A Human Rights Review of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

by kdw

As Yoda might say: “Human Rights about Star Wars not”

Sci Fi films and fiction are often a good place to find the kinds of moral conundrums and ethical challenges, which lend themselves to thinking and teaching about Human Rights. But the Lucas/Disney/Abrams Star Wars franchise isn’t. As Yoda might say: “Human Rights about Star Wars not” – nor for that matter is it about democracy, emancipation, ambiguity, science or egalitarianism.

The universe imagined by Lucas, who saw Star Wars as the “hero’s journey,” gives us little in the way of awareness of the human condition, indeed it eschews any celebration of shared humanity and instead embraces the mass killing of combatants, non-combatants and seemingly sentient human-like androids with little sense of loss or accountability.

Intellectually unchallenging, the films lack any sense of moral ambiguity (Light Side, Dark Side) – which has appealed ever-since to men like Dick Cheney, who once remarked “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will,” as a defense of torture, which occurred at “dark sites” around the world following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Moreover, whatever politics there are seem to be dominated by a quasi-hereditary unelected Senate, whose rebellion seems motivated as far as I can tell by concerns over trade routes and the political autonomy of peripheral planets where the grossest of human rights violations are routinely practiced and without comment from that Senate: slavery, human trafficking, genocide and the destruction of indigenous cultures — and that’s just on Tatooine; I hate to think what’s happening on Endor.

Dr. Watenpaugh debates the finer points of Trek vs. Star Wars with his son, Aram, while his daughter looks on in appropriate bemusement

Dr. Watenpaugh debates the finer points of Trek vs. Star Wars with his son, Aram, while his daughter, Arda, looks on in appropriate bemusement

Presiding over it all is a zealous Gnostic sect, the leadership of which bases its religious practices on the idolization of the tools of extreme violence (light sabers), the ability to violate the privacy rights of others and enter their minds without permission (Jedi mind tricks) and who view the world through absolutes while claiming only their opponents do so (“Only Sith deals in absolutes.”)

Like in Lord of the Rings, technology is bad and the foot soldiers of the enemy are merely a one-dimensional Other (Orcs and Stormtroopers), whose origins in torture and rights-violations are obscured and whose easy and mass deaths are played for laughs. We learn in the most recent “Star Wars” that Stormtroopers aren’t just clones anymore, but are child soldiers stolen from their families in the vein of Joseph Kony and his ilk.

But isn’t it just a movie? Sure, but “Star Wars” is also a cultural phenomenon that is both a reflection of our zeitgeist and a shaper of it. J.J. Abrams is smart enough to know that and rather than just pandering to aging Fan Boys with call backs to “A New Hope” and bringing us yet another Disney Princess in the form of Daisy Ridley’s Mary Sue Rey, he had a chance to use the films in the best tradition of SciFi to pose some decent questions.

But then again, he made the last two Star Trek films, which didn’t do much of that either.

Still, I enjoy and admire Star Trek for many of the same reasons I find Star Wars so problematic. The anthology science fiction series that came from the imagination of Gene Roddenberry has been around for 50 years and shouldn’t be judged only by the last two movies – which weren’t that bad and even asked decent questions about ethics and rights. Kirk and Spock take seriously the idea of exploration, the role of Starfleet in humanitarian efforts and seek to arrest their enemies for the crime of genocide (the destruction of Vulcan) before joyfully blowing them up.

In fact, for years I’ve led a freshman honors’ seminar on the Human Rights of Star Trek. I even use in my 80+ student Human Rights course the brutal interrogation of Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean Luc Picard by a Cardassian Gul played by David Warner in the episode “Chain of Command” (“There are four lights!”) to illustrate how little torture is about information and more about power and fear.

Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) who was the first African-American women to play an officer of any kind on a t.v. show always remembered how Roddenberry told her that Trek was about “something.” Sci Fi was a safe space from which to explore the tough issues of the ‘60s, including the Vietnam War — “Private little war” — and race — “Let that be your last battlefield.” In the 90s it covered homosexuality; in the Aughts, anthropogenic climate change.

