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    2018 Apr 05

    Study Group: Metamorphosis - New Rights on the Horizon

    12:00pm to 1:00pm

    Location: 

    Carr Center Conference Room (R229), HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

    The study group will meet from 12:00-1:00pm on four occasions this semester:

    • Wednesday, March 7 in room R229
    • Thursday, March 22 in room R414AB
    • Thursday, April 5 in room R229
    • Wednesday, May 2 in room R229

    This group is open by application only. If you are interested, please send an email explaining your interest to carr_center@hks.harvard.edu.

    Description:

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    2018 Mar 07

    A.R.T. of Human Rights

    8:00pm to 9:30pm

    Location: 

    OBERON 2 Arrow St. Cambridge, MA 02138

    Resistance Mic! is part of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series, an ongoing collaboration between the American Repertory Theater and Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Resistance Mic! will take place on Wednesdays @ 8pm @ OBERON, A.R.T.’s second stage theater, and will be co-hosted by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and Sarah Sweeney.

    Resistance Mic! continues this spring with performances February 7,...

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    The Prospects, Problems, and Proliferation of Recent UN Investigations of International Law Violations
    Zachary D. Kaufman. 2/22/2018. “The Prospects, Problems, and Proliferation of Recent UN Investigations of International Law Violations.” Journal of International Criminal Justice, 16, 1, Pp. 93-112. See full text.Abstract
    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. 

     

    2018 Apr 02

    Contentious Narratives: Digital Technology and the Attack on Liberal Democratic Norms

    (All day)

    Location: 

    The George Washington University, Washington, District Of Columbia 20052

    contentiousnarratives

    The conference focuses on the effects of disinformation on peacebuilding and on efforts to document human rights abuse and war crimes. Trolls, bots — bits of computer code designed to augment social media activities — have emerged as disruptive elements...

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    New UN Team Investigating ISIS Atrocities Raises Questions About Justice in Iraq and Beyond
    Zachary D. Kaufman. 9/28/2017. “New UN Team Investigating ISIS Atrocities Raises Questions About Justice in Iraq and Beyond.” Just Security. See full text.Abstract
    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

    Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective
    Siddharth Kara. 10/2017. Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective, Pp. 360. Colombia University Press. See full text.Abstract
    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.

    The ties that bind: How armed groups use violence to socialize fighters
    Dara Kay Cohen. 9/12/2017. “The ties that bind: How armed groups use violence to socialize fighters.” Journal of Peace Research, 54, 5, Pp. 701-714. See full text.Abstract
    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.

     

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