Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

European Union Integration And National Self-Determination, Mare Ushkovska

New England Journal of Public Policy

Recent demands for secession in several EU member states bring the issue of self-determination to the forefront of the debate about the future of the European Union. This article explores the European Union’s attitudes toward the international right to self-determination in the context of the rising salience of the greater political union between member states. The focus of the European project, in direct contrast to the glorification of nationhood, is on consensual decision-making rather than sovereignty, making self-determination obsolete in a reality of EU integration. This research finds that recognition of, or references to, the right to self-determination of peoples …

Self-Determination And Psychological Adaptation In Forcibly Displaced People, Numan Turan, Bediha İpekçi, Mehmet Yalçın Yılmaz

New England Journal of Public Policy

According to the UN Refugee Agency, as of 2018 approximately 70 million people were forcibly displaced because of intrastate and interstate conflicts. A majority of those people endured significant hardships, and a consensus is growing among researchers that forcibly displaced people have gone through potentially traumatic experiences that challenge their well-being and health. Consequently, a large amount of research focuses on their mental health concerns, whereas research focusing on their will to normalize their lives and grow after a traumatic migration is scarce. In this article, we highlight the efforts by forcibly displaced people to normalize their lives, pointing out …

Foreword, James Holmes

New England Journal of Public Policy

The International Communities Organisation (ICO) is a self-determination research and innovation center and a not-for-profit organization based in London. Guided by its vision of self-determination and the values of development and human rights, ICO aims to empower communities. It strives to foster an environment where organizations within these communities can overcome the barriers they face, allowing them to fulfill their potential and develop and create positive change for their local communities through local action, collaboration, and decision making.

To enhance our vision and our credibility as an international organization that works for peoples, we organized the February 2019 London conference …

Editor’S Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The articles in this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy have their origins in presentations at a Chatham House conference titled “Rethinking Self-Determination,” February 2019, hosted by the International Communities Organization and the journal.

Among the many aspects of self-determination they address: the elasticity of the concept as a human right in the context of “peoples” (Freeman); individual rights versus collective self-determination (Summers); Biafra as an early case of internal self-determination—the territorial integrity of the state and the right of secession when “the right of a people to participate in the decision-making processes of a country is …

The Right To Self-Determination: Philosophical And Legal Perspectives, Michael Freeman

New England Journal of Public Policy

Why do we need to rethink self-determination? In this article I argue that self-determination is a necessary feature of the human condition and a human right but that it is in part illusory and is potentially dangerous. We need to rethink self-determination because our collective thinking has been very confused, and bad thinking about self-determination costs many lives.

The Right Of Peoples To Self-Determination In Article 1 Of The Human Rights Covenants As A Claimable Right, James Summers

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article looks at the potential for individual communications under common article 1 of the Human Rights Covenants, in particular, under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It first outlines the problems posed by the drafting of common article 1, in particular, the identity of peoples. It then considers how individuals might be able to claim peoples’ rights through representation and the collectivization of individual rights.

Finding Foreign Friends: National Self-Determination And Related Norms As Strategic Resources During The Biafran War For Independence, 1967–1970, Christopher Brucker

New England Journal of Public Policy

The study analyzes how the government of the Republic of Biafra used international norms to win foreign support during its 1967–1970 campaign to secede from Nigeria. Secession conflicts occur at the intersection of international and domestic politics. For independence movements, support from outside is crucial. But, as Bridget Coggins has asked, how can secession movements find “friends in high places”? International support for unilateral secession attempts is strictly prohibited. Domestic and international asymmetry are limiting secessionist foreign policy instruments to intangible means. Legitimacy is a central concept to illuminate the phenomenon. In international politics, legitimacy depends on the external perception …

Language, Indigenous Peoples, And The Right To Self-Determination, Noelle Higgins, Gerard Maguire

New England Journal of Public Policy

Language has always played a significant role in the colonization of peoples as an instrument of subjugation and homogenization. It has been used to control nondominant groups, including Indigenous peoples, often leading to their exclusion or assimilation. Many Indigenous groups, however, use language as a tool to connect the members of their community, to assert their group identity, and to preserve their culture. Thus, language has been used both as a means of oppression and as a mobilizer of Indigenous groups in their struggles for national recognition. Recognizing the significance of language in the identity and culture of Indigenous peoples, …

Raising Indigenous Women’S Voices For Equal Rights And Self-Determination, Grazia Redolfi, Nikoletta Pikramenou, Rosario Grimà Algora

New England Journal of Public Policy

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that the right to self-determination for Indigenous peoples involves their having the right to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. The implementation of this right is linked to the ability and freedom to participate in any decision making that relates to their development. Current laws and practices are considered “unfair to women,” because they sustain traditional and customary patriarchal attitudes that marginalize Indigenous women and exclude them from decision-making tables and leadership roles. Despite the many challenges Indigenous women face in …

Communicative Justice And Reconciliation In Canada, Alice Neeson

New England Journal of Public Policy

Communicative justice co-exists with other dimensions of justice and emphasizes the importance of fair communicative practices, particularly after periods of direct or structural violence. While intercultural dialogue is often assumed to be a positive, or even necessary, part of reconciliation processes, there are questions to be asked about the ethicality of dialogue when one voice has been silenced, misrepresented, and ignored for decades. This article draws on twelve months of ethnographic research with reconciliation activists and organizations in Canada and considers the potential for communicative flows to help compensate for structural inequalities during processes of reconciliation.