The fact that Trek was about something has given its actors the kind of post-t.v. platform from which to support the arts and respect for rights and dignity we’ve never seen those of the Star Wars universe even attempt. Being Sulu has given George Takei the credibility and trust of legions of fans that made him not just a gay rights icon, but also a moral leader in the remembrance of Japanese Internment and most recently anti-Muslim and Arab hysteria.

The movies we love and stand in line for tell us a great deal about who and where we are as a people on the critical issues of the moment. I’m not sure that “Star Wars” is where we should be.

“Syria’s Lost Generation: A Human Rights Challenge to American Higher Education”

by kdw

“Syria’s Lost Generation: A Human Rights Challenge to American Higher Education”

By Sara Phelps – UC Davis Human Rights Minor

Educators, academic leaders, and students gathered in early December at UC Davis to discuss the role of U.S. universities, including UC Davis, in helping student refugees access higher education. The public event was organized as part of a joint effort between UCD’s Office of Global Affairs, the UCD Human Rights Studies Program and the Institute of International Education to develop principles and best practices to support Syrian refugee students and others in this time of crisis.

Dr. Keith David Watenpaugh, the director of the UC Davis Human Rights Studies Program, opened the event by arguing that the human right to education is “about justice” and that U.S. universities have a responsibility in “creating a culture of human rights through education.”

NMLG_opening

Opening of No More Last Generation Workshop

Human rights professionals from two NGOs, the Institute of International Education (IIE) and Jusoor, an organization that provides scholarships and other resources for Syrian refugees, discussed the different programs they have developed to assist refugee students. Daniel Obst, the Deputy Vice President of IIE, provided an overview of IIE programs, which include the IIE’s Emergency Student Fund and the IIE Syria Consortium for Higher Education in Crisis. Maya al-Kateb, the Director of Jusoor, described her organization’s mentorship and scholarship programs for Syrian refugee students.

The key word of the event was “resilience,” which presenters argued was fostered through education and support. Adrienne Fricke, the Syria Advisor to Physicians for Human Rights, discussed the importance of specialized educational training in resilience-based capacity building. The event concluded with an inspirational presentation by Megan Mozina, the Director of the International Initiatives and Strategic Alignment at the Illinois Institute of Technology, on the success of the “Syrian Students for a Better Future” program. In this program, the university partnered with Jusoor to grant several dozen Syrian students scholarships to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The next steps of the initiative include the creation of a document on the principles and best practices of supporting refugee students in higher education, which universities around the US will be asked to sign on to as a guide to further implementation.

BETWEEN THE SEA AND THE PROBLEM OF HUMANITY: THE MEDITERRANEAN’S REFUGEES AND THE HUMANITARIAN REASON OF RESCUE AT SEA

by kdw

Rescues at sea are dangerous and come with great possible cost to those involved.  In this brief essay, I consider why, beyond a simple explanation of the imperative to protect life, civilian sailors rescue refugees at sea, and explore how specific extreme environments and professional identities may interface at the boundaries of humanitarian imagination, thought and action

Before MSF and the navies of EU states became more involved in intercepting boatloads of refugees sinking into the Mediterranean, the job of pulling them out of the sea often fell to the crews of rusted fishing boats sailing from Greek and North African ports and great container ships headed to the Suez Canal and points further East.

For the men on those vessels these kinds of rescues required them to stop fishing, pull their nets and return to port; or bring a massive 165,000 ton vessel traveling at 21 knots to a halt, drop smaller boats over the side and deploy ladders — and delay the arrival at their next port of call.  For both the fishermen and the container ships’ captains rescue came with a cost to their livelihoods.

It’s also dangerous: moving on and off a boat adrift on a rolling sea is among the most treacherous and delicate of maneuvers; and bringing a group of desperate strangers fleeing war in Syria and Iraq or brutal dictatorships in African on board carries with it a whole host of health and safety concerns.

