Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons^™

Disciplining Human Rights (Abstract), Sarita Cargas

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Hundreds of thousands of people work in human rights. They work for one of the international or local non-governmental organizations, international organizations, government ministries of human rights, and even corporate divisions of human rights.

Despite this, it is not being taught as an academic discipline in the US. It is treated like an interdisciplinary subject in the few universities with degree programs. While about a dozen universities offer a BA in the US, there is not a single course common to them all. It is not clear that a student graduating from an interdisciplinary human rights program is leaving with …

Mapping The Current State Of Human Rights Education In Journalism Education (Abstract), Shayna Plaut

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Utilizing a mixed methods approach, we map and analyze the current state of human rights education within journalism education. We aim to answer the question: If the role of a journalist is to both “educate and inform” a citizenry in order hold those in power accountable, what kind of training does a journalist need to cover a story about human rights and how can that best be provided?

Through compiling and categorizing 627 journalism programs in eight countries, surveying 88 professional journalists and conducting in-depth interviews with 25 journalists, journalism educators, human rights practitioners and funding organizations we found an …

An Experimental Examination Of The Efficacy Of Human Rights Campaigns: Gender Differences And Stereotypes (Abstract), Michele Leiby, Angie Bos, Matthew Krain

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

International Human Rights Organizations [IHROs] attempt to shape individuals’ values and mobilize them to act. Based on previous research, we know that IHROs may strategically manipulate gender images and stereotypes in order to increase consensus and action on human rights issues. The discourse of “women and children” as protected categories rests on the assumption that women do not participate in the public sphere, and as a result are apolitical and innocent, whereas men, especially draft-age men, are seen as political agents and potential combatants, and therefore automatically do not qualify for protection as civilians. While many scholars have rightly criticized …

From Acceptable Loss To Unacceptable Harm: How Norm Entrepreneurs Co-Opted The Human Rights Discourse (Abstract), Danielle K. Scherer, Taylor Benjamin-Britton

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Contemporary human rights campaigns have created a shift in the discourse by reframing and co-opting the language surrounding high politics issues such as arms control and human security. The atrocities of the twentieth century led to increased interest in minimizing the costs of war, converging in an international norm privileging the protection of human life. While the dominant discourse in IHL has been geared towards rights of the human, a new approach framing human rights as duties of the state has gained traction resulting in victories for various human rights campaigns. This shift has placed the onus on states to …

Contemporary Rhetoric, Ethics, And Human Rights Advocacy (Abstract), Richard K. Ghere, Kathleen Brittamart Watters

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper will discuss how rhetorical analysis might interpret current ethics conversation related to governance and re-position some of its touchstone rationales. Specifically, efforts in this paper will apply the ideas of preeminent rhetorician Gerald Hauser (the current editor of Philosophy and Rhetoric) about human rights discourses and of a reticulate (variegated) public sphere to intersection of governance and human rights advocacy.

Specifically, our paper will examine the rhetoric of various “exemplars” who advocate for causes and actions pertaining to human rights in particular contexts. In particular, we will incorporate case studies reviewing the public actions of the Russian …

Literature And Human Rights Violations In U.S. Borderlands (Abstract), Tereza M. Szeghi

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper offers a comparative assessment of how Ana Castillo (in The Guardians) and Louise Erdrich (in The Round House) craft overtly didactic novels as a means of raising awareness about contemporary human rights violations in the U.S-Mexico and Ojibwe borderlands, respectively. I argue that placing their novels in conversation with one another calls attention to the ways that excess policing of borders and ambiguities regarding jurisdiction in border zones both (albeit differentially) contribute to human rights violations. It is not part of the general U.S. consciousness to think about our internal borderlands (i.e., those surrounding tribal lands), but …

The Migrant Rights Gap: How Non-State Actors Meet The Unrecognized Economic And Social Rights Of Undocumented Immigrants (Abstract), Barbara Frey, Melissa Pardo

