Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Collective Memory Of Past Human Rights Abuses-South Korea, Ñusta Carranza Ko

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The discourse on transitional justice by academics and practitioners center upon a common understanding of the importance of truth-seeking or truth-telling, reparations, prosecutions, and other institutional reforms in addressing a state’s past abuses. Policies of memorialization complement these processes of transitional justice, with the production of collective memory and history that helps transitioning states from authoritarian pasts toward reconciliation.

This study builds on the growing interest in memory initiatives by bringing to light the integral and "visible" role memory practices have played in truth-seeking and reparations processes. Particularly, it focuses on the building of collective memory integrated in truth commission …

Understanding Truth: How Commissioners Influence The Final Report Of A Truth Commission, Christine Bianco

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Ensuring a future of human rights means coming to terms with past violations of human rights. This both recognizes human rights as an important position in the policy of the state and helps to end a system of impunity against such actions, even if it is done symbolically. One of the major mechanisms that states have used to address their past has been truth commissions. The strength of truth commissions lies in their ability to bring to light the voices of the victims as well as their ability to criticize those who have committed human rights abuses.

In order to …

Homophobia, Human Rights And Diplomacy, Douglas Janoff

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Multilateral human rights diplomacy is a product of the triad relationship between intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), and states. This paper examines the emergence of LGBT rights within the context of the UN human rights system. Recently, the global debates around LGBT rights have become much more public and increasingly complex: Ministers, leaders, and even the UN Secretary-General routinely call on states to do more to protect sexual minorities. Countries such as Uganda and Russia are labeled “homophobic” — not just by human rights activists, but by other states. These “accusations” are delivered both bilaterally and in multilateral …

Making The Sustainable Development Goals Really Sustainable: Human Rights Strategies To Improve Land Tenure Rights And Wages For The Poor, Paul J. Nelson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The Millennium Development Goals created incentives for donors and governments to favor quick impact over addressing complex social systems. As a result, the MDG period saw little sustained effort to open up access to those productive assets, and that presents a challenge for the SDGs.

This paper argues (1) that this failing of the MDGs weakened their impact; (2) that the SDGs significantly improve on this record by including goals and targets that focus on these productive assets, in both land and labor; (3) that human rights approaches have driven important efforts in some societies to improve land and labor …

Agency, Equality And Courage: A Case Study Of Women On The Front Lines Of Egypt’S 2011 Revolution, Carol Gray

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

How were women involved in Egypt’s 2011 revolution/uprising? What role did they play vis-à-vis male activists? To what degree were Egyptian women “equal” during those 18 days in Tahrir Square? These questions will be explored within the context of interviews conducted by this writer in Cairo during and following Egypt’s 18-day revolution (uprising). This essay will explore the public/private sphere split, political consciousness-raising, and gender equality within the context of the stories of Egyptian women on the front lines of protest.

Much of the recent literature on women's protests in Egypt has focused on women's victimization. Critical gender theorist Ann …

Localizing Human Rights In Response To Global Urban Crises And Right-Wing Populism, Jackie Smith

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights are under increased threat as the world faces economic insecurity, financial volatility, climate change, and the rise of right-wing populist movements. At a time global interdependence demands more intensive cooperation among national governments to address economic and environmental crises, nationalist tendencies are polarizing politics within and among countries.

Although news headlines have focused on the rise of exclusionary and racist movements, there is evidence of significant popular mobilization around more inclusive human rights claims. Because these movements challenge basic elements of the capitalist system, they get less traction in electoral contests and remain marginal to mainstream media and …

Ordinary 'Worthiness': Sex Work, Police Raids, And Human Rights Violence In Sonagachhi, Simanti Dasgupta

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Based upon ethnographic research with Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), a grass-roots sex workers organization in Sonagachhi, the iconic red light district in Kolkata, India, this paper explores the relationship between police raids and human rights violation. It especially focuses on the nature of violence initiated by the construction of “corrupt” evidence to justify a raid, which in this case is not solely a state initiative; the police usually work in tandem with other rescue missions such as the International Justice mission (IJM). The raid involves a practice and a narrative commonly referred to by both the police and the …

Providing Refuge: A Regime Analysis Of Legal Protections For Displaced Persons In Sub-Saharan Africa, Natasha Bennett, Hannah K. Brown

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

While refugees are entitled to the right of asylum vis-a-vis the U.N. 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol, which includes rights of a legal resident in the host country, African states vary in their domestic implementation of refugee rights.

Sub-Saharan Africa host approximately 29 percent of the world’s refugees and as such represents a key region for understanding the dynamics of refugee rights and protections. With 45 member states having ratified (another 4 having signed) the Organization of African Unity’s 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of the Refugee Problem in Africa (OAU …

Faith-Based Resistance, Human Rights, And Emancipatory Practices, Curtis Kline

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Progressive political theologies can expand and deepen both the strength and the conceptualization of human rights advocacy. However, not all political theologies are an effort to defend human dignity; neither are all understandings and practices of human rights. The validation of progressive political theologies as well as the validation of human rights conceptualizations comes from their capacity to concretely change the lived reality of poor and oppressed peoples of the world.

As with political theologies, there is a constant struggle over the control of how to conceptualize what constitutes a human rights issue. While many communities of faith find liberating …

State Sovereignty And Human Security: The Migration-Securitization Nexus In The Global South, Eugene R. Sensenig

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper deals with the issues of state sovereignty and refugee policy in insecure and marginalized regions of the Global South. Using the displaced Syrian populations (UN-recognized and undocumented) in Lebanon as a case in point, the attempt will be made to portray and discuss the responses of underdeveloped host communities to overwhelming increases in the size of their non-national population. Lebanon has faced various waves of refugees since its independence in 1943, making up between 2.5% (Iraqis) and 25% (Syrians) of the entire citizen population, currently estimated to be slightly over 4 million. Almost 500,000 Palestinian refugees are registered …