Author: Aixin Dunn

The Need To Increase Participatory Mechanisms at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

by Karina G. Carpintero

27 MAR 2017

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has been subject to significant criticism regarding the absence of participatory mechanisms that allow societal actors to intervene in the inter-American process.  To some extent, these critiques reflect a similar demand that is occurring in the domestic realm.  Latin-American constitutional democracies present a scenario in which social movements, among many different types of other relevant stakeholders, aim to move forward toward more participatory schemes. Societies are beginning to challenge governments and institutions with demands for more transparency, accountability, and concrete deliberative mechanisms.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has just one available method for outside actors to participate in its international process: amicus curiae briefs. The process entails submitting a written brief before the hearing of an individual case or advisory opinion takes place. Unfortunately, the impact these briefs have is almost null. There is not necessarily any consideration of what the amicus argues, which can be understood as the ‘claim of society’ in an individual case. Because this is the only road to make societal voices heard, there is clear difficulty in accessing “inter-American justice.”

However, realizing how narrow access to this international process is, and debating about it, does introduce an opportunity to start thinking about ways to improve it. The Court should reconsider its procedures in order to enact fruitful strategies that lead to more active participatory methodologies. In fact, there are some alternatives that the Court could take as steps towards that aim. One effective reform could be using a virtual platform, like the internet, as an accessible tool that aids in shortening distances and reducing the economic costs of international actions. Another pathway for reform could be holding an open call for hearings, not only for the parties of individual cases as it does in its ordinary period of sessions, but also to individuals, advocates or organizations that participate in amicus briefs. A bolder method of reform could be considering formal changes to the Court’s rules of procedures to encourage more democratic practices.  Without doubt, engaging in effectively increasing the level of participation at the international order is a difficult challenge to implement, but it is clear that amicus curiae briefs are insufficient as the sole available tool.

All in all, if the Inter-American Court assumes the role of informing the regional consensus about how human rights should be interpreted, protected and guaranteed, more clarity on how these consensuses are reached should be guaranteed. So, the next step for the Inter-American Court, and human rights advocates generally, is to search for more participatory mechanisms to legitimize the creation of conventional meaning.

Karina G. Carpintero is an LLM student at Texas Law, concentrating in Human Rights and Comparative Constitutional Law, and member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

The Weight of Stigma and Segregation: Examining the Denial of Equal Education Opportunities to Roma Communities in EU Countries as an Abuse of Human Rights

by Claudia Kania

22 MAR 2017

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination released a statement in 2000 that acknowledged “the place of the Roma communities [is] among those most disadvantaged and most subject to discrimination in the contemporary world.” Such socially and institutionally accepted xenophobia is perhaps most clearly epitomized by its breach into the European school system. Although academic institutions are often times portrayed as “the great equalizer” within Western societies, walls founded on the principles of ignorance and prejudice frequently separate European Roma from reaping their benefits.  

The impartial right to education is universally established as a fundamental guiding principle within international human rights discourse. It is recognized as a human right and protected by Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as Articles 28, 29, and 40 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. To further contextualize the premise of academic equity, UNESCO put forth the 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education, an international legislative framework adopted to promote “the ideal of equality of educational opportunity without regard to race, sex or any distinctions, economic or social.” Education is not only a right in and of itself, but also an intrinsic vehicle in realizing other rights. It is an instrument vital in securing a life free of financial hardship, disenfranchisement, and social exclusion.

A report released in 2016 detailed the true scope of Roma communities’ expulsion to the fringes of European society. In total, approximately 17% of EU citizens are at risk of poverty, while that number is more than four times higher for Romani individuals; in the month prior to the study, only about 30% of Romani households received paid work. The Office for National Statistics revealed that out of 60,000 individuals who identified as Roma, 60% had no formal schooling. Moreover, Roma individuals are often times the victims of hate crimes and police brutality.  

Segregation remains one of the primary obstacles standing between Roma pupils and equal education opportunities. Although prejudice is sometimes blatantly propagated by biased media and political campaigns, such instances present a gateway to less conspicuous modes of discrimination. For instance, lower expectations for Roma students subsequently lead to higher dropout rates within their communities, which substantially decreases the prospects of secondary and tertiary education for Roma individuals. This, in turn, translates to higher unemployment rates and hinders the participation of Roma in the democratic process. Thus, the cycle continues. A 2015 report by Amnesty International illustrates discriminatory placement of Romani students in classes physically away from their non-Roma peers. A UNICEF report, specifically noting a 2002 case in Hungary, states that in general all-Roma classrooms typically lack fundamental resources otherwise available to students not of the Roma ethnicity, including experienced teachers and up-to-date curricula. More recently, the European Commission specifically targeted discrimination within Hungarian schools. Although EU member states are expected to abide by equal education frameworks, legal directives such as the Racial Equality Directive and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights oftentimes have little impact on institutionalized forms of ethnic discrimination. 

In 2012, The Slovakian Regional Court condemned the segregation of Roma in its schools. Although the ruling sent a message to the Slovakian Ministry of Education regarding the country’s international obligations to provide impartial access to education, it did little to prevent ethnic-based segregation. Not only do schools continue to run all-Roma classes, but Slovakian Roma pupils are faced with the prospect of being sent to “container schools”- schools made from material resembling shipping containers, and isolated from the rest of Slovak society. Apart from their extreme impoverishment, these schools are also homogeneous. When the guardians of Roma students attempt to enroll their children in non-container schools their pleas are refused by school board officials, who argue that their schools do not have the capacity to accommodate Roma pupils. Indeed, the container schools were instilled as a cursory solution to the problem of overcapacity. However, the “convenient” construction of substandard learning institutions within close geographic proximity to Roma settlements is nothing other than an arm of ethnic discrimination and social exclusion, as noted by Amnesty International. Recent reports delineate Slovakia’s shortcomings in guaranteeing its Roma citizens equal treatment.

