Kyrgyzstan, a small mountainous country in Central Asia, is sandwiched between China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In the twenty years since independence from the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan has seen three regimes. The first post-Soviet President, Askar Akaev, was an early reformer but, after increasing corruption and authoritarianism, was ousted during the ‘Tulip Revolution’ in March 2005. His successor, Kurmanbek Bakiev, promised to rewrite the Constitution and undo the excesses of the Akaev era, but ultimately consolidated power and resources. Bakiev was overthrown in April 2010 (see pictures), setting in motion the first effort to create a parliamentary democracy in Central Asia.

crisis in Kyrgyzstan 2010

Researching the contributions of the Kyrgyz human rights community

In summer 2011 I was lucky enough to receive a Kathryn Davis fellowship to study Russian at Middlebury College and also to receive a Harriman Institute fellowship to conduct research in Kyrgyzstan in the late summer and early fall for my Master’s thesis. My research interest was to further understanding of the contributions of the Kyrgyz human rights community during the constitutional reform efforts of both 2005 and 2010.

In both 2005 and 2010 the human rights community was involved in rewriting the Constitutions to include better rights provisions and state commitments. In 2005, they regulated pretrial detention and abolished the death penalty. In 2010 they improved the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of information, and added a new right on access to the international system, among other successes.

An essential motivation behind my research was to look beyond the improvements in constitutional rights provisions on paper to ask, has the new Constitution shifted the country’s identity toward a greater respect for human rights norms?

Increased rights commitments are positive, but applying the Constitution is key

The lead up to the constitutional referendum was not very encouraging. The June 27, 2010 referendum took place barely two weeks after inter-ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan left over 400 people dead. Some government officials and NGO activists urged that the referendum be postponed, but the interim government had tied its legitimacy to the vote and rejected any delay.

Against the inauspicious lead up to the June 27 referendum, there have been signs that the international human rights norms incorporated into the new Constitution have found a tentative foothold in Kyrgyzstan.

One encouraging sign is the recent decision by the government to establish a national mechanism for implementation of international human rights decisions. Another example is Kyrgyzstan’s recent treaty accessions (see second optional protocol to the ICCPR and Disabilities Convention).

One prominent human rights lawyer I spoke to during my research said that even though improvements to the Constitution were positive, what was needed was to apply it directly in the courts. It becomes increasingly important that people make use of it and follow through when confronted with State resistance. A medical doctor and activist who was a constitutional council member in 2005 echoed this view. She also noted that being able to cite the Constitution for authority instead of referring to an international treaty almost always strengthened her advocacy work on mental health system reform and political corruption.

Backsliding is easy, maintaining pressure is vital

As activists decide to test the limits of the Constitution, they often meet resistance. For example, one of the key successes in 2010 was an improvement in the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and the removal of penalties for not notifying authorities ahead of a protest. The constitutional change is dampened by the current draft law that restricts the right and retains onerous notification requirements on organizers.

Protests in Kyrgyzstan ahead of presidential elections, October 2011

Just as rights groups remain focused on pressuring the government to revise the draft law to be more in line with the spirit of the new Constitution, they are hopeful that ongoing monitoring,  documentation, and advocacy on a host of issues will help lead to greater human rights protection and government accountability.

Though Kyrgyzstan’s political trajectory is still unclear, my thesis research has provided an initial window into the efforts by rights groups to try and match government rhetoric to state commitments. With every small success, they help create the conditions for a rights respecting regime.

By Matthew Kennis. Matthew currently works as the Guatemala Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA. He recently received an MA in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University. He was a Kathryn Davis Fellow (Middlebury College Davis School of Russian) and also received a PepsiCo Summer Research Fellowship from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University for field research in Kyrgyzstan.

Wikipedia’s move three weeks ago to block access to its site across the English speaking world in protest against two proposed US bills – SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and Pipa (Protect Intellectual Property Act) – had its intended effect. A post on the Guardian joked, “the Internet seems a little…quiet today, don’t you think?” as the web buzzed with activity about the “blackout”. Countless independent blogs and a few big sites such as WordPress and Reddit joined Wikipedia by “turning the lights out”, while other big Internet sites used banners, pop-ups and logo-changes to signal their opposition to the bills and their backers. Google ‘censored’ its logo on its search engine.

Google's ‘censored’ logo on its search engine.

