Another Highway of Tears: Human rights abuses on the Alaska Highway

Existing measures of human rights abuses are often only available at the country-year level. Several more fine-grained measures exhibit spatio-temporal inaccuracies or reporting biases due to the primary sources upon which they rely. To address these challenges, and to increase the diversity of available human rights measures more generally, this study provides the first quantitative effort to measure human rights abuses from textual records of citizen-government interactions. Using a dataset encompassing over 1.5 million access-to-information (ATI) requests made to the Mexican federal government from June 2003 onward, supervised classification is used to identify the subset of these requests that pertain to human rights abuses of various types. The results from this supervised machine learning exercise are validated against (i) gold standard ATI requests pertaining to past human rights abuses in Mexico and (ii) several accepted external measures of sub-national and sub-annual human rights abuses. In doing so, we demonstrate that the measurement of human rights abuses from citizen-submitted ATI request texts can provide measures of human rights abuse that exhibit both high validity and notable spatio-temporal specificity, relative to existent human rights datasets and variables.

Reflections on BDS

Human rights abuses and suicidal ideation among male injecting drug users in Delhi, India

Business and Human Rights:A P&O Ferries Case-Study KD Ewing (bio) Quite by chance, I was completing a section of my Human Rights at Work course at King's College London. The section in question was on 'Business and Human Rights', and formed part of the Human Rights at Work (LLM) course. One of the themes covered in the latter section of the course is the obligation of businesses to comply with Human Rights obligations and the multiple sources of that obligation. And then came the P&O announcement like a bolt from the blue, once again raising big questions about the effectiveness of soft law instruments as a means of ensuring that big business behaves in a socially responsible way. Business enterprises 'should respect human rights' Pre-eminent amongst these sources are the UN General Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) approved in 2011 (the so-called 'Ruggie principles' after their author). These seek to impose obligations on governments to protect against human rights abuses; on corporations to respect internationally recognised human rights; and on States to 'ensure as part of their duty to protect against business-related human rights abuse' that those affected have access to an effective remedy. The principles require national governments to develop an action plan to promote their implementation, which the British government proudly claims to be the first to have done. This can be found on the BEIS website, with the government's implementation document claiming implausibly that 'the promotion of business, and the respect for human rights, go hand in hand'. Not only that: 'The 'golden thread' of safeguards in society that are good for human rights–democratic freedoms, the rule of law, good governance, transparency, property rights and civil society–also provide fertile conditions for private sector led growth'. The question that then arises is what is meant by human rights for this purpose? To which human rights do these obligations apply? The position could not be clearer or more expansive. According to the UNGPs, they apply to the 'international bill of rights' (meaning the UN Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), as well as the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles at Work. It is not necessary to go into these in great detail here; they are easily accessible on the web. So what are the obligations on the part of the government to comply with principles which have now been endorsed by the G7 as part of the currency of globalisation? First they have a duty to 'prevent, investigate, punish and redress' human rights abuses. Secondly they should set out 'an expectation that all business enterprises domiciled in their territory and/or jurisdiction respect human rights throughout their operations'. Thirdly, they should enforce laws that are aimed at or have the effect of requiring business enterprises to respect human rights'. Special obligations arise specifically in relation to those businesses which are supported by the State or have contracts with the State. One other obligation which is worth noting in light of press reports that a Department of Transport was notified by P&O in advance of the announcement, yet did nothing to stop it, but on the contrary appeared to condone the company's decision. This is the principle that states should ensure that government departments that shape business practices are aware of and observe the State's human rights obligations when fulfilling their mandates. This includes providing relevant information, training and support, raising questions about the training and support of the DoT official, whose responsibility when circulating details of P&O's decision was to raise a red flag not to flash a green light. A duty to 'identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for' So far as the company itself is concerned, the Guiding Principles impose multiple human rights obligations. They must avoid causing adverse human rights impacts in their activities, and address such impacts when they occur, and in order to do so, they must take a number of prescribed steps. First they must have in place policies and processes, whereby they commit to meet their...

