Abuse Of Human Rights Research Articles

“When the ground opened”: Responsibility for harms and rights violations in disasters – Insights from Sierra Leone

So-called “natural” disasters are often characterized by major human rights abuses, yet responsibility and accountability for such violations have attracted relatively limited attention in research and practice. Instead, these events and survivors’ suffering are often dismissed as “acts of God” or tragic misfortunes. Through analysis of an under-examined disaster—the 2017 mudslide in Freetown, Sierra Leone—this article probes survivors’ perspectives on responsibility for disasters, and suffering and violations accompanying them. While survivors in this case often attribute responsibility to God or other supernatural forces, they also understand the state and other earthly actors as sharing different forms and degrees of responsibility for the disaster and its harmful consequences. Indeed, seeing the mudslide as an “act of God” does not absolve the state from its obligation to protect citizens from harms associated with disasters and subsequent response efforts. Survivors’ perspectives provide significant insight into the challenge of advancing accountability in disaster contexts.

Documentary filmmakers confront trauma: An interview with Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner

The article features an interview with Copenhagen-based filmmakers Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner, directors of Songs of Repression (2020), the latest documentary film to tackle Colonia Dignidad, a sectarian German enclave founded in Chile in 1961. The dialogue revolves around the film, but it also illuminates some general problems documentarians must face when encountering trauma, among them ethical responsibilities towards protagonists and narrative strategies to employ. The interview is preceded by an introduction that sketches background information on the notorious colony, explains how the film originated, examines the role of music – a central motif of the film – for Colonia’s functioning and situates the work in a wider context of documentaries that confront human rights abuses. The political, religious and moral complexities of Colonia Dignidad are salient because they point to the way the inadequacy or total absence of processes of redress and reconciliation may ultimately prompt the re-emergence or re-establishment of sinister practices.

Committing to coal? Scripts, sociotechnical imaginaries, and the resurgence of a coal regime in the Philippines

The Philippine coalscape emerged from state-sponsored support for coal that civil society continually challenges. This paper examines how this coalscape was produced from contesting sociotechnical imaginaries and by whom. The article highlights how the state circulated the imaginaries of support towards coal import, domestic mining, and combustion for electricity using the scripts of energy security for national development. At the same time, it also sheds light on how proponents of an anti-coal imaginary used their scripts of energy transition, energy justice, and energy democracy. Using primary data from interviews, supplemented by a review of policy documents, news reports, and popular articles, this paper maps the scripts that proponents employ to produce these imaginaries. On the one hand, scripts on affordability, access, and reliability have shored up the pro-coal imaginary in the Philippines, which, altogether, converge into a grand imaginary of securing domestic energy supply to address the country’s economic development. On the other hand, the scripts of polycentric social mobilizations for just and democratizing energy transition against pollution, human rights abuses (especially on Indigenous Peoples), and climate action buttressed an anti-coal imaginary. Putting into the spotlight these conflicting imaginaries provides insights into the intricate associations of energy systems with the environment, human rights, sustainability, and climate.

West Papua: Indonesia’s last regional conflict

ABSTRACT This article explores three interrelated components of the independence movement in Papua – armed resistance, political struggle, and international lobbying. As an insurgency, the armed resistance in Papua is local, sporadic and does not threaten Indonesian control. Indonesia’s predominantly military response to both armed and peaceful resistance has given violence a greater significance in the Papua conflict than the capacity of the armed resistance groups would suggest. The significant Indonesian military deployment and the associated human rights abuses have provided ammunition for pro-independence international lobbying. Notwithstanding a highly constrained political environment, activists continue to demonstrate after nearly 6 decades of Indonesian rule the capacity to mobilise support for independence harnessing issues such as racism. The article examines the Government’s dilemma that the means it has chosen to sustain its authority – an overwhelming military superiority – is one of the factors that fuels Papuan support for independence. What form of governance is possible in democratic Indonesia, when a portion of Papuan society does not consent to Indonesian rule?

Explaining support for international action against human rights abusers

How do international audiences decide whether to support action against human rights abusers? Foreign governments often respond to human rights abuses with naming and shaming, economic sanctions, or military action. Individuals make decisions about whether to support these actions with varying levels of information: Allegations might be sparse on details because of insufficient resources for reporting or because perpetrators conceal their behavior. Using a survey experiment that randomly varies the precision of details in human rights allegations, I found that respondents are highly supportive of action against human rights abusers regardless of the level of detail in reporting. Audiences especially support naming and shaming and imposing economic sanctions; they are more skeptical about intervening militarily. I found no evidence that precise fatality estimates, precise geographic location, or prompt reporting make respondents more willing to support these actions. Obfuscating details of human rights violations is not enough for perpetrators to escape international support for accountability.

