voices and ask, “What still needs to be done?” If the legacy and inheritance of Stonewall mean anything, it’s that our fight is far from over and that our collective struggle for liberation—for everyone—must continue."
—Timothy Patrick McCarthy
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Reclaiming Stonewall: Welcome to the Celebration—and the Struggle
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Timothy Patrick McCarthy
AB - As we reckon with the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, it is essential that we ask, “What still needs to be done?”
"Fifty years ago, in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, a motley multitude of queer folks fought back. The stage was the Stonewall Inn, a popular Mafia-owned gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City’s West Village. The spectacle was a police raid, which had become an increasingly routine fact of queer life during the 1960s. It was summer, people were hot, and the nation was pulsing with protest."
Read more.
JF - The Nation
UR - https://www.thenation.com/article/stonewall-1969-progress-paradox/
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - The Quest For Inclusive & Ethical Technology
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Sabelo Mhlambi
AB - New interview with Technology and Human Rights Fellow Sabelo Mhlambi.
"Most of us think of technology as a neutral force. Objects or processes are designed and implemented to solve problems and there are no biases, implied or overt, at work. But Sabelo Mhlambi says, not so fast. The computer scientist and researcher says technology cannot be neutral. What gets made, who makes it and uses it, and why is dependent upon our societies — and all societies are biased.
"Technology will only replicate who we are," he explains. "Our social interactions will still occur online anyway. So, there’s nothing magical about technology where it somehow brings neutrality or brings equality or equity."
https://www.wuwm.com/post/quest-inclusive-ethical-technology
JF - WUWM Milwaukee NPR
PB - Bonnie North
UR - https://www.wuwm.com/post/quest-inclusive-ethical-technology
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Future Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Humans and Human Rights
JF - Ethics and International Affairs
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Steven Livingston
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - What are the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on human rights in the next three decades?
Precise answers to this question are made difficult by the rapid rate of innovation in AI research and by the effects of human practices on the adaption of new technologies. Precise answers are also challenged by imprecise usages of the term “AI.” There are several types of research that all fall under this general term. We begin by clarifying what we mean by AI. Most of our attention is then focused on the implications of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which entail that an algorithm or group of algorithms will achieve something like superintelligence. While acknowledging that the feasibility of superintelligence is contested, we consider the moral and ethical implications of such a potential development. What do machines owe humans and what do humans owe superintelligent machines?
Read the full article here
VL - 33
UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ethics-and-international-affairs/article/future-impact-of-artificial-intelligence-on-humans-and-human-rights/2016EDC9A61F68615EBF9AFA8DE91BF8
IS - 2
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Big Tech Firms are Racing to Track Climate Refugees
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Mark Latonero
AB - The MIT Technology Review features new report by Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow Mark Latonero.
"Simply layering technology on top of existing humanitarian problems tends to exacerbate the issues it intended to resolve. In a new report on the role of digital identity in refugee and migrant contexts, a team of researchers at the Data & Society Research Institute, led by Mark Latonero, detail the various ways these initiatives can reproduce and worsen existing bureaucratic biases."
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613531/big-tech-firms-are-racing-to-track-climate-refugees/
JF - MIT Technology Review
UR - https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613531/big-tech-firms-are-racing-to-track-climate-refugees/
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world
Y1 - 2019
A1 - David Robson
AB - Research featuring Carr Center's Erica Chenoweth.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
"In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands."
Read the full article on BBC Future.
JF - BBC Future
UR - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Critical Skill for Nonprofits in the Digital Age: Technical Intuition
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Alix Dunn
AB - Not everyone needs to become a tech expert, but all activists and nonprofit leaders must develop skills to inquire about, decide on, and demand technological change. Tech Fellow Alix Dunn talks to Stanford's Social Innovation Podcast.
In a world where the pace of organizational learning is often slower than the pace of technological change, activists and nonprofit leaders must develop their “technical intuition.” Not everyone needs to become a tech expert, explains Alix Dunn, of the consulting firm Computer Says Maybe, but this ongoing process of imagining, inquiring about, deciding on, and demanding technological change is critical.
In this recording from the Stanford Social Innovation Review's 2019 Data on Purpose conference, Dunn walks through her guidelines to help anyone to develop these skills.
JF - Stanford Social Innovation Review
UR - https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/critical_skill_for_nonprofits_in_the_digital_age_technical_intuition
ER -
TY - ABST
T1 - The Populist-Nationalist Rebellion: Challenge to Transatlantic Democracy
Y1 - 2019
A1 - John Shattuck
AB -
"The US and the European Union (EU) are confronted to- day by a surge of populist nationalism that presents mul- tiple challenges to transatlantic democracy. Populism is a form of grassroots rebellion against governing elites with a long history and complex relationship to democracy, as illustrated by two historical examples, the rebellions in colonial America and post-1989 Czechoslovakia, both of which led to democratic governments, and two contrary contemporary examples, in the US and Hungary, which have gone in the opposite direction."
Link here: https://www.coleurope.eu/research-paper/populist-nationalist-rebellion-challenge-transatlantic-democracy
VL - 2
UR - https://www.coleurope.eu/research-paper/populist-nationalist-rebellion-challenge-transatlantic-democracy
IS - 19
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - People Power is Rising in Africa
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Zoe Marks
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Jide Okeke
AB - New article in Foreign Affairs from Carr Center's Zoe Marks and Erica Chenoweth, with Jide Okeke, delineates how protest movements are succeeding where even global arrest warrants can’t.
A new tide of people power is rising in Africa. On April 2, a nonviolent resistance movement in Algeria succeeded in pressuring Abdelaziz Bouteflika to resign after 20 years as president. Nine days later, protesters in Sudan were celebrating the ouster of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president of 30 years, after a three-month-long uprising against his regime.
The nonviolent overthrows of Bouteflika and Bashir are not aberrations. They reflect a surprising trend across the continent: despite common perceptions of Africa as wracked by violence and conflict, since 2000, most rebellions there have been unarmed and peaceful. Over the past decade, mass uprisings in Africa have accounted for one in three of the nonviolent campaigns aiming to topple dictatorships around the world. Africa has seen 25 new, nonviolent mass movements—almost twice as many as Asia, the next most active region with 16.
Read the full article on Foreign Affairs.
JF - Foreign Affairs
UR - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/africa/2019-04-25/people-power-rising-africa
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - How to Solve Homelessness With Artificial Intelligence
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Desmond Patton
AB - New article on Ozy.com featuring Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow Desmond Patton.
“This is a pioneering phase for social work and AI,” says Desmond Patton, a professor at Columbia University who uses natural language processing algorithms to analyze gang violence. “I don’t think it’s a space yet.”
Read the full article here
JF - Ozy
UR - https://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/how-to-solve-homelessness-with-artificial-intelligence/92033
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Half a Century After Malcolm X Came to Visit: Reflections on the Thin Presence of African Thought in Global Justice Debates.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - What would it mean for there to be a genuinely and legitimately global discourse on justice that involves Africa in authentic ways?
There are various responses. On the one hand, there is the idea of “philosophical fieldwork” developed by Katrin Flikschuh. African thought that fell by the wayside due to European expansionism must be recuperated and inserted into that discourse. On the other hand, there is the world society approach pioneered by John Meyer and others. The point is that ideas from elsewhere in the world can be genuinely and legitimately appropriated, which is how ideas have always spread. Once ideas about justice are appropriated by African thinkers, they are associated with Africa as much as with any other region. My goal here is to explore both approaches and support the second, while also making room for the first. In doing so, I articulate a view about how my own ongoing work on global justice can be seen as a contribution to an actual global discourse. There are rather large (and sensitive) issues at stake here: how to think about respectful appropriation of ideas and thus respectful philosophical discourse. A great deal of nuance is needed.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccpd_2019_007_africa_global_justice.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Discrimination, Cognitive Biases and Human Rights Violations
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Mathias Risse outlines his presentation at the First Colloquium on Discrimination, Cognitive Biases and Human Rights at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), on November 15th, 2018.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_006_discrimination_cognitive_bias.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Countermajoritarian, Representative, and Enlightened: The Roles of Constitutional Courts in Democracies
JF - The American Journal of Comparitive Law
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Luís Roberto Barroso
AB - Justice Luis Roberto Barroso's latest article on Countermajoritarian, Representative, and Enlightened: The Roles of Constitutional Courts in Democracies.
The primary purpose of this article is to examine the roles of constitutional courts in contemporary democracies. It aims to demonstrate that such courts perform, in addition to the countermajoritarian role traditionally recognized in constitutional theory, two other roles: representative and, occasionally, enlightened. In the construction of the argument, the Article analyzes the phenomena of the judicialization of politics and judicial activism, as well as the issue of the difficult demarcation of the border between law and politics in the complex and plural societies of today. Although it presents several examples of the constitutional experience of the United States, the Article’s conclusions are generalizable, looking at the roles of constitutional courts from the perspective of a global constitutionalism whose categories have become common practice in the democracies of the world.
See full text.
UR - https://academic.oup.com/ajcl/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcl/avz009/5427869
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court at 20: Looking Back and Looking Forward.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court at 20: Looking Back and Looking Forward. Symposium Report.
Mathias Risse, Faculty Director of the Carr Center, and Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, opened the conference with welcoming remarks. Risse noted that 2018 was a year of anniversaries, not only the 20th anniversary of the Rome Statute but also the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and of the American Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man, an occasion both for celebration and for critical reflection. Sikkink also noted the 20th anniversary of the Rome Statute was a moment to reflect and remember, looking backward to take stock with an eye toward moving justice forward in the future.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/iccconferencereport_final.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Human Rights and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Joseph Nye
AB - This working paper is a transcription of a
talk given by Joseph Nye for the Carr Center's Fierce Urgency of Now lecture series.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccpd_2019_005_human_rights_foreign_policy.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Digital Identity in the Migration & Refugee Context: Italy Case Study
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Mark Latonero
A1 - Keith Hiatt
A1 - Antonella Napolitano
A1 - Giulia Clericetti
A1 - Melanie Penagos
AB - New Report by Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow Mark Latonero.
"Increasingly, governments, corporations, international organizations, and nongov-ernmental organizations (NGOs) are seeking to use digital technologies to track the identities of migrants and refugees. This surging interest in digital identity technologies would seem to meet a pressing need: the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) states that in today’s modern world, lacking proof of identity can limit a person’s access to services and socio-economic participation, including employment opportunities, housing, a mobile phone, and a bank account. But this report argues that the tech-nologies and processes involved in digital identity will not provide easy solutions in the migration and refugee context. Technologies that rely on identity data introduce a new sociotechnical layer that may exacerbate existing biases, discrimination, or power imbalances.How can we weigh the added value of digital identification systems against the potential risks and harms to migrant safety and fundamental human rights? This report provides international organizations, policymakers, civil society, technologists, and funders with a deeper background on what we currently know about digital identity and how migrant identity data is situated in the Italian context. "
JF - Data & Society
PB - Data & Society
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/datasociety_digitalidentity.pdf
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Deepfakes are Solvable—but Don’t Forget That “shallowfakes” are Already Pervasive
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Mark Latonero
AB - New article features Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow Mark Latonero.
"
Mark Latonero, human rights lead at Data & Society, a nonprofit institute dedicated to the applications of data, agreed that technology companies should be doing more to tackle such issues. While Microsoft, Google, Twitter, and others have employees focused on human rights, he said, there was so much more they should be doing before they deploy technologies—not after."
JF - MIT Technology Review
UR - https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613172/deepfakes-shallowfakes-human-rights/
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Realizing Rights for Homeworkers: An Analysis of Governance Mechanisms.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Marlese von Broembsen
A1 - Jenna Harvey
A1 - Marty Chen
AB - Realizing Rights for Homeworkers: An Analysis of Governance Mechanisms Carr Center Discussion Paper:
Following the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, the labour rights violations in global supply chains, and indeed the governance of global supply chains, has become a pressing global issue. This paper evaluates key existing global and national supply chain governance mechanisms from the perspective of the most vulnerable workers in supply chains—informal homeworkers.
Read the full paper here: https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_004_realizing_rights.pdf
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_004_realizing_rights.pdf
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Any Us Military Intervention in Venezuela Will Be Counterproductive
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Douglas A. Johnson
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Original post here.
It is so tempting to believe that U.S. military intervention offers a quick solution to the Venezuela crisis. And by military intervention, we don’t just mean a full-fledged invasion, but any action that involves U.S. military forcefully crossing an international border. We understand why some in the Venezuelan opposition urge the use of military force. It seems simple to have the U.S. intervene and stop the killing, the incompetence, the corruption that is today’s Venezuela.
As unarmed civilians attempt to bring needed food and medicine into the country, the Maduro government responded with blockades of international bridges and violence, beginning the killing that now headlines American news. U.S. officials warn that Maduro’s days are numbered and flash threats that the U.S. might intervene militarily, a move that would seem welcome to many Venezuelans, both at home and exile. Is that a good idea?
This should give us pause — at the very time that the U.S. is negotiating with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan, perhaps ending 18 years of armed intervention and the forlorn hope of building a stable democracy. The equally destructive example of Iraq and its spillover into Syria is another warning that American intervention can stimulate the creation of new enemies.
But isn’t Venezuela different? There is a long tradition of democracy, eroded by a corrupt regime held in power by a small but powerful military. We now have an active leader of the opposition and massive numbers of citizens in the streets every day. Surely this is a time when American troops will be welcomed as liberators. And what about the examples of Grenada and Panama? Didn’t military intervention “work” there? But these small states have virtually no similarities to the political and geographic situation in Venezuela.
Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro, fearing the history of invasion and U.S. supported coups, consciously armed and trained tens of thousands of their supporters into militias precisely to prepare for armed attacks against their governments. We should understand that the traditions of “going into the mountains” hold a fascination and moral example in Latin America. Better armed and trained than ever the FARC was in Colombia, would we wish a 50-year civil war on our southern neighbor?