In many ways, the objective of the protest was simple: to raise awareness of, and mobilize opposition against the badly designed anti-piracy bills and to dent their support in Congress. In this effort, opponents of the bills won an overwhelming victory. The Wikimedia Foundation reportedthat 162 million people experienced the Wikipedia blackout landing page in the space of 24 hours and eight million in the United States looked up their congressional representatives through the site, flooding phones and inboxes with protest. SOPA/Pipa became a top news story for the first time and the bills were promptly postponed after 13 senators withdrew support.

Wikipedia blackout landing page

The question is, during the course of the protest, did civil rights and free speech activists succeed in re-casting the controversial debate about copyright enforcement online? And what does this mean for the future of human rights on the Internet?

Understanding the debate: rightsholders vs. rightsholders

The essential problem with the debate over copyright enforcement online is that it pits two different systems of rights against one another.

On the one hand are the copyright holders whose essential concern is ensuring that Internet regulation protects the rights of creators and distributors against the ease of piracy on the global net.

SOPA and Pipa were designed to allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders themselves, to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement, with a view to safeguarding intellectual property, which, according to Rep. Goodlatte is “one of America’s chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace”.

On the other side are human rights groups and free speech activists who argue that Internet controls like this constitute Internet censorship, threatening free speech as well as fundamental rights such as the right to assembly and privacy. These groups condemn all forms of regulation that would give the U.S. government power to block access to Websites on the global Internet (not just those within the U.S.) without a court hearing or trial.

The objection to SOPA/Pipa was that the vague language of the bills would have done just this. Countless analysts have shown that the bills would have had a chilling effect on millions of ordinary users’ free speech online, even as they proved rather blunt tools to stop tech-savvy pirates from distributing stolen content. The below video gives a good explanation of how.

Copyright vs. Net Freedom

The problem is that too often the debate quickly veers away from a rights-based discussion to become an ideological debate between supporters of intellectual property and supporters of “Internet freedom”.

Is innovation damaged more by intellectual property theft or by the threat of censorship to start-ups, blogs and websites? Are die-hard defenders of IPR refusing to adapt to the realities of the digital age or are the champions of net freedom clinging to a waning era of the Internet as Wild Wild West? For many skeptics, it simply boils down to a standoff between the interests of the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry and the multi-billion dollar technology industry.

Predictably, these dividing lines underpinned commentary during the SOPA/Pipa protests. John Gapper in the Financial Times argued that the SOPA/Pipa defeat was a “strategic victory” for Silicon Valley. “The blackouts were a dramatic gesture,” he said. “But curbing piracy does not ‘destroy the Internet as we know it’. It would be wiser for Silicon Valley to cut the histrionics and help to fashion a decent law.”

Danny Goldberg on CBS news called it a “populist” victory and “also a victory for the enormously powerful tech industry”. In his NYT blog, John Pogue interpreted websites’ shock language about “fatally damaging the free and open net” as akin to a rallying-cry to “Light the torches! Grab the pitchforks!”. Pogue argued that the protests conflated two totally different points – the “you’re going about it the wrong way” camp and the “we want our illegal movies!” camp.

Can a human rights approach help navigate the debate?

Interestingly, in the course of the SOPA/Pipa protests, a coherent human rights approach emerged. The Amnesty Blog gave the following analysis:

Protecting IP is an obligation, and enjoying IP rights is a human right like any other. But the core concepts of indivisibility and interdependence of rights are meant to prevent the trade-off in rights enjoyment we’re faced with in these bills…(T)he real catch is that SOPA isn’t even an attempt to balance rights. (highlight in original)

From this perspective, the key criticism of SOPA/Pipa is that the US would be sacrificing “some rights over others through onerous and ultimately self-defeating efforts to control information”. The sacrifice made would be the US’s commitment to protect freedom of expression and information online – a failing of its obligations under international human rights law and a betrayal of the Obama administration’s professed stance on Internet freedom.

In other words, human rights groups seem to be making a coherent contribution to the “you’re going about it the wrong way” camp.

Why we need a human rights approach to Internet regulation

Rather than marking a decisive victory on the side of “Internet freedom”, the recent protest is a signal of the ever-higher stakes in Internet governance debates worldwide. Given the long line in flawed efforts to address piracy in the US, it is certain we have not heard the last of SOPA/Pipa. Equally, in Spain and in the UK, tough new piracy laws have provoked backlash from rights groups. Perhaps most controversial is the European Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was signed by EU member states two weeks ago and is already brewing up a storm.

