Centre For Human Rights Research Articles

Intro page and Guest Editor's note: The right to development in Africa and natural resources ownership

This special edition of the Journal for Juridical Science is the outcome of the Third International Conference on the Right to Development that took place at the University of the Free State in September 2019, hosted by the Free State Centre for Human Rights, in collaboration with the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, and the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, University of South Africa. The selected articles present some exciting viewpoints for reflection on the very important, but often overlooked subject of the right to development and the requirement of natural resources ownership for its realisation.

Motion to File Brief Amicus Curiae (with Brief in Support & Amicus Brief) Filed in Yale University v. Konowaloff, 09-466 [United Stated District Court (Connecticut)], of the University of North Dakota Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies, Michael Berenbaum, Christian Defrancia, Edward M. Gaffney, Jr., Gregory S. Gordon, Michael J. Kelly, Jordan J. Paust, Pammela A. Saunders, Krista Sigler,

The brief was filed in a case failed by Yale University to preempt demands for restitution of The Night Cafe by Van Gogh by Pierre Konowaloff, whose family's property was confiscated by Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution on Lenin's orders in 1918. The Russian Revolution and rise to power of Josef Stalin resulted in the deaths of over 20 million people. Cold War politics and subsequent diplomacy never allowed for resolution of the vast majority of claims to confiscated property. The museum received the painting as a bequest in 1961. The deeply researched amicus brief counsels the court to analyze the legal defenses of the Act of State doctrine and New York time-bar principles in light of true historical context, rather than knee-jerk, broad assumptions about historical events.

Brief Amicus Curiae Filed in Konowaloff v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10-Cv-9126 (United Stated District Court Southern District of New York), of the Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies, Michael Berenbaum, Christian Defrancia, Edward M. Gaffney, Jr., Gregory S. Gordon, Michael J. Kelly, Jordan J. Paust, Pammela A. Saunders, Krista Sigler, Ronald G. Suny, and Fritz Wienschenk, in

Brief Amicus Curiae Filed in Konowaloff v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The brief was filed in a case seeking restitution on behalf of Pierre Konowaloff, whose family's property was confiscated by Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution on Lenin's orders in 1918. The Russian Revolution and rise to power of Josef Stalin resulted in the deaths of over 20 million people. Cold War politics and subsequent diplomacy never allowed for resolution of the vast majority of claims to confiscated property. The painting at issue is Portrait of Madame Cezanne by Paul Cezanne, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum received the painting as a bequest in 1960. The painting today is valued at $50 million to $70 million, but some believe it would fetch $100 million if it came to market today. The deeply researched amicus brief counsels the court to analyze the legal defenses of the Act of State doctrine and New York time-bar principles in light of true historical context, rather than knee-jerk, broad assumptions about historical events.

Las organizaciones locales frente al riesgo socioambiental en la cuenca del Alto Atoyac, Tlaxcala-Puebla

Este artículo versa sobre las acciones de un conjunto de organizaciones locales frente al riesgo socioambiental, causado principalmente por la contaminación de un río en una región compartida por los estados de Puebla y Tlaxcala. Hacemos referencia a la “Coordinadora por un Atoyac con Vida”, la “Red de Jóvenes en Defensa de los Pueblos” y el “Centro Fray Julián Garcés de Derechos Humanos A.C.”, que desde hace dos décadas han denunciado públicamente el devastador impacto ambiental que está provocando el desarrollo industrial en la cuenca del Alto Atoyac.

ABA CHR Report: The Case of Judge Alina Czubieniak: Threats to Judicial Independence in Poland through the Use of Judicial Disciplinary Procedures

The American Bar Association Center for Human Rights would like to acknowledge Elizabeth Zechenter, an American-educated international attorney, social scientist, published author, and public speaker, for her profound contribution to this report. Ms. Zechenter's pro bono assistance was instrumental and served as the basis for this report in many ways. Since 2015, the Polish government has enacted a series of so-called judicial reforms' including the creation of new disciplinary procedures and oversight body for judges that have dramatically increased political oversight of the judiciary. One of the first judge to be disciplined under the newly created judicial disciplinary body was Judge Alina Czubieniak. The ABA Center for Human Rights sent monitors to Judge Czubieniak's disciplinary hearings to ascertain whether they complied with international standards for maintaining the independence of the judiciary. Its monitors found several indicia that the new judicial disciplinary procedures fail to properly protect judges against improper influence and are subject to potential arbitrary application, which has since been confirmed by decisions at the European Court of Justice and the Polish Supreme Court. The judicial reforms of the last four years have made it possible for disciplinary procedures to be used as a tool to intimidate judges whose decisions are unpopular with the executive branch. The independence of the judiciary is threatened when disciplinary procedures are applied arbitrarily. Judge Czubieniak's case was one of the first in a series of disciplinary proceedings, brought by the Ministry of Justice against judges for legitimate judicial activities and the first to be decided by the newly created Disciplinary Chamber. While governments may reform judicial disciplinary proceedings to reduce overall delays, ethic violations, conflicts of interest, and other inefficiencies in the judicial system, disciplinary proceedings should not be used to discipline judges for issuing valid legal opinions that are deemed unpopular by the executive. Arbitrary application of disciplinary proceedings endangers the fair and impartial administration of justice. This and other recent cases against judges are part of a growing evidence that, in addition to the threat to judicial independence posed by the Disciplinary Chamber's creation and process, the Ministry of Justice has used the new process to target judges whose rulings are inconvenient and to chill legitimate and protected free speech.