The European Roma community also faces another kind of widespread segregation. Roma pupils are frequently placed in learning disability schools, regardless of scholastic comprehension. A 2013 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights remarked that Hungary’s systematic misdiagnosis of learning disabilities violated the European Convention on Human Rights. A 2012 report by the Roma Education Fund highlights the prejudicial nature of such entrance level examinations, focusing specifically on their cultural and linguistic biases.

Presently, cases of outright denial to enroll Romani children to academic institutions continue to remain prominent. The mayors of several French municipalities refused to enroll Roma children in public schools on the basis of lack of certification. Certification, however, is not easily achieved by Roma parents as informal settlements are almost never recognized by government officials. As identity documents remain largely inaccessible to Roma individuals, most families thus remain under the status of statelessness. Thus, admission, in most cases, is granted only after the intervention of the French Ombudsmen. A recent article by the New York Times highlights the bureaucratic obstacles Roma students face when attempting to gain access to French schools. Recently, the country made headlines due to the forced evacuation of hundreds of Roma families.

Former Columbia Law professor Jack Greenberg linked the Roma battle for equal education to the American Civil Rights Movement. Both groups have experienced the harrowing realities of slavery, societal disenfranchisement, and discrimination, propagated in part by stereotyping in biased media. Just as African Americans fought for the right for citizenship in the 19th century, countless stateless European Roma individuals embark on a similar mission today. The doctrine of “separate but equal” plagues much of contemporary European society. Schools today segregate non-Roma students from their Roma peers, providing the latter with substandard educational resources; the case of Horváth and Kiss v Hungary bears a resemblance to Brown v Board of Education. Although both rely on the concept of strategic litigation, the successful implementation of anti-discriminatory education policy is currently a far reach for contemporary Europe. It will require not only the willingness of policymakers, but also the active mobilization of Roma civil society. Locally, individual schools should engage in active redistricting in order to achieve ethnic diversity within academic institutions, as well as incorporate Romani culture into standing curricula to promote diversity and ethnic tolerance. It is well within the means of any school within the EU to guarantee an environment based on social inclusion and academic equity. Likewise, it is crucial that international bodies, such as the European Commission and European Union,  apply political pressure on national governments to uphold international and national legislative standards of equality.  The implementation of such standards and their effects on academic institutions should be monitored by national bodies, benefiting from sustainability through the intersection of interests of both grassroot NGOs and international donors.

Claudia Kania is a freelance writer and independent researcher. Her most recent work has been featured by the Oxford Human Rights Hub, the Yale Broad Recognition, and the University of Cambridge Centre of Human Rights and Governance. Her research interests include minority rights, gender violence, and education policy.

“Are Refugees Really Not Welcome?”

by Courtney McGinn and Reina Wehbi

2 MAR 2017

“#RefugeesNotWelcome: Making Gendered Sense of Transnational Asylum Politics on Twitter” by Inga Ingulfsen is the winning paper of the 2016 Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights, an interdisciplinary writing competition organized by the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. In 2017, Ingulfsen wrote a follow-up article to #RefugeesNotWelcome  addressing why critical feminist scholarship is now more important than ever.

In this piece, Ingulfsen creatively uses new methodologies to explore the “contentious landscape of asylum politics” by analyzing the gendered discourses used by Twitter users who tweet with the hashtag #refugeesnotwelcome. In doing so, Ingulfsen unveiled that Twitter users justify refugee exclusion by imaging themselves as a “White Western Enlightened community” in binary opposition to refugees, who are deemed threats to their community. This process of binary construction is inherently gendered due to the fact that refugees (specifically Muslim refugees) are often depicted as barbaric, violent men who frequently objectify, abuse, and oppress women.

In the beginning, Ingulfsen gives insights into the evolution of contemporary asylum politics through history, statistics and a comparison of attitudes of different western communities towards asylum and immigration. She also showcases the increasing challenges faced by both refugees and asylum regimes who are sometimes unable to accommodate the large influx of migrants.

Since Twitter today serves as a platform for the “global flow of real-time reactions and opinions” worldwide, Ingulfsen sheds the light on users’ different patterns of behavior. She describes the mainstream pattern as “unequal participation” because the majority of the content on Twitter is produced by a small group of opinion makers who shape the public discourse. The majority of Twitter users disseminate the material through “re-tweeting” what that small group of opinion leaders have to say. Throughout her argument, Ingulfsen reflects on the impact of such a course of online activity on the refugee crisis.

Ingulfsen then explores the gendered discursive strategies employed by Twitter users who ‘imagine’ refugees as ‘not welcome.’ Her research methodology focuses on analyzing English-language tweets with the hashtag #refugeesnotwelcome, guiding the reader into the steps of her analysis process. To explain her findings, Ingulfsen presents a set of tweets that perceive the Muslim migrants as culturally different, barbaric, and oppressive; thus justifying their exclusion. In the end, Ingulfsen stresses on the importance of deconstructing anti-immigrant rhetoric.

