Policy History, Theory, and Methods Commons^™

International Organizations As Normative Agenda Setters: Social Influence And Reputational Costs In The Effects Of The International Human Rights Regime, Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz, Aldo F. Ponce

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper focuses on the question of how International Organizations (IOs) influence states. In particular, we assess the role of the mechanism of social influence in shaping states’ normative (discursive) behavior, by looking at the “reporting procedure” of the Human Rights Committee (HRC) of the United Nations (UN). Our study finds that in the definition of the substantive content of their “periodic reports,” states follow the human rights agenda set by the HRC in its “concluding observations.” In this sense, we provide systematic evidence that shows that, through social influence, even poorly “legalized” IOs can have an influence over state …

Human Rights In The Digital Age: Opportunities And Constraints (Abstract), Mahmood Monshipouri

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

By making information more accessible than ever before, digital technologies have come to shape societies and cultures in many respects. These technologies also offer tools for resistance and change that can be effectively deployed to influence existing power relations. People around the world have increasingly used digital media to present political reactions against authoritarian rule or to speak out against failed policies. In contrast to the all-too familiar centralized, vertically integrated social movements, theories Social Movements argue for a new way of doing politics—namely, “network politics.” More importance is attached to social and cultural concerns in these movements, and the …

The Potentiality Of A Digital Revolution: Alienated Activists And The Surveillance State (Abstract), Jennifer Grubbs

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The following paper will examine the ways in which digital media is used by both activists engaged in struggles of inequity as well as the State. Specifically, the paper focuses on the use of digital media in the antiracist organizing following the murders of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Activists relied on digital media to share information, narratives, as well as create networks for mobilization. The State relied on digital media to provide counter-narratives and promulgate a fear-based rhetoric depicting activists as “looters.”

This paper emphasizes the …

Status Of Public Access To Government Information As An International Human Right (Abstract), Amin Amiri

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Freedom of information, according to which the public has a right to have access to government-held information, is largely considered as a tool for improving transparency and accountability in governments, and as a requirement of self-governance and good governance. So far, more than ninety countries have recognized citizens’ right to have access to public information. This recognition often took place through the adoption of an act referred to as “freedom of information act”, “access to public records act,” and so on.

Some steps have been taken at the national and international level towards the recognition of freedom of information as …

Putting It On The Line: Social Justice Frameworks For Human Rights Fieldwork (Abstract), Michael Loadenthal

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Research methodology is often understood as a dry, sterile arena of IRB forms and transcription. While this is a common portrayal, things get a fair bit livelier when our field work runs amuck of extrajudicial assassinations, police infiltration and academic isolationism. Investigating social movements and individual respondents who are actively engaged in criminality presents challenging dilemmas to researchers attempting to gain respond trust while simultaneous avoid repressive State security forces. In this discussion, I will examine two venues in which this difficult navigation surfaced: ethnographically investigating Palestinian armed fighters (Nablus: 2006-2007), and interviewing clandestine Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists (UK: …

To Adapt Or Not To Adapt? Accommodating Change In Humanitarian Response (Abstract), Emily K.M. Scott

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

What conditions facilitate or frustrate opportunities for adaptation during on-the-ground responses by non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? I seek to explain variation in the outcomes of adaptations by Doctors Without Borders (MSF)* during three crises: Ebola in West Africa in 2014, middle-income diseases after the Syrian Crisis, and HIV/AIDs and mental health in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This research shows that humanitarian organizations can be uniquely accommodating of uncertainty and change. In these cases political entrepreneurship by those in the field is filtered through an internal structure that deliberately accommodates debate and creative recombination of resources. Actors do not simply …

Crafting The Humanitarian Narrative: Development Organizations And Cause-Marketing Campaigns (Abstract), Alexandra Cosima Budabin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Development organizations have begun to follow corporations in launching CSR initiatives such as cause-marketing campaigns. Private aid for causes is increasingly tied to branded products and celebrities, an alliance described as Brand Aid (Richey & Ponte 2011). However, scholars have found that the promotional aspects of these corporate partnerships were more important than the actual materials benefits (Hawkins 2012). The puzzle remains: if brand aid humanitarian fundraising through cause-marketing is not for the funds, then what purpose does it serve?

