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Richard Parker. 12/2/2020. “Are Rights and Religion Orthogonal?” Carr Center Discussion Paper Series, 2020-13. See full text.Abstract

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. 



Sushma Raman. 6/29/2020. “Attacks on the Press Track a Democratic Backslide.” Foreign Policy . See full text. Abstract

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.



Mark Latonero. 5/17/2019. “Big Tech Firms are Racing to Track Climate Refugees.” MIT Technology Review. See full text.Abstract

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/



Siddharth Kara. 5/6/2014. Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia, Pp. 336. New York: Columbia University Press. See full text.Abstract

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.



Michelle G. Kurilla. 9/10/2019. “Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Talks Ethics and Technology at Kennedy School.” The Harvard Crimson. See full text.Abstract

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



Averell Schmidt and Kathryn Sikkink. 2/20/2019. “Breaking the Ban? The Heterogeneous Impact of US Contestation of the Torture Norm.” Journal of Global Security Studies, 4, 1, Pp. 105-122. See full text.Abstract

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



Patricia Illingworth. 3/22/2018. “Businesses, Guns, and Human Rights.” The Hastings Center. See full text.Abstract

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.



Mark Latonero. 1/29/2020. “Can Facebook’s Oversight Board Win People’s Trust?” Harvard Business Review. See full text.Abstract

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.



Salil Shetty. 12/16/2018. “Can Technology deliver freedoms for India’s poor? ”. See full text.Abstract

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



Jacqueline Bhabha. 5/20/2018. Can We Solve The Migration Crisis?, Pp. 140. Cambridge, UK; Medford, MA: Polity Press. See full text.Abstract

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.

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