This piece comes at a very troublesome time for refugees and immigration in general. Recently, President Trump signed an executive order to keep refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations out of the United States for a specified period of time. Refugees and immigrants were banned from entering the country for 120 days. The countries affected are Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. Even more daunting is the fact that the White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, said more countries could be added to Trump’s order in the future.

Although green card holders and individuals with valid visas were supposed to be excluded from the ban, that was not what actually played out. As reported by CNN, some travelers who were in the air when Trump signed the order were not able to enter the country when they landed. Some were detained and others were sent back to the country of origin. The confusion of who was included or excluded from the travel ban came from the fact that career homeland security staff were only allowed to see the final details of the order on the day it was signed by Trump. In the following days, airports struggled to adjust to the new directive. [1]

Although presidents have broad power in shaping immigration policy, many deem this executive order as unconstitutional based on its discriminatory nature. On its face, the order does not discriminate on the basis of religion or even mention Muslims. The Supreme Court of the United States has held that a facially neutral law may still be deemed unconstitutional based on the discriminatory intent of that law. In regards to Trump’s intent, Professor Corey Brettschnieder from Brown University stated the following:

[A] closer look at the executive order’s origins makes clear that it is a direct assault on the fundamental constitutional values of equal protection and religious freedom. How do we know this? Because Trump’s adviser, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, told us so.

Interviewed on Fox News on January 28, Giuliani explained how the administration’s immigration policy morphed from one that was obviously unconstitutional to one that is more subtly so. Host Jeanine Pirro asked, “Does the ban have anything to do with religion?” In response, Giuliani said, “When [Trump] first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.’” “It,” in this case, of course, is a ban on Muslims. Giuliani’s admission is a textbook case of drafting an order in a way that avoids overt declaration of animus against a religious or ethnic group, while retaining the motive and much of the effect.[2]

Similarly, lower courts have already shown their resistance. In New York, a federal judge granted an emergency stay for citizens of the countries included in the ban and ruled they cannot be removed from the U.S. Similarly, in Boston, federal judges ruled officials cannot detain a person on the basis of Trump’s executive order.[3] In Washington, a federal court issued a stay, which stopped detained travelers from being sent back to their home country. After the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments over whether to lift the temporary halt to the travel ban, the three judge panel unanimously held that the travel ban will remained blocked.[4] Although there has been great opposition to the Trump Administration’s actions thus far, things look far from over. On February 9, 2017, in response to the 9th Circuit’s decision, Trump took to Twitter per usual, stating, “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” Trump is expected to issue a replacement order in the near future.

Instigated by anti-immigration xenophobic rhetoric, hundreds of cases of hateful harassment or intimidation have been reported during the month after election day.[5] Hate speech and bias-related incidents took place on streets, schools and groceries.[6] According to CNN, overall reported hate crime rate spiked 6% since the elections. However, the actual rate could be higher since the majority of incidents go unreported.[7]

Due to today’s current issues, Ingulfsen’s emphasis on the importance of deconstructing anti-immigrant rhetoric could not be more appropriate. Inga Ingulfsen’s presented her research to the data and research team at UN Women. You can view the complete published paper here.

Courtney McGinn is an LLM student at Texas Law, concentrating in Human Rights and Comparative Constitutional Law, and member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

Reina Wehbi is a Fulbright grantee from Lebanon currently pursuing her LL.M in Human Rights and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Texas at Austin. She graduated with an LL.B from the Lebanese University in Beirut.

Oscar Night Winners Bring Human Rights Issues Center Stage

by Briana D. Perez

1 MAR 2017

On a night usually reserved for celebrating Hollywood elites, human rights violations around the world were featured front and center in several winner’s acceptance speeches. Especially in the categories that celebrated international achievement in filmmaking, winners did not hesitate to make strong statements in support of inclusion, tolerance, and peace.

Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi won the Oscar for best foreign language film for “The Salesman.” Farhadi, however, was not in attendance to accept his award. In a statement, read by Iranian-American astronaut Anousheh Ansari, Farhadi denounced President Trump’s immigration executive order, saying, “My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the US.” The statement concluded, “Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ categories creates fear.” Before the broadcast, the five directors nominated in the best foreign language film category released a joint statement, where they denounced “the climate of fanaticism and nationalism we see today in the US and some many other countries.”

In the best short documentary category, “White Helmets” took home the statue. The 40-minute short focuses on Syria’s civil war and a volunteer rescue group working in rebel-controlled areas of the country. When director Orlando von Einsiedel accepted the award, he called the audience to stand and applaud to show their support for the Syrian people and an end to the six-year long war. A cinematographer who worked on the film, Syrian Khaled Khatib, was barred from entering the U.S. and could not attend the awards ceremony.

These two big winners, however, were not the only ones to discuss politics from the stage. Italian-born Alessandro Bertolazzi dedicated his award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling to “all the immigrants.” Presenter Gael Garcia Bernal specifically addressed President Trump’s proposed border wall, saying, “As a Mexican, as a Latin American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I am against any form of wall that wants to separate us.” In addition, several stars, including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ruth Negga, wore blue ribbons to demonstrate support for the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a statement that encapsulated the overall mood of the evening, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs pronounced, “Tonight is proof that art has no borders, art has no single language and art does not belong to a single faith.”

Briana D. Perez is a J.D. student at Texas Law, Rapoport Center Fellow, and a member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

Ann Swidler on the Romance of AIDS Altruism

by Megan Tobias Neely and Maro Youssef

22 FEB 2017

How is culture embedded within institutions? This central question drives the research of Ann Swidler, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. The interplay between culture and institutions has taken her from investigating how middle-class Americans talk about love to studying the international AIDS effort in sub-Saharan Africa.

