Fortifying the future of human rights with human rights education

Abstract

Those scholars debating the health of the human rights movement completely ignore the role of human rights education, HRE. Whether it is Samuel Moyn and Stephen Hopgood declaring the demise of what they also term the “human rights project”, or Kathryn Sikkink defending it, none explore the effect HRE is having or can have. This article argues that those who neglect to recognize the substantial and substantive conversation going on in our institutions of higher education cannot provide a complete picture of the human rights project. It will demonstrate which of the naysayers Moyn and Hopgood's arguments are weakened by ignoring HRE and argue that Sikkink's recommendations for human rights efforts can be strengthened by HRE. Also explored is what HRE should learn from the critiques of these three scholars and how university HRE can be improved.     

Civil society and public sector institutions: more than a zero‐sum relationship

Measuring civil society strength has become entangled in competing definitions of civil society (CS). A more productive approach begins by considering CS from the perspective not of what it is but from what it does. Civil society functions—articulating citizens' interests and demands, defending their rights and meeting their needs—can be performed by a variety of institutions and organisations, not all of which are or need to be detached from the government. Determining the strength of CS requires assessing how well these functions are performed by a continuum of organisations and institutions. A disaggregated, multi‐sector model is developed that assists in measuring CS strength in any specific context. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Think Tanks in the Swedish Political Landscape

The term ‘think tank’ represents a heterogeneous concept and is used to characterise a diverse group of organisations. This diversity also characterises the Swedish organisations and institutions that currently fall under the think tank umbrella. In the Swedish political context, most organisations known by the public and news media as think tanks are advocacy organisations with an unambiguous ideological and political profile. Further, during the last decade, we have seen a proliferation of independent, self-declared think tanks with more specific policy agendas, such as the environment and health care. However, according to the broader understanding used in global rankings, the Swedish think tank landscape includes a range of research institutions in different policy areas. Some receive funding from the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, corporations and private donors; others are government-funded, with Stockholm's International Peace Research Institute as a prominent example. The aim of this article is to map the Swedish think tank landscape and its borders and analyse the roles of different types of think tanks in consensual or confrontational policymaking. Strategic differences among these types are related to historical background and funding. While government-funded and some policy-sector think tanks typically represent a tradition of consensual policymaking, those funded by the Corporation of Swedish Enterprise and other business interests represent a post-corporatist development advocating neoliberal ideas and assuming a confrontational role in the expansion of private ownership and market solutions.     

On the creation of indigenous subjects in the Russian Federation

For many of Russia's poorest people, and especially for the officially recognized ‘indigenous small-numbered peoples’, neoliberal reforms following the collapse of the Soviet Union represented a major retrenchment in ‘social citizenship’ as defined by T.H. Marshall. However, some reforms also promised increased civil, political and cultural citizenship rights, which Russia's indigenous peoples have sought to realize through new legislation and appeals to international agreements regarding the rights of indigenous peoples. But with Russia's current economic and political course geared towards maximizing revenues from the extraction and sale of natural resources, Russia's indigenous peoples have been frustrated in their efforts to realize these citizenship rights, particularly in their attempts to assert rights to land and resources through legal means. This paper draws on case studies from southern Siberia to discuss first how Russia's identity politics and an international focus on indigenous peoples have combined to create indigenous subjects in the Russian Federation, and second how the anticipated transition from indigenous subjects to indigenous citizens has for the most part failed to materialize.     

Women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion in Mexico City: citizenship,experience and clientelism

In April 2007, after a period of intense social debate, the Mexico City Legal Assembly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was an unprecedented development in women's rights in Mexico. Within the context of a proliferation of public discourses about women's citizenship rights changes in women's social status in Mexico, this article explores the extent to which the newly legalized character of abortion is interpreted by women as a right. Drawing on 24 interviews with women who had a legal termination of pregnancy between 2008 and 2009, this research shows that legalization opens up new and complex relationships between women as subjects of rights and the state. Such relationships are expressed as three discursive figures: legal abortion (1) as a concession from the government, (2) as ‘excessive’ tolerance by the state, and (3) as a right to be protected and guaranteed. The analysis shows that women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion are mediated by profound transformations, which Mexican society is currently undergoing. These include changes related to a shift from a clientist political culture to one more framed in terms of citizenship, the subjective effects of family planning policies, and their ambivalent relationships with Catholic notions of women and motherhood, and the effects of feminist discourses of women's citizenship, abortion, and reproductive rights.     

