Author: shonaghmcewan

Reflections from the Edinburgh Legal Theory Group Past Convenors’ Colloquium

Innovative Initiative Fund, Law and Legal

The Global Justice Academy recently sponsored the Edinburgh Legal Theory Group Past Convenors’ Colloquium in collaboration with the Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group. In this blog post, Paul Burgess – a third year PhD candidate in the Edinburgh Law School and Co-Convenor of the Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group – reports on the issues raised.

 

The Colloquium was well attended by staff and students from across The University of Edinburgh. This included several new PhD candidates who had only arrived in the university for the first time that week. Some participants and presenters had travelled from other parts of the world.

» Read more

Talking Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery in the Context of Migration Negotiations

Human rights, Immigration, International Law, migration, Refugees, UN

Dr Kasey McCall-Smith, Chair of the Association of Human Rights Institutes and member of the Global Justice Academy, discusses Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery in the context of the UN Global Compact for Migration.

In a previous post, I gave general overview of the UN Global Compact for Migration and a brief analysis of the Migration Compact thematic discussions on the distinctions between human smuggling and human trafficking. This note considers modern slavery, a topic with which the University of Edinburgh is highly engaged through both academic projects as well as its Modern Slavery initiatives. Following on from the distinction between migrants smuggled into a state for the sole purpose of evading legal migration and individuals trafficked into (or within) a state for purposes of exploitation, the following will present key debates about modern slavery and human trafficking that are highly relevant to the conclusion of a comprehensive Migration Compact.

» Read more

Smuggling or Trafficking? Defining the Terms in the UN Migration Compact

Human rights, International Law, Refugees, UN, Women

Dr Kasey McCall-Smith, Chair of the Association of Human Rights Institutes and member of the Global Justice Academy, discusses recent steps towards a UN Global Compact for Migration. This is the first of two blogs from Dr McCall-Smith on the Migration Compact negotiations.

The next steps toward a UN Global Compact for Migration to combat the ever-growing legal and policy issues associated with mass and irregular migration were taken at the UN headquarters in Vienna, Austria, 4-5 September 2017. The Compact aims to deliver a comprehensive approach to human mobility as well as further clarification of and support for existing international frameworks addressing migration, refugees and trafficking, including the Refugee Convention and its Protocol, the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking in Persons Protocol) and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air (Smuggling of Migrants Protocol), as well as a number of human rights instruments such as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), among many others.

» Read more

Just Justice – how can we achieve the fair distribution of legal resources?

book review, Innovative Initiative Fund, Law and Legal, Uncategorized

The Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory organised an author-meets-critics workshop on the manuscript of the book Just Justice by Frederick Wilmot-Smith. This workshop was funded by the Global Justice Academy’s Innovative Initiative Fund.  Lucas Miotto, a PhD candidate in the Edinburgh Law School, introduces the key issues and questions raised by this soon-to-be-published book.

Resources must be fairly distributed. Hardly anyone would disagree with this statement. Besides, most people would agree that the fair distribution of resources is something valuable which we should care about. And people do care about it. Many of the heated debates about social security, social benefits, education, public health and immigration which have recently caught the attention of the public and the media are – or at least are connected to – debates about the fair distribution of resources. It is no exaggeration to say that debates about the fair distribution of resources are at the core of past and present public debate.

Just as we talk about the distribution of economic or educational resources, we can talk about the distribution of legal resources. The public needs lawyers and courts. Like any other resource, lawyers and courts are scarce and access to them doesn’t come for free. So, how about the fair distribution of legal resources? What sort of distribution would count as fair? Curiously, and unfortunately, questions like these are under-appreciated. Not only has the public been timid in addressing questions about the fair distributions of legal resources; an in-depth philosophical treatment of the topic has been entirely missing. Frederick Wilmot-Smith’s Just Justice attempts to correct this.

The book directly engages with many puzzles associated with the fair distribution of legal resources. It starts by questioning the very object of distribution. What should be fairly distributed? To say ‘access to lawyers and courts’ would be too simplistic an answer. The object of fair distribution, Wilmot-Smith argues, is broader than this. Of course, he doesn’t deny that it is important to fairly distribute access to legal resources such as lawyers and courts. But the questions about the fair distribution of these legal resources hang on a broader debate about the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of the justice system. It is only after we have sound principles for the fair distribution of such benefits and burdens that we will be able to address the fair distribution of legal resources (e.g., access to lawyers and courts).

The core part of the book puts forward principles for the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of the justice system. In a nutshell, the principles defended in the book support the establishment of a justice system in which benefits and burdens are equally distributed among citizens. Practical implications are myriad, and some of the institutional reforms required to meet the proposed principles radically clash with established views about the justice system. The book, however, doesn’t shy away from defending these radical implications and objecting to established views. In fact, some of these implications are defended at length. For, example, the book has an entire chapter dedicated to defending the view that the justice system should be financed by everyone – which is perhaps the most controversial implication of the principles defended throughout the book. Discussions about the privatisation of legal resources and alternative dispute resolution systems also receive an extensive treatment. The book is no doubt an extremely timely and important contribution to legal philosophy and to the public debate in general. It sharply allies care for philosophical rigour with readability and public relevance.

The Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory had the pleasure of hosting an author-meets-critics workshop to discuss Frederick Wilmot-Smith’s Just Justice on May 24th, 2017. The event, jointly organised by Luís Duarte d’Almeida and Euan MacDonald, featured a total of eight commentators – ranging from philosophy to criminal law and political science – each of which focused on a different chapter of the book manuscript.

Participants were keen to engage in discussion and offered both critical remarks and constructive feedback. As a result, discussion was very lively, friendly and informal. We look forward to the publication of Just Justice, and we would like to express our gratitude to the Global Justice Academy, whose support made this event possible.

Colombia’s peace process: reflections

Democracy, Innovative Initiative Fund, Peace, Political Settlements, UN

This post was written by Sara Valencia and Alejandra Londoño. It reports from a series of recent workshops on the Colombian peace process, led by Colombian students at The University of Edinburgh. The Global Justice Academy and the Global Development Academy supported the workshops.

Colombia’s peace process and Latin America

The first workshop examined the impact and influence of the Colombian internal conflict in the Latin America region. The methodology employed in this workshop was a Collaborative Critical-Thinking Sheet, in which the participants reported the main reflections emerging from the discussion.

The discussion highlighted the role of the Latin-American community in the peace process. This has been crucial for the exploration phase of the Peace Processes with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). On the one hand, for example, Venezuela, Cuba, and Chile played a central role to build a bridge of trust between the Colombian Government and the FARC guerrilla, a process that started with the FARC in 2012 in La Habana Cuba and concluded with the signing of the agreement in Bogotá on November 24th of 2016. On the other hand, Ecuador has been a crucial actor in the peace process with the ELN guerrilla, offering a neutral space to host the negotiations that started on January 7th of 2017.

During the implementation phase of the Agreement with the FARC guerrilla, the monitoring and checking mechanism of the Agreement on the Bilateral and Definitive Ceasefire and Cessation of Hostilities were explicitly limited to countries of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) on behalf of the United Nations. These are just a few examples of the level of commitment and active participation of Latin American States in Colombia’s peace processes.

The direct impact of the peace process in Colombia on the commercial dynamic of Latin America was then discussed. The strategic geographic position of Colombia makes it an important route for transportation between the West and the East (Pacific- Atlantic Ocean) and North and South. The pacification of the country will not only allow the improvement of the Colombian economy, but also may have a direct impact on Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela because of a reduction in illegal activities like drug production and trafficking; human trafficking and the illegal immigration routes to the United States. In addition, the shift in the Colombian Foreign Policy since 2010 has strengthened the integration process of Colombia in Latin America. Blocks like the ‘Alianza del Pacifico’ and the formulation and implementation of Bi-national Integration Plans with Ecuador and Peru will be strengthened by the implementation of the Peace Agreements.

On an international level, it was argued that Colombia’s peace offers a historic opportunity to rethink the position, role and contribution of the Latin American bloc in the 21st century. Through these peace processes, the Latin America states can have the opportunity to project themselves in the international community as a region which supports dialogue, openness, interdependence and inclusion where other regions like North America and Europe have begun to shift to a more closed, controlled and independent dynamic within the regional and international systems. The peace process in Colombia is an opportunity to strengthen the regional economy, increase foreign investment, trade and governance in the border areas, and overcome the USA military influence in the region.

A new topic emerged as discussion continued, namely, the popular mobilisation in support of the peace processes following the rejection of the comprehensive peace agreement via referendum on October 2, 2016. The feeling among youths that their agency was weakened by corrupt powers and misinformation, it was argued, catalysed mass mobilization. From this discussion emerged questions like, ‘which factors inspire citizens to mobilise at a personal and collective level?’ ‘How can citizen participation be strengthened after a collective mobilisation?’ ‘What is the role of the citizen as an agent for change within its community in a context of post-truth?’

These questions become the base for our second workshop.

Citizenship in the 21st century: dialogue and mobilisation

In response to the rejection of the peace agreement in Colombia, a massive social mobilisation emerged under a social movement called “¡Paz a la calle!” (Peace to the streets!). This movement reunited social groups and individuals who marched on the streets across the country demanding the Government and FARC guerrilla maintain the bilateral ceasefire and include the proposals of the 50.2 per cent of the electorate whose turn-out did not approve the text. The objective was to claim only for an outcome shared by both parties: peace.

However, the Colombian case of mobilisation is not unique. Other mobilisations like the Women against Trump movement in the United States or the massive protests against corruption in Romania are clear examples of citizen mobilisation. Nonetheless, these types of national dialogues and social mobilisations have not been so evident in the UK after Brexit.