Only one course of action will forestall this scenario: The Venezuelan military must render itself to its own people, not to a foreign power.
The political campaigns and pressures already underway offer very promising avenues for change. A campaign of non-recognition of the Maduro government has led to 50 countries recognizing Juan Guaido as president. This campaign is completely in line with Latin American and Venezuelan traditions. In 1907, an Ecuadoran Foreign Minister issued the Tobar Doctrine, calling for non-recognition of any government that came to power by non-constitutional means. In the 1950s, the democratically elected Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, followed with his “Betancourt Doctrine,” saying that Venezuela would deny diplomatic recognition to any government that came to power by unconstitutional means. At the time, not many Latin American countries followed suit, but since that time, the OAS has elaborated a legal and political framework to address governments that come to power illegally, as Maduro’s second term would be.
American intervention has a long history in Latin America; likewise, this has been a source of distrust and opposition throughout the Americas, one that Chavez & Maduro, Castro and others have nurtured and used to create political power. Perversely, the threat of American intervention strengthens Maduro’s core support, rather that weakens it.
Although this conflict may extend itself even longer and more unarmed civilians may be killed and more children may die from malnutrition and disease, there is hope that change will happen. And there is good evidence that this hope is the strategically best option for all.
Compelling evidence from Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan in their book “Why Civil Resistance Works” demonstrates that disciplined nonviolent movements are more effective overall, and generally quicker to good effect, than violent conflicts. Using an original data set of all known major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006, they show that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to win legitimacy and attract widespread support than violent movements. There are lessons to be learned from this evidence, and the Venezuelan opposition now seems to be heeding those lessons. Chenoweth and Stephan also find that nonviolent conflict is much more likely than violent efforts to lead to a democratic outcome. That is what we and what the Venezuelan people want. A U.S. military intervention would derail that success.
The Venezuelan movements against Maduro have been prolonged and often numerous with civilian participation, but the opposition parties were disunited, unable to create an inclusive vision to unite the population. It was easy for Maduro to dismiss the opposition as right-wing conservatives opposed to the inclusive vision promised by Chavez.
With the compelling leadership of Juan Guaido, that has changed. The opposition is united, not just under a charismatic leader, but with a broadening vision that has consciously reached out to the poor and other constituents of the Maduro regime, shifting their loyalties as only a nonviolent campaign can.
Chenoweth and Stephan identify what they call the “participation advantage” of nonviolent movements. Everyone can participate at levels of risk they are willing to undertake, publicly and privately creating resistance to the regime and raising its costs of repression. A wider demographic of participants brings in new tactics to keep the regime off balance; it brings in new networks of family, friendship, and influence that increase the likelihood of recruitment of military and security forces; and it brings legitimacy to an alternative vision for society.
These will be dangerous times for many activists, but it is their risks and sacrifices that can bring about a truly democratic change. Let us do nothing to rob them of their moments of courage and victory.
NOTE: This post has been updated from the original to update the number of countries recognizing Juan Guaido as president to 50.
Dr. Kathryn Sikkink (@kathryn_sikkink) is the Ryan Family Chair of Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School. Douglas A. Johnson is a Lecturer in Public Policy and the former Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (@CarrCenter) at the Harvard Kennedy School.
JF - The Hill
UR - https://thehill.com/opinion/international/431996-any-us-military-intervention-in-venezuela-will-be-counterproductive
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - The War on Voting Rights
Y1 - 2019
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Aaron Huang
A1 - Elisabeth Thoreson-Green
AB - Discussion Paper on The War on Voting Rights:
The 2020 presidential election will be a showdown over the right to vote. The outcome will be determined by an electoral system under attack from both foreign and domestic sources. Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 presidential election are being extensively investigated, but the domestic war on voting rights is less well understood. After more than a century of expanding the voting rights of previously disenfranchised groups, the American electoral system today is confronted by political and legal maneuvers to curtail the hard-won rights of these same groups, ostensibly in the name of combating fraud and regulating voting, but in fact in order to change the outcome of elections.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_003_war_on_voting_final.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Breaking the Ban? The Heterogeneous Impact of US Contestation of the Torture Norm
JF - Journal of Global Security Studies
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Averell Schmidt
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Breaking the Ban? The Heterogeneous Impact of US Contestation of the Torture Norm recent journal article by Kathryn Sikkink and Averell Schmidt
Following the attacks of 9/11, the United States adopted a policy of torturing suspected terrorists and reinterpreted its legal obligations so that it could argue that this policy was lawful. This article investigates the impact of these actions by the United States on the global norm against torture. After conceptualizing how the United States contested the norm against torture, the article explores how US actions impacted the norm across four dimensions of robustness: concordance with the norm, third-party reactions to norm violations, compliance, and implementation. This analysis reveals a heterogeneous impact of US contestation: while US policies did not impact global human rights trends, it did shape the behavior of states that aided and abetted US torture policies, especially those lacking strong domestic legal structures. The article sheds light on the circumstances under which powerful states can shape the robustness of global norms.
Read more here: https://academic.oup.com/jogss/article-abstract/4/1/105/5347914?redirectedFrom=fulltext
VL - 4
UR - https://academic.oup.com/jogss/article/4/1/105/5347914
IS - 1
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Future is a Moving Target: Predicting Political Instability
JF - British Journal of Political Science
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Drew Bowlsby
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
A1 - Cullen Hendrix
A1 - Jonathan D. Moyer
AB - Journal article on: The Future is a Moving Target: Predicting Political Instability
Previous research by Goldstone et al. (2010) generated a highly accurate predictive model of state-level political instability. Notably, this model identifies political institutions – and partial democracy with factionalism, specifically – as the most compelling factors explaining when and where instability events are likely to occur. This article reassesses the model’s explanatory power and makes three related points: (1) the model’s predictive power varies substantially over time; (2) its predictive power peaked in the period used for out-of-sample validation (1995–2004) in the original study and (3) the model performs relatively poorly in the more recent period. The authors find that this decline is not simply due to the Arab Uprisings, instability events that occurred in autocracies. Similar issues are found with attempts to predict nonviolent uprisings (Chenoweth and Ulfelder 2017) and armed conflict onset and continuation (Hegre et al. 2013). These results inform two conclusions: (1) the drivers of instability are not constant over time and (2) care must be exercised in interpreting prediction exercises as evidence in favor or dispositive of theoretical mechanisms.
UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/future-is-a-moving-target-predicting-political-instability/0028744BE1AFF83F879E7759D798D88A
N1 - Bowlsby, D., Chenoweth, E., Hendrix, C., & Moyer, J. (n.d.). The Future is a Moving Target: Predicting Political Instability. British Journal of Political Science, 1-13. doi:10.1017/S0007123418000443
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Human Rights, Artificial Intelligence and Heideggerian Technoskepticism: The Long (Worrisome?) View
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Mathias Risse's explores the impact of artificial intelligence on human rights in his latest discussion paper.
My concern is with the impact of Artificial Intelligence on human rights. I first identify two presumptions about ethics-and-AI we should make only with appropriate qualifications. These presumptions are that (a) for the time being investigating the impact of AI, especially in the human-rights domain, is a matter of investigating impact of certain tools, and that (b) the crucial danger is that some such tools – the artificially intelligent ones – might eventually become like their creators and conceivably turn against them. We turn to Heidegger’s influential philosophy of technology to argue these presumptions require qualifications of a sort that should inform our discussion of AI. Next I argue that one major challenge is how human rights will prevail in an era that quite possibly is shaped by an enormous increase in economic inequality. Currently the human-rights movement is rather unprepared to deal with the resulting challenges. What is needed is greater focus on social justice/distributive justice, both domestically and globally, to make sure societies do not fall apart. I also ague that, in the long run, we must be prepared to deal with more types of moral status than we currently do and that quite plausibly some machines will have some type of moral status, which may or may not fall short of the moral status of human beings (a point also emerging from the Heidegger discussion). Machines may have to be integrated into human social and political lives.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_002_risse_technoskepticism.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - The Social Construction of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. CCDP 2019-001, February 2019.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - John Ruggie
AB -
The Social Construction of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by John Ruggie:
The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles) in June 2011. To date, they constitute the only official guidance the HRC and its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, have issued for states and business enterprises in relation to business and human rights. And it was the first time that either body had “endorsed” a normative text on any subject that governments did not negotiate themselves. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, describes the Guiding Principles as “the global authoritative standard, providing a blueprint for the steps all states and businesses should take to uphold human rights.” According to Arvind Ganesan, who directs business and human rights at Human Rights Watch, as recently as the late 1990s “there was no recognition that companies had human rights responsibilities.” Needless to say, many factors contributed to this shift, particularly escalating pressure from civil society and adversely affected populations. But in terms of putting a global standard in place, The Economist Intelligence Unit has judged HRC endorsement of the Guiding Principles to be the “watershed event.”
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2019_001_un_guiding_principles.pdf
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Embedding Ethics in Computer Science Curriculum
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Kate Vredenburgh
AB - New article in The Harvard Gazette features work by Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow Kate Vredenburgh.
"A module that Kate Vredenburgh, a philosophy Ph.D. student, created for a course taught by Professor Finale Doshi-Velez asks students to grapple with questions of how machine-learning models can be discriminatory, and how that discrimination can be reduced."
JF - The Harvard Gazette
UR - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/01/harvard-works-to-embed-ethics-in-computer-science-curriculum/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Introducing the Nonviolent Action in Violent Contexts (NVAVC) dataset
JF - Journal of Peace Research
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
AB - Introducing the Nonviolent Action in Violent Contexts (NVAVC) dataset article by Erica Chenoweth
Scholarship on civil war is overwhelmingly preoccupied with armed activity. Data collection efforts on actors in civil wars tend to reflect this emphasis, with most studies focusing on the identities, attributes, and violent behavior of armed actors. Yet various actors also use nonviolent methods to shape the intensity and variation of violence as well as the duration of peace in the aftermath. Existing datasets on mobilization by non-state actors – such as the Armed Conflict Events and Location (ACLED), Integrated Conflict Early Warning System (ICEWS), and Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD) – tend to include data on manifest contentious acts, such as protests, strikes, and demonstrations, and exclude activities like organizing, planning, training, negotiations, communications, and capacity-building that may be critical to the actors’ ultimate success. To provide a more comprehensive and reliable view of the landscape of possible nonviolent behaviors involved in civil wars, we present the Nonviolent Action in Violent Contexts (NVAVC) dataset, which identifies 3,662 nonviolent actions during civil wars in Africa between 1990 and 2012, across 124 conflict-years in 17 countries. In this article, we describe the data collection process, discuss the information contained therein, and offer descriptive statistics and discuss spatial patterns. The framework we develop provides a powerful tool for future researchers to use to categorize various types of nonviolent action, and the data we collect provide important evidence that such efforts are worthwhile.
UR - https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/BfJwuWG2fXV5S6PCwSU8/full
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - We Can't Future-Proof Technology. But Here are 5 Ways to Forward Plan.
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Alexa Koenig
A1 - Sherif Elsayed-Ali
AB - New article co-authored by Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow Sherif Elsayed-Ali.
"We know that the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are drastically changing our world. This change is happening at a faster rate and greater scale than at any point in human history – and with that change come significant challenges to the ability of our public institutions and governments to adequately respond.
From the plough to vaccines to computers, technological innovations have generally made human societies more productive. Over time, people have figured out how to mitigate their negative aspects. For example, electrical applications are much safer to use now than in the early days of electrification. Though we came close to disaster, since the Second World War the international political system has managed to contain the threat of nuclear weapons for mass destruction.
However, the accelerating pace of change and the power of new technologies mean that negative unintended consequences will only become more frequent and more dangerous. What can we do today to help ensure that new technologies make life better, not worse?"
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/how-to-plan-for-technology-future-koenig-elsayed-ali/
JF - World Economic Forum
UR - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/how-to-plan-for-technology-future-koenig-elsayed-ali/
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Conference Report: Human Rights, Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence
T2 - Human Rights, Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
AB - Human Rights, Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence: Challenges for the Next 70 Years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
In early December 2018, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society hosted an inaugural conference that aimed to respond to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ 70th Anniversary by reflecting on the past, present and future of human rights. The conference was organized by Carr Center Faculty Director Mathias Risse.
JF - Human Rights, Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/aitechconferencereport_jan14.pdf
ER -
TY - CHAP
T1 - Democracy, Political Crisis, and Constitutional Jurisdiction
T2 - Judicial Power: How Constitutional Courts Affect Political Transformation
Y1 - 2019
A1 - Luís Roberto Barroso
A1 - Aline Osorio
AB - Read Justice Luis Roberto Barroso's latest chapter on Judicial Power: How Constitutional Courts Affect Political Transformation.
JF - Judicial Power: How Constitutional Courts Affect Political Transformation
PB - Cambridge University Press
UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/judicial-power/democracy-political-crisis-and-constitutional-jurisdiction/DD0E3B98EC8CBB1B12FB03FB82680995
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Can Technology deliver freedoms for India’s poor?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Salil Shetty
AB - Talk given by Carr Center's Senior Fellow
Salil Shetty at TechFest IIT Bombay.
"My talk today is addressed to concerned citizens who are not experts on the subject. Many of the issues I am touching on require a much more complex and nuanced treatment but this talk is deliberately taking a simpler narrative."
Read Salil Shetty's complete presentation here: https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/can_tech_salil_shetty_01.pdf
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/can_tech_salil_shetty_01.pdf
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Here’s What Erick Erickson Gets Wrong About Dictators and Migration
T2 - The Washington Post
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - In a recent op-ed, conservative writer Erik Erickson
argued that the U.S. government should support the “next Pinochets” to create more stability in Latin America and stop the flow of refugees seeking access to the United States.