International Power and Local Action – Implications for the Intersectionality of the Rights of Women with Disability

The recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) reframes how policy responds to disability, difference, interdependence and rights. We examine how Australian disability activists used the CRPD to advocate for the intersectional rights of women with disability. We applied a framework from Zwingel's conceptualisation of mutually constituting global norms to analyse the intersectionality of rights represented in three stages of the CRPD process – during the drafting, the wording in the Convention, and the periodic review. We found that disability activists were able to shape the gendering of disability through their targeted representation as people with lived experience. This expertise filled a knowledge gap in the policy process valued by the actors at other policy levels. Extending Zwingel's concept of global discourse translation, it also suggests that the dynamic contribution continues in the international interpretation of the CRPD itself.     

From Passive Objects to Active Agents: A Comparative Study of Conceptions of Victim Identities at the ICTY and ICC

Contemporary developments in international criminal justice have led to new systems of victims' rights and redress. A number of studies have identified the processes of victim protection, participation, and reparations at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, little attention has been paid to how these changing practices have served to constitute victim identities. This article seeks to address this gap in scholarship through an analysis of the changing definitions, status, and integration of victims into these institutions. It explores how institutional practices serve to construct victims as either “passive objects” or “active agents” of the law. It then considers whether this “active agent” translates to ideas of the person in all social contexts. The article argues that the ICC needs to consider whether victims hold the necessary personal, material, and social “resources” required to action their rights in this institutional context.     

Uncivil society and social policies in Brazil: The backlash in the gender,sexual, and reproductive rights and ethnic and racial relations fields

This paper analyzes how dynamics between Brazil's right-wing populist government and civil and uncivil organizations affected the role of civil organizations, especially rights-based ones, and Brazil's democratization process. These dynamics contributed to stripping policies of their progressive nature and rejecting the values of diversity, freedom, and equality. Our analysis relies on the inhabited institutions approach to comprehend the role of action, interaction, and meaning in institutionalized spaces. We analyzed two policy fields—gender, sexual, and reproductive rights, and ethnic and racial relations—through documents and in-depth interviews. Our analysis shows that Bolsonaro's government mobilized mechanisms related to institutional changes, the replacement of actors, and their interactions to inhibit civil society organizations' influence in policy formulation and provision and strengthen the participation of uncivil groups, thereby legitimating conservative ideas and discourses, and closing civic space for NGOs with rights-based agendas.     

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of “equality-as-same” to one that treats children as “differently equal” members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.     

In Pursuit of a Balance: the Regulation of Conscience and Access to Sexual Reproductive Health Care

In any given society, rights are said to co-exist. When rights, however, begin to conflict, a balance must be sought. In few fields has the ability of governments to accommodate two conflicting sets of rights been so controversial as it has in the case of conscientious objection (CO) in reproductive health care. Today, states have an obligation under international law to protect the right to the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion of medical providers. They also, however, have an obligation to protect right to the highest attainable standard of health and other fundamental rights of women. Considering the extent to which CO has been invoked in the context of reproductive health care, international law recognizes limits to its use. Over the years, human rights bodies have sought to develop guidelines around CO in order to ensure the protection of women’s basic rights. While some state practices have shown to be consistent with guidelines established at the international level, some countries have struggled to provide an effective balance so as to protect women’s fundamental rights. Taking the example of countries in Latin America and Europe, this article provides an overview of the different ways states have sought to regulate CO in the medical context and the various difficulties ensued.     

How do international human rights influence national healthcare provisions for irregular migrants?: A case study in France and the United Kingdom

Debates about human rights have often questioned their potential for generating rights at national levels. In this article, we use the case of irregular migrants' access to health care in the United Kingdom and France to explore the extent to which international human rights influence national health care provisions for irregular migrants. We explore the extent to which health care access and provision for irregular migrants in these two countries is in agreement with international human rights. In so doing, we examine what constitutes an infringement of the international human right to health care. Finally, we sketch out some hypotheses about the role played by different state structures in the implementation of human rights norms, comparing the United Kingdom with France. We argue that, although international human rights often have a largely symbolic role in nation-state jurisdiction, they may sometimes represent a force for change.     

