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2020 Sep 10
What Remains? Liberalism and Racial Justice
Registration Closed 1:30pm to 2:30pm
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Please join the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy for its signature weekly series this fall, The Fierce Urgency of Now, featuring Black, Indigenous, People of Color scholars, activists, and community leaders, and experts from the Global South. Hosted and facilitated by Sushma Raman and Mathias Risse, the series also aligns with a course they will co-teach this fall at the Harvard Kennedy School on Economic Justice: Theory and Practice.
In this discussion, Charles Mills, a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center, CUNY, will examine how liberal thought...
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2020 Oct 08
10 Years On: Lessons from the Cholera Epidemic in Haiti
2:00pm to 3:30pm
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Virtual Event (Registration Required)
October 2020 marks the 10-year anniversary of UN peacekeepers’ introduction of cholera to Haiti. The resulting epidemic has killed over 10,000 people and caused immeasurable losses in Haiti. The UN’s reluctance to accept responsibility and to remedy affected communities has also tested the organization’s commitment to human rights and spurred strong criticisms from inside and outside of the organization.  This event brings together UN officials and Haiti advocates to examine what lessons the UN should draw from the cholera epidemic. Panelists will discuss how the cholera...
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2020 Nov 13
Reckoning with Election 2020: Race, Violence, & the Power of New Voters
Registration Closed 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Location: 
Virtual Event (Registration Required)
Election 2020 proved to be historic in terms of the numbers of voters that were mobilized to the polls. The Election also made clear that there would be no nationwide repudiation of Trumpism. Join the Carr Center for a conversation with leading scholars of racial politics about the election turnout, voter suppression, and what this means about the state of democracy today. This event is part of the Bending the Arc: A Talk Series with Dr. Megan Ming Francis. This event will be co-sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. 
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2020 Dec 01
North Korea’s Information and Technology: The Inflow of Foreign Content and the Regime’s Countermeasures
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Virtual Event (Registration Required)
The North Korean regime has traditionally controlled information production, circulation, and consumption. However, over the years, foreign information and content have continued to trickle into the country. This phenomenon has major social and foreign policy implications. Our panelists will discuss how outside actors are getting content into North Korea, how the regime has responded with countermeasures, what kind of macro and micro impact foreign information consumption has on North Korean society, and why these trends are consequential.
The Belfer Center’s ...
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2021 Jan 14
POSTPONED :Democracy at Risk: Reckoning with the Capitol Insurrection
Registration Closed 1:00pm to 2:15pm
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Virtual Event (Registration Required)
 
This event has been postponed. 
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2021 Feb 18
The Cause of all Humanity: Why the United States Should Support the International Criminal Court
Registration Closed 10:00am to 11:00am
Location: 
Virtual Event (Registration Required)
Join the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy for a presentation by Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, President of the International Criminal Court on "The cause of all humanity: Why the United States should support the ICC.” His talk, moderated by Professor Kathryn Sikkink, will be followed by brief remarks by Dr. Geoff Dancy and Dr. Phuong Pham about their research on the effectiveness of the ICC.
Panelists: 
• Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji | President, International Criminal Court 
• Dr. Geoff Dancy |...
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2021 Mar 03
Human Rights and the Military Coup in Myanmar
Registration is required
10:00am to 11:00am
Location: 
Virtual Event (Registration Required)
Join us for our first Human Rights in Hard Places event this semester, a discussion on Human Rights and the Military Coup in Myanmar with leading activists in the region. The Carr Center’s Human Rights in Hard Places talk series offers unparalleled insights and analysis from the frontlines by human rights practitioners, policy makers, and innovators. The series is moderated by Carr Center Executive Director, Sushma Raman. 
Speakers: 
• Matthew Smith | co-founder and Chief...
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Zachary D. Kaufman. 4/7/2016. United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics and Pragmatics, Pp. 382 pages. New York: Oxford University Press. See full text. Abstract

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.



Federica D’Alessandra. 2014. “Human Rights and Alternative Legality in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”. See full text.Abstract

dalessandra_israelsaltlegality_utrecht.pdf

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.



Mathias Risse. 2014. “The Human Right to Water and Common Ownership of the Earth.” Journal of Political Philosophy, Pp. 178-203. See full text.Abstract

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.

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