Americas – Page 6 – RightsViews

How U.S. Cities can Advance Abortion as a Human Right

December 18, 2018 by Editor1 Comment

Sexual and reproductive rights are foundational to gender equality. Access to abortion care is essential to the full realization of a person’s human rights. Indeed, international human rights mechanisms have had an impact on liberalizing national abortion laws by requiring that governments take affirmative action to ensure that women can access safe abortion care as part of fulfilling their obligations under human rights law. For instance, treaty monitoring bodies (TMBs) have consistently interpreted that safe abortion care is the application of several fundamental human rights guaranteed by international human rights law such as: the right to life; freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; liberty and security of the person; privacy; human dignity; health; and equality and non-discrimination. Although abortion is legal in the United States, anti-choice groups and conservative lawmakers have been successful in restricting the right to an abortion. For example, the Hyde Amendment is legislation that for forty-two years has banned federal funds from covering abortion care for...

Lives in Limbo: Immigration as a Human Rights Issue

July 30, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

"Trump Zero Tolerance," artwork by Dan Lacey // Flickr By Jalileh Garcia, a blog writer for RightsViews and an undergraduate student at Columbia University In late June, the event “Lives in Limbo: Immigration as a Human Rights Issue” took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The event was a direct response to the current administration’s immigration policies, which were highlighted by the recent and highly controversial separation of children from their parents. In the last couple of months, photographs and voice recordings of children crying “Mami” and “Papa” have overtaken the web. The children, predominantly from Central American countries, some as young as 18 months old, have become the focal point of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy. Courts set a deadline for July 26 to reunite the children with their families, but the government has stated that hundreds of families were ineligible to be united. In total, 711 children remain in custody, according to the latest tally from the government. Furthermore, many of the children who have...

#MeToo – Now What? From Outcry to Action

April 25, 2018September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

By Sharon Song, an MA student in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University “I was an optimistic, driven, hardworking and ambitious young woman, determined to pursue a career in acting… I found myself relentlessly harassed… My life and career was in the hands of people intent on destruction, people who judged and vilified me in ways they never would have done if I was a man… I fought back, I got privacy laws changed.” – Sienna Miller, Actress & Activist On the final day at the 62nd UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the United Nations’ largest gathering on gender equality and women’s rights, the energy and anticipation was almost palpable. Journalists and activists convened at the UN headquarters to snatch a seat at a side-event discussing women in the media. Since the tidal wave of #MeToo posts sprung up last fall in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual perpetrations against dozens of women, activists across the nation and around the...

Unjust Justice: A Case of American Exceptionalism

December 11, 2017December 11, 2017 by EditorNo Comments

By Olivia Heffernan, a master’s candidate at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs The United States represents four percent of the world’s population but is home to 22 percent of the world’s prisoners. These disproportionate figures, and the financial and emotional burdens of mass incarceration in America, were the topic of a recent discussion at Columbia University between former Mayor of Philadelphia Michael Nutter and Obama administration official Elias Alcantara. The discussion, hosted by the Criminal Justice Reform Working Group (CJR) at the School of International and Public Affairs, brought together two panelists well suited to discuss criminal justice policy—its challenges, similarities and differences—on city and federal levels. As a country that prides itself on its values of freedom and equality, the United States demonstrates a gaping contradiction with its discriminatory and broken justice system. Spikes in incarceration rates are often attributed to the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, signed by former President Bill Clinton, which implemented a...

Human Rights Futures

November 20, 2017November 21, 2017 by EditorNo Comments

By Ayesha Amin, a blog writer for RightsViews and a M.P.A. candidate at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs Is the human rights movement on the road to nowhere? Last Thursday, the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University hosted a book launch and panel discussion on “Human Rights Futures,” edited by Stephen Hopgood, Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri. The book brings together 15 mainstream human rights scholars and their critics to debate alternative futures for the human rights movement. The panel conversation was moderated by Andrew Nathan, professor of political science at Columbia University, and included four contributors to the book: Jack Snyder, Belfer Professor of International Relations at Columbia University; Shereen Hertel, editor of the Journal of Human Rights; Alexander Cooley, director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University; and Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice at SOAS, University of London. Other panelists included Aryeh Neier, co-founder...

What of those who stood by and watched? Reckoning with Racial Injustice in the U.S.

