Category: Conflict

Comparing Police Discipline in the US and the UK: Lessons for American Law Enforcement – Part 1

American law enforcement, Conflict, Labour rights, Police and Policing, Punishment, Security, UK, US Politics, USA

This post is the first of a two-part blog by Prof. Paul Clark comparing police discipline in the US and the UK. Part I focuses on the relevant similitudes and differences between police discipline in the two countries and highlights the connections between police trade unions and police discipline.

Paul F. Clark is Professor and former Director, School of Labor and Employment Relations at Penn State University in the United States.  His research has focused on employment relations, labor unions, and the globalization of labor markets.  His current focus is on police unions and police disciplinary processes in the UK and the US.  He has authored or edited six books and his research has appeared in the leading scholarly journals in industrial and labor relations, applied psychology, and international labor issues.  He has served as a visiting professor at universities in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand and is currently President-elect of the U.S.-based Labor and Employment Relations Association.

 

Recent high-profile cases of police misconduct in the U.S. have heightened racial tensions and increased public awareness of systematic problems in American law enforcement.  The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of Minneapolis and Louisville police in 2020 were met by widespread protest around the world and for calls for police reform.

Photo by Gayatari Malhotra on Unsplash

The fact that Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck causing his death, had 18 complaints regarding serious misconduct filed against him since 2001 and was still working as a police officer, has contributed to the impression that American police are not being held accountable for their actions.

In the wake of these concerns, the movement to reform American policing has gained momentum.  This reform movement is looking at all aspects of American law enforcement including oversight, funding, training, use of force, hiring, pay, and recruitment.  However, one important element that has received minimal consideration in discussions about reform are the processes for disciplining police officers accused of misconduct.

While the British public has concerns about police misconduct, police are viewed more favorably in the UK than in the US.  In surveys conducted in 2020, 74 percent of people aged 16 and over in England and Wales reported having confidence in their local police, while only 48 percent of Americans held that view.

A preliminary examination of the UK police complaint and discipline processes indicates that these processes differ significantly from, and work more effectively than, those in the US.  This suggests that there may be elements of the British system of police discipline that could be adapted and adopted by American law enforcement.

To learn more about the UK police complaint and discipline processes, I spent the spring of 2022 in residence at the University of Edinburgh’s Global Justice Academy and the University of Oxford Law School.  Because England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland each have their own systems of law enforcement, they each have their own police complaint and discipline processes.  In the course of my work, I gathered information about the three processes and conducted 37 interviews with parties involved in these processes—police forces, police federations representing officers, independent public oversight agencies, and neutral hearing officers.  An analysis of the data collected identified a few elements that differ significantly from the discipline processes in the US and that, in my view, have potential to improve what is now, in many cases, a problematic process in the US.

Police disciplinary processes in the UK and the US have some elements in common.  Disciplinary processes are utilized to deal with both public complaints about officer conduct and internal charges made by police colleagues or supervisors.  Public or internal charges can result in an investigation into an officer’s conduct.  The results of the investigation are considered by police administrators and the charged officer (and the officer’s representatives) are given opportunities to respond.  If the charges are not resolved, the case can go before a neutral third party who renders a decision.

Photo by King’s Church International on Unsplash

One significant difference between the US and UK systems of law enforcement is that the majority of police officers in the US belong to trade unions (57.5 percent in 2019) that have the right to collective bargaining. Some of these police unions, mostly in large cities, have used their bargaining power to negotiate contract clauses that make it harder to discipline their members. These unions also generally take a more adversarial approach when advocating for their members in the discipline process than their counterparts in the UK.  For these unions, “defending the member at all costs” is the priority, even when the officer or officers involved have engaged in problematic behavior.

A recent analysis found that in 624 police discharge cases heard by arbitrators (neutral third parties) nationwide between 2006 and 2020, police officers were reinstated to their jobs 52 percent of the time. During the same period, in Minneapolis, in six of eight cases involving the discharge of police officers, the charges were overturned, and the officers returned to their jobs.