Last November, the Power, History, and Society group in the Sociology Department here at UT-Austin brought Swidler to campus present her current research in a talk titled “A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa.” Through this timely study, Swidler sought to understand how two institutional orders—that of the international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and of the local village—meet on the ground. She asked: How do NGOs focus their efforts? And how are these efforts implemented in a local cultural and institutional context?

To answer these questions, Swidler, her colleague Susan Cotts Watkins, and a team of 60 post-doctorates, graduate students, and undergraduate students undertook a massive data collection project. From 2004-2016, the team conducted a “Motel Ethnography,” surveying 4,000 Malawian villages, interviewing 2,000 villagers and 200 donors and brokers, and recording 1,200 ethnographic journal entries.

The researchers found that the primary efforts of NGOs focused on trainings. Topics covered everything from “Training for Home-Based Care” to “Youth Peer Education Training” to “Business Management.” These training programs were desirable to NGOs and villagers alike, because they were perceived as sustainable, cost-effective, and empowering. Attendance included a meal and a small amount of compensation. The programs also provided opportunities to employ villagers.

However, the efficacy of trainings came into question in the case of one woman who, despite completing stigma awareness training and attending support groups, failed to acquire practical information on the antiretroviral drugs available to her. Not all training programs, according to Swidler, were equally effective in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS.

This and other shortcomings in the NGOs efforts, Swidler found, arose when the priorities of foreign volunteers were disconnected from local needs. Many volunteers had an idealized fantasy of helping the Other, which Swidler called the “romance of AIDS altruism.” As volunteers encountered difficulties, they became disillusioned and often gave up, citing “misunderstandings” with local intermediaries who were necessary in implementing the NGO programs. Swidler identified how these “misunderstandings” had to do with clashes between the volunteers’ expectations and reality. It had disastrous consequences: When an NGO terminates its programs, the flow of aid throughout the supply chain ceases.

Among the more long-lasting programs, Swidler found that the extent to which NGO efforts were subverted or indigenized depended on the NGO’s relationships with local intermediaries. According to Swidler, when the cultural expectations of an institution are transposed to a new setting, the practices and expectations of the local network “colonize” the imported institutional logics. It is a dialectical rather than one-sided process.

As the result of this dynamic, Swidler found that certain training programs were perceived as more effective by both the NGOs and the villagers. For example, trainings designed to eliminate stigma were well-received because they aligned with local cultural beliefs in a shared obligation to care for the sick and suffering. The programs most effective in changing sexual practice, according to Swidler and her team, framed contraceptives and self-protection as a radical act.

Swidler’s research on the efforts of NGOs in the fight against AIDS in Malawi sheds much-needed light on why transnational health programs do or do not work. In this case, the most effective NGOs worked with local intermediaries to understand the cultural and institutional context of the people they served. The Malawi case demonstrates how culture and institutions must be understood as deeply intertwined in order to make meaningful health interventions.

This commentary was also featured in UT Austin Soc. Listen to the audio of Professor Swidler’s talk on UT Box.

Megan Tobias Neely is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, graduate fellow in the Urban Ethnography Lab, and on the editorial committee of the Working Paper Series at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. Her research interests are in gender, race, and class inequality in the workplace, financial sector, and political systems, as well as how these issues relate to the recent growth in widening economic inequality. Maro Youssef is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and graduate fellow in the Urban Ethnography Lab. Her research interests include gender,  political sociology, culture, social movements, organizations, and North Africa and the Middle East.

New Research on the Relationships between Businesses and Military Regimes under Latin America’s Cold War

by Eyal Weinberg

13 FEB 2017

State terror and human rights violations during Latin America’s authoritarian phase have been amply studied in the past two decades. Scholarship has revealed how Cold War military dictatorships and juntas-headed national security states detained, tortured, and disappeared hundreds of thousands of civilians— from indigenous groups in Central America to political activists in the Southern Cone. Studies have also illuminated how the relations of military regimes with various international and domestic forces—among them U.S. policymakers, Church representatives, technocratic experts, and industrialists—enabled and facilitated that repression. Yet many facets of the repressive apparatus remain under-examined.

Recently, scholars are returning to scrutinize the interplay between business corporations and Latin American regimes. Early literature has already unraveled the close ties between business elites and authoritarian rules, from the state’s reliance on industrialists in developing a pro-market, open economy, to industrialists’ consent and sometimes-active support of coups d’état and ensuing state-led repression.  Today, newly available archives and updated approaches to the study of Latin America’s Cold War allow researchers to revisit some of these issues, as well as other questions that explore the entanglements between corporations and regimes.

Studies exemplifying this new wave of research were presented last September in a special workshop at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Presentations shed light on the changing nature of relationships between businesses and dictatorships across states and over time, analyzing the transitions from collaborations to conflicts and even opposition. They also examined the direct and indirect roles companies played in state-sponsored repression.  And they explicated how the regimes’ policy planning met business interests to introduce new domestic industries—healthcare, energy, and pharmaceutical markets, to name a few. The histories of multinational corporations under the military rules received a particular focus. Moving beyond the traditional interpretation of the authoritarian state as a guarantor of international companies, papers focused on how subsidiaries dealt with both state apparatuses and parent corporations, typically located in Europe or North America.