Comment on Andrew S. Carron and R. Dan Brumbaugh,Jr.’s “The viability of the thrift industry”

Abstract

Krueckeberg summarizes Hernando de Soto's premise on property rights and offers a critical interpretation of de Soto's work, arguing that it emphasizes efficiency over equity and, ultimately, that enhanced property rights alone are unlikely to significantly improve housing stability or access to capital for households living in informal arrangements. I clarify several of Krueckeberg's discussions of de Soto's ideas from the perspective of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD).

The ILD perspective, informed by de Soto's writings, contrasts with Krueckeberg's in the following five areas: access to utilities and services in squatter settlements, the criminal nature of these communities, the ability of the poor to fulfill the responsibilities of formal ownership, their ability to borrow against formally owned property, and the impact of formalizing property on rental housing. I close by considering how the ILD perspective on formalization might be brought to bear in the United States.     

Social citizenship and ethnicity around a public sector steel plant in Orissa,India

This article is about a modern public sector steel plant in the state of Orissa and its promise to set standards for post-colonial India's citizenry at large. These steel plants were to provide their workforces with superior social and economic citizenship rights, which in turn were to serve as exemplary industrial relations for the industrialising nation. The steel plants were also intended to forge multi-ethnic workforces into exemplary Indian citizens by transcending their manifold ethnic differences. The trajectory of the public sector steel plant in the town of Rourkela confirms that enhanced social and economic citizenship rights detached public sector steel workforces from labour at large and produced a ‘labour aristocracy’. The trajectory, furthermore, reveals how in Rourkela policies designed to accommodate ethnic differences constantly recreated these differences and hampered the access of large sections of the local population to these enhanced social and economic citizenship rights.     

Management standards and development practice in the South African aid chain

The article addresses how South African non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) approach the management of their development activities and the influences upon their approaches. Based on interviews, field visits and programme documents from 40 organisations working in South Africa, the article explores the extent to which NGO programme priorities and adopted management practices arise out of donor conditions, succeed in their stated aims and generate other unintended consequences. Four aspects of contemporary NGO management dynamics are explored: logical frameworks, participatory processes, impact enhancement and financial probity. While donor requirements in these four areas generally impose heavy costs on South African NGOs and poorly achieve their stated aims, the research documents cases, in which local managers were able to work effectively and learn within these constraints, found ways around the more intrusive requirements, or challenged donors to change their policies to permit more equitable donor‐recipient relationships and better development practice. However, an unintended impact of tighter funding requirements is an observable differentiation within the South African NGO sector, with smaller community‐based organisations excluded as larger professional organisations establish more enduring links with international development organisations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reconstruction of the state: Lobbying against political corruption in the Czech Republic

High level of distrust in political elites accompanied with a strong perception of corruption in Czech Republic has led to an increase of several anti‐corruption nongovernmental organisations' activities. About 18 organisations have created in 2013 an open coalition and established a project called “Reconstruction of the State” (Rekonstrukce státu). This project is oriented towards political parties and political elites to lead them to adopt nine anti‐corruption legislative proposals. This paper analyses how the project operates in its formal and informal aspects, which communication means are preferred and how the lobbyists interact with the politicians and political parties. Apart from the analysis of publicly available pieces of information from the project's website and official printed materials, semistructured interviews with activists and field research were performed. It can be seen that Reconstruction of the state has been most successful regarding agenda‐setting, but in the context of the legislative process, it has to face many obstacles either from legislators themselves or competitors with different goals.     