RESCUE AND LAW OF THE SEA

In the case of the current Mediterranean refugee movement, the UNHCR prepared a legal brief outlining the responsibility of ships’ masters and others to conduct rescues at sea and apply many of the same rules governing refugees and others moving across land boundaries to this situation.  The responsibility to rescue draws its modern legal basis from a series of 20th century conventions on maritime law which evolved out of an even earlier body of European and Islamic laws and customs on salvage, stowaways, enslaved sailors and piracy.

Among the most relevant documents cited by the UNHCR is the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. According to its “Article 98: Duty to render assistance:”

  1. Every State shall require the master of a ship flying its flag, in so far as he can do so without serious danger to the ship, the crew or the passengers: (a) to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost; (b) to proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress, if informed of their need of assistance, in so far as such action may reasonably be expected of him…

In general this duty applies to ships in international waters – and primarily those moving between ports in different countries or on the high seas— it doesn’t apply to fishing boats just offshore. In any case, a master always has an escape clause from acting if a rescue is considered too “dangerous.”

Recent UNHCR rescue of Syrian children

For the fisherman, whose knowledge of international law may be limited or the container ship captain on a tight schedule, it’s unlikely that any state would ever hold them accountable for failing to rescue an un-flagged, overcrowded vessel; in fact the burden in most cases would be on the refugees to show in an admiralty or similar court that the ship passed them by without helping them.  This is a situation where the international legal mandate to act is very weak and suggests a kind of voluntary compliance.

In a more traditional rescue-at-sea scenario, one in which a flagged ship founders, runs aground or is involved in a collision with another ship, an iceberg or a whale, the act of rescue may be done in anticipation of reciprocity for the state’s own fleet of ships.  That anticipated reciprocity functions as a kind of mutual assistance pact among states; and one can imagine how that same balance might work on a more local level, where fisherman, and even recreational boaters, would aid one another to maintain that pact.

At this moment, though, a boatload of refugees, their states of origin and the failed state of Libya from whence they have come isn’t going to be involved in reciprocal rescues anytime soon.  There is no “reward,” no reciprocal recognition of rights and privileges involved.  The very lack of possible reciprocity helps define the humanitarian nature of the act of rescue.  Humanitarianism itself is predicated on the lack of the reciprocal possibility. Were states and organizations that provide the majority of aid and assistance only to do so for individuals from states that could “return the favor,” humanitarianism would be quite limited in scope, indeed.

REFUGEES IN EXTREMIS AND THE SAILOR’S HUMANITY

Instead, I think the act of rescue has something to do with the nature of the sea and our relationship with it as humans.  That thesis is based on my own thinking about the reason of humanitarianism and humanitarian rescue, but also my own experience as a sailor.

This last July, as the Mediterranean refugees were still being largely ignored by the EU,PBS Newshour’s Lisa Desai interviewed Captain Slaheddin of a Tunisian fishing boat that sails from the port town of Zarzis.  As the captain explained:

One time we rescued 10 migrants. [though in Arabic he used the word for refugee, al-laji’. When they got on the boat two of them started praying. It gave me chills, all over my body. We are fisherman. We are here to make a living. We are not here to rescue people, but we have a feeling of humanity. So if I find someone on the sea I will save him…

It’s a powerful feeling to see someone helpless, hungry and being burned by the sun. It’s very hard: you are in front of someone who is calling for help.

Captain Slaheddin used the very old Arabic word al-bashariyya for the concept of humanity, rather than the modern neologism al-insaniyya, which an Arabic-speaker familiar with the concept of human rights would probably use.  The older word carries with it a broader sense of the feeling of corporeal human and human-ness – the feeling of belonging to a humankind, as opposed to an animal or supernatural kind. That solidarity of the human against the vastness of the sea and an empathetic consciousness of how small and fragile human life is in the face of it is what moved him to rescue.  Like most fisherman, Captain Slaheddin most likely grew up fishing as the son of a fisherman and had seen the terrible price the Mediterranean can exact throughout his entire life.