In Argentina, for example, German companies Deutz, Siemens, and Daimler-Benz held subsidiaries operating during the Dirty War. Case studies examined how these businesses reacted to workers’ protests and union demands, as well as how they handled reports of disappeared people in their correspondence with the distant board of directors. In 2015, for example, a team of Argentinian researchers supported by Argentina’s Ministry of Justice published a detailed report that investigates the responsibility of domestic and multinational companies in regard to human rights violations carried out on the premises of their factories. The workshop’s papers also payed considerable attention to the relationship of Volkswagen do Brasil (a subsidiary of the German car manufacturer) with the Brazilian regime and its counterinsurgency agencies. The Brazilian National Truth Commission (2012-2014) concluded that over 70 corporations, among them Volkswagen, provided security agencies with blacklists of unionizing and “problematic” workers, some of whom were later detained or fired. The workshop’s presentations illustrated the controversy over the extent of VW’s collaboration with state repression, a result of inaccessible or missing archival material. For now, appeals are still in review at the office of the Attorney General.

As the last example demonstrates, there is much to reveal about the intricate relationships between corporations and authoritarian regimes in Latin America, and particularly about their relation to human rights violations. Further archival research, as well as intellectual exchanges focused on that theme, will expand current knowledge and scholarship.

Eyal Weinberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin and member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

A Move Towards Acceptance of Transgender Women in the Middle East

by Courtney McGinn

10 NOV 2016

On May 27, 2016, Talleen Abu Hanna, 21, became the first Miss Trans Israel. On an international scale, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals face discrimination not only by those in their communities, but also by the legislation and court systems that are entrusted with the duty to protect society. In most Middle Eastern countries,[1] homosexual and transgendered individuals are shunned, mistreated, harassed, and even killed. Due to the recent transgender beauty pageant held in Israel, there may be a cultural shift to public acceptance for the LGBT community in this part of the world.

Out of the seventeen countries in the Middle East, eleven are state parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[2] Yet at least thirteen countries in the region still criminalize homosexuality. In Iran, sodomy is a capital offense often punished by execution.[3] In Saudi Arabia and Yemen, sodomy is punishable by death. In other countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and Syria, homosexual and transgendered individuals face constant threats of imprisonment.  Even in countries that have not yet enacted anti-LGBT laws, individuals are arbitrarily punished in retaliation for their sexual identity.

The Israeli government is much more friendly to the LGBT community in comparison to the rest of the Middle East. In March 2014, the government adopted Amendment No. 4 to the Pupil’s Rights Law 5761-2000, whereby sexual orientation and gender identity were added to the prohibited grounds of discrimination against pupils.[4] With this amendment, the government ensured that transgender men and women would be acknowledged as their chosen gender and allowed the same benefits as the rest of the citizens in the country. Unlike other countries in the region, sodomy is not a crime in Israel. This year, Israel will also host its 18th annual Tel Aviv Pride Parade, which is expected to draw nearly 200,000 participants, 35,000 of which are coming from countries worldwide.

The acceptance of the LGBT community in Tel Aviv is celebrated around the world. In 2012, Tel Aviv was named the world’s top gay city by GayCities.com, and this year, was named “the gayest city on earth” by the Boston Globe.[5] Although this shows great progress within Israel, there is still room for improvements. The rest of Israel is not as accepting of the LGBT community as Tel Aviv, and hate crimes against members of the LGBT community are still common. Furthermore, under the current law, same-sex couples cannot marry and are barred from surrogacy programs.[6] By hosting the Miss Trans Israel pageant in years to come, Israel has the opportunity instill into its citizens a growing acceptance of the LGBT community.

The Miss Trans Israel is much more than a beauty pageant; it provides a platform for women to talk about their circumstances and raise awareness of the LGBT community. As the winner of Miss Trans Israel, Talleen Abu Hanna was able to share her story in Barcelona at the Miss Trans Star International pageant, where she won first runner up. The founder of Miss Trans Star International, Thara Wells, emphasized that the pageant “is an attempt to engage society. We want to go beyond beauty and tell the life story of each girl.”[7] In order to raise awareness, there must be platforms for individuals to speak out about the discrimination, violence, and harassment they face due to their sexual orientation and identity. These beauty pageants not only provide that platform, but also encourage transgender women to embrace their femininity instead of hiding it.

Work Cited

[1] For purposes of this commentary, the Middle East consists of the following countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
[2] Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations, ‘Ratification status by country or by treaty’, http://indicators.ohchr.org.
[3] Islamic Penal Code of Iran of 1991, Book 2, Part 2 (Punishment for Sodomy), Article 110: “Punishment for sodomy is killing; the Sharia judge decides on how to carry out the killing.”
[4] Human Rights Committee Concluding observations on the fourth periodic report of Israel, CCPR/C/ISR/CO/4, November 21, 2014.
[5] Meet the Arab Woman Who Has Just Become the First Miss Trans Israel, (May 31, 2016), http://time.com/4352201/talleen-abu-hanna-first-miss-trans-israel/.
[6] Id.
[7] Miss Brazil Rafaela Manfrini Crowned Miss Trans Star International 2016 (Sept. 21, 2016), http://www.newnownext.com/transgender-beauty-pageant-europe/09/2016/.

