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31. How to Dismantle the Business of Human Trafficking

Author:
Amy Sobel
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Human Rights First
Abstract:
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. Yet in the world today there are an estimated 20.9 million people enslaved, and the United States is both a source and destination of victims. While the United States would have a moral responsibility to address this problem even without its history of slavery, its legacy heightens this imperative. Contemporary slavery manifests in various ways. Many trafficking victims are forced to toil in fields, factories, and fishing boats for little or no pay. Others are held captive in private homes. Forced prostitution rings imprison women, girls, and boys in brothels or force them to work in the streets under threat of abuse. What links all these forms—as well as historic American slavery—is the profit motive. Human trafficking is a lucrative criminal enterprise, generating $150 billion annually in profits worldwide. The United States should seek to reduce substantially the number of victims by implementing policies and practices that dismantle the business of trafficking. Since passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000—and its subsequent reauthorizations—the U.S. government has undertaken significant steps to build an anti-human trafficking infrastructure. Through annual publication of the Department of State’s (DOS) Trafficking in Persons report (TIP report), it has called worldwide attention to this blight. The DOS Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) provides grants to U.S. and foreign institutions involved in prevention/awareness, protection/services, law enforcement/prosecution, research and data collection, and evaluation. J/TIP also coordinates U.S. agencies both at home and abroad, including agencies on the President’s Interagency Task Force (PITF). Despite these efforts, human trafficking continues to be a horrific human rights problem both in the United States and around the world. The 2014 DOS TIP report used law enforcement data to determine that 44,738 survivors were reported globally in 2013 —a paltry figure considering the number of victims. It is clear that far more needs to be done.
Topic:
Human Rights, United Nations, Slavery, and Human Trafficking
Political Geography:
United States, Global Focus, Washington, and D.C.

32. The OSCE Security Concept

Author:
Marianna M. Yamamoto
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)
Abstract:
The OSCE security concept is a theoretical and operational framework based on the idea that international and domestic security depend on principles guiding three areas: how States deal with each other and resolve problems; the protection and promotion of individual rights within States; and the processes to develop, implement, and advance agreements regarding the principles. The OSCE security concept is based on principles that OSCE States began to develop in 1975 with the Helsinki Final Act, and continued to develop over the next decades and into the 21st century. This brief identifies and articulates the OSCE security principles by analyzing a series of official documents adopted by the OSCE States from 1975 to 2001. The concept was described in greater length in the CISSM monograph, OSCE Principles in Practice, which also tested the practical application of the principles in three case studies. The monograph then extended the research on OSCE principles to express an OSCE security concept. As a concept based on principles developed by democratic States, the OSCE security concept has significant policy implications. One highlighted in this brief is that international security cannot be achieved without the protection and promotion of individual rights and freedoms.
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

33. Sleepwalking Again: The End of the Pax Americana 1914–2014; After Gaza 2014: Schabas; Peer Review Redux; In this Issue

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
I think it is difficult to contest that the most important state player in world affairs over the last one hundred years – and consistently so over this period – has been the United States of America. World War I – into which, to borrow from Christopher Clark's justly celebrated book, we 'sleepwalked' – marks a useful starting point. It is not only the fairly important role America played in bringing WWI to an end that signals the beginning of this era, but also the no less important role it played in shaping the aftermath. Wilson's 14 points were considered at the time 'idealistic' by some of the yet-to-be 'Old Powers'. But by dismantling the Ottoman Empire through the principle of self-determination (not at that time a universal legally binding norm) it was an early swallow to the demise, a mere generation later, of all other colonial empires and the truly decisive reshaping of the balance of power in the post-WWII world. The US played an equally cardinal role in ideating and realizing the United Nations Organization and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – two lynchpins of our current world order.
Topic:
Human Rights and War
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Gaza

34. Reconfiguring the Law of Non-Refoulement: Procedural and Substantive Barriers for Those Seeking to Access Surrogate International Human Rights Protection