The remark was instantly controversial because Augusto Pinochet was a Chilean dictator who committed massive human rights abuses.
Read the full article here.
JF - The Washington Post
UR - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/12/04/heres-what-erick-erickson-gets-wrong-about-dictators-and-migration/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.daa4580ca273
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Partners in Crime: An Empirical Evaluation of the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program
JF - Perspectives on Politics
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Averell Schmidt
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Article on : Partners in Crime: An Empirical Evaluation of the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program
In the years following the attacks of 9/11, the CIA adopted a program involving the capture, extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists in the war on terror. As the details of this program have become public, a heated debate has ensued, focusing narrowly on whether or not this program “worked” by disrupting terror plots and saving American lives. By embracing such a narrow view of the program’s efficacy, this debate has failed to take into account the broader consequences of the CIA program. We move beyond current debates by evaluating the impact of the CIA program on the human rights practices of other states. We show that collaboration in the CIA program is associated with a worsening in the human rights practices of authoritarian countries. This finding illustrates how states learn from and influence one another through covert security cooperation and the importance of democratic institutions in mitigating the adverse consequences of the CIA program. This finding also underscores why a broad perspective is critical when assessing the consequences of counterterrorism policies.
VL - 16
UR - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/partners-in-crime-an-empirical-evaluation-of-the-cia-rendition-detention-and-interrogation-program/040CA83C6EAEEF856CC0B90BF6606096
IS - 4
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - In July, the Trump-era wave of protests started taking a back seat to campaign rallies
T2 - The Washington Post
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
AB - Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman contribute to The Washington Post's monthly series on political crowds in the United States.
For 18 months now, as we’ve counted attendance at political gatherings around the United States, we’ve seen crowds in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For the first time since President Trump’s inauguration, we found one state with no political gatherings. In all, in July, we tallied 743 protests, demonstrations, strikes, marches, sit-ins, rallies and walkouts in all states and the District — except South Dakota.
Our conservative guess is that between 71,502 and 73,483 people showed up at these political events, although more probably showed up, as well. This number is the lowest in one month that we’ve seen since December 2017. This year, January, March and June included some of the highest protest numbers in U.S. history, and June featured unusually high attendance because of LGBTQ Pride, Families Belong Together (which protested the policy that separated migrant families at the border), and the Poor People’s Campaign, among others.
Read the full article.
JF - The Washington Post
UR - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/10/19/in-july-the-trump-era-wave-of-protests-started-taking-a-back-seat-to-campaign-rallies/?utm_term=.9838de8d68f5
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Is Your Phone Tainted by the Misery of the 35,000 Children in Congo's Mines?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Siddharth Kara
AB - In his recent article in The Gaurdian, Senior Fellow Siddharth Kara discusses the human rights violations connected to the cobalt industry.
My field research shows that children as young as six are among those risking their lives amid toxic dust to mine cobalt for the world’s big electronics firms -Siddharth Kara, Senior Fellow, Carr Center
"Until recently, I knew cobalt only as a colour. Falling somewhere between the ocean and the sky, cobalt blue has been prized by artists from the Ming dynasty in China to the masters of French Impressionism. But there is another kind of cobalt, an industrial form that is not cherished for its complexion on a palette, but for its ubiquity across modern life.
This cobalt is found in every lithium-ion rechargeable battery on the planet – from smartphones to tablets to laptops to electric vehicles. It is also used to fashion superalloys to manufacture jet engines, gas turbines and magnetic steel. You cannot send an email, check social media, drive an electric car or fly home for the holidays without using this cobalt. As I learned on a recent research trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this cobalt is not awash in cerulean hues. Instead, it is smeared in misery and blood."
Elodie is 15. Her two-month-old son is wrapped tightly in a frayed cloth around her back. He inhales potentially lethal mineral dust every time he takes a breath. Toxicity assaults at every turn; earth and water are contaminated with industrial runoff, and the air is brown with noxious haze. Elodie is on her own here, orphaned by cobalt mines that took both her parents. She spends the entire day bent over, digging with a small shovel to gather enough cobalt-containing heterogenite stone to rinse at nearby Lake Malo to fill one sack. It will take her an entire day to do so, after which Chinese traders will pay her about $0.65 (50p). Hopeless though it may be, it is her and her child’s only means of survival.
Read the full article in The Guardian.
JF - The Guardian
UR - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/12/phone-misery-children-congo-cobalt-mines-drc
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Human Rights as Membership Rights in the World Society
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Human Rights as Membership Rights in the World Society by Mathias Risse
The idea of human rights has come a long way. Even hard-nosed international-relations realists should recognize that the idea has become so widely accepted that nowadays it arguably has an impact. Many countries have made human rights goals part of their foreign policy. International civil society is populated by well-funded and outspoken human rights organizations. We have recently witnessed the creation of an entirely new institution, the International Criminal Court, as well as the acceptance, at the UN level, of guiding principles to formulate human rights obligations of businesses. Around the world, more and more local concerns are formulated in the language of human rights, a phenomenon known as the vernacularization, or localization, of human rights. Ordinary people increasingly express concerns in terms of human rights rather than a language that earlier might have come more natural to them. They are not just helping themselves to a legal and political machinery. They also make clear that they are articulating concerns others have in similar ways where they live.
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2018_006_humanrightsmembershiprights.pdf
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - The War on Voting Rights
T2 - The Boston Globe
Y1 - 2018
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - New op-ed by Carr Center Senior Fellow John Shattuck.
"Eight years ago, on the eve of the 2010 midterm elections, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell declared that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
McConnell’s declaration of war on the Obama presidency ushered in the age of extreme obstruction and polarization in Congress. It also foreshadowed an eight-year Republican campaign to suppress or dilute voting by the coalition that elected Obama. That effort has intensified in the Trump era and is targeted at groups with low or uneven voting participation rates, especially minorities, young people, and immigrants."
Read the full Op-Ed in the Boston Globe.
JF - The Boston Globe
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - After 17 Years, Justice For 9/11 Remains Elusive
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Sushma Raman
AB - Sushma Raman discusses the government’s twin challenges—upholding both the rule of law and national security—and the resulting delays in the trails of the 9/11 suspects.
“My father, along with many residents of the New Jersey town we are from, died on 9/11. My mother died recently, without seeing justice. It is possible that we will not see justice in my lifetime.”
—Family member of victim, September 15, 2018
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? You mean he is still alive and that trial hasn’t even started?”
—A colleague of mine, who is a retired senior U.S. government official, September 17, 2018
Earlier this month, as an independent observer for Human Rights First, I attended a pre-trial hearing in the Guantanamo military commission for the 9/11 suspects. The proceedings fell on the week of September 10, and it was particularly poignant to be there on the anniversary of the attacks. Seventeen years later, there is no start date for the trial of the five men accused of orchestrating the attacks, and the long-serving judge has just been replaced.
The week’s highlights included a “voir dire” of the new judge, in which he was questioned by the prosecution and defense, and a hearing on the dismissal of the former Military Commissions Convening Authority, Harvey Rishikof.
Judge Pohl, an Army colonel, announced his retirement in August and assigned Keith Parrella, a military judge with two years’ judicial experience, to replace him. Just before stepping down, Judge Pohl ordered the exclusion of statements the defendants made to FBI interrogators after their transfer from CIA secret prisons, also called “black sites,” to Guantanamo.
Lawyers for the defendants questioned incoming Judge Parrella on his limited experience as a military judge and in death penalty cases. They also raised the potential for conflict of interest, given Parella’s prior work at the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a fellow alongside several members of the 9/11 prosecution team.
They also inquired about his knowledge of “mitigation”—evidence from the defense geared to persuade the court that the defendants should not receive a death sentence. The defendants spent years in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program. Their brutal treatment will undoubtedly be raised as a mitigating factor during any sentencing phase. Defense attorneys also questioned Parella’s ability to come up to speed on past rulings. He would have to review more than 20,000 pages of transcripts of the last six years of pre-trial proceedings.
On September 10th, all five defendants were present at the start of the day, along with their defense counsel. The new judge agreed to, among other things, allow the defendants to be unshackled (unless there was probable cause) and keep breaks in the day that coincide with the defendants’ prayer times.
On Tuesday, September 11th, all five defendants were absent in the morning. Judge Parrella set forth his findings that he possessed the requisite skills and experience to preside in the case, that his DOJ fellowship did not pose a conflict, and that he has no personal bias against the defendants or prior affiliation with the case.
Another key matter was the firing of Convening Authority Harvey Rishikof. The government argued that Rishikof was fired due to concerns about judgment, temperament, and a lack of appropriate coordination with superiors. The court heard testimony from Lieutenant Doug Newman, an investigator assigned to the office that oversees the defense teams, who described his investigation into Rishikof’s firing. Newman discussed his interviews with former Obama Administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and former White House Counsel Neil Eggleston. According to Newman, Eggleston indicated that President Obama had become frustrated with the slow pace and cost of the process and asked for a path to move the case forward.
Defense counsel said that Rishikof had been exploring plea deals that would have taken the death penalty off the table and expedited proceedings. They questioned whether his firing constituted unlawful command influence from political appointees who sought to shape the judicial workings of the case and thus, compromise the independence of the proceedings.
Upholding both the rule of law and national security are the twin challenges facing the government in this case. The use of torture, as well as alleged government surveillance and intrusion into attorney-client conversations, may result in delays for years to come, with justice remaining elusive for the victims, their families, and the American public.
Sushma Raman is the Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and served as an independent observer representing Human Rights First. This blog does not reflect the official opinion or position of Harvard Kennedy School or the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
JF - Human Rights First
UR - https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/after-17-years-justice-911-remains-elusive
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Elections Under Oppression in Cambodia: A Predictable Outcome?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Sreang Heng
AB - Read more on the Cambodian elections by by Sreang Heng, Carr Center fellow.
"On July 29, 2018, another parliamentary election was held in Cambodia. When the commune elections had been held on June 4, 2017, they were followed by complaints and recounts, but the official results showed that the two major rival parties had won the majority of votes: the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) received 1,156 communes (out of 1,646) while its opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) won 489. The Khmer National United Party received only one."
Full publication.
JF - Yale Macmillan Center
UR - https://macmillan.yale.edu/news/elections-under-oppression-cambodia-predictable-outcome
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - 170 Years Ago in Seneca Falls New York, Voting Was a Radical Idea
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Original publication via Harvard's Ash Center.
On July 19th, we celebrated the 170th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, a gathering that launched a global movement to secure the right to vote for women. As people in the US and around the world lament the state of our democracy, now is a good time to reflect on an anniversary that reminds us of how democratic change occurs.
Women’s suffrage was the most radical demand that Elizabeth Cady Stanton included in the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments in 1848. When Stanton first suggested a suffrage resolution at the Seneca Falls Convention, even her most resolute supporters were afraid that it might make the women’s movement look ridiculous and compromise their other goals. Voting was considered the quintessential male domain of action. Resolutions on other issues at Seneca Falls, such as equal access to jobs and education for women, passed unanimously, while the suffrage resolution carried by a small majority and only after eloquent speeches by Stanton and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It would take decades of struggle, including parades, protests, arrests, hunger strikes, and force feeding, before the US acknowledged women’s right to vote in 1920. The struggle to secure the vote for African Americans is an even longer story that can be traced from the Civil War to current voter suppression in states like North Carolina.
Our appreciation of voting as a radical demand secured through decades of struggle has been lost in US politics today, as reflected in low voter registration and turnout. At Harvard, where I teach, 59% of eligible students voted in the 2016 presidential election and only 24% in the 2014 midterm elections. This spring, I did a small set of focus groups with Harvard undergraduates to gauge their attitudes toward voting in an attempt to understand these low numbers. In every group, at least one person clearly articulated the belief that voting is a privilege and duty of citizenship. A small number argued that there was no duty whatsoever to vote and that there might be good reasons not to vote. Most students, however, fell in between these two positions. They argued that voting is the right thing to do, but that it is optional and that there are many reasons why it is acceptable not to vote. These reasons include lack of compelling candidates, lack of information, lack of interest, and lack of a personal stake in the matter.
“All of us have to collaborate in helping people exercise their legal right and their civic duty to vote”
These students revealed disillusionment with the political system, saying their vote would not make a difference. Voting was one option for participation in a democratic society, but for many of the students it held little meaning or impact. The passion of Seneca Falls was missing. One student mused, “I wish that there was a way … to make people more enthusiastic about voting. … apathy is a huge problem…”
People often assume college students don’t need advice or help to vote, especially Ivy League students. But many of the students found the US voting system genuinely complicated, and antiquated, especially in the case of absentee voting. At times, what the students described reached the level of voter suppression.
We need to continue the struggles launched by the activists in Seneca Falls to expand voting. If some of the smartest and most motivated young people in America today find voting difficult, we have a responsibility to help them and many others as they navigate the often complicated and sometimes hostile terrain of the US voting system. Voter suppression has been a conscious and well-orchestrated set of policies in many states; voter encouragement must be no less conscious or collective. Ensuring that US citizens enjoy the right to vote is very much the work of our government and political parties, but should not be left only to them. All of us have to collaborate in helping people exercise their legal right and their civic duty to vote.
Kathryn Sikkink is the Ryan Family Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Radcliffe
JF - Medium
UR - https://medium.com/challenges-to-democracy/170-years-ago-in-seneca-falls-new-york-voting-was-a-radical-idea-a14261d04a25
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Thinking About the World: Philosophy and Sociology.