Using the brand aid conceptual model (Richey and Ponte 2013) and the lens of CSR, this paper will explore cause-marketing …

Double Jeopardy: The Rights Of Refugees In Marginalized Communities In The Middle East (Abstract), Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The plight of Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon was been well documented in recent years. Less attention has been paid to the impact these large refugee populations have had on the already marginalized regions in the northern (Akkar), eastern (Bakaa), and southern (Tyre & Nabatiye) parts of the country. Basic human rights such as education, health care, childhood development, family, employment, and equal protection before the law are being undermined through the ‘double burden’ of a largely unregulated and under-serviced refugee population, which is now threatening to exceed 2 million by the end of 2015.

This paper will …

Realizing The Right To Sport To Address The Socialization And Trauma Healing Of Children In Refugee Camps (Abstract), Konstantinos Koutsioumpas

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The forced displacement of human beings around the globe as a result of natural and humane disasters has placed great social, political and economic pressure on the international system like never before. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)(2012), there are approximately 35.8 million people of concern to UNHCR, including refugees, internally displaced people, people affected by major natural disasters, stateless or asylum seekers, and people displaced in urban areas. Almost half of this forcibly displaced population is children (UNHCR, 2014).

Children, in particular, who are exposed to these catastrophic situations, experience adverse consequences on their physiological, …

Teaching Human Rights Inside And Outside The Classroom: Education Without Borders (Abstract), Shayna Plaut, Lisa Brock, Carol J. Gray, William Simmons, Alice Kim

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

University courses addressing various human rights issues have grown exponentially at the undergraduate and graduate levels over the past 20 years. Most of these courses focus on specific issues and many programs require fieldwork and/or internships. In addition, the use of the international human rights language is increasingly integrated into professional training programs that are often labeled “social” issues; for example, labor, immigration or domestic violence. What is lacking, despite the resonance and inclusion of human rights issues in these and other areas, is the development of comprehensive human rights methods and ethics courses.

This roundtable seeks to bring together …

Indignation, Or, Reconsidering The Place Of Dignity In Human Rights Theory And Practice (Abstract), Michael Goodhart

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights scholars have recently seized on the concept of human dignity as a possible ground or justification for human rights. For various reasons, this is a mistake: it gets the role of dignity in human rights theory wrong, and it distorts our understanding of human rights politics. In this paper I develop the concept of indignation, arguing that it accounts for the place of dignity in human rights theory more accurately than do foundational approaches and that it provides useful insight into the actual dynamics of human rights movements. Specifically, I argue that human dignity is likely to …

To Err Is Human Rights: Toward A Pragmatist Activism (Abstract), Geoff Dancy

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights activists have often been criticized by political scientists for being “principled” rather than “pragmatic” actors. Rarely, though, is this criticism accompanied by a discussion of what pragmatism means, or what pragmatic action looks like. In this article, I conceptually trace and define three aspects of pragmatism: philosophical, methodological, and political. I then consider how these aspects of pragmatist thought can be applied in the world of human rights activism.

Among other things, I argue that pragmatic activism should remain flexible about the foundations of human rights ideals, that it should accept and even encourage local bad-mouthing of global …

A 'Revolution Of Values' In Immigrant Rights Advocacy (Abstract), Jamie Longazel

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights,” Martin Luther King Jr. told Southern Christian Leadership Conference members in 1967 as they prepared to launch the Poor People’s Campaign, “an era where we are called upon to raise certain questions about the whole society.” King called for a “revolution of values” and a recognition of the interconnectedness “of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.” The goal of the campaign was economic security for all so that poor people can maintain dignity and “control their own destiny.”