In the UK, police are not permitted to be represented by a trade union.  Instead, officers at all ranks are represented by professional associations that advocate for the good and welfare of their members (for example, constables, sergeants, and inspectors in England and Wales are represented by the Police Federation of England and Wales), but do not engage in collective bargaining.  While these federations and associations fight for their members when they feel they have been treated unfairly, they also tend to look more broadly at what is good for the policing profession and for the community.  In some instances, they may put the interests of the profession and the community ahead of those of an individual member.  For example, they might try to counsel a problematic officer into resigning from the force, rather than fight to get their job back.  One long-serving police federation representative told me he thought “he might be responsible for getting rid of more bad cops than the police force had.”

Certainly, some police unions in the US do what they can to make sure that officers not suited to policing do not continue to serve.  But in some notable cases where unions have won reinstatement for officers accused of excess force, racism, or corruption, these officers have continued to engage in misconduct. If they want to increase the public’s confidence in their members, the more aggressive police unions need to moderate their approach to representing their members and emphasize what is good for the profession and the community.

In addition to moderating their defense of “bad cops,” some US police unions need to consider rethinking existing contract language that makes it difficult for police departments to discipline officers (while still ensuring that they receive appropriate due process).  Both changes would have a positive impact on how the public views the police.

Finally, it should be noted that an additional reason that police officers fired for misconduct in the US (and sometimes in the UK) are put back on the job is that police management sometimes does a poor job of investigating and building discipline cases against officers.  Bringing a weak case before a neutral third party greatly increases the chances that a union will win the case and enable an undeserving officer to retain their job.  Where this happens, police managers need to improve their performance.

Continue reading part 2 of this two-part blog.

 

 

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AHRI Statement on the Russian Aggression against Ukraine

Conflict, Eastern Europe, Human rights, ICCPR, International Law, Russian Federation, Security, Ukraine, UN

The Secretariat for the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI), hosted by the Global Justice Academy (GJA) and Strathclyde Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law, along with the full AHRI Executive Committee, today published its statement on the Russian Federation’s violations of fundamental international law, including human rights law, and the danger it poses to the post-World War II peace and security architecture.

The Russian Federation’s invasion of sovereign Ukrainian territory is a clear violation of international law and endangers the post-World War II peace architecture that has prevailed over Europe these last seven decades.

The Russian Federation is bound by seven of the core UN human rights treaties as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. We recall the position of the Human Rights Committee that States parties of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights who are engaged in acts of aggression as defined in international law, resulting in deprivation of life, violate ipso facto the right to life as protected by Article 6 of the Covenant. Each step it takes in Ukraine negates its commitment to respect and protect the rights of civilians in Ukraine and those in Russia who are unable to safely voice their opposition to their government. This unprecedented use of force and blatant breach of the UN Charter, the Charter of Paris, and the Helsinki Final Act brings suffering and misery to Ukraine and its people.

As the largest global network of human rights research institutes, AHRI stands together with its colleagues, students and friends in the Ukraine and those in Russia who have been intimidated and forced to remain silent in the face of Russia’s acts of aggression.

Photo of protestors holding Ukraine flags

Photo by: Beth LaBerge

Read the full statement here: AHRI Statement on Russian Aggression against Ukraine

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Human Insecurity: Can ‘ISIS Brides’ Be Victims of Human Trafficking?

Conflict, Gender, Human rights, Human Trafficking, ISIS, Middle East, Palermo Protocol, Security, Sexual Violence, UNCRC, Women

Photo of the authorThis is the third blog in a series written by LLM students on the Human (In)Security course at Edinburgh Law School. The series celebrates the top five blogs selected in a class competition. This blog is by Isobel Murray John. Isobel is from the Highlands of Scotland and finished her LLB at Edinburgh University before taking a year out and returning to read the LLM in International Law. You can follow her on Twitter @IsobelMurrayJo1.

 

Choice or coercion? Can ‘ISIS brides’ be victims of human trafficking?