Author:
Mark R. von Sternberg
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Both geographic and normative constraints restrict access to surrogate international human rights protection for those seeking a haven from serious human rights abuses. Primary among territorial restrictions has been the fall-out from the US Supreme Court's decision in Sale v. Haitian Council Centers in which the court explicitly ruled that nothing in US statutory law, or in the 1951 Convention on Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, precluded the interdiction of Haitian refugees in international waters and their return to the country of origin without an effective interview on their protection clams. This ruling is in transparent contradiction to the general international law norm of non-refoulement according to modern scholarship and emerging case law. This paper concludes that Sale should be overturned by statute as should related pre-screening practices. A new standard of “jurisdiction” should be adopted which does not depend on territorial access to a signatory state but on whether the state is exercising power in fact. Similar concerns exist with respect to safe third country agreements which often offend the international customary right of the asylum seeker to choose where his or her claim will be filed. This paper argues that the right of choice should be recognized and onward travel and admission to the country of destination allowed. This result is especially called for where return of the alien by the country of first contact raises serious concerns under the law of non-refoulement. Imbalances noted in this paper include those generated by the new terrorism related grounds of inadmissibility in the United States and the summary denial of children's asylum claims flowing from gang violence. Other questions are raised in this paper concerning work authorization and detention of asylum seekers. Access to an employment authorization Journal on Migration and Human Security document for those filing colorable claims should be recognized by statute to render US practice consistent with that of most other states. Release from detention, on the other hand, for asylum seekers has now been broadly recognized by the US Department of Homeland Security where the asylum seeker's identity can be ascertained and the claim is non-frivolous in nature. This approach is largely consistent with international law, although there have been unnecessary delays in implementing it. On the substantive law, the international customary norm of non-refoulment has been expanded considerably through the development of opinio juris by scholars and the practice of states. This paper traces efforts in Europe to develop a law of temporary refuge for those fleeing civil war situations characterized by humanitarian law violations. Similarly, case law under the European Convention of Human Rights has now come to focus on the harm the claimant would suffer as the result of conditions in the country of origin without identifying an explicit agent of serious harm. Related to these developments has been the notion of complementary protection under which relief can be conferred where the alien would suffer serious harm upon return to the home state but not for a Convention reason. These approaches have now received approval in the European Union Asylum Qualification Directive so that international protection may now be conferred either because the alien would suffer serious harm on account of the intensity of human rights violations taking place in the country of origin, or those conditions, taken in conjunction with the claimant's personal situation, support a finding that the claimant would be impacted. This paper argues that this latter standard has now been made a part of the customary norm of non-refoulement and that it should be recognized by statute as a basis for non-return and coupled with status where the new standard can be met. Such a measure would help restore the nation's commitment to human rights and humanitarian concerns.
Topic:
Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States

35. Stephen Allen. The Chagos Islanders and International Law

Author:
Peter H. Sand
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The tale of the Chagos Archipelago (British Indian Ocean Territory, BIOT) raises a wide spectrum of transnational legal questions, all across the fields of human rights, environment and disarmament. Last-born of the Empire’s colonies, the BIOT was established – and systematically depopulated – for the sole purpose of accommodating a strategic US military base during the Cold War years in 1965–1966. The territory has since generated extensive litigation in the national courts of the United Kingdom (UK) and the USA as well as proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights and an arbitration under Annex VII of the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Stephen Allen, senior lecturer at the University of London’s Queen Mary College, has long followed and commented on legal developments in the Chagos cases as an observer. The focus of his attention remains the plight of the native Chagossians, a small Kreol-speaking people of African and Malgasy origin, whose exile (mainly to Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK) has lasted for more than 40 years.
Topic:
Environment, Human Rights, Imperialism, International Law, History, Courts, Disarmament, and Displacement
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, Europe, and Chagos Islands