A Study on State Duties under UNGPs Ensuring Human Rights in the Ship-Recycling Industry

The adverse human rights impact in the South Asian ship-recycling yards is not uncommon for international shipping industry since beginning of 2000s. Even if preventive measures under the Basel Convention has been established to ensure human rights in these beaching yards, the deteriorated conditions over human rights have rarely experienced improvements for workers and residents. Thus, this paper slightly deviates from current international instruments regulating ship-recycling activities, and then focus on the state duties under IHRL to ensure human rights through UNGPs. Particularly, UNGPs, in order to ensure human rights under the current regime of IHRL including the UDHR and other legal instruments, provides principles which can be applied in relation to business activities of transnational corporate. In particular, as state duties, the UNGPs prescribes state duty to protect against human rights abuses caused by the business activities and to ensure access to effective remedy for the victims. While the UNGPs has not created new obligations of states since it is not an international legal instrument, these obligations should be looked upon derived from the existing international human rights law. Therefore, this paper will examines the state duties under the UNGPs focusing on how to ensure these duties in the ship-recycling industry of South Asia where especially human rights abuses have been severe. These includes development of a new treaty for implementation of the UNGPs for a long-term and domestic measures ensuring effective remedy to the victims for a short- to mid-term.

OECD National Contact Points as Sites of Effective Remedy: New Expressions of the Role and Rule of Law within Market Globalization?

AbstractNational Contact Points (NCPs), which support the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, are often invoked as a reliable state-based mechanism for holding transnational corporations accountable for business-related human rights abuses. The objective of this article is to scrutinize the ability of NCPs to offer effective remedy through the lens of an often-quoted success story (the case of the post-colonial brewery Bralima-Heineken at the Dutch NCP) and through a few existing studies that examine factors that curtail or enhance the possibility of NCP mechanisms to deliver effective remedy. Based on these findings, we suggest specific ‘actions for effectiveness’ in the form of recommendations for improving NCPs as a tool to deliver effective remedy. Zooming out, we extend some general observations on how our findings illustrate that NCPs are expressions of a larger systemic problem surrounding the role of law within market globalization and the impact of economic liberalization on the making of norms, changing legal authority and basic fairness under conditions of stark power imbalance. Supporting this approach are historical factors which make the OECD Guidelines and NCPs ripe for such conceptualization.

Constructing police legitimacy during protests: frames and consequences for human rights

ABSTRACT Police legitimacy is a constructed concept. Theorists argue that legitimacy is achieved through police practices that conform to the law and societal expectations, and respect human rights. The challenge is that the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable police force requires interpretation. This article uses a qualitative frame analysis of leading Chilean newspapers to reveal how police and their supporters justified police actions in response to the massive social protests in Chile from October to December 2019. We argue that the dominant frames speakers used to explain police actions during the social uprising justified police violence as a legitimate response to a criminal threat and as consistent with police protocols and the law. While reasserting police legitimacy, the frames delegitimise claims of human rights abuses (often explicitly) and shift the dominant public conversation away from discussions of broader public security and public order reforms that could better reduce police violence. Such frames reveal the tensions between police legitimacy and human rights protections, and the power of state and civil society voices elevated in the media to challenge the latter.

Human Rights in the Oil and Gas Industry: When Are Policies and Practices Enough to Prevent Abuse?

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.

"They're Not Closing This School, We Won't Let Them".

This autoethnography details the story of my personal experience in the field as a social work MSW and Ph.D. student, working as the facilitator of a human rights-based after-school and summer program at an urban high school set for permanent closure in a structurally oppressed community, and my journey to the realization that I was witnessing genocide in the form of structural violence. One purpose in writing this narrative is to provide a social and cultural context to the ubiquity of structurally violent policies, such as closing public schools. This story also testifies to the wealth of strengths that youth possess to resist even the most severe human rights abuses. I also write to show the inextricable political link between individuals and societal structures and systems and to challenge social workers to actively oppose structural violence and its genocidal effects. As I reflect on the genocidal conditions I witnessed, I will at the same time critically consider the profession of social work’s role in responding to structural violence, as well as the great potential that our profession has to meaningfully address crises like these.

Democracy and Human Rights of Rohingya in Myanmar

Liberal democracy and human rights are interlinked. However, the human rights of Rohingya are openly neglected in Myanmar's democratic process under Aung San Suu Kyi. This paper focuses on state-sponsored comprehensive human rights abuses of Rohingya in Myanmar when the country has returned to official democracy in 2015. Studies on state sponsored human rights violation of Rohingya in Myanmar remains limited to few topics. Existing studies does not focus adequately on the links between democracy and human rights violations of Rohingya in Myanmar. This paper argues that the human rights of Rohingya in Myanmar are regularly abused due to the ineffectiveness of the human rights institutions, absence of democratic culture and minority rights, and militarism in Myanmar's democracy. Therefore, concerned stakeholders should rethink making relations between Myanmar's style of democracy and human rights and find out alternative ways to ensure the human rights of Rohingya in Myanmar.