Courtney McGinn is a LLM student at Texas Law and member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee

Violence Committed by Americans against (Foreign) Americans

by Dr. Barbara Harlow

10 DEC 2015

Mark Danner’s portrayal of the muted denunciation of human rights abuses during the now more than decade-long U.S.-led global “War on Terror” and the remission of the once honorable paradigm of the exposure of injustice leading to redress were especially poignant reminders of the current crisis in humanitarian thought and activism. In her post, Natalie Davidson speculates that the lack of public protest and political accountability derives from the fact that the abuses “mainly affect foreigners living outside U.S. territory.” That explanation, however, is complicated, if not obviated, by the death-by-drone of Anwar al-Awlaki (also al-Aulaqi) in Yemen on 30 September 2011. Awlaki, a U.S.-born and U.S.-educated radical Muslim preacher, had been the target of a protracted mission to eliminate him, in an operation code-named “Objective Troy.” In his recent book, which takes its title from that code-name, prize-winning journalist Scott Shane reads that assassination mission to “eliminate” the compatriot as a near-epic mortal combat between the “president” and the “terrorist,” assisted by none other than the “drone.” Barely two weeks after his own violent demise, Awlaki’s teenaged son Abdulrahman was also killed while eating at an outdoor café in Yemen (some say accidentally, others aver the teenager’s alleged own “radicalization” as the rationale), again in a lethal drone strike. He, too, was a U.S. citizen.

In April 2014, the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. granted the defendants’ “motion to dismiss” in the case of Nasser al-Aulaqi v Leon Panetta et al. (2012). Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Nasser al-Awlaqi, father of Anwar and grandfather of Abdulrahman, had charged the named U.S. officials with the unlawful deaths and extrajudicial executions without “charge, trial, or conviction” of his near relatives. The senior al-Awlaki had brought a similar charge in an earlier case against Barack Obama, Leon Panetta (director of the CIA), and Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense) for violations of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibiting “unreasonable seizure.” His claim in Al-Aulaqi v. Obama (2010) that “targeted killing” of U.S. citizens violated the Constitution had likewise been dismissed, with the Court noting in a lengthy opinion that the plaintiff’s claims raised “non-justiciable political questions.”

The District Court’s repeated, if predictable, dismissals have so far failed to galvanize concerted rejoinders from a larger U.S. citizenry. Yet, the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the death by drone of the imam and his son, and their elder’s enduring insistence on the rule of law and the integrity of the U.S. Constitution have not been dismissed from either the political annals of contemporary history or their popular cultural re-enactments. In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill’s 2013 monumental account of the construction of “the world as a battlefield” and George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s nefarious waging of the “global war on terror,” Scahill interweaves Nasser al-Awlaki’s personal struggle for justice for his son and grandson with what Scahill calls the “story of how the United States came to embrace assassination as a central part of its security policy” and the “story of the expansion of covert U.S. wars.” The latter includes imbroglios that feature “stories of insiders who have spent their lives in the shadows,” or, in the words of Dick Cheney, “on the dark side.” This storied history of Anwar al-Aulaki’s political odyssey and ensuing family saga is also featured in Shane’s Objective Troy (2015). The book narrates the parallel lives of Barack Obama and Anwar al-Aulaki, although, as Shane tellingly if cynically admits in his Prologue, the two “men would never meet, except virtually, clashing in the battleground of ideas, where the cleric’s mastery of the internet would serve his jihadist cause, and violently, when Obama dispatched the drones that carried out Awlaki’s execution.”

Scahill is adamant, even against the opinionated rulings of the U.S. District Court and the apparent lack of interest on the part of Awlaki’s “fellow Americans,” that “Awlaki’s case would cut to the heart of one of the key questions raised by the increasing role targeted assassinations were playing in U.S. foreign policy. Could the American government assassinate its own citizens without due process?” And Shane predicts that Awlaki would become a “bigger brand,” a veritable living legend, given that, as the investigative journalist describes the phenomenon, “One factor in the dark portrayal of drones [is] that stories trump facts in the human imagination, and drone strikes produced compelling stories.”

If the story has not compelled the political or legal change that some might have anticipated, Anwar al-Awlaki’s biographically tragic fate has served, whether in sinister martyrdom or with heroic mien, as legal – and cultural – precedent, as drones themselves are set to become the very stuff of the contemporary international thriller. Indeed, in Drone (2013), the first of political scientist Mike Maden’s fictional Troy Pearce trilogy, the protagonist – a former U.S. government employee and current CEO of a “private security firm specializing in drone technologies” – explains that “a considerable plurality of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum were still troubled by the use of lethal force against American citizens without benefit of trial, whether or not drones were used, even if the threat was imminent and catastrophic.” The same issue, however paraphrased, will haunt Maden’s two subsequent Troy Pearce novels, Blue Warrior (2014) and Drone Command (2015). It also underwrites former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism Richard A. Clarke’s Sting of the Drone (2014) and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’s Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage (2012).

It would seem after all, as Natalie Davidson has noted, that if “Danner asks how we can return to legality,” it is all the more the case that “the story he tells can also be understood as one in which law, with its indeterminacy and malleability, its sometimes absurd fictions and bureaucratic vocabulary, plays a key role in reassuring government officials that even acts such as torture and execution are acceptable” (emphasis added). In a world where legal and political discourse are imbued with fictions that enable violence, might fiction ironically be the most promising arena in which to challenge targeted killing?

Perhaps not. Jeremy Corbyn might not write international thrillers but the newly elected British Labour leader did protest strenuously – to the thrill of some of his constituents and the indignant ire of others – the death-by-U.S.-drone of one of his compatriots. Mohammed Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John,” was slain in November 2015 in the targeted killing of a British citizen, a deed that the nation’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, had condoned as committed in “self-defense.” Cameron’s reference to self-defense echoed the rationalizations of his U.S. counterparts in their rendition of ratiocination in the waging of the “forever war” executed by UAVs (“unmanned aerial vehicles”) or, as some weapons analysts and “whodunnit” fans might prefer, RPAs (remotely piloted aircraft). Whether disarticulated in legal language or spellbound through generic whodunnit intrigues, the questions persist, “loiter” in drone-speak. Might the still muted decibels of denunciation yet become a mobilized chorus of dissent and resistance? What would such a raucous uproar require? And will the culprits at last be brought to justice?