Physicians are known to have participated in human rights abuses in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, but the nature and extent of that participation are not well documented. To characterize the nature of physician participation in human rights abuses, identify structural factors that facilitated physician participation, and assess approaches for accountability and for prevention of future physician participation in abuses. A self-administered survey in June and July, 2003, of a convenience sample of 98 physicians and semistructured interviews of hospital directors and physicians in 3 major hospitals with general surgical units in 2 cities in southern Iraq. Respondent reports of peer and self-participation in human rights abuses in Iraq since 1988. The majority of participants were male (88% [86/98]) and Shi'a Muslims (97% [95/98]). Respondents reported a mean of 6.8 years in practice. A total of 71% of respondents (65/91) reported that torture was a problem to an extreme extent in Iraq since 1988. The proportion of respondents indicating that, since 1988, their physician peers as a group were extremely or quite a bit involved in human rights abuses included 50% (42/83) for nontherapeutic amputation of ears as a form of punishment, 49% (39/79) for falsification of medical-legal reports of torture, and 32% (25/78) for falsification of death certificates. Fewer numbers of respondents (range, n = 2 to 6) reported participation in abuses themselves. More than half (52% [48/92]) indicated that physicians did not willingly participate in these abuses; 93% (52/71) reported that the Iraqi paramilitary force Fedayeen Saddam was responsible for initiating physician complicity. Fear of harm to oneself or family members was a common explanation for complicity. Respondents reported that physicians who refused to participate in abuses faced consequences including loss of job, imprisonment, torture, and disappearance. Respondents reported on preventive measures that should be undertaken to prevent physician involvement in future abuses, including increasing human rights and ethics education of physicians (99% [79/80]), legal provisions to ensure effective monitoring (97% [73/75]), punitive sanctions for physicians who commit abuses (96% [77/80]), and ensuring the independence of physicians from state authorities (95% [76/80]). Although not generalizable beyond the study participants, the findings of this study suggest that among those surveyed, physician participation in human rights abuses included falsification of medical-legal reports of alleged torture, physical mutilation as a form of punishment, and falsification of death certificates. As Iraq rebuilds, it is essential that the country address these violations and enact measures to prevent physicians from future complicity in human rights abuses.

[Extract] Criminology, human rights and Indigenous peoples: how do we understand the connections between these three terms? For too long the voices arguing to connect criminology with human rights were isolated and marginalized. At best, the possible links were seen as peripheral to the main concerns of criminology. At worst, bringing a human rights understanding to definitions of and criminal justice was seen as undermining criminology’s search for scientific status. And as for Indigenous people? They were seen as part of the crime problem, a segment of the problem population whose criminality needed explanation. Human rights apparently had nothing to do with their offending behaviour. However, over the last decade or so the intellectual terrain has shifted significantly. As a result of these developments we can see at least three strands to how we might bring criminology to a more intellectually robust understanding of Indigenous people and human rights. The first point is that Indigenous people have been victims of profound historical injustices and abuses of human rights which can be at least partially understood as state crime. The second point is that contemporary justice systems are often seen in the context of the abuse of Indigenous people's human rights. The third strand is an analysis of how claims to specific Indigenous rights impact on current criminal justice processes, and how those claims might broaden our understanding of reform and change.

As a response to Kofi Annan’s 1999 challenge to the global community to reconcile the “twin principles of sovereignty...and fundamental human rights,” the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is based upon the rethinking of the sovereignty principle as a responsibility of the state to protect its citizens from human rights violations. Domestic authority is no longer absolute, but rather limited by both human rights principles and the responsibility of a state to protect its citizens. The adoption of the R2P doctrine at the 2005 UN World Summit demonstrated an overwhelming consensus amongst nation-states to prevent and/or put a stop to mass human rights abuses such as genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity - with the use of military force when deemed necessary by a legitimate authority such as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the invocation of UN Charter a Chapter VII. The R2P principle places an inherent duty to protect citizens irrespective of geopolitics or agreements between states. Under the doctrine, the international community does not have a choice whether to intervene or not; rather, it has a moral, de facto and de Jude obligation to do so when massive human rights violations occur. The Rwandan genocide demonstrates the need for the codification of not the right to intervene, but rather a responsibility to intervene when faced with the evidence of mass human rights abuses. In the case of Rwanda, the great power interests of the United States and France undermined the mechanisms within the UN for mobilising a coherent military force to prevent genocide and protect civilians. While humanitarian intervention has been tainted by neo-imperialist ambitions, the cost of non-intervention in situations of severe human rights abuses, war, or poverty is morally and intrinsically unjustifiable. This paper will state in no uncertain terms that the international community must come to the realisation that they have a responsibility to intervene if states are unwilling or unable to protect their citizens from human rights abuses. Refusing to respond when presented with unequivocal evidence of mass human rights abuses flies in the face of the R2P doctrine itself. As great power interests continue to expand in emerging economies, geopolitical instability and dissatisfaction with illegitimate regimes motivate civil society driven pushes towards democratisation, the international community must be prepared to fulfill their obligation and Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

