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1. KIDNAPPING OF MIGRANTS IN TRANSIT THROUGH MEXICO AND THE TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY NETWORKS FOR THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS: SCOPE AND STRATEGIES

Author:
Monica Salmon Gómez
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
The human rights crisis in Mexico and particularly the one with migrants in transit through Mexico is not coincidental. The increased securitization of migration has transformed it into a security issue, causing it to be a threat to the national security. The mechanisms and strategies to fight against this crisis has led to terrible consequences to the thousand of migrants that pass through Mexico every year. As stated by David Harvey, the conceptualization of the irregular migration as a threat to the Nation-States has occurred as a consequence of the “global unequal capitalist integration”. This is a structural process that promotes global inequality in a parallel way, creating the undocumented as the others unwanted (Álvarez and Guillot, 2012:24). We then have migration as a phenomenon characterized by the economic globalization and the predominance of the logic of social exclusion, that it reveals itself as a feature for nations and families in their need to seek, among other things, improved living conditions in places that are different from their place of origin
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, Migration, United Nations, and Inequality
Political Geography:
United States, South America, Latin America, North America, and Mexico

2. DECOLONIZATION IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND LEGAL PLURALISM, A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN BOLIVIA, COLOMBIA, AND ECUADOR

Author:
Sergio Miranda Hayes
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
In the academic world, scientific literature comes mainly from the western part of the globe. Ramón Grossfoguel believes that knowledge is determined by power relations in the "post-colonial" era (Grossfoguel, 2002: 16). This means that Western powers dominate the academic world. In constitutional law, this is not the exception. However, while we can accept that it is true that many constitutional provisions, doctrine, jurisprudence and theories of Western constitutional law have influenced Latin American countries, most of these countries have also developed their own constitutional systems that have specific and new features, whose unique identity differentiates them from other systems in the world. In this paper, I will try to study the special features that Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia have in the recognition of indigenous rights and legal pluralism, whose discursive axis entails a “decolonizing” spirit which is the retrieval of their own institutions against the trends of hegemonic governance of the western culture as I will explain later. Latin America has faced numerous problems concerning social differentiation. In the opinion of one of the most cited authors in Latin American constitutional law, Raquel Yrigoyen, the disadvantaged were left behind from the social, economic and political issues through legal measures created by people of a favored minority, in order to maintain privileges (Yrigoyen, 2011: 139). In the case of Latin America, many of the disadvantaged match to be those survivors of the brutal Spanish conquest; the native Indians. I have chosen these three countries since they have a significant indigenous population; more than 36.6 million indigenous people in the region. In Bolivia, the number rises to 4,115,222 natives, in Ecuador 1018176,and in Colombia 1392623. (World Bank, 2014: 24-25) The Constitutions of Colombia (1991), Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009) reflect the new “decolonizing” ideology; Colombia through its jurisprudence, on the one hand, and Bolivia and Ecuador, proclaiming themselves "Plurinational”countries on the other. All made great strides in recognizing indigenous rights and, consequently, in gaining their social inclusion. (Gargarella, 2014: 175) Constitutional systems are a product of history and the struggle of peoples. In these cases, the effort to include indigenous peoples in the economic, political and social spheres resulted in these new constitutional models which can be understood through a comparative study.By understanding this, advantages and disadvantages of each country to improve social inclusion of indigenous peoples in all the mentioned spheres can be found. In the first title, I will talk about the meaning of legal pluralism. In the second, I will discussthe new models of statewhich are conditioned by legal pluralism and indigenous rights. In the third, I will address indigenous autonomies and jurisdictions that are the subject of our study. And in the remaining two titles, I will discuss the most distinctive features, and rights arising from the recognition of this unique legal pluralism. All this with the purpose of exposing the new constitutional spirit of "decolonization" of these countries.
Topic:
Human Rights, Post Colonialism, Legal Theory, Colonialism, Decolonization, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
United States, Colombia, South America, Latin America, North America, Ecuador, and Bolivia

3. Human Security

Author:
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Carol Messineo
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper reviews the concept of human security, its use in policy debates and the academic literature on the concept as an idea in international relations. We argue that in spite of the controversy, human security is an important concept that should not be ignored as a significant discourse in contemporary debates about the world order. It opens up new lines of analysis, gives voice to new actors. Its value added in the security field is that it focuses attention on human beings and integrates non-military mechanisms as means to security. Its value added in the development field is to focus attention on downside risks.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Human Rights, and Human Welfare

