Welcome
Dedicated to interdisciplinary and critical dialogue on human rights, the Rapoport Center’s Working Paper Series (WPS) publishes innovative papers by established and early-career researchers as well as practitioners. The goal is to provide a productive environment for debate about human rights among academics, policymakers, activists, practitioners, and the public.
Authors from all disciplines and institutions are welcome to submit papers. We publish papers on a variety of human rights and social justice topics, and we particularly welcome papers focusing on issues and topics affecting the Global South. We are especially interested in the following: reproductive justice and sexual rights; environmental justice and climate justice; peace and nuclear disarmament; inequality; and the future of work.
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis and evaluated by the WPS interdisciplinary editorial committee, which includes graduate and professional students from across the University of Texas. The WPS committee provides comments and feedback to authors before the paper is published online. Publication in the WPS does not preclude future publication elsewhere; in fact, many of our working papers have since been published in academic journals and edited volumes.
Each year, the WPS publishes the winning paper from the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights and the Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice.
Our Latest Posts:
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International Law and the Disaggregated Democratic State: Two Case-Studies on Women’s Human Rights and the United States
by Karen Knop View/download paper Abstract: The two United States case studies in this paper demonstrate that whether or not a state is party to a particular treaty, in a disaggregated democratic state both the central government and different parts of the state have a remarkable range of possibilities for configuring their law and politics
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Self-critique, (Anti)politics and Criminalization: Reflections on the History and Trajectory of the Human Rights Movement
by Karen Engle View/download paper Abstract: Today’s human rights movement places the fight against impunity at its center. Such a focus is the culmination of a governance project in which the movement has been engaged for close to two decades that puts an enormous amount of attention on and faith in criminal justice systems—international, transnational
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Archiving Memory After Mass Atrocities
by John D. Ciorciari View/download paper Abstract: Archiving and disseminating records of past atrocities is crucial in societies emerging from periods of conflict or repressive rule. It advances victims’ “right to the truth” and promotes broader social goals of accountability and historical truth. This working paper explores legal and policy issues that arise when collections of
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‘The People Follow the Mullah, and the Mullah Follows the People’: Politics of Aid and Gender in Afghanistan post-2001
by Joyce Wu View/download paper Joyce Wu’s paper was the runner-up in the 2011 Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights. The piece has been subsequently published in an edited volume, Gender, Power, and Military Occupations: Asia Pacific and the Middle East since 1945, eds. Christine De Matos and Rowena Ward. Reproduced by permission
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From Structural to Symbolic Dimensions of State Autonomy: Brazil’s AIDS Treatment Program and Global Power Dynamics
by Matthew Flynn View/download paper Abstract: Theories of globalization debate the current role of the state in the contemporary world, specifically questioning how much autonomy or policy space the state has to enact policies considered to be in a country’s interest. The problem of state autonomy becomes more acute for developing countries attempting to construct
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Translating Rights into Agency: Advocacy, Aid and the Domestic Workers Convention
This post is one of our Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship in Gender and Human Rights, Working Papers .by Kali Yuan Winner, Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2012) View/download paper Abstract: In June 2011, the International Labor Conference adopted the Domestic Workers Convention (the Convention), the first international labor standard to set out legal obligations that specifically protect and improve the working lives of domestic workers. This paper argues
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Legal Empowerment of the Poor: The Re-emergence of a Lost Strand of Human Rights?
by Marlese von Broembsen View/download paper Abstract: This paper considers the contribution of the UNDP’s Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP) framework to the rights and poverty reduction discourse. It argues that the value of LEP, as envisaged by its architect, Stephen Golub, is less of a new development paradigm, but rescues one of the
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United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 (2011): Libya in the Dock
by Barbara Harlow, Daniel Kahozi, Lucas Lixinski, and Caroline Carter View/download paper Abstract: This paper examines Libya’s most recent (and ongoing) uprising—following the largely peaceful popular overthrows of the repressive governments in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt (and complemented by the more violent and still unresolved confrontations in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and in sub-Saharan Africa from
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Thinking Past Rights: Towards Feminist Theories of Reparations
This post is one of our Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship in Gender and Human Rights, Working Papers .by Genevieve Renard Painter View/download paper Winner, Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2011) Abstract: The notion of reparations encompasses debates about the relationship between individual and society, the nature of political community, the meaning of justice, and the impact of rights in social change. In international law, the dominant approach to
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Wearing Out Arizona
2011 by Sandra K. Soto View/download paper Abstract: In “Wearing Out Arizona,” Sandra K. Soto describes and analyzes what her colleague K. Tsianina Lomawaima has aptly coined Arizona’s “regressive suite of legislation.” Seeking to further marginalize the growing Latino community in the state (especially the foreign born), these laws and bills curtail mobility, solidarity, education,
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