BackgroundThe Myanmar army and ethnic armed groups agreed to a preliminary ceasefire in 2012, but a heavy military presence remains in southeastern Myanmar. Qualitative data suggested this militarization can result in human rights abuses in the absence of armed engagements between the parties, and that rural ethnic civilians use a variety of self-protection strategies to avoid these abuses or reduce their negative impacts. We used data from a household survey to determine prevalence of select self-protection activities and to examine exposure to armed groups, human rights violations and self-protection activities as determinants of health in southeastern Myanmar.Methods and findingsData collected from 463 households via a two-stage cluster survey of conflict-affected areas in eastern Myanmar in January 2012, were analyzed using logistic regression models to identify associations between exposure to state and non-state armed groups, village self-protection, human rights abuses and health outcomes. Close proximity to a military base was associated with human rights abuses (PRR 1.30, 95 % CI: 1.14-1.48), inadequate food production (PRR 1.08, 95 % CI: 1.03-1.13), inability to access health care (PRR 1.29, 95 % CI: 1.04-1.60) and diarrhea (PRR 1.15, 95 % CI: 1.05-1.27. Direct exposure to armed groups was associated with household hunger (PRR1.71, 95 % CI: 1.30-2.23). Among households that reported no human rights abuses, risk of household hunger (PRR 5.64, 95 % CI: 1.88-16.91), inadequate food production (PRR 1.95, 95 % CI: 1.11-3.41) and diarrhea (PRR 2.53, 95 % CI: 1.45-4.42) increased when neighbors’ households reported experiencing human rights abuses. Households in villages that reported negotiating with the Myanmar army had lower risk of human rights violations (PRR 0.91, 95 % CI: 0.85-0.98), household hunger (PRR 0.85, 95 % CI: 0.74-0.96), inadequate food production (PRR 0.93, 95 % CI:0.89-0.98) and diarrhea (PRR 0.89, 95 % CI:0.82-0.97). Stratified analysis suggests that self-protection strategies may modify the effect of exposure to armed groups on risk of human rights violations and some health outcomes.ConclusionMilitarization may negatively affect health in southeastern Myanmar, and village self-protection activities may reduce these impacts. As southeastern Myanmar opens to international health and development interventions, implementing agencies should consider militarization as a determinant of health and design interventions that can mediate its effects. Such interventions should take into account existing self-protection strategies, seek to provide support where possible and, at all times, take care not to unintentionally undermine them.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13031-015-0059-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The article constitutes an initial attempt to combine the insights provided by the disciplines of Transitional Justice (TJ) and human rights, and it originates from a concern with the current situation of human rights in Argentina. Although there have been significant improvements since democratization in the mid-1980s, conditions favouring human rights abuses still persist. In particular, specific human rights abuses (torture, disappearances, and murder) that resemble practices common during the repression under state terrorism (1976 to 1983) continue to take place. The article has four parts. First, it provides a brief literature review on TJ and investigates the relationship between TJ and human rights. Second, the article offers a concise theoretical background on the notion of impunity, considering its nature and sustaining mechanisms. Third, the case of Argentina is examined, looking at the years of military rule and the reforms undertaken since transition. Fourth, the persistence of continuities between past and present human rights abuses in Argentina is unpacked, by offering an empirical consideration of impunity and its consequences; the lack of successful police reform; and a social context that tolerates human rights violence. The combined lenses of TJ and human rights can be useful for practitioners to spot continuities in human rights violations and enable them to develop policies and strategies that better address the causes of human rights abuses.