Panel Discussion: Are Reparations Possible? Lessons to the United States from South Africa

Introduction: On September 25, 2019, the Honorable Richard Goldstone joined Dr. Lewis Gordon f or a conversation about reparations at the University of Nebraska at Omaha ( The public discussion was offered as part of a series of events for Human Rights Week. It was co sponsored by the Goldstein Community Chair for Human Rights, the Schwalb Cent er for Israel and Jewish Studies, and the UNO Department of Black Studies. Goldstone and Gordon were brought to the University of Nebraska at Omaha by the Leonard and Shirley Goldstein Center for Human Rights. The Honorable Richard Goldstone, Dr. Lewis Gordon, Dr. Alecia Anderson (moderator)*

KOMUNIKASI IJIC: PROFESIONALISME SEBAGAI MODAL AKREDITASI JURNAL

In today's digital era, publication of scientific works is a standard for the progress of universities and even the State. Publication of articles in journals both nationally and internationally is a standard for the development of science and technology which is loved by many people including Indonesians. Therefore, IJIC is present as a scientific journal to contest in the standard of higher education progress. To support the management of online journal system journals and arouse the spirit of writing scientific articles, IJIC held a workshop on reputable article writing techniques and management of Online Journal System journal management, by presenting two reliable resource persons namely Al Khanif, SH, MA, Ph.D as Editor in Chief Journal Of Southeast Asian Human Rights and Director of the center for human rights, multiculturalism and migration (CHRM2) Chair Persons of the Indonesian Consortium for Human Rights Lectures, SEPAHAM Indonesia and Dr. Abdul Muhid, M.Sc as Editor In Chief Engagement: Journal of Community Service Kopertais Region IV Surabaya that has been accredited by Sprott 3. ID Scopus 57209454955. The results obtained from the workshop were at least three things namely First; the author is a writer who studies deeply, is written and then published. Second; the writing style of the IJIC article is seven in general namely the title. Ownership lines (byline), Abstracts, Keywords (keywords), Body of writing, references, and completeness of articles. Third; the editorial board of IJIC has an extraordinary passion for serving science, even though it is not supported by various things such as facilities and finance. Even though the journal management agency must have the ability to organize journal publishing. This is based because the institution must have the capital to publish a journal and have an IP address network device and have an online journal publishing information system or better known as an online journal system (OJS).

Disappearing Dance, Dancing Disappearance

Arkadi Zaides’s solo performance Archive (2014) focuses the Camera Project of B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), which distributes video cameras to Palestinians in high-conflict areas in the West Bank in order to provide an ongoing documentation of human rights violations. The film material to be presented in the performance shows Israelis only. The Palestinians stay behind their cameras—they seem to disappear, but are exiled in such a way that they are all the more there as and in the viewer’s perspective. Archive is all about the mode of disappearance as a paradox of archive practice and—as this text suggests—as paradoxical poetics and politics of art. By screening documentary material from the Camera Project, with the exact references to the images, the Israeli choreographer Zaides also comments and contaminates, infects, affects, afflicts, by the mere act of repetition, his own position. Zaides performs gestures, voices and movement sequences of soldiers and settlers, firstly simultaneously with the documentary clips and then separately. As isolated choreographic material, the gestures re-transform in an ongoing act of abstraction: as a critical pointing at the absence, they are disappointing any metaphysic of presence, activating an archive of gestures, focusing on the aesthetic and political potential for disappearance, pausing poses and positions—literal and figurative, ambiguous positions. In never repeating the same Archive repeats the difference itself. Deterritorializing the filmed act with his factuality to a mere movement, Zaides’ re-enactment problematizes referring in principle to an act of certainty, opening potentially for—as this text proposes—an intra-choreographic context (as in, for example, works by Rabih Mroué, Walid Raad, Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion, Jan Ritsema, Jerômé Bel, Meg Stuart, Philipp Gehmacher, Xavier Le Roy). Zaides works on a liquidation of liquidity, on the problems of legibility and availability—explicitly in the breathless handheld-camera movement of the clips. Deconstruction procedures question here the cause–effect linearity of a hi/story. The anagrammatic principle of an ever-new arrangement of the material accumulates a collection of gestures into a collapse of a collective body, as a disappearing dance, dancing disappearance, resisting all too easy understanding: uneasy going instead of anything goes. Choreographic opacity becomes an appeal for withdrawal, nuance, shadow, disappearance, beyond neo-liberal forced transparency. Undoing positions again and again(st), re-membering the difference itself, Zaides and we as audience members, are apart from the situation and only thereby become a part of it.