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Risse, Mathias
A1 - John W. Meyer
AB - Thinking About the World: Philosophy and Sociology an article by Mathias Risse
In recent decades the world has grown together in ways in which it had never before. This integration is linked to a greatly expanded public and collective awareness of global integration and interdependence. Academics across the social sciences and humanities have reacted to the expanded realities and perceptions, trying to make sense of the world within the confines of their disciplines. In sociology, since the 1970s, notions of the world as a society have become more and more prominent. John Meyer, among others, has put forward, theoretically and empirically, a general world-society approach. In philosophy, much more recently, Mathias Risse has proposed the grounds-of-justice approach. Although one is social-scientific and the other philosophical, Meyer’s world society approach and Risse’s grounds-of-justice approach have much in common. This essay brings these two approaches into one conversation.
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
N1 - For Academic Citation: Mathias Risse and John W. Meyer. Thinking About the World: Philosophy and Sociology. CCDP 2018-005, July 2018.
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - The Globalized Myth of Ownership and Its Implications for Tax Competition
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Risse, Mathias
A1 - Marco Meyer
AB - The Globalized Myth of Ownership and Its Implications for Tax Competition by Mathias Risse
Tax competition (by states) and tax evasion (by individuals or companies) unfold at a dramatic scale. An obvious adverse effect is that some states lose their tax base. Perhaps less obviously, states lose out by setting tax policy differently – often reducing taxes – due to tax competition. Is tax competition among states morally problematic? We approach this question by identifying the globalized myth of ownership. We choose this name parallel to Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel’s myth of ownership. The globalized myth is the (false) view that one can assess a country’s justifiably disposable national income simply by looking at its gross national income (or gross national income as it would be absent certain forms of tax competition). Much like its domestic counterpart, exposing that myth will have important implications across a range of domains. Here we explore specifically how tax competition in an interconnected world appears in this light, and so by drawing on the grounds-of-justice approach developed in Mathias Risse’s On Global Justice.
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2018_004_globalizedmyth.pdf
N1 - For Academic Citation: Mathias Risse and Marco Meyer. The Globalized Myth of Ownership and Its Implications for Tax Competition. CCDP 2018-004, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, June 2018.
ER -
TY - CONF
T1 - Corruption and Human Rights: The Linkages, the Challenges and Paths for Progress Symposium Report
T2 - Corruption and Human Rights - The Linkages, the Challenges, and Paths for Progress
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Sushma Raman
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Corruption and Human Rights: The Linkages, the Challenges and Paths for Progress Symposium Report
This symposium was conceived as a way for us to convene leaders and academics from the human rights and anti-corruption movements, which have traditionally operated as separate communities of practice, to explore the linkages between the issues we work on and consider approaches to advance our work together. We hope that this symposium will not only help to inform and shape a deeper involvement of the Carr Center into the issue of corruption, but will also be the start of an ongoing collaboration between the human rights and anti-corruption communities.
JF - Corruption and Human Rights - The Linkages, the Challenges, and Paths for Progress
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge, MA
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/corruption_symposium_report.pdf
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - Can We Solve The Migration Crisis?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Jacqueline Bhabha
AB - Can We Solve The Migration Crisis? by Jacqueline Bhabha
Every minute 24 people are forced to leave their homes and over 65 million are currently displaced world-wide. Small wonder that tackling the refugee and migration crisis has become a global political priority.
But can this crisis be resolved and if so, how? In this compelling essay, renowned human rights lawyer and scholar Jacqueline Bhabha explains why forced migration demands compassion, generosity and a more vigorous acknowledgement of our shared dependence on human mobility as a key element of global collaboration. Unless we develop humane 'win-win' strategies for tackling the inequalities and conflicts driving migration and for addressing the fears fuelling xenophobia, she argues, both innocent lives and cardinal human rights principles will be squandered in the service of futile nationalism and oppressive border control.
PB - Polity Press
CY - Cambridge, UK; Medford, MA
UR - https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Can+We+Solve+the+Migration+Crisis%3F-p-9781509519408
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Human Rights Documentation in Limited Access Areas: The Use of Technology in War Crimes and Human Rights Abuse Investigations.
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Sushma Raman
A1 - Steven Livingston
AB - Human Rights Documentation in Limited Access Areas: The Use of Technology in War Crimes and Human Rights Abuse Investigations:
We offer a theoretical framework for understanding the role of technological capabilities (affordances) in documenting war crimes and human rights abuses in limited access areas. We focus on three digital affordances: geospatial, digital network, and digital forensic science. The paper argues that by leveraging digital affordances, human rights groups gain access to otherwise inaccessible areas, or to information that has been degraded in an effort to obfuscate culpability. We also argue that the use of digital technology invites a reassessment of what we mean when we speak of a human rights organization. Organizational morphology in digital space is hybrid in nature, with traditional organizations also taking on or joining more virtual or solely digital forms.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2018_003_humanrightsdocumentation.pdf
N1 - For Academic Citation: Steven Livingston and Sushma Raman. Human Rights Documentation in Limited Access Areas. CCDP 2018-003, May 2018.
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence: An Urgently Needed Agenda?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence: An Urgently Needed Agenda? by Mathias Risse
Artificial intelligence generates challenges for human rights. Inviolability of human life is the central idea behind human rights, an underlying implicit assumption being the hierarchical superiority of humankind to other forms of life meriting less protection. These basic assumptions are questioned through the anticipated arrival of entities that are not alive in familiar ways but nonetheless are sentient and intellectually and perhaps eventually morally superior to humans. To be sure, this scenario may never come to pass and in any event lies in a part of the future beyond current grasp. But it is urgent to get this matter on the agenda. Threats posed by technology to other areas of human rights are already with us. My goal here is to survey these challenges in a way that distinguishes short-, medium-term and long-term perspectives
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge, MA
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2018_002_hrandai.pdf
N1 - For Academic Citation: Mathias Risse. "Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence: An Urgently Needed Agenda?" CCDP 2018-002, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, April 2018.
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - #Us Too: Children on the Move and Belated Public Attention
JF - International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Jacqueline Bhahba
AB - Children on the move are having their #UsToo moment.
Over the past months, momentous developments point to a more intense engagement with the needs and rights of refugee and other migration-affected children than has previously been evident. As with #Me too, many of the most central claims – the pervasive presence of abuse, the scale of the problem, the striking power imbalances that have perpetuated the problem’s relative invisibility – are not new or surprising per se. It is the avalanche of evidence, the mobilization of affected constituencies, and the sobering realization of the extent and consequences of previous denial that are disquieting.
VL - 21
UR - https://academic.oup.com/lawfam/article/32/2/250/4969543
IS - 2
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Human Rights: Advancing the Frontier of Emancipation
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Human Rights: Advancing the Frontier of Emancipation essay by Kathryn Sikkink:
Amidst bleak prognostications about the future, the human rights movement offers a beacon of hope for securing a livable world. The movement’s universality, supranationalism, and expanding emancipatory potential serve as inspiration and guide for the larger project of global transformation. The sweeping vision embodied in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights has experienced constant renewal and steadfast legitimacy in the tumultuous postwar world. It has been a foundation for the pursuit of supranational governance and an antidote to the notion that the ends justify the means. The human rights movement, despite its imperfections, has a key role to play in the transformational change in human values crucial to building a just, flourishing future.
JF - Great Transition Initiative
UR - http://greattransition.org/publication/human-rights-frontier
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Businesses, Guns, and Human Rights
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Patricia Illingworth
AB - The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla, resulted in the deaths of 17 people.
Tragically, from January 1 to March 21, 2018, there were 3,088 gun-related deaths and 5,355 gun-related injuries in the United States. Gun violence is a public health problem. But it’s also a human rights problem. It is time to turn to international human rights and moral and social norms, which ground obligations for individuals and business organizations to limit gun ownership.
Human rights are entitlements that all people have by virtue of their humanity. Gun violence puts a number of human rights at risk. Most obviously, it threatens Article 6 of the United Nation’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: “Every human being has the inherent right to life.” Studies show that the mere presence of guns increases the probability of crime, suicide, and accidents.
Ethics asks us to promote the good and to prevent harm to others, especially when we can do so with little inconvenience to ourselves. Individuals are not alone in having moral responsibilities. In the eyes of the law, corporations are persons; they also have moral responsibilities. Businesses that manufacture guns have a moral responsibility to ensure that their products are not used in acts of violence. Businesses are also subject to the far more demanding obligations of international human rights.
Read the full post on The Hastings Center website.
JF - The Hastings Center
UR - https://www.thehastingscenter.org/businesses-guns-human-rights/
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Wake Up, Hapless Technology Users
T2 - The Boston Globe
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Read this Op-Ed in the Boston Globe by Professor Kathryn Sikkink.
"Wake up, users of technology! You are not just a hapless victim, but you too have obligations — along with, of course, the multiple obligations of governments and corporations. We all should know by now that our smartphones are little spy machines that we carry around in our pockets and our Facebook pages are open invitations for violations of privacy. They are usually benevolent spy machines, and certainly, indispensable ones, but spy machines nonetheless."
Read the full Op-Ed here.
JF - The Boston Globe
UR - https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/03/21/wake-hapless-technology-users/8TpT8tqKQZZhchpusBW6IL/story.html
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - Gina Haspel Is a Torturer. What Else Does the Senate Need to Know?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - President Donald Trump is notoriously hostile toward the CIA. He frequently denigrates it in public and reportedly rarely even bothers to read its reports. None of Trump’s critical tweets, utterances or acts, however, carries as much venom or has the potential for causing as much harm to the agency as the president’s recent nomination of Gina Haspel to serve as the CIA’s next director. If evidence were needed of the president’s continuing grudge against the agency, this is it.
Original post, in Politico, here.
JF - Politico
UR - https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/15/gina-haspel-is-a-torturer-thats-all-the-senate-needs-to-know-217641
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Human Rights Aren’t Just from the Global North – so Why Aren’t We Talking About It?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Kathryn Sikkink looks at the outstanding contributions of human rights activists from Chile to China.
When we discuss the origins of human rights, we tend to focus on contributors from the Global North like Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin. But are we getting the full picture? Kathryn Sikkink, author of Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century, says no. She argues that human rights owe their existence to a global effort, with important contributors from the Global South.
RightsInfo went to her talk, organised by the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice and the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, to find out more.
When we discuss the origins of human rights, we tend to focus on contributors from the Global North like Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin. But are we getting the full picture? Kathryn Sikkink, author of Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century, says no. She argues that human rights owe their existence to a global effort, with important contributors from the Global South.
Original Article on Rights Info.
JF - EachOther
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - How Democracy in America Can Survive Donald Trump
Y1 - 2018
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - New article by Senior Fellow
John Shattuck in The American Prospect.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1835 that “the greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” Tocqueville’s observation, broadly accurate over the past two centuries, is facing perhaps its most severe test today.
In its 2016 “Democracy Index” report, the Economist Intelligence Unit downgraded the United States from a “full” to a “flawed democracy.” In 2018, Freedom House offered a more dire assessment: “[D]emocratic institutions have suffered erosion, as reflected in partisan manipulation of the electoral process, bias and dysfunction in the criminal justice system, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence.”
Declining participation and confidence in government are not new, but the populist forces that propelled the election of Donald Trump signaled a new level of public disillusionment with democratic politics and institutions. During his campaign and first year in office, Trump’s core constituency cheered him on as he attacked fundamental elements of liberal democracy, including media freedom, judicial independence, and a pluralist civil society.
Read the full article in The American Prospect.
JF - The American Prospect
UR - https://prospect.org/power/democracy-america-can-survive-donald-trump/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Prospects, Problems, and Proliferation of Recent UN Investigations of International Law Violations
JF - Journal of International Criminal Justice
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Zachary D. Kaufman
AB - In his recent article, The Prospects, Problems and Proliferation of Recent UN Investigations of International Law Violations, Zachary Kaufman examines investigations into atrocity crimes in Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Burundi, and Yemen.
Atrocity crimes rage today in Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Burundi, and Yemen. Given their potential to establish facts and promote accountability, recently opened United Nations investigations of international law violations in each of these states are thus a welcome, even if belated, development. However, these initiatives prompt questions about their designs, both in isolation and relative to each other.
This article describes the investigations into alleged violations in these five states, examines their respective sponsors and scopes, and presents a wide range of questions about the investigations and their implications, including their coordination with each other and their use of evidence in domestic, foreign, hybrid, and international courts (such as the International Criminal Court). The article concludes that, while seeking accountability for international law violations is certainly laudatory, these particular investigations raise significant questions about achieving that goal amidst rampant human rights abuses in these five states and beyond. International lawyers, atrocity crime survivors, and other observers thus await answers before assessing whether these investigations will truly promote justice.
VL - 16
UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3128436
IS - 1
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - New Report - Trump's First Year: How Resilient is Liberal Democracy in the US?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - John Shattuck
A1 - Amanda Watson
A1 - Matthew McDole
AB - Declining levels of political participation and public confidence in government in the US are not new, but the populist forces that propelled the election of Donald Trump in 2016 signaled a new level of public disillusionment with democratic politics as usual. There has been a sharp increase in public discontent with the system of governance in the US over the last fifteen years.
A new report from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy examines the democratic checks and balances in the US, and measures their resiliency in the first year of the Trump administration, comparing US response to illiberal democracies worldwide.
Read the report.
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Trump's First Year: How Resilient is Liberal Democracy?
Y1 - 2018
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - In his recent discussion paper, Shattuck examines the Trump administration’s attacks on liberal democratic institutions during its first year, and assesses their institutional resilience.