This paper lays out advocacy strategies applicable …

Linking History To Practice: Mapping The History Of Nigeria As A Tool To Combat Human Trafficking Today (Abstract), Robin P. Chapdelaine

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The international community that concerned itself with the welfare of children, protecting childhood and eventually with the wellbeing of the African child found itself with an overwhelming project in during the colonial era. The League of Nations Advisory Committees on the Traffic of Women and Children and the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People recognized Nigerian children to be a protected group as a local expression of an international movement that targeted women and children during the 1920s and 1930s. As a result of the increased international attention and pressure, colonial officials began to investigate specific practices involving …

On Solid Ground: Evaluating The Effects Of Foundational Arguments On Human Rights Attitudes (Abstract), Stephen Arves, Joe Braun

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

What makes some human rights campaigns denouncing prisoner abuse and torture more effective than others? Specifically, what convinces individuals to support, accept, and take action on behalf of calls to stop prisoner abuse and torture? Some normative theoretical literature has argued that justifications for human rights matter, with multiple traditions offering their own versions of rights foundationalism Other theoretical literature, however, has argued that foundations used to legitimate human rights are unimportant. Despite these theoretical arguments, there is a dearth of empirical investigation into the actual appeal of different foundational arguments. This is surprising, because foundational arguments by their nature …

Anti-Sex Trafficking Hysteria, False Narratives And The Rights Of Sex Workers (Abstract), Lonya M. Humphrey

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In 2014, a Newsweek exposé of Somaly Mam, one of Cambodia’s most highly prominent anti-sex trafficking activists, detailed how Mam fabricated her own background and experiences as a sex-trafficked Cambodian prostitute forced into sexual slavery. The Somaly Mam affair not only exposed the problematic and often hysterical victim narratives presented by the anti-trafficking communities; it also calls into question the influence those narratives have on increasingly harsh U.S. government legal initiatives directed at combatting global sex trafficking. Growing research suggest the implementation of more punitive anti-trafficking laws that focus on the rehabilitation of sex workers and the abolition of commercial …

Lights, Camera, Policy? Examining Celebrity-Driven Anti-Sex Trafficking Campaigns (Abstract), Samantha Majic

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Celebrities—persons who attract large audiences and are well known in the realm of popular culture (sports, entertainment, and fashion)—are increasingly vocal about sex trafficking. Although they often lack knowledge about or experience with the issue, they commonly testify before Congress, serve as Goodwill Ambassadors for the UN, and act in public service announcements (PSA), to name just some examples. As a result, celebrities arguably play a role in shaping related policy developments, namely by fostering particular discourses about the issue.

To explore celebrities’ engagement with sex trafficking, my paper considers a very prominent case: Demi Moore’s and Ashton Kutcher’s “Real …

Silencing Women’S Agency And Forgetting Sexual Violence: Challenges In Realizing Women Survivors’ Human Rights (Abstract), Katarina Lucas

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Almost twenty years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the physical violence of the Bosnian War, there remains minimal success in effectively realizing the social and economic human rights of women survivors of wartime sexual violence. Women survivors across ethnic groups continue to have limited or no access to health, social and economic services they are entitled to under international law, essential for their empowerment and agency as rights-holders. Employing a gender lens and findings based on interviews and an in-depth review of secondary resources, this research uses the stalled draft Programme for Victims of Wartime …

Roundtable: Does All Human-Rights Funding Use A Human Rights-Based Approach?, Matthew Hart, Jason Franklin, Diana Samarasan, Mona Chun, Katy Love

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In this session, presenters and attendees will discuss different dimensions of the question, "Does All Human-Rights Funding Use a Human Rights-based Approach?"

In the U.S., grant strategies and decisions have historically been made by individuals and funders behind closed doors, with little transparency and accountability. Grant seekers, not to mention the public at large, have rarely had insight into how those decisions are made or any influence on the process. What criteria are they using? To whom are they accountable? And how do they make their decisions about what and who they are going to fund?

Replacing traditional hierarchical models …

Oral History As A Methodology For Teaching Human Rights (Abstract), Carol J. Gray

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 …