Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does Human Rights Derogation Limit Covid-19 Infections?, Brian K. Gran, Reema Sen

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The purpose of this project is to model and understand socio-legal responses to the spread of COVID-19—in particular, emergency measures that derogate from states’ human rights commitments. Derogation of human rights in response to COVID-19 is unprecedented, according to some experts (Scheinin 2020). This project investigates whether combinations of conditions, such as moderate human rights derogation in combination with strong health infrastructures, reduce degrees of virus transmission and promote prevention. Its preliminary findings indicate that suspension of some rights appears crucial to limiting COVID-19 infections, but suspension of many rights has limited impacts, raising questions for practices of human rights …

Grassroots Globalism: Human Rights Cities And Local Human Rights Implementation, Jackie Smith

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This presentation reports on how local human rights activists are mobilizing around the United States's 2019-2020 Universal Periodic Review process in the UN Human Rights Council. Organizers with the US Human Rights Cities Alliance have been promoting "UPR Cities" to engage local activists in work to document local human rights conditions and develop recommendations for a national civil society stakeholder report that will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council. The UPR Cities serves three key purposes: First, it helps inform and inspire local and trans-local mobilization and alliance building around a human rights framework, advancing analyses of the …

On The Need For Human Rights To Constitute Structural Change: Lessons For Colombia From The Arab Spring’S Failures, Anthony Chase

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Transitional processes have nowhere failed as spectacularly than in the wake of the Arab Spring's "revolutions." Contrary to popular expectations, these revolutions gave way to counter-revolutions rather than transitions to democracy and pluralistic politics. This article argues that, by settling for transitions to mere formal democracies, an opportunity was lost to engage in necessary structural change. While understandable that transitional processes shied away from addressing controversial issues -- including how to translate diversity in religious, gender, sexual, and ideological domains into the foundation of new political communities -- not doing so was a fatal error as it left untouched preexisting …

The Human Right To Science, Brian K. Gran, Anne Bryden, Mark Frezzo, John Dale

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights may be game changers to science. Science is under pressure. The ability to do science, to gain scientific educations, and to make and implement public policies based on science are under attack globally. Harms from doing science continue despite greater attention. Individuals are harmed in the name of science and scientists are persecuted for doing their work. The human right to science may change these scenarios. The human right to science belongs to everyone. Discrimination along lines of nationality, gender, skin color, beliefs, and other markers is not permitted. The human right to science bolsters other rights, including …

Out Of The Prison And Onto The Streets: The Trafficking Of Incarcerated Women (A Trans-Disciplinary Media Research Project), Mei-Ling Mcnamara

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Women are being actively targeted for the sex trafficking trade within US prisons and are recruited by a network of fellow inmates who are given "finders fees" for supplying victims. In prisons from Florida to North Carolina, Ohio to Massachusetts, women are promised housing and food in exchange for work upon release but instead are deceived and prostituted for the human trafficking trade. Some traffickers stalk their victims through public-access profiles from statewide prison websites, then groom them over months through correspondence and phone calls.

Inside the largest women’s prison in the United States, the Florida Lowell Correctional Institution, officers …

Joyful Human Rights Activism, William Simmons

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In popular, legal, and academic discourse, a subtle but significant shift has occurred: The term “human rights” is now almost always discussed in relation to its opposite, “human rights abuses.” Syllabi, textbooks, and academic articles focus largely on abuses, victimization, and trauma with nary a mention of joy or other positive emotions.

This will be obvious to most human rights scholars and practitioners once it is pointed out, but the depth of the elision is staggering. Human rights could also be discussed in the context of the most joyful of human experiences and even those victimized almost always experience …

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 …