Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Rights Of Children And Families: Local Initiatives In The Miami Valley, Kelly S. Johnson, Raymond L. Fitz, Vanessa Ward, Jan Lepore-Jentleson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Dayton’s Committee on the Place-Based Two-Generation Approach to Poverty completed a working paper titled “A Call for Community Long-Term Recovery Plan” in January of 2021, arguing for an approach to recovery that is strategic, efficient, equity-focused, and regional. Practitioners and theorists connected to this document will address challenges and opportunities for addressing the rights of children in this area, particularly addressing the ways a regional approach can help to dismantle the legacy of historical injustices as we try to build back better.

Captivity As Crisis Response: Migration, The Pandemic, And Forms Of Confinement, Eleanor Paynter

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

During Europe’s recent “refugee crisis,” Italy responded to increased migrant arrivals by sea with progressively restrictive border and asylum policies. While crisis-response restrictions are perhaps unsurprising, those implemented since 2014 have produced a set of situations that appear, at least initially, paradoxical: Following Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s 2018 “Closed Ports” campaign, independently-operated rescue ships continue to be blocked from disembarking the migrants they have rescued. At the same time, asylum officials have rejected claims for protection at higher rates, while border officials deport a minority of those whose claims are rejected. Thus, under the guise of crisis management, some migrants …

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 …

Power And Participation In Philanthropy: Human Rights As A Goal Or A Process?, Katy Love, Diana Samarasan, Allistair Mallillin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This session will examine why it is critical — when addressing human rights — to break down traditional funder approaches and barriers in favor of participation, transparency, accountability, and collaboration.

Institutionalizing Rights: The Rise And Fall Of The Human Rights Paradigm In Managing Migration, Todd Scribner

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In a December 2018 message to a gathering in Rome, Pope Francis challenged attendees to place “human rights at the centre of all policies,” even if it meant going against the grain of popular opinion. The occasion for his message was the 70^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, at least rhetorically, placed human rights at the center of the international order. Three years after its proclamation, the United Nations used the Universal Declaration as a key pillar on which it built its Convention Related to the Status of Refugees, thus making human rights a …

Fiscal Citizenship: How Can Tax Efficiency And Isonomy Aid In The Promotion Of Economic Rights, Social Participation, Political Accountability, And Cultural Diversity?, Gustavo Voeroes Dénes

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

According to the World Inequality Report 2018 (WID 2017), Brazil is one of the few countries that has not recently displayed an increase in income inequality, having instead sustained it on persistently very high levels, actually composing the world’s “inequality frontier”. While such levels of inequality may be partly attributed to poor distribution of property rights, human capital endowments, and specificity of labor relations, a significant part of it is undoubtedly due the national fiscal system’s reduced distributive capacity, compromised by one the worst taxation systems in the world. Occupying the 184th position out of 190 countries in the World …

Caste, Economic Inequality, And Climate Justice In India, Dadasaheb Tandale

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper examines the deepening of economic inequities in India as a result of caste and climate change. Caste as a structure of disadvantage and discrimination determines social, economic, and political status in India. Access to the non-agricultural labor market, financial resources like banking and microfinance resources, and rural cooperatives is shaped by one’s position in the caste hierarchy. Further, the social mobility of the rural poor, migration trajectories, and navigation of the urban labor market are shaped by caste networks in India. In recent years, climate change has also adversely affected various caste groups in India. The change in …

Faith-Based Civil Society Organizations And The Protection Of Victims Of Human Rights Abuses In Nigeria, Nathaniel Umukoro

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Nigeria has witnessed various forms of human rights violations such as extrajudicial killings, rape, and torture during both military and civilian regimes. Amnesty International, the U.S. State Department, and the Political Terror Scale of the Centre for Systemic Peace indicate that Nigeria is a country characterized by generalized human rights violations.