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper explains how non-state actors, including churches and non-profit organizations, work informally to protect the economic and social rights of undocumented Mexican immigrants. Under international law, economic and social rights should apply equally to non-citizens unless distinctions in their protection are necessary and proportionate to a legitimate State objective. There is no legitimate State objective to deny food, shelter or health care to non-citizens. Despite this, Federal and State governments in the United States take no express responsibility to respect, protect or fulfill the economic and social rights of undocumented migrants. The authors designate this lacuna in state protection …

Promoting Immigrant And Human Rights At The Local Level: A Case Study Of The Welcome Dayton Initiative (Abstract), Theo J. Majka, Jamie Longazel

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Hazelton, Pennsylvania and Dayton, Ohio represent contrasting examples of community reactions to increases in immigrants. Both cities have experienced de-manufacturing in recent decades. In reaction to an influx of Latinos, Hazelton enacted the 2006 Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA) which placed severe restrictions on the rights of undocumenteds. In contrast, the Dayton City Commission passed the Welcome Dayton: Immigrant-Friendly City initiative in 2011 with the goal of facilitating the integration of immigrant residents.

Hazelton’s developers used tax incentives to establish warehouses, distribution centers, and a meatpacking plant, resulting in a significant demographic change.

However, in adopting a neoliberal approach, the …

Imagining International Justice In Post-Genocide Cambodia (Abstract), Haley Duschinsky, Katie Conlon, Elizabeth Cychosz, Samantha Rommel

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Through an innovative student-faculty collaborative research externship program supported by the Ohio University Center for Law, Justice & Culture, several undergraduate students spent the summer of 2014 in Cambodia conducting independent ethnographic research on issues of law, memory, and justice in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Utilizing the students’ research in Cambodia, this proposed panel session presents three case studies for a conversation regarding how ethnographic methods can inform transitional justice mechanisms by emphasizing local experiences. Much of the research is in light of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid tribunal that began …

Human Rights In Russian-Occupied Crimea (Abstract), Jaroslaw Bilocerkowycz

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Russia’s use of hybrid warfare to occupy and annex Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 drew intense international coverage. This effort to change borders in Europe by force was broadly condemned by the international community as an illegal violation of international law and Ukrainian law. In response, various economic sanctions were leveled against Russia and Crimean leaders and companies. Since Crimea has been occupied by Russia and de facto annexed into the Russian Federation, there has been only modest international coverage of internal developments within Crimea.

What is the human rights situation for the Crimean population since Russian occupation of the …

Democratizing Human Rights From Below: Blacklisted Workers At The European Court Of Human Rights (Abstract), Filiz Kahraman

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Labor activists around the world are increasingly attempting to use human rights frameworks to draw attention to serious labor rights violations. While some scholars are enthusiastic about the prospects that this new alliance between human rights advocates and labor activists will renew a focus on labor issues, others are skeptical about turning away from the traditional vehicles—such as social citizenship, the welfare state, trade unions, and collective bargaining, which are in decline in many parts of the world— toward individual rights-claiming before the courts. Yet, we lack a comparative study that carefully examines the effects of these rulings on the …

Gunsmoke And Mirrors: Transitional Justice Implementation During Armed Conflict In Uganda (Abstract), Cyanne E. Loyle

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Transitional justice (e.g. trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, etc.) has been vociferously championed as a tool to improve human rights and prevent the resumption of violence in the post-conflict period, yet little work has been undertaken to understand the prevalence of these practices while conflict is ongoing.

The assumption within the literature is that transitional justice (TJ) is put in place once conflict has ended or a political transition occurs, but this need not be the case. Through an empirical analysis of the ongoing conflict in Uganda between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army, this paper traces the implementation …

Enforced Disappearances In México: A Good Practice On Human Rights Governance Through Systematization Of Experiences In Search Of Justice And Truth (Abstract), Luis Eduardo Zavala De Alba

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The right to the truth and the right to justice are intimately related, and they should complement each other, but without confusing to act of searching for the missing persons with the investigation to determine criminal responsibility. Criminal investigation can and generally does contribute to the clarification of the disappearance cases. An effective criminal investigation can allow the provision of incentives so that those who hold information that may be relevant render it to the authorities doing the search for missing persons (article 4.2 of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance); and contemplates establishing mitigating …