Variation of gunshot injury patterns in mortality associated with human rights abuses and armed conflict: an exploratory study

Claiming the right to health

The semiotics of women’s human rights in iran

It has been two decades since the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Commission) rendered its landmark decision in SERAC and CESR v Nigeria. In this landmark judgment, and later in IHRDA and Others v DRC, the Commission explicitly affirmed states’ obligation to investigate, prosecute and redress corporate human right abuses as part of the obligation ‘to adopt legislative or other measures’ under article 1 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (AfricanCharter). Similarly, states’ obligation to ensure a remedy for corporate human rights abuses is also one of the issues clarified under the ‘Third Pillar’ of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. However, as this obligation is not adequately translated into practice at the national level, corporate human rights abuses committed in Africa continue to be met with impunity and lack of access to effective remedy. Over the last several years, African victims who are denied justice in their domestic jurisdictions have increasingly been turning to home states of corporations to seek remedies. Victims’ access to home state remedies has, however, been significantly restricted in recent years due to various legal barriers, particularly jurisdictional challenges. The article therefore aims to highlight the increasing restriction on African victims’ access to home state remedies and show the need for strengthening domestic remedies in Africa

Although human rights abuses have been reported in Iraq, the full scope of these abuses has not been well documented. To assess the prevalence of human rights abuses since 1991 in southern Iraq, along with attitudes about women's health and human rights and women's rights and roles in society, to inform reconstruction and humanitarian assistance efforts in Iraq. Cross-sectional, randomized survey of Iraqi men and women conducted in July 2003 using structured questionnaires. Three major cities in 3 of the 9 governorates in southern Iraq. A total of 1991 respondents representing 16 520 household members. Respondent demographics, information on human rights abuses that occurred among household members since 1991, women's health and human rights, opinions regarding women's rights and roles in society, and conditions for community health and development. Respondents were a mean age of 38 years and were mostly of Arab ethnicity (99.7% [1976/1982]) and Muslim Shi'a (96.7% [1906/1971]). Overall, 47% of those interviewed reported 1 or more of the following abuses among themselves and household members since 1991: torture, killings, disappearance, forced conscription, beating, gunshot wounds, kidnappings, being held hostage, and ear amputation, among others. Seventy percent of abuses (408/586) were reputed to have occurred in homes. Baath party regime-affiliated groups were identified most often (95% [449/475]) as the perpetrators of the abuses; 53% of the abuses occurred between 1991 and 1993, following the Shi'a uprising, and another 30% between 2000 and the first 6 months of 2003. While the majority of men and women expressed support for women's equal opportunities for education, freedom of expression, access to health care, equality in deciding marriage and the number and spacing of children, and participation in community development decisions, there was less support among both men and women for women's freedom of movement, association with people of their choosing, and rights to refuse sex. Half of women and men (54% and 50%, respectively) reported agreeing that a man has the right to beat his wife if she disobeys. Fifty-three percent of respondents reported that there were reasons to restrict educational opportunities for women at the present time and 50% reported that there were reasons to restrict work opportunities for women at the present time. Nearly half of participating households in 3 southern cities in Iraq reported human rights abuses among household members between 1991 and 2003. The households surveyed supported a government that will protect and promote human rights, including the rights of women. However, currently, neither men nor women appear to support a full range of women's human rights.

Multinational enterprises are aware of their responsibility to protect human rights now more than ever, but severe human rights violations, including physical integrity abuses (e.g., death, torture, disappearances), continue unabated. To explore this puzzle, we engage theoretically with the means-ends decoupling literature to examine if and when oil and gas firms’ policies and practices prevent severe human rights abuse. Using an original dataset, we identify two pathways to mitigate means-ends decoupling: (a) while human rights policies alone do not reduce human rights abuses, firms with a high-quality human rights policy over the long-term reduce severe human rights abuses; (b) firms that combine preparedness—which we define as a firm’s capabilities, practices, and engagement—with a long-term human rights policy also reduce the likelihood of human rights abuses. Preparedness, we argue, can lead to reinforcement dynamics between long-term policy efforts and additional capabilities that provide a more holistic understanding of firm behavior.