Path to Justice from Penal Reform International on Vimeo. This quarter, I’m interning with the Northwestern University Center on International Human Rights, a legal clinic in the law school. One of our projects is an access to justice project in Malawi, where we work to improve legal representation for prisoners – particularly those sentenced to…
I recently finished reading an amazing book, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. The book itself has too many statistics and can be quite dry at times, but the strong message that resounds through its pages is truly powerful. It is a damning account of the utter…
Through my studies in the political science field, I’ve studied both Guantanamo Bay and the Gacaca process of post-conflict restorative justice in Rwanda in quite a bit of detail. Well, you might ask, what in the world do these two issues have in common? In essence, both alleged terrorists in Guantanamo and those on trial…
I recently read Half the Sky, by Nick Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn. To be quite honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of the book. But I think that the organizations he highlighted were impressive and innovative, and were able to tackle big challenges through their own innovative approaches. He was able to highlight some effective…
(Note: This is a post I wrote a week ago, so it’s a bit outdated – but still very relevant!) For the first time ever, the United States will be participating in the universal periodic review (UPR) process of the U.N. Human Rights Council. This council of 47 members was established in March 2006 to…
At my internship last summer, what I really took away was the importance of pioneering a new approach to human rights. The 20th century approach to human rights was in defining human rights standards – like the International Covenants on Civil & Political Rights, and Economic, Social, & Cultural rights. I’m sure you know how…
Thanks to Running Chicken, I found an excellent new article by Hunjoon Kim and Kathryn Sikkink: Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions for Transitional Countries. The article basically concludes that: We find that human rights prosecutions after transition lead to improvements in human rights protection, and that human rights prosecutions have a deterrence…
I just ran across this fascinating Time interview with Stephen Rapp, who was previously chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (H/T Shelby Grossman). Rapp states: The concern all of us had was that we were conducting justice in a comfortable courtroom with long trials and well-paid attorneys. Prisoners had single cells, and…
I ran across this interesting quote recently in this report: Reverend Miguel d’Escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, President of the General Assembly, tried to frame the dialogue with a “concept paper” that argued that R2P was just colonialism in a new package. D’Escoto wrote that the correct way to eliminate genocide and other mass atrocities was…
Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers. Thank you so much for reading, commenting, tweeting, or discussing these issues with me. It genuinely means a lot, and I put time and effort into writing this blog not only because I personally love writing, but also because I love interacting with all of you on a regular…