Racial Inequality and the Dissolution of Kinship

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook and Film ReviewsRacial Inequality and the Dissolution of Kinship Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States. By Kathryn Mariner. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.Amy KraussAmy KraussPozen Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago, 5720 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA ([email protected]). Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 60, Number 5October 2019 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/705836 Views: 170Total views on this site HistoryAccepted August 15, 2019 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Impact of the Core International Human Rights Treaties on the Human Rights Situation in States: doctrinal approach

INTRODUCTION. The paper considers the problem of the realisation of the core international human rights treaties at the national level from a perspective of the importance of conducting doctrinal research in this area. The authors provide the analysis of the content of the study project “The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level”, launched in 2018 in continuation of the study carried out almost 20 years ago initiated by Ch. Heyns and F. Viljoen, professors of the Center for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria (South Africa), with the support of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to study the impact of the six existing at that time core international human rights treaties on the human rights situation in 20 States, including the Russian Federation. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research was based on a variety of study materials, including international treaties, outcome documents of the international conferences, recommendations of the human rights treaty bodies, doctrinal studies, national legislation and the court practice of the Russian Federation. The authors applied historical legal and comparative legal methods when comparing the contents of the 1999 research and the 2018 study project, tracking the developments in the universal human rights system since 1999 till today, comparing the current tendencies in the realisation of the human rights treaties in Russia with the conclusions of the previous research on Russia. The method of legal forecasting was used to determine the perspectives of the present and possible future research on the impact of human rights treaties in States. RESEARCH RESULTS. Demonstrating the developments in the universal human rights system and the dynamics in the realisation of the human rights treaties in Russia taken place since 1999, the authors examined the tasks of the new research they need to conduct as the successors of professors Yu. Kolosov and Yu. Reshetov and identified the specifics of the approach of the new study comparing to the previous one. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. The authors demonstrate the potential of the study to determine the measures to enhance the effectiveness of the human rights treaty body system within the ongoing process on its strengthening, including the 2020 UN comprehensive review of the progress achieved in this field. The paper points out the importance of expanding the research to more than 20 countries, already covered by the research, with a view of forming a comprehensive picture of the way in which the international human rights treaty system influences the situation of rights holders at local level, just where it really matters.

Diaspora influence on the thin sympathetic response in transitional justice

ABSTRACTThin sympathetic engagement is a basic, cognitive understanding of the needs of the other. It played an important role in how elites from the Montreal Haitian diaspora were able to influence an NGO in their adopted country, Canada, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, to work with the diaspora to secure a truth commission in Haiti. That commission ultimately became the Commission Nationale de Vérité et de Justice. The aims of the diaspora were advanced by its engagement with neutral outsider groups in their adopted country and their ability to persuade these groups toward a thin sympathetic response.

Women Seeking Asylum: Multiple Traumas Inflicted by Multiple Perpetrators [6B

INTRODUCTION: The WHO estimates that 1 in 3 women has experienced Gender-Based Violence (GBV). A majority of female asylum applicants in the United States are seeking relief from at least one form of GBV. We hypothesize that an analysis of female asylees' affidavits will confirm a pattern of multiple types of GBV, throughout their lives, at the hands of multiple perpetrators. METHODS: A retrospective review was performed of de-identified legal and medical affidavits that were prepared for adult, female asylum applicants presenting to the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights from 1/1/2013-12/31/2014 for forensic medical evaluation. Definitions of abuse types, severities, and perpetrators were drawn from several sources to generate the coding tool that was employed to assess the affidavits. RESULTS: 25 affidavits were reviewed, of which 23 met inclusion criteria. 189 instances of abuse were identified, yielding an average of 8.2 (range 2-15) abuses per woman. Repetition of the same abuse by the same perpetrator over any time-frame (days to decades) counted as a single instance of abuse. The plurality of abuses were perpetrated by intimate partners (56/189) and immediate family (73/189). 48% of the abuses were psychological, 26% were sexual, and 26% were physical. In these respective categories, threats of serious violence, rape, and experiences of serious physical violence, were documented most often. CONCLUSION: These preliminary results confirm our hypothesis and suggest that the current conceptualization of GBV among female asylees as episodic abuse by a single perpetrator requires revision.