In its 2016 “Democracy Index” report, the Economist Intelligence Unit downgraded the United States from a “full” to a “flawed democracy”. The report cited “an erosion of trust in political institutions” as the primary reason for the downgrade.1 In January 2018 Freedom House made a more dire assessment: “democratic institutions in the US have suffered erosion, as reflected in partisan manipulation of the electoral process, bias and dysfunction in the criminal justice system, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity and political influence.”2
Declining levels of political participation and public confidence in government in the US are not new, but the populist forces that propelled the election of Donald Trump in 2016 signaled a new level of public disillusionment with democratic politics as usual. There has been a sharp increase in democratic discontent over the last fifteen years. An October 2017 Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that 71% of Americans believe that political polarization and democratic dysfunction have reached “a dangerous low point”. Three years earlier, in 2014, a Gallup Poll showed that 65% of Americans were “dissatisfied with their system of government and how it works,” a dramatic reversal from 68% satisfaction twelve years earlier in 2002.
How resilient is liberal democracy, and how broad is its base of support? On a global level there is evidence of both erosion and resilience. A November 2017 report of the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental organization that assesses the state of democracy worldwide, put it this way: “The current situation is more positive than suggested by an increasingly gloomy view that democracy has been in decline for the last ten years or more. This period appears to be one of trendless fluctuations in which gains and downturns in individual countries
tend to balance each other out at the global level.”3 From this vantage point, democracy in the US may be resilient when compared to some other democracies where neo-authoritarian leaders -- such as Orban in Hungary, Kaczyński in Poland, and Erdoğan in Turkey -- have recently undermined the independence and functioning of pluralist institutions.
But the health of American democracy has been called into question. Experts are divided on whether the illness reflects an ongoing struggle in the US by the proponents of liberal democracy to fend off anti-democratic tendencies ,4 or a long-term trend toward democratic deconsolidation.5 This paper considers a sampling of evidence about attacks on key institutions and elements of democracy in the US during the first year of the Trump administration, and potential sources of democratic resilience in the media, the judiciary, law enforcement, democratic norms and principles, the electoral process, civil society, state and local government, the federal civil service, and the Congress. The stakes are high. A central question, posed by a provocative new book, How Democracies Die, by Harvard scholars Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Zieblatt, is whether these institutions will withstand anti-democratic pressure, or “become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not?”6
Following is a summary of the Trump administration’s challenges to democratic institutions during its first year and an assessment of institutional resilience compiled in this report.
JF - Carr Center Discussion Paper Series
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
CY - Cambridge, MA
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/trumpsfirstyeardiscussionpaper.pdf
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - How Trump Just Might Close Guantanamo Prison
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - See Carr Center Senior Fellow
Alberto Mora's new Op-Ed in
Defense One.
The president asked SecDef and Congress to ensure that detention policies support warfighting aims. That should mean shutting Gitmo down.
Will President Trump close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay?
This question may sound preposterous. After all, President Obama, who called the prison a threat to national security and American ideals, actually tried to close it. President Trump, by contrast, is on record as vehemently favoring not only its continuation but its expansion. On Jan. 30 he reaffirmed that commitment both in his State of the Union address and in an executive order revoking President Obama’s order commanding its closure.
Why, then, even raise the prospect of closing Guantanamo during this administration? The answer lies in two related actions recently taken by the president: his command to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to “reexamine our military detention policy” and report back to him within 90 days and his request to Congress to ensure that “we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists.” The two actions in conjunction represent an unexpected open-mindedness on the part of the president with respect to detention policy. By seeking a broad-focus, “blank-sheet-of-paper” review, asking Mattis to take charge, and inviting Congress to join with them, President Trump acted prudently and, dare I say it, wisely.
Full Op-Ed in Defense One.
JF - Defense One
UR - https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/02/how-trump-just-might-close-guantanamo-prison/145716/?oref=d-river
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - The Politics of Terror
Y1 - 2018
A1 - Erica Chenoweth
AB - The Politics of Terror by Erica Chenoweth:
Bringing together both classic and contemporary research, The Politics of Terror provides a systematic introduction to the theory, politics, and practice of terrorism. In addition to offering a comprehensive, evidence-based overview of the subject, Chenoweth and Moore challenge readers to think critically. The book is oriented around a set of empirical, theoretical, and methodological puzzles that arise in the study of terrorism. By encouraging students to engage with these puzzles, and equipping them with the resources to do so thoughtfully, the authors present a nuanced introduction to a complex and crucially important field.
PB - Oxford University Press
UR - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-terror-9780199795666?cc=us&lang=en&
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Siddharth Kara
AB - Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective book by Siddharth Kara
Siddharth Kara is a tireless chronicler of the human cost of slavery around the world. He has documented the dark realities of modern slavery in order to reveal the degrading and dehumanizing systems that strip people of their dignity for the sake of profit—and to link the suffering of the enslaved to the day-to-day lives of consumers in the West. In Modern Slavery, Kara draws on his many years of expertise to demonstrate the astonishing scope of slavery and offer a concrete path toward its abolition.
From labor trafficking in the U.S. agricultural sector to sex trafficking in Nigeria to debt bondage in the Southeast Asian construction sector to forced labor in the Thai seafood industry, Kara depicts the myriad faces and forms of slavery, providing a comprehensive grounding in the realities of modern-day servitude. Drawing on sixteen years of field research in more than fifty countries around the globe—including revelatory interviews with both the enslaved and their oppressors—Kara sets out the key manifestations of modern slavery and how it is embedded in global supply chains. Slavery offers immense profits at minimal risk through the exploitation of vulnerable subclasses whose brutalization is tacitly accepted by the current global economic order. Kara has developed a business and economic analysis of slavery based on metrics and data that attest to the enormous scale and functioning of these systems of exploitation. Beyond this data-driven approach, Modern Slavery unflinchingly portrays the torments endured by the powerless. This searing exposé documents one of humanity’s greatest wrongs and lays out the framework for a comprehensive plan to eradicate it.
PB - Colombia University Press
UR - https://cup.columbia.edu/book/modern-slavery/9780231158466
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - New UN Team Investigating ISIS Atrocities Raises Questions About Justice in Iraq and Beyond
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Zachary D. Kaufman
AB - New UN Team Investigating ISIS Atrocities Raises Questions About Justice in Iraq and Beyond:
On September 21, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously passed resolution 2379 to pursue accountability for atrocity crimes perpetrated in Iraq by the Islamic State (also called ISIS, ISIL or Da’esh). The resolution, in paragraph 2, requests the UN Secretary-General "To establish an Investigative Team, headed by a Special Adviser, to support domestic efforts to hold ISIL (Da’esh) accountable by collecting, preserving, and storing evidence in Iraq of acts that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the terrorist group ISIL (Da’esh) in Iraq . . . to ensure the broadest possible use before national courts, and complementing investigations being carried out by the Iraqi authorities, or investigations carried out by authorities in third countries at their request."
The desirability of such an investigative team is well understood. ISIS has perpetrated widespread and systematic murder, kidnapping, sexual violence (including forced marriage and sexual slavery), and destruction of cultural heritage. The creation of this investigative team is thus a welcome, even if belated, development. However, this initiative prompts questions about the body’s scope, use of evidence, comparison to Syria, and precedential value.
Suggested Citation:
Kaufman, Zachary D., New UN Team Investigating ISIS Atrocities Raises Questions About Justice in Iraq and Beyond (September 28, 2017). Just Security, September 28, 2017. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3044527
JF - Just Security
UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3044527
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The ties that bind: How armed groups use violence to socialize fighters
JF - Journal of Peace Research
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Dara Kay Cohen
AB - How do armed groups use violence to create social ties? What are the conditions under which such violence takes place?
In this article, I describe how armed groups use one type of atrocity, wartime rape, to create social bonds between fighters through a process of combatant socialization. As a form of stigmatizing, public, and sexualized violence, gang rape is an effective method to communicate norms of masculinity, virility, brutality, and loyalty between fighters. Drawing on literature about socialization processes, I derive a set of hypotheses about individual-level factors that may influence vulnerability to violent socialization, including age, previous socialization experiences, and physical security. I analyze the support for these hypotheses using newly available survey data from former fighters in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The results show the broad applicability of considering group violence as a form of social control within armed groups, suggest some of the limits of violent socialization, and have implications for both theory and policy.
VL - 54
UR - http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343317713559
IS - 5
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Kathryn Sikkink's new book documents the history of successes of the human rights movement, and makes a case for why human rights work.
Evidence for Hope makes the case that, yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. They point out that Guantánamo is still open, the Arab Spring protests have been crushed, and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But respected human rights expert Kathryn Sikkink draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to pessimistic doubts about human rights laws and institutions. She demonstrates that change comes slowly and as the result of struggle, but in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective.
Attacks on the human rights movement’s credibility are based on the faulty premise that human rights ideas emerged in North America and Europe and were imposed on developing southern nations. Starting in the 1940s, Latin American leaders and activists were actually early advocates for the international protection of human rights. Sikkink shows that activists and scholars disagree about the efficacy of human rights because they use different yardsticks to measure progress. Comparing the present to the past, she shows that genocide and violence against civilians have declined over time, while access to healthcare and education has increased dramatically. Cognitive and news biases contribute to pervasive cynicism, but Sikkink’s investigation into past and current trends indicates that human rights is not in its twilight. Instead, this is a period of vibrant activism that has made impressive improvements in human well-being.
Exploring the strategies that have led to real humanitarian gains since the middle of the twentieth century, Evidence for Hope looks at how these essential advances can be supported and sustained for decades to come.
Kathryn Sikkink is the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her books include The Justice Cascade (Norton) and Activists beyond Borders. She lives in Cambridge, MA.
PB - Princeton University Press
CY - Princeton, NJ
UR - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691170626/evidence-for-hope
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Hungary’s Attack on Academic Freedom
Y1 - 2017
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - See the op-ed in
The Boston Globe by Carr Senior Fellow
John Shattuck.
An authoritarian nationalist regime in Hungary is threatening a renowned international university in Budapest. Legislation introduced last week by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban would fundamentally alter the legal status of Central European University and could force it to shut down or leave the country.
What’s going on in Hungary is not a local political dispute, but a frontal assault on liberal values essential to democracy and academic freedom.
Full Op-Ed here.
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Trump’s Revised Travel Ban Is Denounced by 134 Foreign Policy Experts
T2 - The New York Times
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - Read the letter, which features Alberto Mora, published in The New York Times.
WASHINGTON — More than 130 members of America’s foreign policy establishment denounced President Trump’s revised travel ban on Friday as just as damaging to the United States’ interests and reputation as his original order that halted refugees and froze travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.
In a letter to Mr. Trump, the former government officials and experts said even the scaled-back order will “weaken U.S. security and undermine U.S. global leadership.” And they said it continues to signal to Muslim allies that — as the Islamic State and other extremist propaganda profess — the United States is an enemy of Islam.
Read the full letter in The New York Times, Carr Center Senior Fellow Alberto Mora is one of the letter's signatories.
JF - The New York Times
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Disinformation Campaigns Target Tech-Enabled Citizen Journalists
JF - Brookings
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Steven Livingston
AB - "Governments hoping to evade responsibility for war crimes and rights abuses are having a much tougher time of it these days. Denying entry to nettlesome investigators is still standard while many places are simply too dangerous to investigate. But even where investigators cannot go, digital technologies can sometimes overcome barriers to investigation. A recent Harvard Kennedy School report published by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy underscores how various digital technologies undermine attempts to hide abuses and war crimes. Commercial high-resolution remote sensing satellites, some capable of distinguishing objects on the ground as small as 30-cm across, allow human rights groups to document military forces deployments, mass graves, forced population displacements, and damage to physical infrastructure."
Read the full blog at Brookings.
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - American Cruelty and the Defense of the Constitution
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - Alberto Mora recently gave the Stutt Lecture at the United States Naval Academy.
"I propose to explore with you this evening what it means to “support and defend the Constitution.” I will use as a prism the 2002 decision of the Bush administration to use torture as a weapon of war and my own involvement in the matter as Navy General Counsel."
Read his full address here.
JF - United States Naval Academy Stutt Lecture
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/american_cruelty_and_the_defense_of_the_constitution.pdf
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - What is a Populist?
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Pippa Norris
AB - The Atlantic features HKS's
Pippa Norris, the Paul. F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics.
Why does Donald Trump exaggerate the size of his inauguration crowd, brag about his election win in conversations with world leaders, and claim without evidence that voter fraud may have cost him the popular vote? Why does he dismiss protesters who oppose him as “paid professionals” and polls that reflect poorly on him as “fake news”? Why does he call much of the media the “enemy of the people”?
There are explanations for these things that focus on the individual, characterizing Trump as a self-centered reality-TV star obsessed with approval and allergic to criticism.
But there is also an ideological explanation, and it involves a concept that gets mentioned a lot these days without much context or elaboration: populism.
Read the full article in The Atlantic.
JF - The Atlantic
UR - https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/02/what-is-populist-trump/516525/
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Climate Change Induced Displacement: Leveraging Transnational Advocacy Networks to Address Operational Gaps
JF - UNHCR
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Steven Livingston
A1 - Joseph Guay
AB - An article on climate change and induced displacement, by Carr Center's Senior Fellow
Steven Livingston and Joseph Guay.
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, “Few aspects of the human endeavor…are isolated from possible impacts in a changing climate. The interconnectedness of the Earth system makes it impossible to draw a confined boundary around climate change impact, adaptations, and vulnerability.”1 This includes human population displacements, which amounted to a staggering 51.2 million refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people (IDPs) in 2013.2
Unfortunately, as the frequency, duration, and intensity of extreme events affecting populations are on the rise, the humanitarian aid community is stretched thin in the face of multiple complex emergencies and protracted challenges around the world
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Conference Report: Technology & Human Rights in the 21st Century
T2 - Technology & Human Rights in the 21st Century
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Steven Livingston
A1 - Sushma Raman
AB - Technology & Human Rights in the 21st Century:
On November 3 - 4, 2016, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School hosted a symposium that aimed to:
1. Strengthen collaboration among stakeholders working on issues at the intersection of human rights and technology and
2. Deepen our understanding of the nature of collaboration among different technical and scientific communities working in human rights.