SOPA/Pipa were typical of how such legislation often comes about, rushed through with no public consultation and designed with almost no consideration on the long-term implications on basic rights online.

Neither is the issue restricted to copyright enforcement. Online information controls exist or are planned for many reasons, from child protection to terrorism.

To ensure that in the course of creating information controls, governments do not end up forfeiting fundamental rights, citizens and civil society groups must find increasing unity and coherence in their claims. Public stunts such as the recent Internet strike are an important awareness raiser. Yet, in the long-run, advocating for citizen-centered regulation to balance and protect human rights online may prove the most fruitful tactic to defend the principles of the “free net”.

By Tanya O’Carroll. Tanya has just graduated with an MA in Human Rights Studies. Her thesis focused on “privatized censorship” online and freedom of expression claims made by activists against user-generated content (IGC) platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Tanya is an editor of RightsViews.

Late last year, with little fanfare, the UN General Assembly voted to reinstate Libya’s membership to the Human Rights Council (HRC). Libya was suspended from the body last winter amid the mass killings of protestors and other egregious human rights abuses perpetrated by Muammar Qaddhafi’s regime and credible threats of continued violence.

For human rights advocates interested in reforming and improving the HRC, the way in which Libya’s membership was restored represents a lost opportunity to build the credibility of the institution by creating stronger criteria for reinstating suspended members.

Geneva Human Rights Council

An unprecedented step

On March 1, 2011, the General Assembly unanimously took the bold step of suspending Libya’s membership from the Council for committing “gross and systemic violations of human rights.” This action was historic as it marked the first time that a member state was suspended from either the HRC or its predecessor, the Human Rights Commission, for violating human rights. It also helped to boost the credibility of the Council, which is often criticized for having countries with poor human rights records among its membership.

According to the resolution establishing the HRC, “members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights [and] shall fully cooperate with the Council.” The problem is that these criteria are aspirational and are enforced only by the voting choices made by UN member states at the General Assembly, which are supposed to take into account the human rights records and voluntary pledges of candidates in annual elections.

The reality is that because the membership criteria are not enforceable, states often vote according to political considerations, which explains how Libya (not to mention China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia) was elected to the HRC in the first place.

Libya's liberation

With the fall of the Qaddhafi regime in August, and the establishment of a transitional government formed by Libyan rebels, the General Assembly had to decide whether, and under what standard, to reinstate Libya’s HRC membership. Curiously enough, while the founding resolution provided guidelines on suspending an HRC member, — a two-thirds majority vote by the General Assembly when a Council member commits “gross and systemic violations of human rights”, — it did not provide any guidelines whatsoever for restoring membership.

Restoring rights in Libya?

Logically, to have one’s membership restored, a country should have to prove that it meets the initial criteria, i.e. that it is upholding the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights and fully cooperating with the Council. Implicitly, this means that it should also be able to demonstrate that it is no longer committing gross and systemic human rights violations.

In the test case of Libya, the UN’s own human rights mechanisms didn’t inspire confidence that the transitional authorities met either benchmark.

Back in February, when the violence in Libya first broke out, the HRC established an independent commission of inquiry (COI) to investigate alleged human rights violations in Libya and to identify measures that would hold perpetrators accountable.

In the last oral update from the COI at the Council’s 18^th session in September, the COI’s chair relayed a bone-chilling account of abuses that were still taking place in Libya. In addition to the cruelty perpetrated by Qaddhafi and his cohorts, which by now are well known, the COI reported that the transitional authorities may have committed a range of violations of international human rights law including extra-judicial killings, mass arrests and arbitrary detention, as well as possible violations of international humanitarian law. (The Commission’s final report is due in March 2012).

Politics trump reform

With such serious allegations, member states could have waited for the COI’s final report, or at least conditioned Libya’s HRC membership with concrete commitments from the transitional authorities. For example, they could have required that the transitional authorities carry out (or take tangible steps towards carrying out) the COI’s core recommendations from its first report. These include:  conducting “exhaustive, impartial and public investigations into all allegations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law violations with a view to: prosecutions”; “the provision of adequate reparations to victims and their families”; and “taking all appropriate measures to prevent the recurrence of such violations.”

Unacceptably, HRC member states ignored the COI’s account (ironic, considering they requested the oral report) as well as its recommendations and accepted a mere promise by Libya’s transitional authorities of “cooperation” with the HRC. In September, the HRC unanimously agreed to recommend that the General Assembly restore Libya’s membership.