Pharmaceutical trade policies and access to medicines in Kenya

This article was prepared while the author was a doctoral student at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria

Repression, resistance and lifestyle: charting (dis)connection and activism in times of accelerated capitalism

ABSTRACT Studying the nexus of media and social movements is a growing subfield in both media and social movement studies. Although there is an increasing number of studies that criticize the overemphasis of the importance of media technologies for social movements, questions of non-use, technology push-back and media refusal as explicit political practice have received comparatively little attention. The article charts a typology of digital disconnection as political practice and site of struggle bringing emerging literatures on disconnection, i.e. forms of media technology non-use to the field of social movement studies and studies of civic engagement. Based on a theoretical matrix combining questions of power, collectivity and temporality, we distinguish between digital disconnection as repression, digital disconnection as resistance and digital disconnection as performance and life-style politics. The article discusses the three types of digital disconnection using current examples of protest and social movements that engage with practices of disconnection. Abbreviations: AFA: Anti-Fascist Action; CHRI: Center for Human Rights in Iran; DDoS: Distributed Denial of Service

Editor’s Plaisance

Editor’s Plaisance

Perspective

Perspective

Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Many challenges exist regarding the discourse over human rights in South East Asia due to the complex relationship between the region’s myriad cultures, laws, religions and political desires. This socio-political environment produces a number of varying, and often contradictory, interpretations of human rights, as well as differing opinions on how they should be implemented. On one hand, some countries in Southeast Asia have internalized international human rights instruments by amending their constitutions in order to provide a semblance of protection for their citizen’s human rights. On the other hand, some countries still operate under authoritarian regimes and continue to violate certain internationally recognized rights for the sake of preserving political stability and economic development. Proponents of such regimes often claim that this is done to maintain both societal and religious harmony. Therefore, the effort to address human rights issues in Southeast Asia must expand beyond the international legal sphere and take into account the intricate relationships and power struggles between the region’s various economic interests, social and cultural norms, and religions. Furthermore, the successful implementation of human rights law in Southeast Asia will require a number of obligations and checks be imposed on the state governments in the region. The specific means by which to promote human rights in South East Asia, and how to reconcile diverging options on the definition and scope of said rights, was the theme of the 2nd Annual Conference of the Centre for Human Rights, Multiculturalism and Migration (CHRM2) and Indonesian Consortium for Human Rights Lecturers (SEPAHAM Indonesia), held in August, 2017, at the University of Jember. This article is a summary of the major points and topics covered during the two day conference.

Between a frightening Present and a disjoined Future. Recession and social vulnerability in the case of Greek Neets: Socio-demographics, facets of the Crisis’ Impact and the revival of the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

The paper initially approaches definitional issues and proceeds in a brief overview of the state of play concerning NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training) in the EU, emphasizing the relation between youth unemployment and NEET rates. Then, based on some of the key findings of a recent quantitative research (carried out within the framework of the EEA Grants/ GR07-3757 Project), the paper maps Greek NEETs’ main characteristics today and presents findings related to the impact of the crisis in both Young people in total and NEETs’ life course, employability, public trust, civics and survival strategies. The research leading to several of the results presented in the present paper has received funding from the EEA/Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2009-2014, under the Project Contract n° EEA Grants/ GR07- 3757 (‘Neets2). The Project was carried out by the Centre for Educational Policy Development of the General Federation of Greek Workers (KANEP/GSEE) (Project Coordinator Partner), the Centre for Political Research & Documentation of the Department of Political Science at the University of Crete (KEPET/ UoC) and the Centre for Human Rights of the Department of Political Science at the University of Crete (KEADIK/UoC) (Project Partner 1). It was carried out from 15/12/2015 to 14/12/2016.

Summary of an expert meeting about human rights and psychology, held in Venice, 9–11 October 2016

The meeting was jointly held by the European Federation of Psychological Associations (EFPA), the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC). The meeting took place at the Monastery San Nicolo. It consisted of presentations and workshops. I was asked to be the official rapporteur of the event and drafted the report. The following is a short summary of some of the main points.

Adolescent sex and 'defilement' in Malawi law and society

This article was first presented as a paper at the Colloquium on Adolescent Sexual Rights convened by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria.