Human Rights Futures

Human Rights Futures

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...
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Memory Laws: Criminalizing Historical Narratives

Memory Laws: Criminalizing Historical Narratives

by Ido Dembin, a blog writer for RightsViews and a M.A. student in Human Rights Studies at Columbia University On the weekend of October 27 and 28, Columbia University Seminars hosted a two-day conference on Historical Narratives and Memory Laws. The conference was scheduled as part of a University Seminar titled “History, Redress and Reconciliation,” chaired by Elazar Barkan, director of Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights. The seminar’s self-proclaimed objective is to "forge a more structured exchange among scholars and practitioners who engage a set of issues that are yet to self-identify as an academic field, and is addressed in different disciplinary spaces.” The content-heavy weekend proved to serve that objective. Memory laws embody state-approved understandings of historical events, with the criminalization of historical narratives becoming more commonplace. The conference dealt with issues of memory legislation in countries from East Europe to Africa, where governments and parliaments have been tackling the problem of historical narrative, memory and redress over the last...
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What of those who stood by and watched? Reckoning with Racial Injustice in the U.S.

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

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...
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Soviet Affirmative Action and Contemporary Inclusion of Minorities

Soviet Affirmative Action and Contemporary Inclusion of Minorities

by Ulia Popova, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University ISHR  November 7 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, an event that set in motion one of the controversial political experiments of the 20th century, the development of a socialist state. The legacy of the Soviet experiment is contradictory, given the greatness of the idea that inspired it and the tragedies it engendered. The Soviet treatment of the rights of ethnic minorities is particularly instructive in this regard, not least due to its relevance to the contemporary debate over inclusion and diversity. Terry Martin, a Harvard historian, called the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) the “world’s first Affirmative Action Empire.” With the exception of India, no other multi-cultural state before or after the USSR, Martin writes, took action of equivalent scope in support of the cultural and political rights of ethnic minorities. The architects of the Soviet Union envisioned it as a state based on the principle of...
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Corporate Social Responsibility Belongs on the U.S. Human Rights Agenda

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

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...
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Counterterrorism and Human Rights under the Trump Administration

Counterterrorism and Human Rights under the Trump Administration

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...
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Mis-Gendered Security: Women’s Exclusion from Counterterrorism Efforts

Mis-Gendered Security: Women’s Exclusion from Counterterrorism Efforts

By Marina Kumskova, M.A. in Human Rights '17 Achieving security for all is impossible without the involvement of more women in the field of security. In practice, the inclusion of women in security-related decision-making has proven difficult to achieve. It took decades for researchers, civil society activists and gender champions to demonstrate that meaningful inclusion of women in the field of security is a necessary measure that prevents the emergence of new security threats and addresses existing challenges. The Global Study on Women, Peace and Security, part of the 2015 U.N.-led Global Review, was a culmination of these efforts, as it demonstrates the importance of women’s inclusion across multiple security situations. Specifically, the Global Study proved that women’s participation increases the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years by 20 percent. The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security also found that refugee camps where women have been consulted in the design and implementation of protection strategies are...
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Lankesh and Free Speech: Gagged, Tortured and Shot

Lankesh and Free Speech: Gagged, Tortured and Shot

By Malcolm Katrak, a guest blogger and judicial clerk to Justice S.N. Variava The Asian News International (ANI) tweeted on September 5th, “There has been a shootout at Gauri Lankesh’s house this evening; she is no more. Body found in the veranda.” Another tweet swiftly followed, “This is a cowardly act, she is just a writer & journalist, not a terrorist or a naxalite.” Gauri Lankesh, a senior journalist from Karnataka, had been portrayed as a critic of Hindu right-wing extremism by journalists and news outlets around the country after she was shot dead in Karnataka, India. A total of seven bullets were fired, four missing the target and three hitting Lankesh. The Chief Minister of Karnataka termed the murder as brutal and further stated that this was an “assassination on democracy.” Freedom of press and protection of free speech has long been debated in the halls of parliament and the corridors of the judiciary in India. Be it the First Amendment in...
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A Hidden Population of Disabled Refugees in the U.K.

A Hidden Population of Disabled Refugees in the U.K.

By Jason Hung, a guest blogger from the University of Warwick Currently, there are an estimated 118,995 refugees living in the U.K., composing less than one percent of the country's total population. Three to ten percent of these refugees are thought to have a physical or mental disability. Due to the small number of disabled refugees living in the U.K., the rights of these refugees have often been disregarded, according to Keri Roberts and Jennifer Harris, research fellows from the University of York who generated data on the numbers and social characteristics of disabled refugees and asylum seekers living in Britain. Their research, which was completed in collaboration with the Refugee Council, found that U.K. communities are unable to provide sufficient aid for these vulnerable groups. “Disabled people in refugee and asylum-seeking communities frequently experienced great hardship,” the authors note. “Considerable confusion about the responsibilities of different agencies and National Asylum Seekers Service (NASS), a lack of coordinated information and service provision, and...
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From the Field: Building a Plurality of Memories in Spain

From the Field: Building a Plurality of Memories in Spain

By Zina Precht-Rodriguez, Columbia College '19 The story of Spain’s traumatic history is compelling because it is continuously unfolding. One of my most memorable experiences in Barcelona this summer was my visit to an air raid shelter that was designed during the Spanish Civil War to protect thousands of civilians during the fascist bombings of Barcelona. The existence of the shelter was only discovered a couple of years ago by a cable company. The company intended to build an underground landline to connect more people throughout Spain, but the irony of the situation is that something much deeper connects the people of Spain: a traumatic memory that tells the story of a vicious divide within Spain, as well as within Europe, of those who risked their lives for progressive change and those who compromised their own morality. In 2017, these casual rediscoveries of a traumatic Spanish past are triggering an outpouring of civilian, intellectual and political inquiry. The European Observatory for Memories (EUROM) addresses...
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