4. The Human Right to Development and Global Partnerships

Author:
Sakiko Fukuda- Parr
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
This statement discusses the role of economic theory and global economic policies in articulating the Right to Development (RtD). RtD is unique in focusing attention to the extra-territorial aspects of rights; where state action impinges on the rights of people outside its national boundaries, and where people have claims on states other than their own. In particular, the statement argues for the importance of global economic policy, focusing on four main points: (i) the development economics basis for the RtD and for defining obligations under this right; (ii) economic policies and other public policies as the principal means for implementing the RtD ;(iii) a priority agenda for collective international responsibilities; and (iv) mobilizing civil society to move the RtD forward.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Economics, Globalization, and Human Rights

5. Extending Political Rights to Citizens Abroad: Implications for the Nation-state

Author:
Jonathan Bach
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper inquires into the implications of extending the voting franchise to citizens living outside their national territory. It argues that the recent increase in the extension of political rights began as a restorative exercise for citizens regarded as disenfranchised for various reasons, and that this is in keeping with the classic expansion of rights within the traditional model of the democratic nation-state. This reinforces, rather than challenges, the principles of the sovereign state system. However, the paper then argues that citizens abroad have distinctive characteristics that complicate core conceptions of the nation-state: defining the scope of membership, signifying belonging, and negotiating rights and obligations. Because of this, the extension of the franchise does potentially add a transformative dimension to discussions about political community, national identity, and citizenship. Fieldwork in these three areas could constitute the core of an emerging research program into the possible transformational effects on the nation-state resulting from extending political rights to citizens abroad.
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, and Human Rights

6. Security of Property Rights for Whom?

Author:
Terra Lawson-Remer
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
Although protecting the entitlements of some requires preventing others from claiming and controlling those same resources, much recent research regarding property rights and economic development treats the level of property rights security in a country as homogeneous. Widely used cross-national indices of institutional quality—initially designed to assess the property security of foreign investors—fail to consider marginalized groups. Using a new indicator that measures the property insecurity of ethno-cultural minorities, this article finds significant variation in the risk of expropriation faced by different groups in the same country. Findings also show that although secure property rights for elites ma y be positively related to development, aggregate long-run growth occurs in the presence of significant property insecurity for marginalized minorities.
Topic:
Security, Development, Economics, Human Rights, and Social Stratification

7. The Offshore Camps of the European Union: At the Border of Humanity

Author:
Miriam Ticktin
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
Immigrant and asylum-seeker camps like those in Libya and Morocco are the creation, manifestation, and part of the new, borderless Europe. They consist of a new post-colonial, new-liberal border-zone, a space continuously negotiated by the movement of people, new forms of surveillance technology, and new processes of supranational government. The camps are a response to both a “security” and “humanitarian” crisis, brought into reality through two governing regimes: one of policing and one of protection. The precise mechanisms produce spaces which not only divide people into citizens of one nation-state or another, but produce certain populations as surplus humans.
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, Migration, and Immigration
Political Geography:
Europe, Libya, North Africa, and Morocco

8. Genocide by Attrition

Author:
Everita Silina
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
Human rights observers have a tendency to look at humanitarian crises as if they were frozen in time. Many unfolding genocides have gone unrecognized and unprevented because each death, each massacre, was treated as if it were a photograph, a snapshot to be compared in that instance against the definition of genocide. Genocide, however, is not an event. This paper will argue that genocide can be waged with a wide array of methods beyond direct and violent murder. In fact, there are more protracted, more ambiguously lethal means of extermination than machetes, guns or gas chambers. Many victims of historical genocides die from slower indirect and less immediately deadly methods of annihilation than outright murder. Genocide is a process that can unfold over several years, even decades. This paper proposes a notion of genocide by attrition that takes the usual linear (causal) accounts of mass death as its starting point and expands on them to suggest a more complex picture of genocidal processes. More specifically, this study aims to illuminate the concept of genocide by attrition in its proper legal and historical contexts, and identify indicators thereof through the lens of existing international human rights laws and obligations so as to assist legal, humanitarian and political actors in the difficult task of genocide identification and prevention. The paper will draw on empirical evidence from various cases of genocide by attrition to identify a set of attributes that allow a fresh rethinking of the process of genocide.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Violence, Genocide, Human Rights, War, and Non State Actors