Practicing Human Rights: How Human Rights Practitioners Shape The Field (Abstract), Robin Redhead

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This working paper summarises my initial findings of a study into the politics of human rights practice looking specifically at how practitioners shape the human rights field. Through a series of interviews with lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and activists I have mapped the ‘work’ that takes place within the field of human rights and analysed how this ‘work’ shapes what Nash (2009) refers to as the cultural politics of human rights. Within the national and international arenas, human rights practices are cultural capital that practitioners trade for political gains. In order to assure the future of the human rights movement we …

Promoting Human Rights Through The Professions (Abstract), Debra Delaet, Emily Sadecki, Holly Atkinson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper examines the ways in which professionals in a range of fields—the health professions, education, journalism, and law to name just a few—have the capacity to engage in critical work in the promotion of human rights. Whereas the scholarly study of human rights focuses largely on formal law and governance processes, this paper explores how strategies for promoting human rights might be integrated into the everyday work lives of professionals. Our focus on this everyday lever for human rights promotion seeks to broaden the vision of what constitutes human rights and justice work by exploring the capacities of actors …

From Activism To Invested Scholarship: When Outsiders Are Insiders (Abstract), Kristi Heather Kenyon, Tal Nitsán

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Social science methodologies frequently assume that the researcher is ahistorical, bringing no background or investment to the topic they study. Yet, as activists and scholars of human rights activism we are drawn to the movements we study precisely because of our engagement with these groups, places and topics. How does our research and teaching change if we are viewed as participants rather than outside observers in the movements we study? How do we navigate interviews with people who know us as activists rather than scholars? How do we interpret materials in which our own words and images appear?

Coming to …

Who Practices Rights-Based Development? A Progress Report On Work At The Nexus Of Human Rights And Development (Abstract), Paul Nelson, Ellen Dorsey

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In 2003 we wrote in World Development that a growing nexus between human rights and development practice could transform both fields and advance struggles against extreme poverty, inequalities and patterns of rights violations. The present paper examines the work of international development and human rights agencies to update our understanding of human rights-inspired development work at the nexus. Examining work in the two sectors now, we see more significant changes among human rights agencies than among agencies in development. Some development actors have embraced human rights language and a handful use human rights principles and strategies to define project and …

A Human Rights Lens On Full Employment And Decent Work In The Post-2015 Development Agenda (Abstract), Diane F. Frey, Gillian Macnaughton

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Since the turn of the Millennium the elimination of global poverty has been a top priority of the international community. In the United Nations Millennium Declaration, the leaders from 189 nations committed to work together for poverty eradication, human rights and global peace. Toward these ends, the Declaration was transformed into Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and targets that aimed to unify governments, international organizations, foundations and nongovernmental organizations to focus their expertise, efforts and funds on achieving specific targets in the areas of poverty reduction, education, gender equality, health and other areas of human development.

Yet, the MDGs failed to …

Girl Power Or Girl Child: Beyond Victory And Victimization In Advocacy For Girls Around The World (Abstract), Kelli Lyon Johnson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper analyzes advocacy campaigns and research reports to demonstrate the construction of “the girl child” as both empowered (or worthy of empowerment) and as exploited and excluded.

Since 1995, when the Beijing Platform for Action of the United Nations Conference on Women identified her as one of twelve critical areas for concern, “the girl child” has been frequently mobilized in human rights campaigns and research. Advocacy campaigns and human rights reports frequently deploy “the girl” or “the girl child” as a metric against which to judge nations for her protection and provision and as a tool to influence foreign …

The Normative Implication Of The B Corp Movement In The Business And Human Rights Context (Abstract), Cindy Woods

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Over the past decades, issues of corporate accountability and social responsibility have risen to the forefront of international debate. The U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles), endorsed by the U.N. HRC in June 2011, lays out authoritatively the state duty to protect and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. In an effort to operationalize the Guiding Principles, the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights has called on all states to develop a National Action Plan (NAP) regarding domestic implementation of the Guiding Principles. A key first-step in the creation of a NAP is …