The symposium brought together practitioners and academics from different industries, academic disciplines and professional practices. Discussion centered on three clusters of scientific and technical capacities and the communities of practice associated with each of them. These clusters are:
- Geospatial Technology: The use of commercial remote sensing satellites, geographical information systems (GIS), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and geographical positioning satellites (GPS) and receivers to track events on earth.
- Digital Networks: The use of digital platforms to link individuals in different locations working towards a common goal, such as monitoring digital evidence of human rights violations around the world. It often involves crowdsourcing the collection of data over digital networks or social computation – the analysis of data by volunteers using digital networks.
- Forensic Science: The collection, preservation, examination and analysis of evidence of abuses and crimes for documentation, reconstruction, and understanding for public and court use. Among the more prominent evidential material in this area includes digital and multimedia evidence as well as corporal and other biologic evidence. When considering the use of digital technologies, we might say that forensic science involves the recoding of material objects into binary code. This domain includes massively parallel DNA sequencing technologies as well as document scanning and data management technologies.
In their landmark 1998 book, Activists Beyond Borders, Kathryn Sikkink and Margaret Keck wrote that “by overcoming the deliberate suppression of information that sustains many abuses of power, human rights groups bring pressure to bear on those who perpetuate abuses” (Keck and Sikkink, 1998, Kindle Locations 77-78). The Carr Center’s symposium on technology and human rights explored the ways modern human rights organization use science and technology to overcome the deliberate suppression of information.
Speakers discussed the latest advances in each of the key technologies represented at the symposium and used today by human rights organizations.
Steven Livingston and Sushma Raman co-organized the event. Livingston is Senior Fellow at the Carr Center and Professor of Media and Public Affairs and Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University; Raman is the Executive Director of the Carr Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Full online version here.
JF - Technology & Human Rights in the 21st Century
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/technologyandhumanrights.pdf
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - This Is What Will Happen If Trump Brings Back Secret Prisons
T2 - The Washington Post
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
A1 - Avery Schmitt
AB - "Amid the flurry of executive orders issued by President Trump during his first week in office, one remains a work in progress. A draft version of the executive order on the “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants” has been leaked. It is a complex document with many provisions — all appeared designed to make it possible for the Trump administration to return to Bush policy of secret kidnapping, detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
Although the Trump administration has publicly backed away from some aspects of the order, Trump’s decision to appoint Gina Haspel — who has been accused of running one of the Bush era secret prisons that tortured inmates — as deputy head of the CIA suggests that Trump continues to be interested in returning to past practices. The mixed signals coming from the administration mean that it is still important to explain what a return of the secret prison system might mean."
Full article at The Washington Post.
JF - The Washington Post
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Trump Repeats Sad History on Immigration
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Trump repeats sad history on immigration by Carr Center's Kathryn Sikkink.
"When I was growing in St. Cloud in the 1960s and 1970s, I was already dimly aware that we were an immigrant community.
In particular, I knew the parents and grandparents of many of my schoolmates had come from Germany because I was always in the homeroom full of the kids with German last names — the Schmidts, Schneiders, and Schwartzs. A number of these students came from poor farms outside town. They had to be up very early in the morning before school to help on the farm, before the long bus trip to school, and they came to homeroom, the first class of the day, smelling like the barn.
If I could, I would apologize to those students today for my cruel remarks behind their backs; I, who had the luxury of spending too long every morning in the bathroom getting ready for school (according to my older brother).
Many of the immigrant families in St. Cloud were Catholic, not only from Germany, but from Poland and Ireland. To this day, Census figures show that well over half of the individuals in the St. Cloud metropolitan area trace their ancestry to those three countries."
Read the full article.
JF - SC Times
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Law Restricts Trump on Torture - Unless He Ignores It
T2 - Deutsche Welle
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - Donald Trump has threatened to make good on his campaign pledge to bring back waterboarding and forms of torture "a hell of a lot worse." That would violate international and US law, of course, but could he do it anyway?
There was a sense that the US was coming to grips with its sins in December 2014, when the Senate completed its report on CIA torture under President George W. Bush in the years following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Months later, on June 16, 2015, when more than 20 Senate Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in a 78-21 vote to ban torture once and for all, there was a sense that the country was even moving forward. There would be no more "rectal feeding" of prisoners in the CIA's secret interrogation centers, no more threats to kill inmates' children or parents, no more people killed by hypothermia after spending hours forced into stress positions on frigid concrete. But 230 miles (385 kilometers) from the US Capitol on that very same June afternoon in 2015, a reality television host was kicking off a scorched-earth campaign at the New York City tower he had named for himself. And in 2017 the United States finds itself debating the limits of official cruelty all over again - though not necessarily the long-settled legality.
"Torture under international law is categorically prohibited under all circumstances," said Alberto Mora, the Navy's general counsel during the Bush administration and a leading Defense Department opponent of the practices euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation." "This is what's called a nonderogable law, meaning that there is no set of circumstances or extenuating circumstance which would justify the application of torture."
Read the full article.
JF - Deutsche Welle
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - How to Defend Human Rights in the Trump Era
T2 - The Boston Globe
Y1 - 2017
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - Carr Center's Senior Fellow
John Shattuck's latest Op-Ed in the Boston Globe.
Recent presidents who threatened rights have been reined in. Richard Nixon used the power of the presidency to attack the Constitution and his political enemies, but the House of Representatives voted to impeach him. Ronald Reagan tried to overturn hard-won legislation on the rights of women and minorities, but civil society groups and a bipartisan congressional coalition beat back the attack. George W. Bush introduced the use of torture in violation of domestic and international law, but resistance inside the federal government led to reinstatement of the torture ban.
Following these examples, a new citizen movement must mobilize the assets of American democracy to protect basic rights and freedoms in the Trump era."
Read the full Op-Ed in the Boston Globe.
JF - The Boston Globe
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - How Trump Can Work with Russia to Challenge the Status Quo and to Control ISIS
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Luis Moreno Ocampo
AB - "What should President Donald Trump do if ISIS crashed a plane into the Freedom Tower next September 11, 2017? After 16 years of a so-called “war on terror,” would experts be able to provide the new President with a clear and effective strategy to confront international terrorism? A short answer to the question is no. In 2015, Stephen Walt denounced a massive, collective failure of the entire U.S. foreign-policy establishment including Democrats and Republican to propose new strategies to deal with international terrorism in the Middle East.
In this essay, I explain, first, the strategic opportunity available through greater US-Russian cooperation and, second, the tools for disrupting ISIS by establishing new international mechanisms—such as a UN Security Council Chief Prosecutor—to go after the group’s leadership and its money."
Read the full article.
JF - JustSecurity
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Facts Aren’t Enough to Save Liberal Democracy
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Chistopher Robichaud
AB - "Facts these days are taking a beating in politics. A month or so back, Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes shared on “The Diane Rehm Show” that “[t]here’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, as facts.” She was pilloried in the press over this, not unsurprisingly, though her words, taken at face value, do at least convey a sense of loss over our purported predicament—it’s unfortunate that there aren’t any facts anymore. Unfortunate or not, is she right that truth has left the building?
Well, no, of course not. We still have death and taxes, if nothing else, two stubborn, non-negotiable facts of modern life. And even if Republicans somehow manage to do away entirely with the latter in the first hundred days of Trump’s presidency, I’m pretty sure we’ll be stuck with our own mortality for at least a little while longer.
The really real world, in other words, didn’t suddenly slip away during the 2016 election cycle, impressions to the contrary notwithstanding. Be that as it may, it’s hard to deny that something funny is going on."
Read the full post on the Niskanen Center website.
JF - Niskanen Center
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Mike Pompeo Is Unfit to Lead the CIA If He Doesn't Reject Torture
T2 - The Guardian
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - Article in The Guardian by Carr Center Senior Fellow
Alberto Mora.
"Among the flurry of confirmation hearings happening this week in the Senate, one in particular will signal whether President-to-be Donald Trump and his administration are, indeed, serious about restoring the failed and discredited Bush-era torture policy.
Trump’s pick for CIA chief, the US representative Mike Pompeo, will face the Senate intelligence committee and no doubt will be asked about his past support for cruelty. If he fails to renounce torture at his hearing, the Senate should deem Pompeo unfit for the office and vote down his nomination.
I know what’s at stake from my own experience. I was the navy’s chief lawyer when, in 2002, I learned that detainees held at Guantánamo were being subjected to cruel and unlawful interrogation practices. This wasn’t a case of “bad apples” – it was a case of officials at the highest levels of government choosing to radically reinterpret, distort or violate the law so as to knowingly apply torture. That can’t happen again."
Read the full Op-Ed in The Guardian.
JF - The Guardian
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - We tried to save 150 people in Aleppo from 5,000 miles away
T2 - The Washington Post
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Steven Livingston
A1 - Jonathan Drake
AB - Article in The Washington Post by Carr Center Senior Fellow Steven Livingston.
"With Russian and Syrian forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad’s regime rapidly closing in, the situation for those trapped in eastern Aleppo in the first week of December was growing grimmer by the hour. It was especially dire for the White Helmets, a Syrian first-responders group that had won international acclaim for its humanitarian work, including a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Assad regime held a different view, describing the group as rebels and terrorists.
On Dec. 8 at 3:30 p.m. in Boston, one of the first messages from the White Helmets to reach researchers at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative said that “three gas bombs have been dropped in the area within the last two hours and they [the White Helmets] feel they have less than 48 hours to evacuate before they are seized.” The Harvard group was asked to help find an escape route out of Aleppo for the White Helmets and their families, about 150 people in all.
How could Harvard scholars sitting in Cambridge, Mass., help 150 people find their way out of a war zone? We hoped it could be done with commercial remote-sensing satellites."
Read the full article in The Washington Post.
Steven Livingston is a senior fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a professor at George Washington University.
Jonathan Drake is a senior program associate with the Geospatial Technologies Project at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
JF - The Washington Post
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - (Re)discovering duties: individual responsibilities in the age of rights
JF - Minnesota Journal of International Law
Y1 - 2017
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
A1 - Fernando Berdion Del Valle
AB - Kathryn Sikkink and Fernando Berdion Del Valle publish new article in Minnesota Journal of International Law: "(Re)discovering Duties: Individual Responsibilities in the Age of Rights."
“There cannot be ‘innate’ rights in any other sense than that in which there are innate duties, of which, however, much less has been heard.”
Their article seeks to recover the tradition of individual duties that is integral to the historical origins of international human rights, arguing that increased attention to duties and responsibilities in international politics can be necessary complements to promoting human rights, particularly economic, social, and cultural rights.
VL - 26
UR - http://minnjil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/6-del-Valle-Sikkink-FINAL-macro.pdf
IS - 1
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Carr Center's 2016 Annual Report
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Sarah Peck
AB - See the Carr Center's 2016 Annual Report.
Today we stand at a precipice. A critical fight for fundamental human rights is brewing, and our work to find policy solutions to the most pressing human rights issues has never been more urgent. These issues include economic justice; human security; equality and discrimination; and institutions of global governance and civil society. We leverage research, practice, leadership and communications and technology to enhance global justice and to address all four of these priority issues.
2016 saw a number of important victories for the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, engaging our outstanding faculty members, fellows and students. We hosted a two-day symposium on the future of human rights and technology, convening a diverse group of practitioners working on these issues. And we organized a conference exploring the strategic costs and consequences of the use of torture.
2017 presents new challenges, but also new opportunities to engage and collaborate to ensure respect for our most fundamental rights and freedoms. We will continue to work tirelessly, as we have for the past 15 years, to enhance global justice – and we hope that you will join us in this critically important work.
Download our 2016 annual report to learn more.
PB - Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
CY - Cambridge
UR - http://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/carrannualreport2016.pdf
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Donald Trump Raises Specter of Treason
T2 - The Boston Globe
Y1 - 2016
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - Read John Shattuck's Op-Ed in The Boston Globe:
A specter of treason hovers over Donald Trump. He has brought it on himself by dismissing a bipartisan call for an investigation of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee as a “ridiculous” political attack on the legitimacy of his election as president.
Seventeen US national intelligence agencies have unanimously concluded that Russia engaged in cyberwarfare against the US presidential campaign. The lead agency, the CIA, has reached the further conclusion that Russia’s hacking was intended to influence the election in favor of Trump.
Read the full Op-Ed in The Boston Globe.
JF - The Boston Globe
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Women’s Rights Are a National Security Issue
T2 - The New York Times
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Dara Kay Cohen
A1 - Valerie M. Hudson
AB - Dara Key Cohen's Op-Ed published in the New York Times.
"The Trump transition team asked the State Department last week to submit details of programs and jobs that focus on promoting gender equality. Maybe it’s for benign purposes — or better, a signal that the administration wants to make women’s empowerment a cornerstone of its foreign policy. But this seems unlikely, to put it mildly, given that such a commitment was absent from Donald J. Trump’s campaign, and alongside Mr. Trump’s vow to defund Planned Parenthood.
Whatever the reason for their request, Mr. Trump and Rex W. Tillerson, his pick for secretary of state, should remember that women’s rights are tied directly to national security. The State Department’s gender equality programs are not just politically correct fluff — they deal with matters of life and death, like rape during war, genital cutting, forced marriage and access to education. The State Department provides essential funding to combat these problems."
Read the full Op-Ed in the New York Times
JF - The New York Times
UR - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/opinion/womens-rights-are-a-national-security-issue.html
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - Resisting Trumpism in Europe and the United States
Y1 - 2016
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - Read the article by Senior Fellow John Shattuck:
Authoritarian democracy is on the march on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite alarming parallels, the U.S. remains better positioned to preserve and rebuild true democracy.