A Digital Toolkit (M-Healer) to Improve Care and Reduce Human Rights Abuses Against People With Mental Illness in West Africa: User-Centered Design, Development, and Usability Study.

BackgroundThe resources of West African mental health care systems are severely constrained, which contributes to significant unmet mental health needs. Consequently, people with psychiatric conditions often receive care from traditional and faith healers. Healers may use practices that constitute human rights violations, such as flogging, caging, forced fasting, and chaining.ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to partner with healers in Ghana to develop a smartphone toolkit designed to support the dissemination of evidence-based psychosocial interventions and the strengthening of human rights awareness in the healer community.MethodsWe conducted on-site observations and qualitative interviews with healers, a group co-design session, content development and prototype system build-out, and usability testing.ResultsA total of 18 healers completed individual interviews. Participants reported on their understanding of the causes and treatments of mental illnesses. They identified situations in which they elect to use mechanical restraints and other coercive practices. Participants described an openness to using a smartphone-based app to help introduce them to alternative practices. A total of 12 healers participated in the co-design session. Of the 12 participants, 8 (67%) reported having a smartphone. Participants reported that they preferred spiritual guidance but that it was acceptable that M-Healer would provide mostly nonspiritual content. They provided suggestions for who should be depicted as the toolkit protagonist and ranked their preferred content delivery modality in the following order: live-action video, animated video, comic strip, and still images with text. Participants viewed mood board prototypes and rated their preferred visual design in the following order: religious theme, nature motif, community or medical, and Ghanaian culture. The content was organized into modules, including an introduction to the system, brief mental health interventions, verbal de-escalation strategies, guided relaxation techniques, and human rights training. Each module contained several scripted digital animation videos, with audio narration in English or Twi. The module menu was represented by touchscreen icons and a single word or phrase to maximize accessibility to users with limited literacy. In total, 12 participants completed the M-Healer usability testing. Participants commented that they liked the look and functionality of the app and understood the content. The participants reported that the information and displays were clear. They successfully navigated the app but identified several areas where usability could be enhanced. Posttesting usability measures indicated that participants found M-Healer to be feasible, acceptable, and usable.ConclusionsThis study is the first to develop a digital mental health toolkit for healers in West Africa. Engaging healers in user-centered development produced an accessible and acceptable resource. Future field testing will determine whether M-Healer can improve healer practices and reduce human rights abuses.

Empty plinths: The significance of absence

The recent growth of the ‘fallism’ movement, in conjunction with Black Lives Matter (BLM), has seen a surge in the number of plinths that stand vacant across South Africa, the United States and Europe since 2015. This article explores the theme of the empty plinth and interrogates what the significance of absence is. It asks what role empty plinths play in fomenting discussion about historical injustices? And, how these empty plinths can be reactivated or reclaimed in a way that attempts to recognize contested memories and ameliorate contemporary divisions along the lines of race, religion and ethnicity? It considers how the British, Ukrainian and Irish states and their civil societies have variously responded to the problem of what to do with monuments (and their empty pedestals) to individuals and regimes that are guilty of human rights abuses. To draw these conclusions, it looks in detail at three examples of monuments that have fallen over an extended time period and the responses to their empty pedestals: The Edward Colston statue in Bristol, United Kingdom (2020); the Bessarabska Lenin which precipitated the leninfall across Ukraine (2013) and Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin, Ireland (1966).

Biden Administration Imposes Sanctions and Seeks to Cement Alliances to Counter China and Russia

The Biden administration's foreign policy emphasizes repairing U.S. alliances and returning the United States to a “position of trusted leadership” to counter increasing challenges from Russia and especially China. The U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (INSSG), released in March 2021, notes that the United States must “contend with the reality that the distribution of power across the world is changing.” It highlights that China, which has “rapidly become more assertive,” is the only country “potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system,” while “Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.” To reaffirm established international norms, the Biden administration has acted both unilaterally and in coordination with long-standing allies to impose sanctions in response to human rights abuses, malicious cyber activity, and election influence. The administration has also taken steps to cement alliances in the Indo-Pacific and with the West.