As this workshop opened up many questions on the role of the citizen as an agent of change within processes of public participation and deliberative democracy, this became the focus of our final workshop, which was particularly interested in how such participation might be strengthened.

Reflections

Diana Diajer (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Oliver Escobar (University of Edinburgh), researchers on citizen participation, were event panellists at our final workshop. Diana highlighted the need to generate spaces free from violence with guarantees to enforce participation. Unfortunately, in countries like Colombia, citizen participation is associated with communism and creates a stigmatisation of this type of participation as well as discouraging public participation. In countries where leaders have been constantly murdered, a cyclical process of fear and death prevent participation. For Diana, there are four main challenges to encourage citizen participation in peace building: A highly polarised society, the lack of a national peace movement that articulates the local initiatives, lack of trust, and apathy produced by corruption. Therefore, she proposed six elements to trigger citizen participation for peace: provide security and protection to leaders, use of an offline-online coordinated strategy, create a state of articulation and coordination, create meaningful dialogues among people, strength state capacity, and enforce individual incentives to participate.

In the Colombian case, the process to build peace initiates with what people understand for peace. She has identified four understandings of peace: peace as a social inclusion process, peace associated with transparency in elections, peace as the empowerment of people to have a possibility to have a word, and reconciliation. Nonetheless, this last understanding is one of the most difficult to reach. For example, people at the local level do not talk about reconciliation, they talk about co-existence or tolerance despite differences – so it is a long path to follow.

Oliver focused his talk on the micro-dynamics that take place in peace processes and civic participation, paying attention to the need to promote spaces for dialogue and deliberation to enhance citizen participation. Nonetheless, the creation of these spaces must overcome challenges that emerge at the individual level.

First, Oliver addressed the tendency of people to avoid conflict, which creates the first barrier to participating in spaces where their ideas are challenged. The lack of diversity and segregation in groups give place to like-minded groups, which create polarisation. Oliver highlighted the ‘Spiral of Silence’, as another barrier to participation. This is a scenario where people think that they are part of a minority and they are not going to be listened to. For this reason, they silence themselves, creating a polarisation by omission in the group, where apparently one idea prevails. Also, in groups where individuals are exposed to opposing views, if they are strongly attached to a position they will tend to avoid any evidence, processing only those messages that confirm their own perspective, so dialogue and deliberation are less possible. Therefore, the lack of views in any conversation reduces the opportunities to be exposed to alternate points of view, furthering polarisation.

According to Oliver, dialogue takes time and is a painful process, but in safe spaces, people can engage with their diverse perspectives and a constructive dialogue can emerge. The creation of these spaces is not simple and requires the work of facilitators to promote spaces where people listen and engage in the conversation. In this way, the facilitator helps the participants to suspend their immediate reactions and reflections, allowing a fluid communication through active listening. However, the communication can be influenced by several factors like different standpoints, communication norms, and a lack of information. In these dialogues, storytelling becomes the most effective way of communication. In the narrative of these stories, emotions play a fundamental role because, as some neuroscience studies reveal, people can only think and reason about things that they care about. One of the challenges for mediators in dialogue spaces, then, is how to channel emotions in a positive and constructive way to promote a constructive process. In conclusion, in safe spaces, dialogue and participation can be fostered, creating a sustainable and legitimate way forward by becoming more open minded.

As Oliver explained that such micro-dynamics in groups matter at the global level because if social movements make an attempt to welcome different positions, there is a risk to only mobilise the like-minded people, which prevents public dialogue and deliberation, thus creating elites of power and micro-worlds in the society. Therefore, mobilisation and public dialogue have a different role and various functions in the political sphere. Social mobilisation is right to create an agenda, paying attention to one issue. However, dialogue allows the inclusion of different perspectives to create not only a shared understanding of complex issues but also by co-producing solutions.

 Note of thanks:

This series of workshops was made possible through the generous support of the Global Justice and Global Development Academies’ joint Innovative Initiative Fund. Special thanks to the organiser team Alejandra Londoño, Ana Chaparro, Natalia Salamanca and María Gundestrup.

Unrecognized in the Shadows – the Plight of the Stateless

Gender, Human rights, Innovative Initiative Fund, International Law

This blog post was written by Lee Caspi and Federica Sola, masters students of the LL.M in Human Rights at the University of Edinburgh. The blog reports on the panel event “Unrecognized in the Shadows: The Plight of the Stateless” on the topic of statelessness, hosted recently in Edinburgh, that received funding from the Global Justice and Global Development academies’ joint Innovative Initiative Fund.

On the 4th of April 2017 students, academics and professionals came together to discuss the issue of statelessness, a topic that does not receive much attention in academia or in public debate. The speakers aimed to raise awareness of the challenges encountered by stateless people. The event started with four short lectures on the topic, orchestrated by Professor Jo Shaw (University of Edinburgh).