Human trafficking exists in many shades of grey. A standard victim profile simply does not exist. Restricting who we consider as legally legitimate victims may leave those who do not fit the traditional mould, open to further exploitation. An example of when lines seem blurred, often to the detriment of the ‘victim’, is seen in the case of girls who are ‘recruited’ to become brides for ISIS. Often as young as 15 they are lured by promises of a more religiously fulfilled life with a loving husband. Yet they often find themselves forced to live as slaves with little regard for their fundamental human rights. The global narrative surrounding these girls centres around the fact that they made the choice to travel to join ISIS, and therefore how could they possibly be victims of human trafficking. This blog post will examine this flawed narrative and explore how the legal definition of ‘human trafficking’ can actually fit the exploitive circumstances these girls find themselves in. There should be more acknowledgment and empathy from society rather than disgust and ostracism.

Current international law on human trafficking

To understand whether ‘ISIS brides’ could be considered as victims of human trafficking it is necessary examine if the current international law can be applied. Most importantly, the United Nations’ Protocol to Prevent, Supress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Palermo Protocol) states that trafficking is the:

Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.[1]

Exploiting people deceived into that position is the key element of trafficking. There is no ‘one-size fits all’ standard definition of exploitation. The Palermo Protocol notes that exploitation can include; sexual exploitation, slavery and forced labour or services.[2] So can these young girls who find themselves lured in by ISIS recruiters be considered as having been deceived and exploited? They are certainly deceived by tales of the ‘joys of sisterhood’ and the promise of love and religious fulfilment. The groups aggressively groom and manipulate these girls, often over social media,[3] showering them with praise and flattery. Once they arrive they almost instantaneously become the man’s property, and find themselves forced into virtual slavery.

Are ISIS brides exploited?
Muslim woman in burqua with two female children

AFP/Getty Images

Montgomery notes that these women find that their role is, “is circumscribed for childbearing, marriage, cooking and cleaning, and they may not even be able to leave the house.”[4] One told of being ‘gifted’ to her husband’s friends and raped until she would

pass out. Another was trafficked at 14, married against her will, pregnant by 15, then again at 16. The realities of stoning’s, beatings and sexual slavery, not to mention the torment of being constantly pregnant is not something you would wish on your worst enemy let alone a child. Yet the fact that many of these girls are under the age of 18 when they first become exposed to this deception and coercion, thus legally considered to be children according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, seems to be forgotten.[5] The UK Government Home Office guidance on human trafficking acknowledges that young people and children, due to their dependent status, will be far more susceptible to psychological coercion. It even states that individuals may appear as “willing participants”.[6]

Unrepentant or brainwashed?

These girls face huge stigma and backlash based on their ‘choice’ to leave their own countries and join these groups. They are believed to have made these judgements clearly and in sound mind, and therefore the punishment should be representative of this. Yet how much of a choice is it? Domestic judicial systems must recognise the likelihood that these girls have been trafficked. Understandably, each case should be judged on individual circumstances as the complexity of motivations and roles of these woman is diverse.[7] Often however, the hallmarks of the Palermo Protocol’s definition of trafficking are present. These girls are groomed and deceived into making the decision to travel to join ISIS. Once there, they move around with the group, are sexually exploited and treated in a manner which totally denies their dignity and fundamental human rights.[8]

Photo of Shamima Begum.

Credit: Anthony Loyd/The Times/News Licensing

Famously, Shamima Begum has been described as “unrepentant and without regret” when asked about her decision to leave the UK and marry a Dutch ISIS fighter. Consequently, she, along with many other British women, has been stripped of her citizenship on the basis of ‘security fears’. Hannah Arendt poignantly describes citizenship as the “right to have rights”. Such an extreme response- to strip these women of their citizenship- should only be justified by unmitigated wrongs and must fully recognise the individual circumstances. The phrase ‘recruit’ is often used when describing these women, which only encourages a global narrative that such women are not victims but equitable with male fighters. The women will sometimes fight too, but the fundamental issue is that women are not lured to ISIS for to their fighting ability. It is the male sexual appetite and the securing of a future ISIS generation which prompts the demand for women.  They are deceived and exploited purely for their bodies.

