Author: Breanna Silva

by Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

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Abstract

How do international structure and African agency constrain or propel the search for truly “durable solutions” to the African refugee situation? This is the central question that I seek to answer in this paper. I would argue that existing approaches to resolving refugee issues in Africa are problematic, and key to addressing this dilemma is a clear and keen understanding and apprehension of the phenomenon as grounded in history, states’ self-interested actions, international politics, and humanitarian practice. I suggest that these cardinal features of the African and international political system are the key obstacles to progress in the search for alternatives to African refugee trajectories, and that durable solutions have no chance of being truly durable if the current configuration of international and regional politics, actors, and policies persist.

About the Author

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso is an associate professor of Political Science at Babcock University in Nigeria. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Olajumoke’s research over the years has explored the positions of women in conflict and postconflict situations in Africa, with a particular focus on refugee and displacement concerns. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Liberia, and some in Nigeria and Geneva. Olajumoke has also researched broader issues in relation to the comparative politics of African states. She has co-edited four books and is also an editor and co-editor of two journals.

Dr. Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso currently serves as the acting Dean of the Veronica Adeleke School of Social Sciences at Babcock University, where she also teaches courses in international relations, peace and conflict studies and comparative politics. In fall 2018, Dr. Yacob-Haliso took part in the Visiting Professor/Practitioner Program, hosted by the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.

by Franziska Brachthäuser

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Abstract

With the introduction of Article 75 to the Rome Statute, the ICC has set the goal to establish a reparation system for victims of mass atrocities. While processes of reparation for victims are only beginning to take shape at the Court, problems become particularly complex in the context of sexual and gender-based crimes. How can one adequately respond to damages that go beyond what can be repaired by mere financial compensation?  And how can individual needs be addressed in mass atrocities? The limited legal mandate, legitimacy and funding of the ICC trigger doubts on the viability of its promises. 

The intersection of these two problems, a coherent reparation practice and acknowledgement of sexual violence in international crimes stand at the center of this study. It argues that the reparation system of the ICC as it stands is overburdened with the idea of full-fledged reparation. Ultimately, it  argues that the idea of reparative complementarity could offer a valuable alternative.

About the Author

Franziska Brachthäuser is currently clerking at the Appellate Court of Berlin (Rechtsreferendariat). She holds a Maîtrise en Droit from Panthéon Assas (Paris II) and an LL.M. in “International Criminal Law” (Amsterdam/Columbia University).

Keywords

International Criminal Court; Reparations; Sexual Violence ; Article 75 ; Reparative Complementarity

A previous version of this paper has been published in German: Franziska Brachthäuser, Der IStGH und die Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung, KJ 51, p. 57-66.

by Patricia M. Rodríguez

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Abstract

Peace with social justice has been elusive in Colombia, despite the series of laws and the latest peace negotiations to end the armed conflict that started in the 1960s. Instead of accepting top-down state-led legislation as the final word, grassroots movements in Cauca came together locally, regionally, and nationally to demand adherence to a minimal set of policies that brought human rights, peace, and social justice to the foreground of politics. What might civil society-centered debates over these policies and legislation mean in terms of challenging more mainstream human rights approaches and asymmetries of power in Colombia? This work draws on field research and secondary research to bring light to how solidarity-based communities and groups think about and construct alternative notions of territorial ordering and socio-economic rights. Civil society-led proposals center on demands for a “particular sort of state” to confront their dispossession (Bebbington et al. 2015, 265). At the local level, civil society-based territorial governance approaches that stress “flexible authority structures” (and not rigid rules that abide by state-led equations regarding multiculturalism, justice and territoriality) in the negotiation over territorial ordering can be a big part of the strategy of building conviviality, or coalitions. They also provide the basis on which to propose broader demands related to human rights on the ground, in a context of continued violence.

About the Author

Patricia M. Rodríguez is an Associate Professor of Politics at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. Her research interests include ethnic, peasant, and worker mobilizations in Latin America and the possibilities and challenges of cohesive interethnic alliance-building, and its consequences for democracy, social justice, human rights, and the environment. She is working on a book manuscript that explores the quest for ‘peace in the territories’ and the ways in which alternative economic, territorial, and socio-political proposals challenge dominant actors and forces to create space for a more dignified life in the so called post-conflict period. She has recently published an article on the civic strike in Buenaventura, Colombia, ‘The People Don’t Give up Dammit’ (Dollars and Sense, November/December 2017).