The first speaker was Mr. Omar Alansari (Queens University, Belfast). Omar gave a very comprehensive overview of statelessness in international law, discussing the difficulties in achieving an accurate number of stateless people worldwide due to the fact that they are, by definition, not registered. He then discussed the causes of statelessness, such as discrimination; religion; gender; arbitrary denial of nationality based on political views; and gaps in nationality laws and geopolitical changes (as happened with the breakup of the former Soviet Union). He then focused on the two international conventions dealing with statelessness, underlining that both are not widely ratified. Next, he described the UNHCR mandate as relates to stateless people, which focuses on encouraging states to ratify the two conventions, and a campaign to end statelessness by 2024. Omar concluded his talk by describing the situation in Saudi Arabia, where there is an estimated total of over half a million stateless people.

Following this excellent outline of the legal framework on statelessness, Deirdre Brennen from the Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion spoke about “Gender Discrimination and Statelessness”. There are 28 countries where women are discriminated against in their ability to confer their nationality to their children, and over 50 where they are discriminated against in their ability to change and confer their nationality through marriage. Following this introduction, Deirdre screened testimonies by a woman named Deepdi, with whom she worked in Nepal, Deepdi’s husband and two daughters. They told their personal stories, describing the everyday difficulties arising from the lack of nationality such as the inability to have their own bank accounts, open a business and access certain educational institutions. Deepdi’s two daughters also spoke about their experiences of feeling different to their friends due to their limited opportunities in some areas. In conclusion, Deirdre spoke about the mainstream aspects of feminism nowadays, but said that a fight for women’s nationality is missing from this global movement, and there is a need to raise more awareness of it.

Next came a presentation by Nina Murray from the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), who spoke about the arbitrary detention of stateless people. The ENS initiated a project around Europe to try to understand the scope of the problem of detention of stateless people, which was derived from 6 country reports from around Europe. The project focuses on removal procedures, the point at which stateless people are most at risk of detention. Despite the fact that detention of migrants is becoming more common, there is very poor data regarding detention of the stateless since it is not always recorded, making it more difficult to protect them. Nina then discussed two countries, Poland and the UK, where there is a route for stateless people to become recognized, but both present often insurmountable obstacles on the path to recognition. For example, in the UK, those who have a criminal record cannot be recognized as stateless. This creates what Nina describes as a cycle of detention-release-detention, making it near impossible for people ever to start a normal life. The presentation concluded with recommendations for the way forward, such as finding alternatives to detention and developing a better procedure for identifying the stateless.

Finally, Cynthia Orchard from AsylumAid spoke about Statelessness in the UK. Being stateless in the UK makes it very difficult to work, access higher education, creates a higher risk of detention, and many other problems as access to housing. A procedure for recognizing stateless people was successfully introduced by the UK government in 2013. To apply to stay in the UK, a stateless person must fill out a 38-page application in English and provide many documents that are impossible to access if you are stateless. The Home Office expects stateless people to contact the embassy of a country to which they have some connection in order to obtain proof that they are stateless. AsylumAid often accompanies them in this process in order to act as witnesses, because the testimonies of the applicants are frequently deemed not credible. If the application is successful, the applicant is granted leave to remain in the UK for 2.5 years, which can then be extended. If leave is refused, the applicant can make a new asylum/statelessness application, or request judicial or administrative review. Cynthia discussed her concerns regarding the process of recognizing stateless people in the UK, which is extremely slow, provides no legal aid (in England and Wales), and has a very low rate of granting stateless status (around 5%).

Following this excellent series of lectures, three students discussed issues of statelessness from their home contexts. The first speaker was Josef Budde who moved to Guam in 2010. Josef discussed Guam’s history and its current status as a US naval base, where the local community has limited statehood. They are, on the one hand, US citizens, but on the other cannot vote for the presidency and have no representation in the Senate. Next, Aija Butane described the situation in Latvia. When Latvia achieved independence, it established in its nationality laws that those who were citizens of Latvia before the Second World War and their descendants would be recognized as Latvian, and those who moved during the Communist era would not. This has rendered many ethnic Russians in Latvia stateless. Aija discussed the very high requirements of the naturalization process for ethnic Russians to become Latvian due, among other things, to the high language requirements. However, the situation is slowly improving and now affects mostly those of the older generation. Finally, Dania Abul Haj described the complex nationality situation in Palestine. She described her personal experiences as a Palestinian from East Jerusalem travelling with an Israeli travel document despite not having Israeli nationality, while having a Jordanian nationality which is cumbersome and impractical to use. She described her experiences when registering her nationality with the University of Edinburgh and the bureaucratic system’s lack of understanding of the situation she must deal with every day.

The event concluded with a short Q&A session, where students brought up issues such as climate refugees, the nationality of children born in the Islamic State, and the ratification rates of the two statelessness conventions.