How to move forward?

Further guidance should be provided on the application of the Palermo Protocol for cases which are not clear-cut, particularly regarding potential victims of trafficking by terrorists. Additionally, domestic legal systems should examine their implementation and interpretation of the protocol in such cases. The assumption in general discourse around trafficking is that it happens from a ‘poorer’ country to either another similar country or a ‘wealthier’ country. It is seen as inconceivable that victims may be transported from the West to less affluent and war-torn countries such as Syria. There is no standard victim of human trafficking. ‘Willing participation’ does not justify ignorance of circumstances that may well fit the legal definition of trafficking. While it should be reinforced that this may not mitigate potential crimes these young women may have committed, it must be taken into account. Very often they are deceived, coerced and brainwashed before being exploited for their bodies. This cannot be ignored.

 

 

[1] UN General Assembly, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, 15 November 2000, Article 3(a).

[2] Ibid

[3] Gladstone, R, “Twitter Says It Suspended 10,000 ISIS-Linked Accounts in One Day.” New York Times. 9 April 2015

[4] Katarina Montgomery, ‘ISIS Recruits Brides to Solve Middle East ‘Marriage Crisis’, Syria Deeply, (2015).

[5] UN Commission on Human Rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 7 March 1990, E/CN.4/RES/1990/74, Article 1.

[6] UK Home Office, ‘Modern Slavery: Statutory Guidance for England and Wales (under s49 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015) and Non-Statutory Guidance for Scotland and Northern Ireland, January 2021, at Section 2.18.

[7] Cook, J & Vale G, ‘From Daesh to Diaspora: Tracing the woman and minors of Islamic State.’ ICSR Report, Kings College London (2018), at p.26.

[8] Binetti, A, ‘A new frontier: human trafficking and ISIS’s recruitment of woman from the west’, Information2Action, Georgetown Institute for Woman, Peace & Security, (2015) at pp.2-3.

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De-Mystifying The G-Word: Enforcement and Success of the Genocide Convention

Africa, Atrocities, Balkans, Conflict, Genocide, Human rights, Students participate!, Teaching, UN
UN Photo/Evan Schneider - 70th Anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

UN Photo/Evan Schneider – 70th Anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

This post by is by Oskar Granskogen Kjorstad, Alexandra Haider and Tess Gallagher. They are students enrolled in PLIT10063 ‘Human Rights in International Relations’, an honours-level course in the School of Social and Political Sciences that explores the political and legal issues surrounding the international enforcement of human rights. As part of their online tutorial activities, students were asked to prepare a blog post about the enforcement of the Genocide Convention. This piece was selected as the standout among the many excellent submissions, chosen for its incisive commentary on the Darfur crisis and its excellent discussion of the Convention’s broader application.

 

 

There is no shortage of forgotten conflicts in history that briefly capture the world’s attention on their way through the news cycle before the next noteworthy event promptly takes their place in the spotlight. Darfur is an especially painful example of such a conflict. State-supported and ethnically motivated violence against the civilian population of Darfur has caused enormous suffering. Yet despite calls from civil society for states to intervene on the grounds that they are obligated to under the Genocide Convention, the international community took no meaningful action to stop the violence. What explains the apathy of the international community and the difficulty of enforcing the Genocide Convention in relation to Darfur?

One of the most basic problems with the enforcement of the Genocide Convention is the difficulty of consistently and accurately applying the legal definition of genocide to cases of mass violence. The Genocide Convention defines genocide as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. Different international courts have variously understood this definition. In Srebrenica, the ICTY ruled that the murder of 7-8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys met the legal definition of genocide, though this case was less obviously a genocide than the Holocaust, which led to the Convention. In spite of the wide span in cases identified as genocides, the ICC determined that the violence in Darfur did not amount to “the crime of crimes”- not because the violence was less horrific than expected, but because the particular nature of the violence was deemed not to meet the legal definition of genocide. The U.S., as well as many NGOs and scholars, reached the opposite conclusion. This lack of legal clarity makes it harder to effectively identify cases of genocide, which is a problem in the enforcement of the Genocide Convention. Confusion caused by these legal debates can be used as an excuse by states not to use the word “genocide”, and so avoid pressure to act and subsequent legal obligations to end mass-atrocities.