Barbara Harlow is the Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor of English Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin and is on the WPS Editorial Committee. She is the author of Resistance Literature, Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention, After Lives: Legacies of Revolutionary Writing, and co-editor of Imperialism and Orientalism: A Documentary Sourcebook and Archives of Empire: Vol I and Vol II. 

What Do We Do With What We Know? The War on Terror and Human Rights

by Natalie Davidson

9 DEC 2015

We at the Rapoport Center were privileged last month to hear journalist Mark Danner talk about human rights and the War on Terror at the inaugural Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights, titled “Spiraling Down: Human Rights, Endless War.” Danner offered an incisive analysis of the current state of the United States’ War on Terror, an analysis that should not only sound alarm bells among European leaders as they choose military strikes as their response to the latest attack by ISIS in Paris, but also raises difficult questions about the part a human rights framework could play in putting an end to torture, indefinite detention, targeted assassinations and wiretapping by the U.S. executive.

Danner nostalgically described the Watergate scandal, which exposed the Nixon administration’s illegal activities against political opponents and led to the president’s resignation under threat of impeachment, as his political coming-of-age. Watergate, in Danner’s view, is a demonstration of “how the system is supposed to work”: a revelation of governmental wrongdoing by journalists, followed by investigations by Congressional committees and the courts, and finally punishment when the President resigns.

For Danner, contemporary American politics operate according to a very different logic. Instead of cycles of injustice-revelation-justice, human rights are now in a state of “frozen scandal.” Torture by and at the instigation of the U.S. military has been widely written about, including in a long Senate report. The practice has been denounced by President Obama, but other forms of gross human rights violations soon emerged. The Obama administration has made extensive use of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia, killing between 3,500 and 5,000 individuals. Meanwhile, prisoners cleared for release continue to languish at Guantánamo under the legal fiction that they can neither be tried nor released, for they are prisoners held captive until the end of hostilities. Although these governmental abuses are well-known, there is no change, no expiation. The liberal assumption that exposing injustice will lead to its correction has not been borne out. This insight leads Sissy Farenthold to ask, when introducing Mark Danner: “what are we going to do about what we know?”

Danner sees the “frozen scandal” of human rights violations as one facet of the state of endless war inaugurated in September 2001 when Congress authorized the use of military force in the aftermath of September 11. The War on Terror has not only failed spectacularly to reduce terrorism, as the rise of ISIS and reemergence of the Taliban indicate. It has also provided the key infrastructure for torture, for it transforms “prison without trial” into “wartime detention,” and “torture” into “enhanced interrogation technique.” The war, though indiscernible in Americans’ everyday life, allows gross governmental violence to appear legal. Drone killing is permitted by government lawyers when there is a “continuous imminent threat”. Danner reports that lawyers in the Obama administration are now developing the concept of “elongated imminence” to further detail the conditions under which targeted killings is justified.

Where do we go from here? Sitting in the audience and listening to Danner, it seemed to me that it is not only the Watergate model that seems to have waned. If exposure and knowledge of human rights abuses do nothing to curb their commission, the traditional model of human rights reporting also seems insufficient. Or perhaps these two models are not so much broken as inapt to address violence committed by Americans against foreigners. The Watergate model assumed governmental abuses of American citizens; the human rights model traditionally targets repression by a foreign government of its own citizens. The human rights abuses in the War on Terror, in contrast, mainly affect foreigners living outside U.S. territory. What avenues of justice-seeking can address this sort of violence?

One path currently popular among international human rights activists around the world for addressing state-sponsored violence is criminal prosecution. Yet Danner does not think that prosecutions of offenders, whether high-ranking officials or low-level torturers, are feasible. Nor will they achieve much change in his view. He suggests instead that a truth commission might lead to a profound political acknowledgment and rejection of torture. Most importantly, Americans must combat the politics of fear fueling their country’s permanent war.

What part should law and human rights activism play in pulling the United States out of the state of exception? Danner asks how we can return to legality – but the story he tells can also be understood as one in which law, with its indeterminacy and malleability, its sometimes absurd fictions and bureaucratic vocabulary, plays a key role in reassuring government officials that even acts such as torture and execution are acceptable. Is talk of “continuous imminent threat” to justify targeted killings a perversion of law, or is this legal logic at work? What tools do human rights activists have at their disposal to effectively combat such uses of legal discourse? If denunciation is insufficient, and what is needed is political mobilization, how does human rights activism retain its relevance?

Natalie Davidson is a PhD Candidate at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law, and  a 2015-16 research fellow at the Rapoport Center where she chaired the WPS Editorial Committee.

Nike’s Girl Effect and the Privatization of Feminism

by Megan Tobias Neely

21 NOV 2015

This commentary is a response to Maria Hengeveld’s paper, “Girl Branded: Nike, the UN and the Construction of the Entrepreneurial Adolescent Girl Subject.”

In 2009, Nike launched the Girl Effect, a “brand-led movement” targeting the alleviation of poverty among girls worldwide. The initiative advocates for investing in adolescent girls to create future workers and stimulate economic growth. For those who associate the Nike brand with anti-sweatshop movement protests over labor standards the Girl Effect may seem counterintuitive. Indeed, Nike moved to eliminate child labor in its factories only fifteen years ago, and the poor working conditions at Nike factories remain a concern for activists today.