On the other side of the rescue equation, I’ve experienced myself that sense of being helpless in the face of the sea.  As a boy I fell overboard from the foredeck of a 27ft sloop while my father steered it North through the Swanson Channel in British Columbia.  When I returned to the surface, I watched the boat grow smaller and smaller as the crew — my family — readied to come about and attempt a man-over-board rescue.  In that moment no matter how hard one tries to remain calm, your legs and arms claw at the sea around you; your lungs ache to breath and your mouth and eyes burn from the bitter taste of salt.  Your world has turned into a small white right triangle of sail in the distance and a green-blue heaving sea.  The line between being and not being is that rescue.

Those onboard know that, too; and a well-trained crew can pull you from the water before hypothermia takes you or you drift from reach. I was back on board, shivering and embarrassed in just a matter of minutes.

I still sail, but now mostly in the San Francisco Bay and off the wild coast of Marin. The water is as cold and the currents as treacherous as anywhere on the West Coast.  While sailing, my crew and I have helped in rescues and we practice and practice throughout our sailing careers the figure eight technique that brings the boat abeam of those in the water.  As I stand at the helm of my own boat, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, and watch my kids move around on deck, I know that the sea, so beautiful, would become the merciless enemy the moment one of them trips and tumbles into it.

The Watenpaugh twins and their father sail the San Francisco Bay

The exquisite beauty and danger of the sea is the certain knowledge all sailors have and have had for the 50 centuries of human seafaring.  The sailor knows the danger and has thecapacity to rescue.  This creates a specific burden on their humanity, which is both a response to their own experience of the overwhelming nature of the sea and their specific professional expertise as a seafarer. A failure to rescue becomes a problem of the sailor’s humanity that drives him to act and pull the refugee onboard.

The unique challenge of the sea to the problem of humanity is suggestive of how the human response to human need and suffering can be influenced by the way we interact culturally and traditionally with extreme environments or different kinds of natural disasters.  This relationship is an under-recognized and certainly under-studied element of humanitarian thought and imagination, though it has the very real potential to connect it with emerging fields like environmental humanities and human geography.

With the IOM estimating that some 30,000 might drown in the Mediterranean this year, the sea is exacting its toll.

Syria’s Lost Generation: A Human Rights Challenge to American Higher Education – Dec 4 3:00-4:30 PM Alumni Center

by kdw

UC Davis Global Affairs and UC Davis Human Rights Studies

Syria’s Lost Generation: A Human Rights Challenge to American Higher Education
Friday, December 4, 2015 Founder’s Library, Alumni Center — 3:00– 4:30

Human RIghts@UCDavis Director Keith David Watenpaugh and Syrian-Kurdish Refugee Students Beirut, March 2014

Human RIghts@UCDavis Director Keith David Watenpaugh and Syrian-Kurdish Refugee Students Beirut, March 2014

Keynote: The Imperative to Protect the Human Right to Higher Education
Keith David Watenpaugh, Director Human Rights Studies, UC Davis

Specialized Educational Training During Conflict
Adrienne Fricke, Syria Advisor to Physicians for Human Rights

Jusoor: An Endeavor to Help Syria through Education
Maya al-Kateb, Director Jusoor

Emergency Support to Syrian Students and Professors: IIE’s Syria Consortium
Higher Education in Crisis
Daniel Obst, Deputy Vice President, International Partnerships in Higher Education, IIE

Syrians Students for a Better Future Program
Megan Mozina, Director of the International Initiatives and Strategic Alignment, Illinois Institute of Technology

This public program is part of the UC Davis initiative to develop principles and best practices for the protection and support for refugee university students globally.

A joint project of Human Rights @UCDavis: The Interdepartmental Program in Human Rights Studies and UC Davis Global Affairs

Recent interview with Civilnet.am on Human Rights in Syria

by kdw

On the situation of Human Rights in Syria

Some Thoughts on the Battle for Aleppo

by kdw

I listened to the snow bursting under the tires/
like teeth crunching an apple/
and I felt a wild desire to laugh/
at you/
because you call this place hell/
and you flee from here convinced/
that death beyond Sarajevo does not exist

“Corpse” – Semezdin Mehmedinović

Amnesty International, in cooperation with Science for Human Rights has published a series of satellite images of the city of Aleppo. The images show evidence of the use of heavy weapons and artillery in residential neighborhoods. We knew this, but the independent confirmation is important.