The Inter-American Responses during COVID-19: Development of Green Human Rights in Indigenous Cases at the Regional and National Levels

Latin America is often considered the world’s most unequal region. This inequality is not limited to socioeconomic differences; it is also seen through discrepancies in access to nature, land, and natural resources. The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified existing vulnerabilities felt by communities, especially susceptible to environmental degradation through furthering their socioeconomic disadvantage. Faced with challenges related to the national implementation of certain rule of law concepts and practices, and the lack of access to sufficient domestic remedies, regional plaintiffs have often reached out to the Inter-American system as an arbiter for human rights abuses. Recent jurisprudence of both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has broadened the scope of recognized rights infringed by State Parties to the Inter-American human rights system, particularly in fields relating to environmental issues, natural resource rights and the rights of vulnerable and marginalized communities. Critical to this is the Inter-American Court’s development of the inter-dependence of green human rights in Indigenous cases. Set against this backdrop, the Covid-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to analyze existing and evolving legal trends, giving the Inter-American human rights system fertile ground to address emerging legal topics on human rights and the environment. This article addresses this evolving jurisprudence, using recent cases brought to the Commission’s attention as case studies on the development of this relationship.

Features of US-Cameroon Relations in the Central Africa

The study is the first to examine U.S.-Cameroon relations in the context of competition of regional centers of power in Central Africa. The study aims to examine the benefits/advantages of the U.S.-Cameroon relations to Cameroon in the leadership competition in the Central African region. Following up on the latest developments in Cameroon regarding Central Africa was another method used in the study. U.S.-Cameroon relations are positive, although they have been negatively affected by concerns over human rights abuses, especially in the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest Regions. Cameroon plays an essential role in regional stability, especially in the Central African Republic's peace process and defeating piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. Cameroon is a crucial regional player in the fight against terrorism, in the Lake Chad Region in particular and in the Central African region in general. America's and Cameroon's governments collaborate and cooperate positively on many issues, including democracy and governance, environmental protection, health, humanitarian assistance, and regional security in Central Africa. US-Cameroon relations have put Cameroon at the forefront of the leadership competition in the Central African region. The U.S. considers Cameroon to be the 'natural and legitimate' leader in the Central African region.

Rise of Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence: A Beacon of Hope or a Double-Edged Sword?

AbstractThis article discusses the evolution, current trends, limitations and controversies around the understanding and practice of human rights due diligence (HRDD), a concept developed in the course of the work of United Nations (UN)-mandate holder, John Ruggie, and enshrined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. While the concept has gathered broad acceptance and a growing number of legislative proposals are seeking to entrench it in law, significant differences of opinion exist among stakeholders as to its nature, objectives and relationship, if any, with legal liability. These differing understandings are at play in a contest to shape future legislation. Some of these carry significant risks for rights-holders, notably the risk of outcome being superseded by process and superficial, compliance-oriented HRDD prevailing in the law or in its interpretation and practice. As legislative efforts continue, the authors warn against the risk of hollow laws which do little to change the status quo or, even worse, inadvertently provide a tool to further impunity for business-related human rights abuses.

Advisors or Enablers? Bringing Professional Service Providers into the Guiding Principles’ Fold

AbstractAfter a decade, different businesses adhere to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Some key commercial entities, however, remain largely outside of the UNGPs universe, including professional service providers (PSPs) who are retained by businesses to provide expert advice and services. These advisors include lawyers, management consultants, architects and others. Some may have specialized units that provide advice on the UNGPs when retained solely for that purpose. But when asked to provide general commercial legal advice, to design a building, or restructure a business, such advisors do not typically appear to apply the UNGPs, to identify negative human rights impacts and tailor their advice in a way that prevents or mitigates such impacts. This article explores the connection between the advice provided by PSPs and negative human rights impacts. It underscores the critical need for these advisors to align their business processes and advisory services with the UNGPs to avoid being enablers of human rights abuses.

A pandemic anniversary: 40 years of HIV/AIDS

A pandemic anniversary: 40 years of HIV/AIDS

"Medical treatments are also part of God's gift": Holy water attendants' perspectives on a collaboration between spiritual and psychiatric treatment for mental illness in Ethiopia.

In Ethiopia, traditional and spiritual treatments, such as holy water, are used by people with mental disorders instead of, or alongside, psychiatric services. Collaborations between traditional and psychiatric providers may increase access to evidence-based treatments and address human rights abuses. This study aimed to explore the perspectives of holy water attendants on a novel collaboration between holy water and psychiatric care, at St Mary's Clinic, Entoto, Ethiopia, and to characterize the users of this service. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 holy water attendants, who run group houses for holy water residents and are paid by family members. A thematic analysis was conducted. Socio-demographic and clinical data were extracted from the records of all service users who had attended the clinic. A total of 174 individuals have attended the clinic in the three years since it opened. The majority were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Holy water attendants provide a partial gatekeeping role to psychiatric care, selecting which of their clients they think will benefit and, for these individuals, facilitating attendance to the clinic and antipsychotic medication adherence. Psychiatric care was felt to be compatible with holy water by some, but not all, attendants. However, family members often had the "final say" in individuals attending the clinic, in some cases putting up strong resistance to using psychiatric care. A novel collaboration is acceptable to some holy water attendants and may increase access to psychiatric care amongst people with mental illness living at a holy water site in Ethiopia.