If the definitional issue is overcome, another obstacle as to why the Genocide Convention is so rarely invoked lies in the semantic power of the word. Sardonically labelled ‘The G Word’, there is often a reluctance to utilise the word for fear of its connotations. Many argue that the term denotes absolute, totemic evil and thus should be treated with caution when used in political discourse. As a result, it is often replaced with other, more (supposedly) palatable alternatives, such as ‘ethnic-cleansing’. Examples of this were seen in the US’ refusal to condemn and recognise the Armenian Genocide; choosing instead to refer to it by the Armenian language phrase ‘Meds Yeghern’, or ‘Great Catastrophe’. This was not without external pressure- such power does the word have that US officials were threatened with losing access to military bases in Turkey if they were to vocalise it. Of course, strategic imperatives often trump moral ones; and evasive terminology in this case appeared the only way to conciliate all sides.

Once the word is invoked however, the game appears to change. If word is weapon, does saying it signify battle? In cases such as Darfur, it appears not. Despite internationalcondemnation and adducing of the Genocide Convention, the violence in Sudan still continues. Numerous resolutions have passed all with limited, if not weak, success. This leads many scholars and critics to question the legitimacy of the Genocide Convention; does it exist to appease, rather than to act?

Given the poor track record of the state system in preventing genocides, there’s a good case to be made for the former. A key explanation for this is that states put their self-interest above their obligation to prevent and punish genocide. States may circumscribe their response in ways that falls short of stopping the atrocities because they don’t see total involvement as self-serving. Upon examination of the crisis in Darfur, this fundamental challenge to the enforcement of the Convention is evident. While the U.S. publicly recognised the crisis as a genocide, Secretary of State Colin Powell asserted that,

UN Photo/Evan Schneider - 70th Anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

UN Photo/Evan Schneider

since the U.S. was already putting political pressure on authorities in Khartoum to halt the violence and was providing humanitarian aid to civilians, nothing more was required of it; the U.S. did not have to act to the extent that the Convention required because it was already pursuing narrow unilateral action. Similarly, although it is not formally labeled a genocide, Kurds are being killed en masse in Syria. While the U.S. has supported Kurdish rebels in the past, President Trump pulled American troops out of Syria in October 2019 on the basis that the conflict had “nothing to do with [the U.S.]”, effectively leaving the Kurds without means to protect themselves. A problem that feeds into this is the absence of a clear enforcement mechanism to make states comply with their obligation to prevent genocide. All states are equally obliged to prevent genocide, which leads to a bystander effect by which no one feels obliged to make the first move.

These are some of the reasons why Darfur stands as a painful reminder of the difficulty and political unwillingness of keeping the promise of “never again”.

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Off the Record: 9/11 Military Commission in its 7th Year

Blog, Conflict, Crime and Criminal Law, death penalty, Global Justice Academy, Guantanamo, Human rights, incarceration, Law and Legal, Punishment, Terrorism, Torture

This is the third post in a blog series by Dr Kasey McCall-Smith which examines some of the contentious legal issues raised in the US v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, et. al. military commission proceedings against the five men charged with various war crimes and terrorism in relation to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. The series is a continuation of her project ‘Torture on Trial’ which was funded by a grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is supported by the Edinburgh Law School.

Whatever Happened to the Alleged 9/11 Terror Plotters? 9/11 Military Commission in its 7th Year

The largest criminal justice trial in US history is currently taking place on Naval Station Guantánamo Bay. For the most part, the general public has no idea. Apart from consistent media coverage by a small handful of journalists, including Carol Rosenberg (formally of The Miami Herald and now with the New York Times) and John Ryan of Lawdragon, the US public and the formerly vocal academy have forgotten that five men, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Khallad bin Attash, Ammar al-Baluchi, Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, are charged with conspiracy to commit various war crimes and terrorism in relation to the September 11th attacks under the Military Commissions Act 2009 (MCA) in United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, et al. (9/11 case). In previous blogs I have explained the choice of venue for the detention facility, law of war detention, details on some of the detainees, and addressed issues relating to torture. This series looks in more detail at specific issues in the trial and why controversial legal stand-offs may not go away.