 

This workshop was made possible through the generous support of the Global Development Academy and the Global Justice Academy. We would like to give a special thanks to Dr Kasey McCall-Smith for her support; to Professor Jo Shaw for chairing the conference and to all the guests who travelled from all over the UK to speak at the event.

Keeping Guantánamo on the Map

Human rights, International Law, Law and Legal, Student Ambassadors, Terrorism, Torture, Uncategorized

Vivek Bhatt, a Student Ambassador with the Global Justice Academy (GJA), has written this blog following a panel event he attended at the Edinburgh Law School. The event, hosted by the GJA, explored the continuing relevance of legal and political issues arising from detention at Guantánamo Bay.

The United States acquired control of Guantánamo Bay in 1903, when it entered into an agreement with Cuba for the perpetual lease of the 45 square mile area.[1] Guantánamo Bay has since been operated as a naval base, and in the 1990s, it was ‘refashioned as a detention camp for those seeking asylum in the United States.’[2] From 1991 to 1996, more than 20,000 Cuban and 36,000 Haitian asylum seekers were interned in Guantánamo Bay.[3] And, in November 2001, merely days after the declaration of a ‘global war’ against terrorism, a US Military Order authorised the indefinite detention and trial of ‘enemy combatants’ at the camp. The US promptly began transferring individuals captured during its international counterterrorist operations to Guantanamo Bay. A total of 770 have been held there through the course of the war on terrorism. Only 8 men have been convicted, with more than 500 released during the Bush administration, 198 released during Obama’s presidency, and 9 killed in custody. 41 remain in detention, with 14 considered high value detainees and 26 designated as ‘forever prisoners,’ individuals whose knowledge of practices at Guantánamo Bay renders them too dangerous to be released.

The legal justifications provided for detention at Guantánamo Bay have been vague, at best. Those transferred to the camp are characterised as ‘enemy combatants’ under the laws of armed conflict, even though many have been captured outside areas of fighting.[4] The camp’s location in Cuba has, furthermore, allowed officials to assert that detainees are not entitled to the protections of the US legal system. According to Harold Koh, Guantánamo Bay is effectively a ‘rights-free zone’ constructed by the US. [5] Its detainees, writes Agamben, ‘[Are] legally unnameable and unclassifiable beings.’[6] After the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture in 2014, it was finally confirmed that many of these detainees have been subjected to ongoing torture practices as part of their interrogation. The camp has, therefore, come to symbolise the legal and ethical dubiousness of the war on terror, with the ‘visceral image’ of the orange Guantánamo jumpsuit now engrained in public memory and popular culture.[7] Fifteen years on, however, International attention to the legal and political issues arising from detention at Guantánamo Bay is waning. Some, it seems, believe the worst is over, while others may simply have accepted that the goings on at the camp are part of an inevitable, ‘new’ reality of the war on terror.

This was the topic of ‘International Law and Guantánamo Detention Operations: Why it Matters,’ a panel event hosted by the Global Justice Academy and the Edinburgh Law School on 9 February 2017. The event aimed to examine the range of international law and human rights issues relating to detention operations in Guantánamo Bay, and was opened by Kasey McCall-Smith, lecturer in public international law at the Edinburgh Law School. Dr McCall-Smith provided an overview of the breaches of international law at Guantánamo Bay. She began by pointing out that the United States is not solely responsible for these breaches; the international community has facilitated the detention programme at Guantánamo Bay, and has failed to react to the grave violations of human rights that have occurred there. The violations of human rights at Guantánamo Bay begin with rendition flights, which transport terrorists to the camp for interrogation, and have been allowed to land at various airports throughout Europe. Various areas of international law are relevant to rendition, but particularly the prohibition of enforced disappearance. Once at Guantánamo Bay, detainees have been denied their right to visits from a consular official of their national State, protected under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.[8] As Dr McCall-Smith pointed out, various provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have also been violated in the course of detention and interrogation at Guantánamo Bay. These include the right to non-discrimination,[9] the right to liberty and security of person,[10] the right to be heard before a court,[11] and the right to be treated with respect for the inherent dignity of the person.[12]

Meanwhile, Jacques Hartmann, a senior lecturer in Law at the University of Dundee, spoke of his research into arbitrary detention in non-international armed conflicts. This topic is particularly relevant to Guantánamo Bay, given that most of those taken to the camp are captured as enemy combatants. To Dr Hartmann, the detention of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay is symptomatic of a much larger problem: the lack of treaty provisions that explicitly address detention in non-international armed conflict. The lack of an express provision leads many to infer the authority to detain from the authority to use lethal force. Yet Dr Hartmann warned against such inferential reasoning, reiterating that any detention without legal justification is arbitrary, and is thus prohibited under both international human rights and humanitarian law.