36. The European Convention on Human Rights, the EU and the UK: Confronting a Heresy

Author:
Andrew Williams
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The orthodox view of the ECHR and its Court as regime in the context of both the EU and UK has been that it has considerable value albeit with systemic flaws. The purpose of this article is to challenge this orthodoxy. Four inter-related submissions are made: that the ECHR has failed human rights conceptually (1); 'good' or lauded decisions of the ECtHR cannot remedy or sufficiently counter-balance this conceptual failure (2); 'bad' decisions further expose and exacerbate the failure (3); the procedural problems of the ECHR regime may contribute to the underlying failure of concept but their resolution cannot solve it (4). These submissions are to provoke a more intense assessment of value and how such value could be enhanced. It may be too late to see any influence on the accession process but this does not reduce the relevance of the critique for the future of human rights in both the EU and the UK. Ultimately an approach to the ECHR system needs to determine whether it continues to be lauded or its influence resisted (thus seeking reform or replacement - the alternative candidates being the EU Charter and/or a national Bill of Rights) and retained only as an iconic scheme of moral importance.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

37. Plan Colombia: A Retrospective

Author:
Michael Shifter
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
At first glance, perhaps the most notable feature of Plan Colombia has been its longevity. Given the current divisiveness in Washington, the bipartisan support it has received across three administrations now seems remarkable. After 12 years, the plan is gradually winding down, but the U.S. allocated more than $300 million under the program in 2012 alone. Although the Plan has evolved considerably since it was approved by the U.S. Congress in July 2000, it has become shorthand for wide-ranging U.S. cooperation with Colombia to assist that country in combating drugs, guerrilla violence, and related institutional and social problems. All told, the U.S. has spent nearly $8 billion on the initiative—more than anywhere outside of the Middle East, and Iraq and Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War. Although the effort gave priority to counter-narcotics operations—and specifically the eradication of coca in southern Colombia—from the outset it also encompassed assistance for the judiciary and economic development.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Development, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Washington, and Middle East

38. Affirmative Action in the Americas

Author:
Tanya K. Hernandez
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
The Americas present many contrasting approaches to affirmative action. In the United States, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its constitutionality, while at the same time narrowing the ability to use race in the Fisher v. Texas case. In contrast, several Latin American countries are beginning to explore more dynamic affirmative action policies. While many of these policies are recent and still developing, the new Latin American interest in affirmative action programs indicates how useful such programs can be in pursuing racial justice. In fact, Latin America has in some ways gone much further in broadly embracing affirmative action as a human right-a key, perhaps, to the growing support for the concept.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States, Germany, and Latin America

39. U.S.-Russia Health Engagement

Author:
Judyth L. Twigg
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Over the last few years, Russia's relationship with the United States has traveled a swift and seemingly deliberate arc from partner to pariah. The current turmoil in Ukraine and near-certain resulting isolation of Russia culminate several years' worth of deteriorating ties. The Edward Snowden mess, disagreements over Syria and Iran, dismay over the eroding human rights environment in Russia, and now Russian annexation of Crimea have led the previously heralded "reset" to an unceremonious end. What are the implications of these and related developments for U.S.-Russia collaboration in medicine and public health? Should avenues of partnership remain open, even in such a frosty political context? Should the international community support Russia's health sector when ample resources exist within Russia itself? Is it even possible anymore?
Topic:
Development, Diplomacy, Economics, Health, Human Rights, Human Welfare, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and North America

40. Iran Seeks to Untangle UN Sanctions

Author:
Steven Ditto
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
The Islamic Republic has added to its nuclear negotiating team a law professor who has extensive experience making Iran's case in international disputes. On April 9, Iran and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States, plus Germany) concluded the latest two-day round of talks on a nuclear deal, setting the next round for May 13. Earlier in the week, on April 7, Iranian media reported the appointment of Dr. Jamshid Momtaz as head of a "legal advisory group" to the Iranian negotiating team. A French-educated expert on sanctions, disarmament, and UN procedure, Momtaz has represented the Iranian government in some of its highest-profile international legal proceedings, including in claims against the U.S. government at the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ). Momtaz's familiarity with the United Nations, his extensive practice in Europe, and his proven history of leveraging complex legal arguments to advance Iran's international interests indicate that in these latest rounds of P5+1 talks Tehran is likely looking for unconventional ways to "address" and "bring a satisfactory conclusion to" the UN Security Council resolutions against it, as called for in the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) agreed to in Geneva last November.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Economics, Human Rights, International Cooperation, Nuclear Weapons, Sanctions, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Iran, and France