The Rights Track

In Episode 8 of The Rights Track, Todd talks to Professor Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, International Chair of Human Rights at Wilfred Laurier University in Canada about state food crime, what it is, where it’s happening, why she believes it should be considered an international human rights crime and the challenges around prosecuting it. 0.00-4.48 How Rhoda got interested in food crime. She mentions an article by David Marcus which discusses four levels of state food crime: intentional, reckless, indifference and incompetence and argues that the intentional and reckless starvation of citizens should be considered an international crime. Rhoda explains how she produced a case study for each of the levels: on North Korea, Zimbabwe, Israel and Venezuela. She has also examined malnutrition in aboriginal people in Australia and Canada. Discussion of the law and the legal basis for these claims. Rhoda argues that food crime should have same status as torture. Existing human rights laws include the rights to be free from

In Episode 7 of The Rights Track, Todd asks Patrick Ball, Director of Research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, how and when statistics can be used to advance and protect human rights. Here are some notes from the interview including useful links and some additional resources from our partner, openGlobalRights 0.00-8.55 mins Todd outlines Patrick’s work testifying against Slobodan Milosevic, on numerous truth commissions and the evidence he provided at the trial of General Ríos Montt in Guatemala. How statistics can be used in general to advance human rights by showing patterns rather than specific individual cases What Patrick means by ‘making the violation the unit of analysis’ using example from El Salvador and how this approach can help in efforts to hold individuals and countries to account and how it prevents us from missing key information and complexities Todd talks about parallels with Chile 8.55-17.20 mins Patrick talks about where he gets his data and information from: voices/testimon

In Episode 6 of The Rights Track, Todd asks James Ron, Professor of International Affairs at the University of Minnesota, about his work with David Crow at the Centro de Investigation y Docencia Economicas, CIDE comparing public attitudes to human rights in and across four different countries. 0.00-5.46 minutes Todd sets the context including how in the UK attitudes have turned against human rights e.g. in the popular press and discussions around the Human Rights Act and whether or not the UK should get rid of it. How human rights are portrayed as protecting criminals and terrorists Jim explains how human rights has absorbed political and social baggage and taken on different meanings for different people Negative attitudes like those in the UK not apparent in other countries How Jim’s research is going about measuring attitudes to human rights and the countries he’s looked at (India, Morocco, Nigeria and Mexico Some human rights related background on each country and the reasons for selecting them Jim talks

In Episode 5 of The Rights Track, Todd asks Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Professor of International Affairs at the New School in New York, about human development and her work to develop a way of measuring and comparing how well countries do at upholding their social and economic rights obligations. 0.00-5.55 minutes Explanation of how the Human Development Index and associated reports came about and those involved in their concept and development The thinking behind the HDI and how it was designed to rival GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of economic success and a better measurement of how countries and their population are progressing and developing How the HDI challenged current thinking and perspectives on evaluating progress by focusing on freedoms to do and be what we value Defining well-being as people’s capabilities e.g. the ‘right to be able to read’ or the ‘right to have an education’ 5.55-9.30 minutes How the HDI works - its scoring system How the HDI enabled measurement and analysis to catch th

In Episode 4 of The Rights Track, Todd asks Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Hull, about modern day slavery, the challenges in identifying and counting victims, his work on the Global Slavery Index and how it’s used to hold Governments and countries to account over the problem. He also discusses his book, Blood and Earth in which he looks at how modern day slavery and climate change intersect. Here are some notes and links on their discussion: 00.00-6.20 mins Why it’s important to measure slavery and why it’s a major challenge to do so The advances and pushes that have taken place in the last decade to account for slavery Some historical context around the abolition of slavery The importance of understanding and agreeing a core definition of modern day slavery rather than enumerating examples of it An interesting example of how slavery can operate in India 6.20-11.00 mins The Global Slavery Index - what it is and what it tells us about the prevalence of slavery in the wor

Episode Note from Todd Landman We are saddened to learn that Will Moore died on 19 April 2017. Professor Moore gave tirelessly of his time to advance the cause of human rights. He was a hugely successful and highly published scholar who not only advanced the quantitative analysis of human rights and political violence, but also supported students and early career researchers through inclusion, sharing, and co creation of knowledge. His contribution has been considerable and he will be sorely missed. It was a privilege to interview him about his work for this episode of The Rights Track. In Episode 3 of the Rights Track, Todd asks Professor Will Moore, Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Arizona State University about the methods he uses to try to count victims of torture. 0.00-5.25 mins  the challenges that organisations and researchers face when trying to count victims of torture accurately why Will and colleagues have moved towards trying to estimate the numbers better the traditional meth

In this Episode of the Rights Track, Todd asks Amanda Murdie of the University of Missouri about the methods she uses to look at when and how NGOs and INGOs are most effective. 0.00-5.20 mins the types of organisations Amanda researches and why what an NGO is, the sorts of things they are set up to do, how they are funded and operate questions of co-ordination and accountability including an example from Nigeria 5.20-12.17 mins the role of marketing and the conflict between inside and external communities when it comes to understanding and framing an issue how much this matters for the effectiveness on the ground when it comes to making a lasting difference professionalisation and financial sustainability of NGOs/viability the work being done on why NGOs do or don’t survive and the tactics they need to employ to remain viable an example Todd’s work looking at the work of NGOs for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see if they were doing what they said they would do why it’s important that NGOs be inn

In this Episode of the Rights Track and on International Human Rights Day, Todd asks Professor Chris Fariss of Pennsylvania State University about the methods he uses to look at the human rights performance of countries around the world and whether over time we have become better at practising and upholding people’s human rights. 0.00-5.00 mins they discuss whether: the way we measure the human rights performance of different countries has improved in recent years there is more information available on people’s lived experiences of human rights abuses our increased awareness of human rights problems has led to increased condemnation of countries our expectations of how a country will behave are higher than they used to be 05:00-13:02 mins is a discussion of Chris’ research, specifically Respect for human rights has improved over time: modelling the changing standard of accountability. This part of the episode includes: an explanation of ‘changing standard of accountability’ the data Chris used and the mode