Keywords

Peace; Social Movements and Law; Colombia; Territorial Governance; Coalitions

by Michaela Bolton

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Abstract

The end of Apartheid marked the beginning of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it. It was recognised by the Constitution that the pursuit of national unity required reconciliation. In response, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (“TRC”) was established. Its central focus was to “promote unity and reconciliation in a spirit of understanding which transcends the conflicts and divisions of the past”.

The TRC identified at least three levels at which reconciliation needs to take place: reconciliation between victims and perpetrators; reconciliation at the community level; and reconciliation between the beneficiaries and the victims of the crime of Apartheid.

At the outset, the TRC recognised the magnitude of this exercise. Its quest for truth was viewed as a contribution to a much longer-term goal. The TRC gave its attention to uncovering the truth about gross violations of human rights. The decision was made to focus not on the effects of laws passed by the Apartheid government, but on human rights violations committed as specific political-criminal acts against specific individuals. Reconciliation at the first level (that between victims and perpetrators) was prioritised at the expense of second- and third-level reconciliation.

This begs the question of how the reconciliatory dialogue initiated by the TRC could be extended to the people that fell outside of the TRC’s purview. I argue that one of the most effective ways to pursue reconciliation at a community and national level is through cultural interventions. Often neglected as a mechanism of transitional justice, these interventions may be an integral stepping stone between the first-level individual reconciliation aspired to by a truth commission, and the broader reconciliation so indispensable after a regime of systemic human rights abuses.

About the Author

Michaela Bolton studied law and philosophy before obtaining her LL.B. degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. During her university years, she participated in various community service initiatives in disempowered South African communities. This exposure contributed to her keen interest in the law’s ability to deliver a society from a past of systemic human rights abuses, to a reality of unity and dignity. Michaela is an admitted attorney in South Africa and hopes to return to practice in the public interest sector. She is currently enrolled in New York University School of Law’s LL.M. program, where she is a Transitional Justice Leadership Scholar at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Her research interests include constitutional law, human rights, legal philosophy and transitional justice.

Keywords

Transitional justice, human rights abuses, reconciliation, national unity, and cultural / artistic interventions

by Leah Rodríguez

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Abstract:

This paper analyzes how US immigration law exacerbates the precarity of immigrants’ work situations in ways that demonstrate that insecure work is not a function of the neoliberal economic system alone; rather, it is partly a function of immigration law and bureaucracy.  Precarious work situations of immigrants in the US perpetuate social and economic inequality, labor rights abuses, and human rights abuses. The extent to which immigration law is the cause of immigrant workers’ precarious work situations explains why changes in labor law and human rights law are insufficient solutions to the issues that precarious work generates.

First, I discuss the history and uses of the term precarity.  I also explain how work authorization relates to immigration status in the US, and the role of the state in producing precarity.  In the second half of the paper, I use case studies from central Texas to illustrate why this relationship between worker status and immigration status is so problematic, and the various ways in which it breeds further precarity in work.  Ultimately, I address why labor law and human rights law are not the solution, although they can realistically help to mitigate the situation while substantive US immigration law reform is not likely at this political moment.

About the author:

Leah Rodriguez is a second-year law student at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas (JD expected 2019). She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies from the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She intends to work in immigration after graduating. Her passions include removal defense and ending immigrant detention.

by Tanja Herklotz

This paper finished third place in the the 2017 Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights. 

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Abstract:

As with other postcolonial states, India maintains a so-called “personal law system” in the area of family law, according to which individuals are governed by the laws of their respective religious community. For feminist and women’s rights activists in India — as in other parts of the global South — these personal laws create a positioning dilemma. On the one hand, there is the critique that personal laws are patriarchal and in need of reform as they often violate international human rights law by discriminating against women. On the other hand, many Indian feminists do not want to mimic the secular agenda of their Western counterparts when considering the reform of personal laws, but rather seek to accommodate cultural and religious identities.