Over the years, several scholars have examined the causes, nature, responses of the state, and reasons for the persistence of human rights violations in Nigeria. A careful consideration of these studies indicates that the role of faith-based civil society organizations in the protection of victims of human rights abuses …

The Power And Pathologies Of Language: How Human Rights Messaging Can Also Affect Support For Violent Non-State Actors, Alexandra Haines, Michele Leiby, Matthew Krain

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Are framing strategies that are effective at encouraging pro-social behavior such as participation in human rights campaigns also effective at mobilizing support for “anti-social” and violent causes? Using an experimental research design, we seek to understand under what conditions individuals will express support for retributive violent action.

We hypothesize that a personal story of victimization, wherein the humanity and vulnerability of the victim and the intensity of the violence suffered are described in vivid detail, will be necessary and sufficient to cause the audience to express support for the victim’s subsequent participation in organized, retaliatory violence. We expect that personal …

Inequalities, Human Rights, And Sustainable Development Goal 10, Gillian Macnaughton

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Most of the 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets echo the goals and targets in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework. SDG 10 — reduce inequality within and among countries — is, however, completely new. The idea that the global community should work together toward equality had no part in the MDG framework, which focused on reducing poverty rather than making a more equal world. From a human rights perspective, the inclusion of the new SDG on reducing inequality is a great step forward.

Notably, Oxfam reported in January 2017 that the eight wealthiest men in the world …

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 …

Engaging Human Rights Norms To Realize Universal And Equitable Health Care In Massachusetts, April Jakubec, Mariah Mcgill, Gillian Macnaughton

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Massachusetts health care law served as the model in 2010 for the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In 2006, Massachusetts adopted sweeping health care reforms. The law sought to increase health care insurance coverage for residents of Massachusetts by:

(1) Mandating that all adults in the state have health care insurance unless an affordable option was not available;

(2) Expanding Medicaid;

(3) Creating a new program of subsidized private insurance for low- and moderate-income residents; and

(4) Establishing a transparent health care insurance market exchange.

Previous studies on the Massachusetts health care reforms of 2006 have analyzed …

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 …

Doing Greater Good, While Doing No Individual Harm: A Public Health Approach To Human Trafficking Using A Human Rights-Centered Model, Patrick L. Kerr, Rachel Dash

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human trafficking (i.e., modern slavery) includes myriad forms of sex and labor trafficking. Widely ranging estimates of the prevalence of human trafficking are commonly cited; at the same time, accurate data on these phenomena remain elusive, and assumptions rather than empirical evidence about the nature, targets, and proliferation of trafficking often dominate public policy discourse.

In this paper, we describe the ways in which this lack of accurate data on basic prevalence rates has led to key limitations in anti-trafficking work. First, this lack of data prevents a clear understanding of the problem of trafficking. Second, this deficit limits our …

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 …

Privacy And Freedom Of Information In Organizational Contexts: Human Rights Issues In An Era Of Big Data (Abstract), Jo Ann Oravec

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Large-scale information collection and dissemination practices are acquiring greater economic and political significance in the everyday lives of citizens. Privacy and freedom of information issues are becoming more complex as “big data” and machine learning replace traditional forms of dossier collection, statistical analysis, and archiving. This paper explores the varieties of human rights issues that are emerging. The enormous amounts of data associated with social media systems and mobile applications have increased the number of facial recognition, locational tracking, socioeconomic analysis, and related practices being conducted by corporations as well as governmental agencies.

Often corporations and governmental agencies couple their …

Detaining Dialogue: Framing Treatment During The 2013 Guantánamo Hunger Strike (Abstract), Kristen Traynor

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In recent years, prisoner treatment during the “War on Terror” has re-emerged as a prominent topic in news headlines and government debate. However, the media’s framing of such treatment toward prisoners at Guantánamo Bay has received scant scholarly attention compared to that of Abu Ghraib.