Military Activity in Aleppo, July 23 - August 1, 2012

I used to live in Aleppo. The streets and neighborhoods now listed in battle dispatches are places where my friends live, where I shopped for books and went for walks in the evening.

What those satellite images can’t show is the human misery that has befallen the city of some 4 million people. Refugees are moving from one neighborhood of the city to another in advance of government forces and my contacts in the city tell of schools and churches filling with displaced people and shortages of everything. Electricity, water, sewage have failed; food has disappeared from store shelves and state bread bakeries – which feed the city subsidized flat pita – have run out of flour. The specter of kidnapping for profit, which was a hallmark of the civil war in Iraq, is rampant, and the fear of reprisals against Christians and Armenians whose leadership have been among the régime’s supporters grips those communities.

Despite my earlier thought that the Battle for Aleppo would be short, it appears that the Free Syrian Army rebels have dug in. The ferocity of the régime’s response also tells me that for it, recovering the city and dealing a decisive blow to the rebels have become absolute necessities. If it loses Aleppo, it loses northern Syria – from the Turkish border to Iraqi Kurdistan. The rebels would then be able to resupply at will and establish in the city an alternative government. Aleppo would be the new capital of a “Free Syria” – complete with an international airport and the physical infrastructure of a government.

The rebels have fought running battles throughout Aleppo, and have now moved into the city’s ancient walled old city. The old city is a collection of narrow streets, winding alleys and cul-de-sacs. The walls of the houses are made of thick cut stone. The rebels could hold out here for weeks. My fear – beyond the human cost – is that the Syrian army will, as it hunts down its enemies, harm the mosques, churches and caravansaries that led UNESCO to designate the city a “World Heritage Center.”

What the satellite images also confirm is that nothing — international opprobrium, the Geneva Accords, nothing restrains the Syrian army. What I think is happening is that the Syrian Army is beginning to encircle pro-rebel neighborhoods: Salah al-Din, Hannanu, Sakhur, and Ashrafiyya. These are among Aleppo’s newest neighborhoods and are inhabited by immigrants from the countryside. IDPs fleeing fighting near the Turkish border have also fled to these places, often because they have relatives there.

These neighborhoods will then become free-fire zones, where anyone is a target – whether rebel or civilian. This is what the régime did in Homs earlier this year. I’m not sure that this will have any real military value, but act to terrorize the surviving population, and reassure the elite of Aleppo and Damascus that the régime is prepared to do everything it can to stay in power.

Massacres in Aleppo will dwarf what has happened so far.

Aleppo, unlike nearby cities of Beirut, Damascus, or Jerusalem hasn’t been the scene of a battle since the time of Tamerlane some 600 years ago. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed hands. Conquerors from the Mamluks, to the Ottomans and the French all preferred to negotiate the city’s surrender to trying to breach its walls and capture its imposing citadel.

I worry that Aleppo will now join Sarajevo in our collective imagination as a once vibrant cosmopolitan city reduced by the fires of hatred to a monument to inhumanity.

I will write more as I am able to resume contact with friends in the city.

Interview with Armenia’s Civilnet on situation in Aleppo

by kdw

Civilnet.am Aleppo and Armenians in the Syrian Civil War

A team of UC professors and a leading UC expert on election administration have completed an elections monitoring mission in the troubled region of Nagorno Karabagh.

by kdw

A team of UC professors and a leading UC expert on election administration have completed an elections monitoring mission in the troubled region of Nagorno Karabagh. They concluded that the elections adhered to international standards and that this was a critical election in the democratization of the entire Caucasus.

Nagorno Karabagh, an internationally unrecognized republic which broke away from the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1992, held its fifth presidential election this last Thursday (July 19, 2012).