The first incarnation of the military commissions were replaced by the MCA following the US Supreme Court decisions in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush. The MCA applies to alien terrorist suspects and members of al Qaida, defined as alien ‘unprivileged enemy belligerents’, rounded up from 2002-2008, though recently there has been talk of the potential use of the statute to detained ISIS fighters.

 

The MCA sets out its applicability to offences before, on and after 11 September 2001 and raises questions about the long-standing principle of no ex post facto laws and the creative addition of ‘conspiracy’ to accepted war crimes definitions. The statute combines different and overlapping issues of military law, constitutional law and international law. Observing the 9/11 hearings, the failure to thoroughly evaluate the relationship between these different legal systems is proving problematic in every aspect of the trial’s slow progress. The only clarity lies in the fact that legislative responses to 9/11 were walled off from the realities of the outrageous conduct of the CIA during its Rendition, Detention and Interrogation programme.

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program (SSCI Report), it is well documented that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad was subjected to combinations of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, so-called EITs, equating to torture designed to exercise total control over the victim. Notably, he suffered periods of sleep deprivation lasting up to 180 hours and was ultimately waterboarded 183 times. The other four defendants were similarly treated. Bin Al-Shibh was subjected to EITs for approximately 34 days and kept in social isolation for almost 2.5 years. Bin Attash and al-Baluchi were subjected to EITs over a period of months. The CIA waterboarded al-Hawsawi and further subjected him to such brutal bodily treatment that he suffers irreparable physical damage. In short, US agents subjected each of them to a sustained and systematic programme of torture in direct violation of US and international law.

The illegal actions by the US were defended by the then Bush Administration as necessary to national security. When rumours and then evidence of ill-treatment began to leak out of US military bases abroad, international civil society and US civil rights groups called for the US, as well States working in concert with the US, to maintain detention and treatment standards demanded by the law. In particular, the customary Law of War and standards outlined in the Geneva Conventions as well as the Convention Against Torture were frequently invoked. Yet as the first detainees arrived in Guantánamo on 11 January 2002 these well-established rules appeared to be the furthest thing from the US government’s mind. For anyone watching as the first goggled and shackled jumpsuit-clad men dropped to their knees in the Cuban heat it was clear that this would be a long game. Of the approximately 780 men that were detained in Guantánamo since it opened the doors to the now defunct Camp X-Ray (pictured below), only 40 remain. One man (Balhul) is serving his sentence following conviction by military commission, 26 are known as ‘forever prisoners’ and eight are currently under charge, including the 9/11 defendants. The 9/11 charge sheet alleges that the defendants committed conspiracy, attacked civilians, and committed murder in violation of the Law of War, intentionally caused serious bodily harm, hijacked an aircraft, and committed acts of terrorism resulting in the deaths of 2.976 along with countless injuries. Following their arraignment on 5 May 2012, intentionally causing serious bodily injury was struck from the charges in the early months of the case. From the outset, issues regarding public access to the trial were raised. Limited public access to close circuit broadcast sites was offered to families soon after the litigation commenced. Though now only a trickle of viewers attend the 40 second delayed live-streams at Fort Meade, Fort Devens and Fort Hamilton. The roster of media and civil society observers at Camp Justice, too, can only be described as small when compared to the original outpouring of attention on the detention activities in Guantánamo.

In its 7th year of pre-trial proceedings, the 9/11 case is bogged down in a range of issues (see subsequent posts) that challenge the rule of law to its very core. How to reconcile the defendants’ status as both alleged terrorist war criminals and torture victims? Does US ‘reinterpretation’ of war crimes definitions square with the law of war? Can an appropriate balance between the alleged crimes and victimhood be achieved? Will the victims of 9/11 ever get the justice they deserve and, if so, at what cost? Seventeen years after the horrendous acts that markedly shifted western governments into a new era of aggressive national security pursuits, it seems that only time will tell. At the conclusion of the 35th round of hearings, we are left only with questions. 