With a focus on elite and media framing of treatment during the prisoner hunger strike from February to August of 2013, the goal of this paper is to explain whether government portrayal of prisoner treatment influenced the way the media framed the situation or whether the media acted with more autonomy. In the study, I …

Reciprocal Critique: A Dialectical Engagement Of Theology And Human Rights Discourse (Abstract), Diane Yeager

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Nicholas Wolterstorff puts the problem baldly: “The relation of Christians to human rights is a troubled relationship. It was not always so; it became so in the twentieth century.” A reviewer has accurately (if perhaps overdramatically) pointed out that “the assumption that rights talk is anathema to theology” functions as the ”chief impetus” propelling Ethna Regan’s ambitious and provocative Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights (2010).

While much of the discussion generated by Regan’s argument has centered on her efforts to show the constructive convergence of moral theology and the human rights movement (which she manages dialectically …

Religious Freedom And The Right To Convert: Laws Against Forcible Or Induced Conversion In India (Abstract), Laura Dudley Jenkins

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In early 2015 several Hindu nationalist leaders India have called for a national law against forcible or induced conversion. Laws against “forcible conversion” have been proposed and enacted an increasing number of Indian states in recent years. Some laws include higher penalties for conversions of lower castes or women, reinforcing paternalistic assumptions that they lack the agency or ability to determine their own religion. Based on their timing, anti-conversion laws seem to be politically motivated, used to rally the Hindu majority during elections by playing on fears of their declining numbers and potential threats of mass conversions. Both proponents and …

Catholic Social Teaching And Economic Rights (Abstract), John Sniegocki

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has much to contribute to ongoing discussions of human rights. One important feature of CST is its holistic understanding of human rights, which includes social and economic rights along with political/civil rights. This paper will explore the understandings of economic rights and of economic democracy that are developed in the Catholic social tradition, with particular attention to the thought of Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis.

Some implications of these concepts for current realities in the United States and globally will be highlighted. Attention will also be given to critics of economic rights and economic …

De-Centering The Human: Moroccan Islamists And Human Rights (Abstract), Ahmed Khanani

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In a critical contribution to contemporary rights conversations, Blattberg argues that “human rights talk” is simply too “thin” (2009). In particular, he argues that a flaw in scholarly conversations is the move to abstraction: the human is insufficient because it is impersonal. Blattberg lodges this criticism against a host of liberal thinkers, including Nussbaum and Walzer, and contends that the move to abstraction hinders calls to justice insofar as it fails to invest actors in the plights of other people. Yet, even as Blattberg calls to personalize the people to be protected, he does not elaborate on how to flesh …

Social Movements, Protest, And Human Rights: Latin America And Beyond (Abstract), James C. Franklin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The basis of this paper is research I have conducted into protests in Latin America. By recording the demands and actors involved in protests, I have been able to assess human rights-related protests. This, in turn, allows a systematic investigation of the relationship between social movements and human rights. One principal finding is that there are two different types of human rights contention. Argentina and Guatemala experienced national human rights movements, led by human rights organizations and focused on general human rights problems and solutions.

The other countries I studied in the region (Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) experienced …

Turn Up The Volume: The Amplification Of Shame (Abstract), Baekkwan Park, Amanda Murdie, David Davis

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

One important strategy that HROs, and other actors, employ to call attention to human rights abuses around the world is “naming and shaming.” By calling attention to governments for their human rights violations, HROs hope to galvanize world public opinion and increase pressure on these states to halt abuses. While some HROs, like Amnesty International, communicate directly with their large membership bases, the vast majority of HROs rely on the international media to communicate their message to the international community.

Issuing reports and press releases is a major part of their strategy the international community aware of abuses The more …

Human Rights-Based Activism: Lessons From Health Activism In South Africa And Brazil (Abstract), Kristi Heather Kenyon, Regiane Garcia

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Drawing on South Africa and Brazil’s experiences of health activism, this paper aims to provide a full illustration of how human rights-based (HRB) activism can function as an influential agency-based social determinant of health. Social determinants of health (SDH) are usually understood as circumstances and structures that disadvantage individuals by increasing their vulnerability to disease and injury. SDH are typically conceived of as conditions that act upon individuals and communities who are relatively powerless to react against the health impacts of context such as poverty and marginalization.

In addition to this ‘passive’ understanding of SDH, we put forward an ‘active’ …

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 …