Prevention And Protection Interventions For Stateless Non-Refugee And Force Displaced Children, Tanya Herring

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article advances a general theory of law and justice that would expand the Palermo Trafficking and Smuggling Protocols to a wider application in human rights jurisprudence. The aim of the research reported here is to close the gaps in member-state policy and scholarship that addresses prevention measures and protection mechanisms for forcibly displaced children seeking self-determination in states that have not ratified the UN Convention on Refugees and the UN Conventions on Statelessness. The research is based on the premise that a stateless nonrefugee status constructs an extremely vulnerable state for children during forced migration and when they are …

Climate Change And Human Rights: Shaping The Narrative For Reflexive Responses From Civilization’S Leadership To Counter And Abate Climate Change And Enhance The Role Of Human Rights In The Rule Of Law, Michael Donlan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article offers a bold new legal process for enhancing and upgrading the rule of law to enable civilization to cope with and counter the mounting damage and injustice caused by climate change. Climate change, once an unimaginable threat, is now a brutal, ubiquitous game changer that is leading inexorably to the demise of all humanity. Only by enhancing the rule of law and melding international law with domestic law can civilization fashion a coherent, global action plan for survival.

For almost three centuries greenhouse gases have been emitted around the world by the burning of fossil fuel, and—most alarming—these …

Invisible No More: Domestic Workers Organizing In Massachusetts And Beyond, Natalicia Tracy, Tim Sieber, Susan Moir Scd

Labor Studies Faculty Publication Series

Domestic workers across the country are making it clear that, even in a difficult political environment, it is possible to make gains for low-wage workers. For the first time in many, many decades, domestic workers are finding ways to win. They are creat
ing policy change that will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers in tangible and substantial ways. The 2014 Massachusetts Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights is the most expansive codification of rights for this long-overlooked part of the labor force ever to be enacted. In one sense, there is nothing new about domestic workers organizing …

Las Abuelas E La Memoria, Doris Cristobal

Archives of an Activist: Celebrating the Donations of Rita Arditti to UMass Boston

Viví en Buenos Aires Argentina durante cuatro años y en mi estadía en ese país aprendí mucho acerca de los efectos que les había dejado la Dictadura militar de 1976. Conocí a hijos, familiares, madres y abuelas de los desaparecidos y de su trabajo importante luchando por la vigencia de los derechos humanos en la Argentina. Aprendí también, que existen fuertes lazos de solidaridad entre el pueblo argentino y los pueblos de Latinoamérica; por ejemplo que el pueblo argentino es muy agradecido con mi país porque durante la dictadura muchos exiliados encontraron protección del gobierno peruano, y que en la …

The United Nations And The Magna Carta For Children, Winston E. Langley

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

The impulse that invited the preparation of this book is one which is linked to the convergence of a number of factors bearing on my interest in human rights. First, the brutality visited on children during World War II has had an abiding negative effect on my sense of what is possible in human conduct. Second, I am persuaded that children are not simply the means by which human societies are continued, but, as well, the potential source of moral revitalization and transformation for those societies. Third, I recognize that the human rights movement, which followed World War II, holds …

Human Rights And Business Ethics: Fashioning A New Social Contract, Wesley Cragg

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author speaks about the social contract which is a general understanding of respective responsibilities in complex societies and traces its impact from the Declaration of Independence to more recent times.

Human Rights And Community Development Through Low-Income Women's Leadership: The Voice Of An African-American Organizer, Claudine Michel

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

In this essay, I argue that grassroots organizing appears as one of the most viable option worldwide until women are better protected through legislation and public policy. I also posit that it is important to learn from divergent leadership philosophies, from the different values, roles and styles that women adopt in various parts of the world in the course of their day-to-day activities and in their efforts to organize, to support current community programs, and to train future community leaders. This essay relates the experiences of a grassroots organizer and presents what I believe to be a successful model of …

Human Rights, Women, And Third World Development, Winston E. Langley

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

As part of the effort to inaugurate a new international socio-political order after World War II, international emphasis was given to certain moral and legal entitlements we have come to call human rights. That emphasis initially found its most forceful expression in the Charter of the United Nations, which not only asserts its members' faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, as well as in the equal rights of men and women of all nations, but also recites its members' commitment to employ international machinery for the promotion of the social and economic …