As suggested above, the most widely discussed human rights violation at Guantánamo Bay is the continued use of torture. This was the focus of an address given by Dr Mitch Robinson, an international law specialist at the United States Department of Defense. He characterised Guantánamo Bay as a concentration camp; the only people detained there since November 2001 have been Sunni Muslim men. Dr Robinson spoke of one of his clients, a Saudi national who was accused of financing terrorism, and was in the CIAs’ torture programme for three and a half years. Though reports from early questioning suggested that he ‘does not appear to be a financing mastermind,’ the client was repeatedly deprived of sleep, sodomised and water-boarded, among other things. Robinson proposed a strategy for global human rights litigation relating to Guantánamo Bay. He refers to this strategy as ‘collateral advocacy’ for detainees’ human rights through domestic courts, regional human rights bodies, the UN’s human rights treaty bodies and high commissioner for human rights, international non-governmental organisations, civil society, and the application of legal or diplomatic pressure by other States.

Andrea Birdsall, lecturer in international relations at the University of Edinburgh, pointed out that as the international community has become aware of torture practices in Guantánamo Bay, the US government has moved along a ‘continuum of denials.’ This began with literal denial, a phase in which the Bush administration simply argued that the US Government does not commit acts of torture. This was, however, challenged by the release of the torture memos,[13] which made clear that torture was being used as a government policy. This led to ‘interpretive denial,’ in which it was argued that detainees were not subjected to torture, but to ‘enhanced’ or ‘increased pressure’ phases of interrogation that did not entail the ‘near-death’ experiences that would constitute violations of international or US domestic law. In the final stage, ‘implicatory denial,’ it was admitted that ‘mistakes had been made’ in the interrogation of suspected terrorists, but it was argued that the measures taken were justifiable in times of crisis. To Dr Birdsall, the US government’s treatment of terrorist suspects does not signify the demise of the anti-torture norm. Instead, the discourse surrounding Guantánamo Bay has legitimised the international law prohibition of torture, reinforcing a shared global understanding of the prohibition’s non-derogability.

The panel concluded that the programme of detention and interrogation at Guantánamo Bay warrants continued attention from scholars, lawyers, governments, and international civil society. There are three reasons for this conclusion. Firstly, violations of human rights are ongoing; Article 14 of the Torture Convention, for example, requires States parties to rehabilitate victims of torture, an obligation the US government has not fulfilled in relation to Guantánamo detainees.[14] Secondly, Guantánamo Bay is unlikely to be closed in the foreseeable future, and conditions may in fact worsen in coming years. And, finally, the prominence of human rights violations at the camp presents an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to reflect upon the state of the international rule of law, and to reify the value of the fundamental rights protected within the international legal order.

About the author

Vivek Bhatt is an Edinburgh Global Research Scholar, and is reading for a PhD in Law. He holds an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and a Master of International Law from the University of Sydney. Vivek’s research interests span public international law, international political theory, and counterterrorism. His current research relates to the engagement of individuals in the international legal system through the course of the war on terror.

[1] Fleur Johns, ‘Guantánamo Bay and the Annihilation of the Exception’ (2005) 16(4) The European Journal of International Law 613, 616.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Mary Ellen O’Connell, ‘The Choice of Law Against Terrorism’ (2010) 4 Journal of National Security Law & Policy 343, 353.

[5] Quoted in Joan Fitspatrick, ‘Spekaing Law to Power: The War Against Terrorism and Human Rights’ (2003) 14 European Journal of International Law 241, 242.

[6] Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Kevin Attell trans., University of Chicago Press, 2005) 3.

[7] This phrase was used by Mitch Robinson, a panelist at ‘International Law and Guantánamo Detention Operations: Why it Matters’, hosted by the Global Justice Academy and Edinburgh Law School on 9 February 2017.

[8] Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, signed 24 April 1963, 596 UNTS 261 (entered into force 19 March 1967) art 36.

[9] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976) art 2.

[10] Ibid art 9(1).

[11] Ibid art 9(4).

[12] Ibid art 10(1).

[13] See, for example, Philippe Sands, ‘Torture Team: The Responsibility of Lawyers for Abusive Interrogation’ (2008) 9 Melbourne Journal of International Law 365, 366.

[14] Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, opened for signature 10 December 1984, 1465 UNTS 85 (entered into force 26 June 1987) art 14.

The Asylum Monologues

Blog, Citizenship and Belonging, Human rights, Immigration, Innovative Initiative Fund, Refugees

This blog has been written by Dr Grit Wesser, a postdoctoral fellow in Social Anthropology at The University of Edinburgh. Here, she reports from a recent Asylum Monologues event in Edinburgh, which brought together performers, academics, students and the public to discuss this global human rights issue.

Immigration has perhaps always been – at least since the rise of nation-states – a contentious issue for policy makers, in public discourse, and around families’ kitchen tables. The so-called “European Refugee Crisis” has renewed a debate not on ‘whether’, but on ‘how much’ to control and limit immigration to Europe. In this process, the issue has been reduced to one of numbers.