Activists here at UT-Austin have taken up this issue. Our chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops demands the university to rethink its $250 million dollar contract with Nike. Last April, former Nike worker and worker’s rights activist Noi Supalai spoke on campus. She described how in Thailand—where women constitute a majority of garment workers—workers face unrealistic expectations for production, round-the-clock schedules, months of back wages, and little time to care for their families. Supalai led a worker’s union to negotiate improved conditions; however, Nike never responded to their requests.

Nike’s track record on worker’s rights raises the question as to whether the Girl Effect is a “brand-led movement” or a movement to re-brand Nike. In the winning paper for the 2015 Audre Rapoport Prize, Maria Hengeveld astutely argues that the Girl Effect only serves to legitimize Nike’s reputation and image by obscuring its own role in creating poverty while it rebrands itself as a proponent of human rights and gender equality. Hengeveld calls attention to how the campaign suggests simplistic solutions to alleviate poverty in the Global South that fail to consider how companies like Nike contribute to creating a global economy that exacerbates poverty among women and girls. By blaming gender inequality on the girl’s communities and placing the burden of alleviating inequality on the girls themselves, Nike does not offer viable solutions to patriarchy, explains Hengeveld.

The problem with Nike’s approach to girls’ empowerment, according to Hengeveld, stems from its neoliberal ideology that places the market as the appropriate avenue for promoting liberty, opportunity, and equality. Although the Girl Effect may have positive outcomes for individual girls, Hengeveld demonstrates how campaigns like Nike’s do little to alleviate poverty among women, because the employment available to them is low-paid and insecure.

Scholars like Radhika Balakrishnan and Jason Hickel, who spoke at the Rapoport Center’s recent Inequality & Human Rights conference, echo Hengeveld’s concerns. Balakrishnan has argued that women’s empowerment in the workforce cannot be achieved without improving conditions for laborers generally. Hickel (2014) too has examined the contradictions of the Girl Effect in which “women and girls are made to bear the responsibility for boot-strapping themselves out of poverty that is caused in part by the very institutions that purport to save them” (p. 1355).

Indeed, Hengeveld explains how Nike’s corporate agenda contributes to a neoliberal system that exacerbates poverty and inequality worldwide, with disastrous consequences for both women and men. An in-depth investigation of these consequences is the next step in Hengeveld’s research: Earlier this year, she interviewed 25 women who work for Nike in Vietnam about the factory and living conditions they face.

The solution to improving these conditions, according to Hengeveld, does not lie in resolving inequality between men and women workers in the Global South but in changing a neoliberal system that rests upon the disenfranchisement of the poor. As Hengeveld contends, “in practice, equalizing the labor standards, market access and wages of women in Nike’s factories with their male counterparts will hardly be emancipatory or liberating if male workers are not protected by decent job protections, collective bargaining rights and living wages” (p. 12).

While I agree with Hengeveld, I fear that campaigns to improve labor standards overall will not necessarily empower women unless addressing gender inequality is a central goal. Garment work is devalued precisely because it has been deemed “women’s work,” which is crucial to understanding the shortcomings of Nike’s gender campaign. Moreover, as Joan Acker (2004) argues, “gender is embedded in the structuring and ongoing practices of globalizing capitalism” (p. 23). Thus, finding a solution requires an analysis of how gender structures the exploitation of these workers in the first place. In particular, an intersectional lens can shed light on how garment work is gendered, racialized, and nationalized.

For example, in 2013, the deplorable conditions of garment workers came to the world’s attention when a factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,138 workers and injuring 2,500 others. Yet mainstream media coverage of the disaster paid little attention to the fact that women comprise 80 percent of Bangladeshi garment workers, who face precarious working conditions and unsustainably low pay.

In fact, women compose a majority of garment workers throughout the Global South and are at the frontlines demanding change. Ethnographers Leslie Salzinger (2003) and Melissa Wright (2006) demonstrate how corporations portray these women’s labor as pliable, temporary, and surplus to devalue it in the pursuit of capitalist profit. Thus, gender, race, and poverty are deeply connected in global capitalism.

Yet, liberal feminists maintain that employment will liberate women by providing them with more bargaining power in their families and communities. Nike’s Girl Effect is part of a resurgence of neoliberal feminism (also called transnational business feminism), which contends that the best avenue for women’s empowerment is through the private sector. This movement has gone global through campaigns led by U.N. Women, the World Bank, and the IMF to promote economic opportunities for women.

Socialist and women of color feminists, however, have long contended that greater participation in paid employment does not liberate women, because capitalism has been contingent on the exploitation of women of color and low-income white women (see Hartman, Hooks, Davis, and Nakano Glenn). Transnational feminist scholars like Esther Chow and Aihwa Ong pioneered intersectional scholarship on global capitalism, identifying how it constructs hierarchies according to nationality, race, class, and gender that perpetuate inequality.

While paid labor may, to an extent, improve some women’s status in society, it may also subject them to precarious and risky working conditions inextricably tied to their position as women of color in the Global South. Moreover, it is the devaluation of women’s labor that makes the profits of corporations like Nike possible. How might recognizing this lead to more effective campaigns to empower women in this neoliberal era?

Megan Tobias Neely is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the WPS Editorial Committee. Her current research is on gender and work in the financial services industry.