Against the backdrop of broader debates on Third World Feminism,[1] intersectionality, legal universality and cultural relativism, this paper will outline the manifold feminist engagements with personal laws. Drawing on feminist scholarship and publications by Indian activists and women’s rights groups, I will differentiate: 1. the call for major state-led reforms (such as the introduction of a secular Uniform Civil Code), which draw on specific ideas of modernity and secularism, constitutional provisions and international human rights law, and 2. the call for community-led reforms, which accept legal pluralism as a fact and acknowledge the intersection of gender and religion. I relate these two positions to Amartya Sen’s[2] distinction between “arrangement-focused” and “realisation- focused” views of justice.

About the author:

Tanja Herklotz is a research fellow and PhD candidate at the Chair for Public and Comparative Law at Humboldt University Berlin. She holds an LLM degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She works primarily on topics related to law and gender, social movements, and the global South. For her research on the Indian women’s movement, she has spent several months in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

An earlier version of this paper is published in: Normative Pluralism and Human Rights: Social Normativities in Conflict, ed. by Kyriaki Topidi, Routledge, 2018.

[1] The terminology refers to Mohanty’s work. Her concept of Third World Women as an “imagined community” will be elaborated in the paper. Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991). Introduction: Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. In C. T. Mohanty, A. Russo & L. Torres (Eds.), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism: Indiana University Press.

[2] Amartya Sen (2009). The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

by Mihret Getabicha

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Abstract 

Although the establishment of the International Criminal Court remains a historic achievement in the field of international criminal law, the court is increasingly subject to criticism by some African leaders and due to the prosecution of African leaders. Understanding the reason for these critiques requires an appreciation of the innovations in international law that led to the court’s eventual establishment. This paper provides a brief legal history of international criminal law and uses case studies of two African situations in order to better understand contemporary debates around the prosecution of African Heads of State by international courts. As such, the paper offers useful background information for actors that may be unfamiliar with the trajectory of international criminal law and how historical developments continue to impact the perceived legitimacy of international criminal law in Africa.

Keywords: public international law, international criminal law, ICC, Africa, human rights

by Scott Squires

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Abstract

In many countries with large endowments of natural resource wealth, resource extraction is considered to be the primary driver of economic development and a major contributor to GDP. Often, however, natural resource extraction is environmentally degenerative and engenders backlash among indigenous communities, conservationists, outspoken members of the human rights community, and other civil society organizations. Unfortunately, environmental and human rights defenders who speak out against such development projects are often subjected to intimidation, censorship, and violence. Increasingly, these activists are murdered for their work.

But what are the root causes when an activist is murdered or silenced for speaking out against natural resource extraction and large-scale development projects? How are neoliberal development models implicated in the dangers posed to activists, and how do conditions of in- country inequality affect the likelihood activists will be murdered? Based on linear regression analysis, I contend there is a correlation between in-country economic inequality and the threat level environmental human rights defenders face. Furthermore, this paper uses case studies to demonstrate the conditions environmental activists face in Honduras and South Africa—two countries with extreme levels of inequality. Finally, this paper makes recommendations to the international community to protect threatened activists.

Keywords: environmental law, environmental defenders, human rights, inequality, Global South

by Sara Liao

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Abstract

This study examines a copycat culture called Shanzhai, particularly looking into fashion imitations made and circulated by a group of women designers through digital media. It investigates the cultural transformation of labor taking place in China through the critical lens of precarious creativity. Women designers perform digital labor to de-fetishize the labor process of global fashion brands, which mythicizes class and commodity. These women’s fashion work lacks official recognition as meaningful labor, while their ability to make a case for the legitimacy of their work is further diminished when the state co-opts Shanzhai for its nation-building narratives. These women’s experiences of precarity and their very act of copying reveal the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of the Chinese Dream.

Keywords: precarious creativity, women, digital labor, Shanzhai, fashion imitations, creative industries, Chinese Dream

About the author:

Sara Liao is a media scholar whose research interests lie in the intersection of digital media, gender and labor studies, globalization, and popular cultures, with a specific focus on Asian societies. She will join the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in fall 2017.

Revised version published as “Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity of Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture,” Communication, Culture, & Critique. Advance online publication. View here.