The election of Donald Trump shows what happens when democracy misfires. It echoes recent developments in Europe, most notably in Hungary and Poland, where elected leaders are attacking democratic pluralism, minority rights, and civil liberties, keeping the forms of democracy without the substance. The same trends are proceeding in France, the Netherlands, the U.K., and other European democracies where far-right parties under the banner of populist nationalism are pursuing racist and xenophobic objectives.
Having returned to the United States this fall after seven years in Hungary, I am struck by the shocking parallel between what is happening in Europe and here at home. The Trump election signals a sharp turn toward the populist far right. The presidential campaign was marked by the denigration of women and minorities and the rhetoric of racial extremism. The president-elect’s early appointments include people with these views. Civil liberties are threatened. Foreign alliances are in jeopardy. The risk of war is heightened.
JF - The American Prospect
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Donations Were Too Little Too Late
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Tom O'Bryan
AB - Read the article by Carr Center Research Assistant Tom O'Bryan:
Countless studies have shown that democracies are less likely to go to war, torture their own citizens, and censor the media. That's one reason why Western governments and philanthropic foundations funnel more than $10 billion every year into promoting democracy overseas. For example, donors fund efforts to help train election observers, educate voters about their rights, and train local media outlets to cover political issues.
In the last year, more than $70 million have been spent on such projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a poor and fragile country emerging from over two decades of armed conflict. That may sound like a lot of money, but in relative terms it's not. The American, British and Canadian governments alone spent more than eight times that amount on democracy promotion in Afghanstan during the country's most recent elections.
Read the full article in Foreign Policy
JF - Foreign Policy
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - International Pressure on Us Human Rights Matters Now More Than Ever
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Kathryn Sikkink
AB - Read Kathryn Sikkink's article in OpenDemocracy:
These are dangerous times. Never has it been so important for domestic and international human rights advocates and scholars to collaborate. Such action must be guided by past successes in promoting human rights, based on our best history and social science. I share Stephen Hopgood’s sense of urgency, but I disagree with his recommendation that we should only engage in domestic politics and abandon international human rights norms and law.
We will need even stronger domestic movements to protect vulnerable populations from hate and discrimination and to mobilize groups harmed by globalization. Domestic movements, as always, must frame their work in ways that will resonate politically. But human rights will continue to be one important language to mobilize both domestic and international publics. The US election did not reveal a tectonic shift in the electorate. Clinton won the popular vote and Trump received fewer votes than Romney did in 2012. This is less a story of a major realignment of US politics, and more about the electoral college, voter turnout and the impact of third parties. Sexism and xenophobia, nothing new in US politics, played a role. These issues are all important but insufficient to conclude that we should suddenly abandon human rights.
Read the full article via Kathryn Sikkink on OpenDemocracy
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - From Brexit to African ICC Exit: A Dangerous Trend
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Just Security
AB - Read the article by Fellow Luis Moreno Ocampo:
Burundi, South Africa, and the Gambia are not violating international law merely by announcing their withdrawal from the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court. In accordance with Article 127 of the Rome Statute, they have every right to go.
Contrary to what some commentators seem to believe, the ICC and the Rome Statute system will not disappear because of some withdrawals. The Statute can still function with 121 states or even less. Think about it this way: in 2003, I was appointed as ICC Prosecutor by 78 states. In those days, the Bush Administration was embarked on military operations in Iraq ignoring the position of the majority of the UN Security Council members, authorizing the use of torture, campaigning against the International Criminal Court and threatening states party of the Rome Statute with economic sanctions for not providing immunity for US troops. Despite those conditions, less than 100 states parties were able to provide the cooperation and support that the Court needed to function. Thirteen years later the system developed by the Rome Statute is a reality, part of international law’s landscape. Its existence is not at risk—its relevance, as with the relevance of international law to manage conflicts, is in question. Just Security produced three important opinions.
Read the full post on Just Security.
JF - Just Security
UR - https://www.justsecurity.org/33972/brexit-african-icc-exit-dangerous-trend/
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - The Strategic Costs of Torture: How “Enhanced Interrogation” Hurt America
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Douglas A. Johnson
A1 - Averell Schmidt
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - Alberto Mora and Douglas Johnson examine the strategic costs of torture, and how enhanced interrogation hurt the U.S.
Read the full article for Foreign Affairs here.
JF - Foreign Affairs
UR - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/strategic-costs-torture
ER -
TY - MGZN
T1 - The Strategic Cost of Torture: How “Enhanced Interrogation” Hurt America
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Douglas A. Johnson
A1 - Alberto Mora
A1 - Averell Schmidt
AB - The Carr Center's "Strategic Consequences of Torture" project was recently featured in Foreign Affairs Magazine.
In the article, Carr Center's research team, Douglas A. Johnson, Alberto Mora, and Averell Schmidt argue that "a truly comprehensive assessment (of torture) would also explore the policy’s broader implications, including how it shaped the trajectory of the so-called war on terror, altered the relationship between the United States and its allies, and affected Washington’s pursuit of other key goals, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad."
Read the full article.
JF - Foreign Affairs
UR - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/strategic-costs-torture
IS - September/ October 2016
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - Classroom technologies narrow education gap in developing countries
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Steven Livingston
AB - Classroom technologies narrow education gap in developing countries by Steven Livingston
Well before the invention of laptops and the World Wide Web, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician, computer scientist, and education visionary Seymour Papertrealized that connected electronic devices could improve the educational experience of students, even for those who face poverty and geographical isolation. His recent death has a particular poignancy in Kenya where the extreme disparities in educational opportunities among different schools and students exacerbate already serious social and economic tensions. Several weeks ago, I traveled to Nairobi to gain some perspective on Papert’s vision.
JF - Brookings
UR - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/08/23/classroom-technologies-narrow-education-gap-in-developing-countries/
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Fighting Terrorism - and the urge to ignore our basic American principles
T2 - The Washington Post
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Alberto Mora
AB - Op-Ed by Carr Center Senior Fellow Alberto Mora.
In late 2002, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service uncovered evidence that detainees were being abused during interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Concerned about the lawlessness and the professional incompetence of the interrogators, they sought out a senior attorney in the Defense Department’s office of general counsel. Nothing could be done, the attorney blandly informed them. “The decision has been taken,” he said, “and, anyway, if the public were to find out, no one would care.”
JF - The Washington Post
UR - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fighting-terrorism--and-the-urge-to-ignore-our-basic-american-principles/2016/08/03/580e3f7a-4cfb-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html?utm_term=.b53f4ea75886
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Rape Myths and the Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale in China
JF - Journal of Interpersonal Violence
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Jia Xue
AB - The study examines the similarities and differences between China and the United States with regard to rape myths.
We assessed the individual level of rape myth acceptance among Chinese university students by adapting and translating a widely used measure of rape myth endorsement in the United States, the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (IRMA) scale. We assessed whether the IRMA scale would be an appropriate assessment of attitudes toward rape among young adults in China. The sample consisted of 975 Chinese university students enrolled in seven Chinese universities. We used explorative factor analysis to examine the factor structure of the Chinese translation of the IRMA scale. Results suggest that the IRMA scale requires some modification to be employed with young adults in China. Our analyses indicate that 20 items should be deleted, and a five-factor model is generated. We discuss relevant similarities and differences in the factor structure and item loadings between the Chinese Rape Myth Acceptance (CRMA) and the IRMA scales. A revised version of the IRMA, the CRMA, can be used as a resource in rape prevention services and rape victim support services. Future research in China that employs CRMA will allow researchers to examine whether individual’s response to rape myth acceptance can predict rape potential and judgments of victim blaming and community members’ acceptance of marital rape.
UR - http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/03/0886260516651315.full
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - US needs to help the EU end the refugee crisis
T2 - Boston Globe
Y1 - 2016
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - In his latest Op-Ed for the Boston Globe, Carr Center Senior Fellow John Shattuck argues that the US "needs to help the EU end the refugee crisis."
Shattuck writes, "the refugee crisis is at the center of Europe’s political war. Some European countries are building walls to exclude people seeking refuge from the deadly conflicts in the Middle East, while others — notably Greece, Germany, and the Nordics — are working to reinforce EU values of openness and tolerance.
The United States should do more to promote these values by increasing its support for relief efforts and opening its doors to refugees from the Middle East."
Read the full op-ed here.
JF - Boston Globe
UR - https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/04/26/needs-help-end-refugee-crisis/5zB18BpCUgQUqLZmJ2Z04K/story.html
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - US needs to help the EU end the refugee crisis
T2 - The Boston Globe
Y1 - 2016
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - US needs to help the EU end the refugee crisis an op/ed by John Shattuck:
The refugee crisis is at the center of Europe’s political war. Some European countries are building walls to exclude people seeking refuge from the deadly conflicts in the Middle East, while others — notably Greece, Germany, and the Nordics — are working to reinforce EU values of openness and tolerance. The United States should do more to promote these values by increasing its support for relief efforts and opening its doors to refugees from the Middle East. European governments this year are contributing four times more money than the United States to the financially strapped United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Meanwhile, the United States will resettle a minuscule 10,000 Syrian refugees, compared with more than 500,000 in Germany.
Blockquote
JF - The Boston Globe
UR - https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/04/26/needs-help-end-refugee-crisis/5zB18BpCUgQUqLZmJ2Z04K/story.html
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics and Pragmatics
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Zachary D. Kaufman
AB - In United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics, Zachary D. Kaufman, J.D., Ph.D., explores the U.S. government’s support for, or opposition to, certain transitional justice institutions.
By first presenting an overview of possible responses to atrocities (such as war crimes tribunals) and then analyzing six historical case studies, Dr. Kaufman evaluates why and how the United States has pursued particular transitional justice options since World War II. This book challenges the “legalist” paradigm, which postulates that liberal states pursue war crimes tribunals because their decision-makers hold a principled commitment to the rule of law. Dr. Kaufman develops an alternative theory—“prudentialism”—which contends that any state (liberal or illiberal) may support bona fide war crimes tribunals. More generally, prudentialism proposes that states pursue transitional justice options, not out of strict adherence to certain principles, but as a result of a case-specific balancing of politics, pragmatics, and normative beliefs. Dr. Kaufman tests these two competing theories through the U.S. experience in six contexts: Germany and Japan after World War II, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, the 1990-1991 Iraqi offenses against Kuwaitis, the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Dr. Kaufman demonstrates that political and pragmatic factors featured as or more prominently in U.S. transitional justice policy than did U.S. government officials’ normative beliefs. Dr. Kaufman thus concludes that, at least for the United States, prudentialism is superior to legalism as an explanatory theory in transitional justice policymaking.
PB - Oxford University Press
CY - New York
UR - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/united-states-law-and-policy-on-transitional-justice-9780190243494?cc=us&lang=en&
ER -
TY - NEWS
T1 - Karadzic verdict is a victory for civilization
T2 - The Boston Globe
Y1 - 2016
A1 - John Shattuck
AB - See latest op-ed from Carr Center's John Shattuck.
"In a world rampant with terrorism, Thursday’s verdict in the Radovan Karadzic trial in The Hague is a victory for international justice. The former Bosnian Serb leader was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for leading a reign of genocidal terror during the Bosnian war."
JF - The Boston Globe
UR - https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/03/25/karadzic-verdict-victory-for-civilization/XswYGRe9N8HMOf09Ojf44N/story.html
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - On Where We Differ: Sites Versus Grounds of Justice, and Some Other Reflections on Michael Blake’s Justice and Foreign Policy
JF - Law and Philosophy
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Mathias Risse examines Michael Blake's Justice and Foreign Policy.
Blake’s book conveys a straightforward directive: the foreign policy of liberal states should be guided and constrained by the goal of helping other states to become liberal democracies as well.
This much is what we owe to people in other countries—this much but nothing more. The primary addressees are wealthier democracies, whose foreign policy ought to be guided by the idea of equality of all human beings. My approach in On Global Justice bears important similarities to Blake’s, but with those similarities also come equally important differences. The purpose of this piece is to bring out these similarities and differences and in the process articulate some objections to Blake.
VL - 35
UR - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10982-016-9255-3
IS - 3
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)
Y1 - 2016
A1 - Jacqueline Bhaba
AB - Jacqueline Bhabha's book, Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age, offers the first comprehensive look at the global dilemma of child migration.
Why, despite massive public concern, is child trafficking on the rise? Why are unaccompanied migrant children living on the streets and routinely threatened with deportation to their countries of origin? Why do so many young refugees of war-ravaged and failed states end up warehoused in camps, victimized by the sex trade, or enlisted as child soldiers? This book provides the first comprehensive account of the widespread but neglected global phenomenon of child migration, exploring the complex challenges facing children and adolescents who move to join their families, those who are moved to be exploited, and those who move simply to survive. Spanning several continents and drawing on the stories of young migrants, Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age provides a comprehensive account of the widespread and growing but neglected global phenomenon of child migration and child trafficking. It looks at the often-insurmountable obstacles we place in the paths of adolescents fleeing war, exploitation, or destitution; the contradictory elements in our approach to international adoption; and the limited support we give to young people brutalized as child soldiers. Part history, part in-depth legal and political analysis, this powerful book challenges the prevailing wisdom that widespread protection failures are caused by our lack of awareness of the problems these children face, arguing instead that our societies have a deep-seated ambivalence to migrant children–one we need to address head-on. Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age offers a road map for doing just that, and makes a compelling and courageous case for an international ethics of children’s human rights.
PB - Princeton University Press
UR - http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10210.html
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Adding Human Rights Punch to the New Lex Mercatoria: The Impact of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights on Commercial Legal Practice
JF - Journal of International Dispute Settlement
Y1 - 2015
A1 - John Ruggie
AB - Adding Human Rights Punch to the New Lex Mercatoria: The Impact of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights on Commercial Legal Practice:
In July 2015, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, otherwise known as FIFA, announced that as a prominent part of its new reforms, it will ‘recognise the provisions of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (‘GPs’)1 and will make it compulsory for both contractual partners and those within the supply chain to comply with these provisions’.