(Same)-sex in the city: Urbanisation and LGBTI rights expansion

Despite the notable successes of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activism in the region, individual European countries have varied considerably in the extent and speed with which they have adopted legislation to recognise the rights of their LGBTI citizens. Scholars have often turned to modernisation theory to explain these variable outcomes and argue that high levels of national wealth are an important factor in the success of LGBTI movements. Although the correlation between modernity, economic development and tolerance of LGBTI lifestyles is often treated as a truism in the literature, scholars have paid less attention to the precise mechanisms by which the complex processes associated with modernisation facilitate policy change. Drawing on the classic works of both modernisation theory and gay and lesbian history, we examine a less explored route by which modernisation leads to the expansion of LGBTI rights. Specifically, we posit that urbanisation facilitates the adoption of rights policies by strengthening LGBTI movements and enhancing their political effectiveness. To test this proposition, we use event history analysis and an original dataset that contains measures for institutional, cultural, economic and movement variables, as well as measures of urbanisation in 44 European countries between 1980 and 2015. Our findings support the contention that urbanisation has a strong effect on the formation of LGBTI movement organisations as well as the speed with which European states adopt both same-sex union and anti-discrimination legislation. The relationship between urbanisation and rights expansion persists even after controlling for a country's level of wealth, religious adherence and the influence of European institutions and norms.     

Transgendering Mother's Day: blogging as citizens' media,reproductive rights and intimate citizenship

Citizenship is fast emerging as a central concern for transgender politics. This article approaches the topic of transgender citizenship by investigating empirically how the practice of blogging has served as a way of claiming, or practicing, intimate citizenship for transgendered people. Theorization of intimate citizenship helps us to further our understanding of the ways in which our most private decisions and practices are inextricably linked with public institutions, law and state policies. Significantly, this development is also tied up with other characteristically late modern technological advancements, ranging from new reproductive technologies to new Information and Communication Technologies. In the case of transgender politics, such interlacings become particularly perspicacious, not only due to modern discourses concerning diagnosis and treatment, but also because the presence of social media resources affords new possibilities for the sharing of personal and political narratives about ‘being transgendered’. In this article, I investigate an event in the Swedish blogosphere, namely the way in which the national celebration of Swedish Mother's Day became a site for the contestation of the current limitations of the reproductive legal rights for transgendered people, providing an opening for a more general debate on transgender reproductive rights.     

The changing face of ‘Drivers of Change’

In 2001 the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID) launched a new way of conducting political economy analysis, called ‘Drivers of Change’ (DoC). DoC is now well known amongst international development practitioners and professionals. This article provides an introduction to DoC, explaining what it is, where DoC analysis has taken place and which organisations have been involved. It also explores the history and background to DoC, outlines its effect on other bi and multi‐lateral donors and shows how the approach has evolved over the last 5 years. The final section of the article analyses some of the current limitations in the way DoC analysis is used by DFID and predicts how the approach may develop in the future. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deleuze and the liberal tradition: normativity,freedom and judgement

This paper is a critical review article of Paul Patton's book, Deleuze and the Political , and analyzes the relationship between Deleuze and the 'liberal' tradition of political philosophy. It focuses on three concepts drawn from the liberal tradition - normativity, freedom and judgment - and in each case shows how these concepts are capable of being transformed in light of Deleuze's philosophy. For Deleuze, a truly 'normative' principle must be a principle of creation as well as critique: it must not only provide norms for condemning abuses of power, but also a means for transforming norms that have themselves become abuses of power. From a Deleuzian perspective, the normative is thus seen as the condition for the production of the new. The liberal notion of 'negative freedom' in turn finds itself transformed into the stronger notion of 'critical freedom' (Tully), which entails the freedom to critique and create, to transform (and not merely pursue) one's own interest and desires. This entails, finally, an exercise of a kind of judgement outside pre-existing rules or norms that would be truly creative of the new (e.g. the production of new rights). A concluding section of the concept of the 'social imaginary’ shows how Deleuze's work might contribute to a transformation and rejuvenation of the liberal tradition itself.     

‘Extremely valuable work’: British intelligence and the interrogation of refugees in London, 1941–45

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the compulsory questioning of over 30,000 refugees who escaped to Britain during the Second World War and who were detained in London’s Royal (Victoria) Patriotic School. It answers three questions: how did intelligence come to see non-British civilians as sources; what characteristics did refugees possess and how did these influence the information they shared; and who was interested in their accounts? It argues that, while this site was set up as an MI5 vetting camp for the identification of Axis agents, it quickly evolved into an intelligence-gathering centre, serving the interests of multiple departments and organisations.