But why do people cross borders and leave behind their home countries and loved ones? What does it mean to be an asylum seeker in Scotland? What new boundaries do migrants face, once they arrive in a country that is foreign to them – and treats them as foreigners? Could Scotland become their new home? These questions were being creatively examined through a performance of the Asylum Monologues, and in the panel discussion that followed.

Ice&Fire, a theatre company that explores human rights issues through performance, created the first script of the Asylum Monologues in 2006. Since then the company has recorded and performed various testimonies of asylum seekers, aimed at raising awareness of asylum seekers’ experiences by sharing their stories with the communities to which they now belong. The audience listened attentively to a Scottish script, launched only during Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival in 2016.

The three Ice&Fire performers took turns in telling the stories of a Kurdish unaccompanied minor, a young Pakistani man, and an Iranian woman and their experiences in Scotland. These narrations were candid and often bittersweet, taking the audience on the asylum seekers’ journeys, oscillating between the fear of state persecution and the sensations of loss, hope, and homesickness. The stories evoked the grief caused by broken families and the joys experienced through new-found friends as well as the frustrations and struggles associated with having to start from scratch and the potentials and expectations that new beginnings hold.

The performance was followed by a panel discussion, chaired by Jenny Munro from Beyond Borders Scotland. The panel comprised Professor Anthony Good, Social Anthropology; Phil Jones, manager of the Glasgow Night Shelter for Destitute Asylum Seekers; and Steven Ritchie, one of the three performers. The panellists were joined by two young men whose stories we had just heard: Tony and Aras.

Since Aras had listened to the script of his own story for the first time, he was eager to praise the performer: “It was great. You told it better than I could have!” Tony and Aras spoke to the audience about their new life in Scotland, while Phil explained how the Night Shelter’s work attempts to mitigate the difficulties faced by asylum seekers in Glasgow. Steven, who was also involved in interviewing asylum seekers, revealed more about the process of recording and retelling their life stories.

Issues surrounding the asylum process in the UK were clarified by Prof Good, who has frequently acted as an expert witness on asylum appeals in the UK and other countries. Contrary to the stories we had listened to, he elaborated, the Home Office structures its interviews with asylum seekers in a way that does not accommodate a chronological order of their experiences. Questions are often phrased ambiguously so that asylum seekers’ answers could vary, in turn leading to an intentional undermining of their credibility – a credibility required for gaining refugee status.

After a vote of thanks to the performers, panellists, and sponsors, the event ended with much applause and a donation appeal. The audience donated a total of nearly £200, which was equally split to support the work of Amnesty International and the Glasgow Night Shelter.

Aimed at making the people behind immigration numbers visible again, it was a successful evening – as one attendee later commented: “I’ve been to a few discussions on refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland, but this was the first to have a more creative take with the monologues, which I thought worked really well. It’s always helpful to have a more personal take, because numbers and places are difficult to bring to life.  I thought it was great all in so thanks for putting it together.”

Grit Wesser organised The Asylum Monologues event with Helene Frössling (Scottish Graduate School of Social Science) and Hannah Cook (Centre for African Studies), and in collaboration with Beyond Borders Scotland and Ice&Fire. The event was co-supported by the Global Justice and Global Development Academies’ through their joint Innovative Initiative Fund.

The Future of Pan-Africanism

Africa, Innovative Initiative Fund

This blog post was written by Micaela Opoku-Mensah, a masters student in Africa and International Development at The University of Edinburgh. Micaela reports from The Future of Pan-Africanism event, hosted recently in Edinburgh, that received funding from the Global Justice and Global Development academies’ joint Innovative Initiative Fund.

Fellow students and lecturers from various disciplines across the University of Edinburgh came together at the Evolution House Boardroom to amplify conversations on ‘The Future of Pan-Africanism’ through a series of panel debates. From tracing the historical foundations, we discussed its current efforts in mobilizing those of African descent and envisaged future ramifications in its influence in African politics, philosophy and economics.

The event opened with the first panel on ‘Pan-Africanism and its Historical Foundations’, led by Dr. Kehinde Andrews (Birmingham City University). Taking us back to the origins of the Pan-African movement, Dr. Andrews drew attention to the importance of differentiating between the all-encompassing ‘Pan-Africanism’ movement with a capital ‘P’ and ‘pan-Africanism’ movement with a small ‘p’, demonstrating that the former refers to the renowned figures W.E.B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and the five Pan-African Congresses and the latter constituting a group of cultural movements that are somewhat ephemeral. Placing emphasis on the tendency to use the terms interchangeably, he explicates that one misses the nuances surrounding the objective. For instance, in regards to Dr. Kwame Nkumah’s end goal of Pan-Africanism to be the United States of Africa, this pushes us to rethink its application in the 21st century and what we mean by the nation-state in Africa.

Following on from this, Dr.Lawrence Dritsas (The University of Edinburgh) also traced the historical trajectories, however he ventured upon a different route talking about the history of pan-African Science, pan-African scientific institutions and explored their combined origins in both colonial and diasporic ideas.