VL - 6
UR - http://jids.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/3/455
IS - 3
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Do States Delegate Shameful Violence to Militias? Patterns of Sexual Violence in Recent Armed Conflicts
JF - The Journal of Conflict Resolution
Y1 - 2015
A1 - Dara Kay Cohen
AB - Do States Delegate Shameful Violence to Militias? Patterns of Sexual Violence in Recent Armed Conflicts:
Existing research maintains that governments delegate extreme, gratuitous, or excessively brutal violence to militias. However, analyzing all militias in armed conflicts from 1989 to 2009, we find that this argument does not account for the observed patterns of sexual violence, a form of violence that should be especially likely to be delegated by governments. Instead, we find that states commit sexual violence as a complement to—rather than a substitute for—violence perpetrated by militias. Rather than the logic of delegation, we argue that two characteristics of militia groups increase the probability of perpetrating sexual violence. First, we find that militias that have recruited children are associated with higher levels of sexual violence. This lends support to a socialization hypothesis, in which sexual violence may be used as a tool for building group cohesion. Second, we find that militias that were trained by states are associated with higher levels of sexual violence, which provides evidence for sexual violence as a “practice” of armed groups. These two complementary results suggest that militia-perpetrated sexual violence follows a different logic and is neither the result of delegation nor, perhaps, indiscipline.
VL - 59
UR - http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/59/5/877.short
IS - 5
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Jus ad bellum in Syria: The Meaning of the US Airpower Campaign
JF - International Bar Association: Human Rights Law Newsletter
Y1 - 2015
A1 - Federica D’Alessandra
AB - Jus ad bellum in Syria: The Meaning of the US Airpower Campaign:
Operation Inherent Resolve is the name of the air campaign carried out by a Combined Joint Task Force of US-led coalition forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.1 Repeatedly, the campaign has been engaged to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ Daesh. The group is a terrorist-designated organisation3responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity – arguably even genocide (against the Yazidis minority of Iraq) – underthe Rome Statute. The group is at war with more than 60 nations or groups: coalition nations conducting airstrikes in Iraq includeAustralia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States; coalition nations conducting airstrikes in Syria include Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/human_rights_law_working_group_march_2015_-dalessandra.pdf
ER -
TY - RPRT
T1 - Rhetoric, Ideology, and Organizational Structure of the Taliban Movement
Y1 - 2015
A1 - Michael Semple
AB - This report examines the evolution of the Taliban case for armed struggle and the minimal adjustments Taliban rhetoricians made to cope with the impending political change in Afghanistan in 2014. It considers how the Taliban might make a case for peace, should they take the political decision to engage in negotiations.
The Taliban movement commands the loyalty of thousands of Afghans and applies resources and men to the pursuit of political objectives, guided by doctrine and inspired by rhetoric. Taliban rhetoric consists of religious and historical references, narratives of recent events, and guidance for Taliban sympathizers. The rhetoric asserts that the Taliban are engaged in a righteous jihad aimed at establishing a divinely ordered Islamic system in Afghanistan. Taliban doctrine focuses on internal affairs and in particular on maintaining cohesiveness. The Taliban are ruthless in enforcing their doctrine of obedience to the amir, or leader. The movement has retained a narrow social base, and its power is concentrated in the hands of mullahs from the Kandahari Pashtun tribes. Any project to build a plural Afghanistan is likely to include an appeal to the Taliban or the constituency they have mobilized. The Taliban’s own attempts to regain power rest on a negation of pluralism, rejection of a popular mandate, and assertion of the divine right vested in their Islamic emirate. A Taliban rhetoric of peace would require addressing the position of the Taliban’s amir, peace as a desirable state, the need for cohesiveness and unity in support of peace, celebration of the withdrawal of foreign troops, Islamic credentials of the government in Kabul, protection of those who sacrificed for the Taliban, peace as conclusion of the jihad, and the new role for the Taliban’s cadres. After 2014, the Taliban leadership is vulnerable to a hard-line challenge arguing that the political system in Kabul is irredeemably compromised by its collaboration with unbelievers.
JF - Peaceworks
PB - United States Institute of Peace
CY - Washington DC
UR - http://www.usip.org/publications/rhetoric-ideology-and-organizational-structure-of-the-taliban-movement
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Response to Arneson, de Bres, and Stilz
JF - Ethics & International Affairs
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Common humanity is one ground of justice.
The distinctively human life generates claims, and their form is that of natural rights. However, explorations of how the distinctively human life generates obligations lead only to a rather limited set of rights—basic security and subsistence rights. Inquiries into another nonrelational ground also produce rather limited results. That ground is humanity's collective ownership of the earth. The principle of justice associated with it merely requires an equal opportunity to use natural spaces and resources for the satisfaction of basic needs. In particular, this result is incompatible with any kind of welfarist commitment. The sheer fact that anybody's welfare as such would be lowered or raised is not a matter of justice. If people share associations with each other (membership in a state, or being connected by trade, say) we can derive obligations from their shared involvement with these associations. But unless people do indeed share such associations, the obligations that hold among them will be rather limited.
VL - 28
UR - http://dx.doi.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1017/S0892679414000641
IS - 4
ER -
TY - ADVS
T1 - A trafficked sex slave could be sold off as a virgin for $7000...a child slave for $20.
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Siddharth Kara
AB - A trafficked sex slave could be sold off as a virgin for $7000...a child slave for $20.
Siddharth Kara, Harvard University fellow and author of three books on modern-day slavery, talks about the profits and losses of slavery and what he has learned from 12 years of research into trafficking, across six continents.
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Watch the video here.
PB - The Guardian
UR - http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/video/2014/jun/13/trafficked-sex-slave-sold-as-virgin-for-7000-dollars-video
ER -
TY - BOOK
T1 - Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Siddharth Kara
AB - This volume is Kara's second, explosive study of slavery, this time focusing on the deeply entrenched and wholly unjust system of bonded labor.
Siddharth Kara's first book, Sex Trafficking , has become a critical resource for its revelations into an unconscionable business, and its detailed analysis of the trade's immense economic benefits and human cost.
In his second volume, drawing on eleven years of research in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, Kara delves into an ancient and ever-evolving mode of slavery that ensnares roughly six out of every ten slaves in the world and generates profits that exceeded $17.6 billion in 2011. In addition to providing a thorough economic, historical, and legal overview of bonded labor, Kara travels to the far reaches of South Asia, from cyclone-wracked southwestern Bangladesh to the Thar desert on the India-Pakistan border, to uncover the brutish realities of such industries as hand-woven-carpet making, tea and rice farming, construction, brick manufacture, and frozen-shrimp production. He describes the violent enslavement of millions of impoverished men, women, and children who toil in the production of numerous products at minimal cost to the global market. He also follows supply chains directly to Western consumers, vividly connecting regional bonded labor practices to the appetites of the world. Kara's pioneering analysis encompasses human trafficking, child labor, and global security, and he concludes with specific initiatives to eliminate the system of bonded labor from South Asia once and for all.
PB - Columbia University Press
CY - New York
UR - http://cup.columbia.edu/book/bonded-labor/9780231158480
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - The Human Right to Water and Common Ownership of the Earth
JF - Journal of Political Philosophy
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - According to the World Health Organization (WHO), each human being requires at least 20 liters of clean water for daily consumption and basic hygiene.2 However, many countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East lack sufficient water resources or have so far failed to develop these resources or the necessary infrastructure.
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water,” so W. H. Auden finished his poem “First Things First." And right he was. Only oxygen is needed more urgently than water at most times. But a key difference that makes water a more immediate subject for theorists of justice is that, for now, oxygen is normally amply available where humans live. Historically, the same was true of water since humans would not settle in places without clean water. Nowadays, however, water treatment plants and delivery infrastructure have vastly extended the regions where humans can live permanently. Population increases have prompted people to settle in locations where access to clean water is precarious.
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12022
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Human Rights and Alternative Legality in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Federica D’Alessandra
AB - This working paper focuses on the legal protection awarded to the Arab populations under Israeli jurisdiction.
In analyzing their legal protection, the author distinguishes between Arab Israelis and other Arab populations resident in territories under Israeli jurisdiction. The author does not deal with Israeli settlements or other discriminating laws such as marriage laws and the family reunification laws, but focuses on anti-terrorism measures. The working paper is divided in three parts: in the first part, the author discusses Israel’s domestic obligations towards Arab Israelis and Palestinian residents, and their de facto discrimination. The second part discusses the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to both the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Palestinian unlawful combatants. The third part discusses the applicability of human rights law to all territories under Israeli jurisdiction, and delves into the issue of the mutual relationship between the two international legal regimes in the territories under occupation. The working paper concludes that many Israeli anti-terrorism measures (such as check-points, night searches of Palestinian households, administrative detentions and targeted executions of Palestinian militants) violate individuals’ rights protected under domestic and international law. Moreover, this working paper finds that Israel’s rationale underpinning the non-applicability of such legislation to the Arab populations under its jurisdiction constitutes a form of ‘alternative legality’ and discrimination.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/dalessandra_israelsaltlegality_utrecht.pdf
ER -
TY - ICOMM
T1 - In India, Dying to Go: Why Access to Toilets is a Women’s Rights Issue
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Sharmila Murthy
AB - Access to clean, safe and private toilets is a women’s issue.
In May, two young women in rural India left their modest homes in the middle of the night to relieve themselves outside. Like millions in India, their homes had no bathrooms. The next morning, their bodies were found hanging from a mango tree. They had been attacked, gang-raped and strung up by their own scarves. Eighteen months after a gang-rape on a Delhi bus, this incident and others since have galvanized nationwide protests to end violence against women and highlighted caste-related discrimination. The tragic story also underscores the need to talk about another taboo topic: open defecation.
JF - WBUR Cognoscenti
UR - http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2014/06/25/human-rights-gang-rape-sharmila-l-murthy
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Israel’s Associated Regime: Exceptionalism, Human Rights and Alternative Legality
JF - Utrecht Journal of International and European Law
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Federica D’Alessandra
AB - In the context of Israel’s declared permanent state of exception, this article focuses on the legal protection awarded to the Palestinian populations under Israeli control.
To broaden the discussion over Palestinian people’s rights, which generally focuses on the confiscation of land and the right to return, the author consciously focuses on anti-terrorism and security measures, which contribute to the creation of what the International Court of Justice has defined as an ‘associated regime’ of occupation. The article is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author discusses Israel’s domestic obligations towards Palestinians (arguing the case of both Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinian residents) and their de jure and de facto discrimination. The second part discusses the applicability of humanitarian law, specifically the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention. This section discusses the applicability of the Convention to both territories and people under Israeli control. The third part discusses the applicability of international human rights law to all territories under Israeli control and delves into the issue of the mutual relationship between the two international legal regimes in the territories under occupation. The article posits that Israel’s rationale for the non-applicability of such legislation to the Palestinian territories and populations it controls constitutes a form of ‘alternative legality’. The article concludes that Israel’s disproportionate application of security practices and anti-terrorism measures to the Palestinian segment of its population violates Palestinian rights protected under Israel’s domestic and international legal obligations.
UR - http://www.utrechtjournal.org/article/view/ujiel.cm/88
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Psychological Consequences of Becoming a Child Soldier
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Federica D’Alessandra
AB - As the civilian population is increasingly targeted in wars, children constitute an increasing quota among the victims of each conflict.
More often than not, the horrific practice of targeting civilians during conflict is seconded by the deplorable active use of child soldiers. In some countries, a whole generation of children seems to have grown up without knowing peace. A lot has been written about war-affected people, and the psychological consequences that they bear as a result of these traumatic experiences; yet, a literature that focuses specifically on the psychological burden of child soldiers is only now slowly emerging. While it might be intuitive that war and widespread violence leave deep psychological scars, it is essential to understand what shape these scars take on children. The relevance of the topic is striking at both a humanitarian and a developmental level as ‘lost education can take years to regain, and physical and psychological trauma may be long lasting’.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/dalessandra_pshychol_cons_of_childsoldiers.pdf
ER -
TY - JOUR
T1 - Three Images of Trade: On the Place of Trade in a Theory of Global Justice
JF - Moral Philosophy and Politics
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Risse, Mathias
AB - Economic theory teaches us that it is in every country’s own best interest to engage in trade.
Trade therefore is a voluntary activity among consenting parties. On this view, considerations of justice have little bearing on trade, and political philosophers concerned with matters of global justice should stay largely silent on trade. According to a very different view that has recently gained some prominence, international trade can only occur before the background of an existing international market reliance practice that is shaped by states. On this view, trade is a shared activity among states, and all participating states have in principle equal claims to the gains from trade. Trade then becomes a central topic for political philosophers concerned with global justice. The authors find fault with both of those views and argue instead for a third view about the role of a trade in a theory of global justice. That view gives pride of place to a (non- Marxian) notion of exploitation, which is developed here in some detail.
VL - 1
UR - http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/mopp.2014.1.issue-2/mopp-2014-0013/mopp-2014-0013.xml
IS - 2
ER -
TY - Generic
T1 - Violence Against Women Middle East and North Africa
Y1 - 2014
A1 - Hayat Bearat
AB - Hayat Bearat discusses violence against women in the Middle East and North Africa through legal framework.
Many women in MENA states fear reporting violence because of the repercussions they may face from their families, communities and legal system upon doing so. An example is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), women who report rape can be threatened with criminal charges instead.20 In Libya,inadequate laws and services, coupled with Libya’s conservative society deter women from reporting rapes or domestic violence as they fear stigma and additional dangers from reporting the crimes.
UR - https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/menahayat_1.pdf
ER -