Dead on arrival

By the time the issue crossed the Atlantic, few states were willing to expend any political capital on fighting for what could have been an important credibility booster for the HRC. Most countries, like the U.S., that had taken on the membership issue in the past were also supporters of the NATO intervention and have been eager to push forward with the transition in Libya. This position is rather clear from the U.S. representative’s remarks after the vote on Libya’s HRC membership in which he recognized the transitional authorities’ “clean break” from the former regime despite remaining “concerned about continuing violations of human rights occurring in Libya.”

The only countries that voted against restoring Libya’s HRC membership did so on the basis of opposing the intervention in Libya, and cited manipulation by “imperial Powers” as part of the reason for their “No” vote.

Pushing for stronger criteria would have also provoked resistance from the so-called proceduralists or spoiler states, i.e. states that seek to limit the Council’s activity by rejecting any measures that are not laid out specifically in UN resolutions. This argument has been successful in thwarting past reform efforts and it would seem that reformers did not see the importance in pressing the issue with this case.

Returning the Focus to Rights

Competing world views and political prerogatives will always temper any discussion of human rights; however in the last year there have been a few moments when the severity of a human rights issue led to robust and committed diplomacy to ensure that the substance of the issue overshadowed the politics.  This was the case when the member states acted swiftly to suspend Libya last March, triggering further international action.

Strengthening the HRC as an institution requires leadership and commitment by member states who want to see it develop into a more credible and effective body. Those states that are committed to promoting and protecting human rights through the HRC should not have let political concerns over Libya’s future distract them from the larger goal of improving the institution.

By Deborah Brown. Deborah is the first Leo Nevas Human Rights Fellow of the UNA-USA, a program of the United Nations Foundation (UNF). She advocates for and supports constructive U.S. engagement with the UN and its human rights mechanisms. Deborah graduated with a BA in political science and human rights from Barnard College in 2007 and an MA Democracy and Governance and Arab Studies from Georgetown University in 2011.

We hope everybody’s semester is getting off to a good start. It has obviously been a busy few weeks for human rights… The news from Burma last week of a ceasefire deal between the government and the Karen rebels and a declaration of amnesty for 651 Burmese political prisoners, 130 of whom were reconciled with their families on Friday, was a moment for celebration – even as we wait to see what it means more broadly for human rights in Burma.

In the US, on the other hand, the new year brought us the more concerning National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which signed into law the ability of the US government to indefinitely detain citizens. On the tenth anniversary of the opening of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay last week, hundreds of activists led a march to the White House to condemn Obama’s betrayal of his promise to close the prison. Amnesty released this spoof video as a reminder of the mockery that Guantanamo continues to make of the US’s commitment to human rights – entertaining, if it wasn’t so scary.

And this morning the US and other English-speaking countries awoke to find a world without Wikipedia! The globe’s biggest free encyclopedia, along with hundreds of other websites and blogs, are staging a 24 hour strike in protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) – that, if passed, would seriously damage freedom of expression and information on the Internet. Check back next week for a post exploring the human rights implications of these bills in more detail.

With so much going on, this semester will undoubtedly be packed with great events and speakers (you can check out what the ISHR has planned on their calendar). We really hope to capture what is happening around campus by including more write-ups on events and conferences, opinion pieces from students and interviews exploring a wide range of topics in-depth. However, we need YOUR involvement so we really encourage anybody who is interested in writing this semester to get in touch via the How to Contribute page!

Finally, be sure to check out our first great post of the semester tomorrow by Deborah Brown, Leo Nevas Human Rights Fellow at the UN Association-USA, exploring the implications of Libya’s reinstatement to the Human Rights Council.

As everything is wrapping up for Christmas, we wanted to say a MASSIVE  thank you to everyone for contributing to the first successful semester of RightsViews! We have had a great response from students and faculty. An especially big thank you to those who have started blogging with us – there have been some fascinating posts this semester reflecting the diversity of interests and passions within the Columbia human rights community. Thanks also to all of our readers – we have lots planned for the blog in the new year so stay tuned for some great content, and more of it!

For anyone who is not tucked up at home for Christmas (like ourselves), then we leave you with this and maybe we’ll catch you down at Zuccotti…

Occupy Wall Street Plans To Occupy Christmas (VIDEO link)

See you in January,

Tanya and Eve, The editors