Mr.Muhammed Dan Suleiman, a PhD candidate from the University of Western Australia, digitally spearheaded the second panel on ‘Pan-Africanism and Islamism’ speaking on locating the ‘African’ in contemporary Islamism. He embarked upon critically unpacking the Eurocentric understandings of Islamism and highlighted continuities in laying aside the Afrocentric perspective. Muhammed closed this segment urging the need for scholars to augment discussions.

In the final panel, ‘Pan-Africanism and Prospects for the Future’, was Mr.Nigel Stewart from the Centre for Pan-African Thought. He indicated that we are in a unique time in history where the future is to what degree one can harness and shape the global awakening and resistance into a program for sustainable change towards the ultimate aim for the total liberation of the African continent and its people. He stipulated that the spirit of Pan-Africanism, a beacon of social, cultural, political and economic emancipation is being revived and will continue to speak essentially on the importance of the unity of Africans across the globe. Nigel closed the event with considerable attention to Pan-Africanism becoming a model that represents a framework and pillars of which one can construct values and principles, particularly through corporate institutions, community programs and development programs focusing renewing consciousness in the mode of decolonization.

This workshop was made possible through the generous support of the Global Development Academy, the Global Justice Academy and the Centre of African Studies. I would like to give a special thanks to Sarah-Jane Cooper Knock, Louise McKenzie, the Student Rapporteurs: Courage Matiza, Safiya Mann, Patrick Brobbey and all of the wonderful volunteers from the MSc Africa & International Development, MSc African studies and MSc Global Health & Public Policy student cohort.

Cinema and Social Justice in Zimbabwe: An Evening with Agnieszka Piotrowska

Africa, Blog, Gender

Brooks Marmon is a PhD student in the Centre of African Studies at The University of Edinburgh.  His thesis examines Zimbabwean responses to the broader process of decolonization in Africa. In this blog post, he writes about an illuminating evening in Edinburgh with Agnieszka Piotrowska on cinema and social justice in Zimbabwe.

With support from the Global Justice and Global Development academies’ Innovative Initiative Fund, the University of Edinburgh hosted Dr. Agnieszka Piotrowska (University of Bedfordshire) in March 2017 for a screening of her film Lovers in Time: Or How We Didn’t Get Arrested in Harare and presentation of a paper on post-colonial trauma.  The event explored the theme of ‘Cinema and Social Justice in Zimbabwe’ and was moderated by Dr. Francisca Mutapi from the School of Biological Sciences.

For the better part of the past decade, Piotrowska has been engaged with cinematic and theatrical initiatives in Zimbabwe.  Expanding on her initial training activities undertaken in Zimbabwe with the support of the British Council, Piotrowska has now made several feature-length and short films in the country and recently published Black and White: Cinema, Politics and the Arts in Zimbabwe.

Piotrowska has been particularly engaged with the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA).  This annual festival in the Zimbabwean capital was the subject of one of Piotrowska’s earliest works on Zimbabwe, The Engagement Party in Harare.  A subsequent edition of the Festival formed the backdrop to the film for which we gathered at Thomson’s Land.

Lovers in Time traces the controversy surrounding a play of the same name.  Written by a Zimbabwean, Blessing Hungwe, Piotrowska was selected to direct the performance at the 2014 edition of HIFA.  The play provocatively traces Nehanda and Kaguvi, revered Zimbabwean spirit mediums who played prominent roles resisting the intrusion of white colonists in the late 19th century.  State media criticized the play for reincarnating the characters with a different gender, calling it “a distortion of history” and Piotrowska was requested to make (slight) alterations to the script, which she refused.  The documentary follows the impact of the tension induced by this critical attention on the cast and crew.

Piotrowska spoke frankly on the challenges she faced in directing the play both in the film and during her remarks. Toward the end of the film, following a scene in which the play has been disrupted by a protester, she queries in a voice-over, “I’m left confused and battered, not sure at all anymore.  Did we change anything?  Did we open a space for dialogue about history and race?”  She does not directly answer the question in the film, however during the Q&A, she noted that if she could do it all over again in that moment, she would.

Ultimately, as the title foreshadows, no one gets arrested. Piotrowska continues to work in Zimbabwe.  She has overseen the production of several shorts on the tumultuous relationship between the German academic Flora Veit-Wild and the celebrated Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera.  Her latest feature-length piece, a film noir entitled Escape with Joe Ngagu (with whom she also collaborated on Lovers in Time) will soon premier in the UK.

Piotrowska, whose work draws heavily on psychoanalysis, has described herself as a ‘trickster’, subverting dominant structures in a humorous manner.  In light of her continued (and prolific) work in and on Zimbabwe, it seems that the post-colonial trauma she endured in staging Lovers in Time has not dented her ambition to provocatively interrogate the lingering impact of foreign rule on Africa.

 

1 2