November 13, 2017November 19, 2017 by Editor6 Comments

By Olivia Heffernan, a master's candidate at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs “If you want the American dream, go to Canada,” Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, told audience members during Thursday night’s lecture, “Reckoning with Racial Injustice in the United States,” hosted by NYU Law School’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). Walker and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Sherrilyn Ifill engaged in a provocative conversation moderated by David Tolbert, president of ICTJ. Tolbert began the panel by stressing the importance of having “unsettling dialogues” among groups at opposite ends of the justice spectrum in order to foster innovative thinking, understanding, and eventually action. Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Trump’s election, a discussion about truth, justice and reconciliation felt particularly pertinent given the President’s record on racial injustice. Trump’s recalcitrant response to Charlottesville and his public condemnations of immigrants have exacerbated racial tensions in the United...

Corporate Social Responsibility Belongs on the U.S. Human Rights Agenda

November 3, 2017September 29, 2018 by EditorNo Comments

By Ashley E. Chappo, editor of RightsViews and a M.I.A. candidate at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University Last week represented a potential turning point for the United States in its commitment to international human rights law and corporate regulation. From October 23 to 27, members of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises (OEIGWG) convened at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, to draft a legally-binding instrument with respect to corporations and human rights. Despite its leadership role in the world order and the prominence of transnational corporations operating within its borders, the United States has so far remained disengaged from negotiations on this new treaty agreement. The treaty process, which could take years to complete, is a historic opportunity for the United States to stand up for its shared values with other governments in regulating and holding accountable the stateless, corporate actors often associated with violations of human rights, from alleged sweatshop...

Counterterrorism and Human Rights under the Trump Administration

October 25, 2017November 27, 2017 by EditorNo Comments

by Genevieve Zingg, a blog writer for RightsViews and a M.A. student in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University On Monday, the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School hosted an event on counterterrorism and human rights under the Trump administration. The event featured Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel at the United States program of Human Rights Watch, speaking on the new human rights challenges posed by counterterrorism policies emerging under President Trump. Prior to working with HRW, Pitter was a journalist and lawyer with the U.N. in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Under the Obama administration, she worked on accountability for past instances of torture and the prevention of government-sanctioned torture. Specifically, she worked to document torture that had not yet come to light prior to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. Human rights concerns under the Obama administration centered on detention practices at Guantanamo and the use of drone strikes. During this time, HRW focused on...

Trump, the Other, and Human Rights in Society

November 30, 2016November 30, 2016 by EditorNo Comments

By Inga Winkler, a lecturer at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights Without downplaying the potential impact of a Trump presidency on foreign policy, renewed acceptance of torture as well as the potential impact on climate change, I fear for society at large. A president-elect who ridicules and denigrates migrants, Muslims, Hispanics, women, persons with disabilities and others sets an example. He gives the impression that such behavior and such attitudes are acceptable. His remarks promote ideas of the superiority of some and inferiority of others, based on a socially constructed divide between “us” and “them”. There is nothing new about racism, sexism and fear of the “other” in US society. It is deeply entrenched. What is new is that the man elected to the highest office institutionalizes and formalizes such attitudes. He legitimizes “othering” and stigmatization. One of the possible explanations for the misleading polls is that voters who declared they were undecided were in fact planning to vote for Trump....

Political Unrest in Brazil: Will Human Rights Policies Endure Mr. Temer’s Government Program?

October 12, 2016December 13, 2016 by Editor2 Comments

By Luiz Henrique Reggi Pecora, an M.A. student in human rights Primeiramente, fora Temer. Firstly, down with Temer. For Brazilians who do not recognize the legitimacy of Michel Temer’s government, this small phrase has gained the weight of a motto. Michel Temer has assumed office since May, when the Brazilian Congress approved the impeachment process of former president Dilma Rousseff, implementing a governmental project bent towards the interests of conservative groups. More progressive sectors of society have reacted energetically, not only opposing his governmental project, but also criticizing the questionable conditions that led to the removal of Mrs. Rousseff from office - for many, the impeachment is no more than an excuse for a coup. After long years of prosperity, how did Brazil come to this critical scenario? The deepening of the economic crisis, combined with the “Lava-Jato” Operation (a series of investigations conducted by the Brazilian Federal Police over a huge corruption scheme involving large Brazilian companies and high-level politicians), contributed to...