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Complicity, Elitism and Storytelling: Exploring Moral Ambiguity in Times of Injustice

Atrocities, Conflict, Crime and Criminal Law, Edinburgh, Global Justice Academy, Human rights, Knowledge Exchange, Theory, Understanding Global Justice

In her second post for this blog, GJA Communications Intern, Jee-Young Song, reflects on the recent GJA GREYZONE Summer School keynote session on ‘Conceptual Perspectives’.

The Summer School kick-started on Monday the 25 June, the theme this year being ‘Navigating the Grey Zone: Complicity, Resistance and Solidarity’.The following is from the ‘Conceptual Perspectives’ talks, where expert speakers from the fields of human rights, philosophy, and political theory (Ruth Kelly, Charlotte Knowles and Lukas Slothuus, pictured above) each gave their unique insight on the key issues.

Storytelling as a way to reinforce human rights

First to speak was Ruth Kelly, who focused on the potential for narrative to help communities articulate approaches to the development of human rights. To give an example of such artistic intervention, she showed footage taken at a poetry workshop in Uganda, where a woman recites a poem about struggling to choose between action and complicity, entitled ‘Should I stay? Should I go?’.

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The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Conflict, Constitutional Change, environment, Ethics, Human rights, International development, International Law, Law and Legal, Peace, UN

Dagmar Topf Aguiar de Medeiros is reading for a PhD in Law at the University of Edinburgh, and is an intern at UN House Scotland. As a member of a delegation from Scottish civil society, she recently attended negotiations in New York on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted 7 July 2017, at the United Nations.

The United Nations has aimed to ban nuclear weapons since it was established in 1945.[1] In fact, the very first UN General Assembly resolution established a Commission to set in motion measures towards nuclear disarmament.[2] Until recently, the most important instrument to this end was the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).[3] Recent years have seen growing discontent with the discriminatory nature of the NPT, which distinguishes between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states. Additionally, the NPT faces criticism with regard to the stagnation of nuclear disarmament. Although the treaty includes an obligation to work towards nuclear disarmament, Article 6 has not, as of late, provided sufficient incentive for nuclear weapon states to act.

With an aim to finally move forwards, in October 2016 the UN disarmament and international security committee saw 123 nations voting in favour of meeting to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading to their total elimination. These negotiations have taken place throughout spring and summer 2017 and have culminated in the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on the 7th July this year.

The treaty prohibits member states from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, and disallows them from assisting, encouraging or inducing anyone to participate in such activities. Furthermore, it has become forbidden to allow nuclear weapons to be stationed or deployed on member states’ territory. Of equal importance are the positive obligations in the treaty to provide adequate victim assistance and to take measures towards the remediation of environments contaminated as a result of the use or testing of nuclear weapons. Although not explicitly mentioned, there is a growing understanding that financing constitutes ‘assistance’ with prohibited acts.

The text and preamble of the ban treaty reflect the efforts of civil society by emphasising the humanitarian and environmental impact of any nuclear detonation, be it accidental or intentional. The humanitarian initiative proved successful in shifting the debate out of the security argument stalemate states had become entrenched in. At the negotiations, civil society had the opportunity to share the experiences of victims of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing, and to highlight the devastating impact of any detonation and the lack of adequate emergency-response capacity.

By placing human welfare and safety at the centre of the treaty, it is hoped that the ban treaty will have a ripple effect similar to that of the Conventions prohibiting Biological and Chemical weapons. Therefore, even though none of the nuclear weapons states have expressed any interest in joining the negotiations or the treaty, it is hoped the legal norm combined with continued pressure from civil society will eventually convince governments to discontinue nuclear deterrence policies.

The ban treaty is of particular interest to Scotland because of the country’s unique position of having to facilitate nuclear weapons without having any say in the decisions involving them. This is because nuclear weapons are considered a matter of national security and as such fall outside the scope of Scotland’s devolved powers.

[1] https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/ (last visited 9 July 2017).

[2] General Assembly Resolution VIII, Establishment of a commission to deal with the problem raised by the discovery of atomic energy (24 January 1946), available from http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/1(I) (last visited 9 July 2017).

[3] Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (5 March 1970) 729 U.N.T.S. 161.

If you are interested in reading more about the negotiations on the ban treaty, including daily reports from the Scottish civil society delegation to New York, visit http://www.nuclearban.scot/ and http://www.icanw.org/

If you want to find out more about civil society engagement surrounding nuclear disarmament, please visit:

http://www.banthebomb.org/

http://www.nukewatch.org.uk/

http://www.article36.org/

If you’re interested in reading twitter updates, the handle to follow is #nuclearban

More about the author:

Dagmar Topf Aguiar de Medeiros is reading for a PhD in Law at the University of Edinburgh. She holds an LLM in Private Law from the University of Leiden and an LLB from the Utrecht Law College of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Dagmar’s research interests span public international law, specifically environmental law, climate change law and human rights. Her current research relates to the international constitutionalism in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Peace and Conflict Series: Can Data Bring Peace? The Gains and Caveats of Data Science in Peace and Conflict Studies

Conflict, Peace, Peace and Conflict Series

What can social and political scientists learn from data science? And what can data science contribute to the research on peace and conflict?

‘Most importantly, one has to know what questions to ask’, says Gabriele Schweikert, Research Fellow at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. ‘And secondly, one needs the necessary data to answer that question.’

For example, researchers on urban conflict might be interested to find out how different instances of violence distribute across a city over time. Available data from media on the location and intensity of violence can be harvested with the help of automatised bots searching for keywords. ‘But if researchers have only a vague idea of their question and do not know what data can do and what not, they might end up with a trivial answer’, she says, adding: ‘Such as the simple result that violent conflict in cities tends to take place in streets.’

Can data predict conflict?

Gabriele’s colleague, Guido Sanguinetti, a Reader in Machine Learning in Informatics at Edinburgh, is an expert in running prediction models, usually in the field of computational biology. But when a friend who worked as a data scientist for the New York Times sent him a visualisation of violent incidents in Afghanistan, taken from the WikiLeaks Afghan War Diaries, he realised that he could ‘do much more with the available data’.

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New Blog Series: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Research in Edinburgh

Conflict, Edinburgh, Impact, Inclusivity, International development, Local-Global Connections, Peace, Peace and Conflict Series, Political Settlements

The University of Edinburgh’s research expertise on peace and conflict is growing fast, making it ever more important to connect and communicate across disciplinary lines. To this effect, a new blog series titled Rethinking Peace and Conflict Research in Edinburgh will foster exchange and make this ongoing research and its challenges more visible. Its aim is to build new interdisciplinary capacity and exchange around challenges and themes that connect experts working on peace and conflict across and beyond the University.   » Read more

Peace in Colombia?

Citizenship and Belonging, Conflict, Peace, Political Settlements

This blog post by Gwen Burnyeat, Wolfson PhD scholar at UCL, was first published by the London Review of Books, on 1 December  2016. In this piece, Gwen comments on the recent development in the post-referendum context and the adoption of a new peace agreement in Colombia.

Photo: School-Children in Pereira draw their hopes for peace, August 2016, by Gwen Burnyeat.

Photo: School-Children in Pereira draw their hopes for peace, August 2016, by Gwen Burnyeat.

The new peace accord between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was signed in Bogotá’s Colón Theatre on 24 November. It was a more sober ceremony than the extravagant signing of the first agreement in Cartagena on 26 September, a week before Colombians narrowly voted against it in a referendum. The second signing was a closed event, and only President Juan Manuel Santos and the Farc commander, Timochenko, gave speeches. A subdued group of Colombians in the main plaza in Bogotá watched it on a big screen. The right-wing TV channel RCN, meanwhile, held a panel featuring only figures opposed to the deal, for ‘balance’.

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