L-R Heghnar Watenpaugh, Karin Mac Donald, and Keith David Watenpaugh at the polling station in the village of Nngi, Nagorno Karabagh

The election returned to office Bako Sahakian with 66% of the vote, and 33% going to his challenger, Vitaly Balasanyan, a former commander in Nagorno Karabagh’s war with Azerbaijan who ran on a platform of anti-corruption and economic development. In a region where past incumbents have often received 80% of the vote, the relative success of challenger Balasanyan is seen as a marked improvement in the democratic nature of that region’s electoral environment.

A team of experts from the UC including Karin Mac Donald of UC Berkeley Law, Professor Keith David Watenpaugh, Director of the UC Davis Human Rights Initiative and Professor Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, an Art Historian and affiliate of the Human Rights Initiative, were part of a group of Californians that traveled to the troubled region of Nagorno Karabagh to observe its citizens cast ballots.

The team met with elections officials, candidates and their staff, local human rights advocates, including the NK’s Human Rights Defender, journalists and likely voters.

Despite some concerns about voter accessibility and possible voter intimidation, the members of the team observed that the election generally adhered to international standards and was marked by a relatively high voter turnout.

UCB Law’s Karin MacDonald was “very impressed with the professionalism, dedication and training at all levels of election administration, in particular that of local election boards.”

UC Davis Human Rights Initiative’s Keith David Watenpaugh, was equally impressed and while noting his personal concerns about the intimidation of voters, said, “One very important dimension of this election that we observed is that even the major losing candidate and his campaign, despite their allegations of unfairness and irregularities, viewed this election as a critical step in the evolution of a fully democratic society. This same sense of what the election meant was shared by most of the people we spoke with.”

The team’s preliminary report is available at The EARC’s website (EARC.berkeley.edu) and the UC Davis Human Rights Initiative, http://humanrightsinitiative.ucdavis.edu/blog/

Joint UC Berkeley Law, Election Administration Research Center —UC Davis Human Rights Initiative Preliminary Observation Report- Nagorno Karabakh Presidential Election, July 19, 2012

by kdw

Joint UC Berkeley Law, Election Administration Research Center —UC Davis Human Rights Initiative Preliminary Observation Report- Nagorno Karabakh Presidential Election, July 19, 2012

Date of Report: July 22, 2012

Group Composition and Method

The group arrived in Stepanakert, the capital city of the Nagorno Karabakh (NK) on Monday, July 18 and remained in NK throughout the election on July 19, and departed the NK on July 21.

Prior to the election, the group held a series of meetings with NK electoral commission officials, each of the three candidates for office, members of their staff, local human rights advocates, journalists and engaged in random discussions with citizens and likely voters.

On the day of the election, the group used a systematic research methodology based on a comprehensive survey questionnaire designed at the Election Administration Research Center, of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, completing the survey form based on observing the election at 7 sites, including a pre-election visit to a voting center, and a return visit to one site. These observations included a range of voting centers in the capital, small villages and regional centers. Observations were made in three provinces: Stepanakert, Askeran, and Martuni,.

The observer team was present at a voting center at opening, returning to that same center for closing to observe the ballot counting and reporting procedures.

The team then followed ballots and reporting materials to the Stepanakert regional election center and observed final handling and recording of results and materials. We were the only observer team in NK that followed the entire process.

The day after the election members of the group conducted follow-up interviews with two members of the Central Election Commission (CEC), local human rights advocates, journalists, election observer members from other countries, and representatives of the second place candidate.

Group members:

Karin Mac Donald, Director, The Election Administration Research Center, University of California, Berkeley Law (Election and Monitoring Specialist)
Professor Keith David Watenpaugh, Director, Human Rights Initiative, University of California Davis (Cultural Expert, non-native Armenian speaker)
Professor Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, Affiliate Scholar, Human Rights Initiative, University of California, Davis (Cultural Expert, Armenian native-speaker)

Preliminary Observations

The group was very impressed with the professionalism, demeanor, dedication and seriousness of purpose at all levels of election administration, in particular that of local election boards.

We observed large numbers of women voters and that a considerable majority of women served as presidents and members of local election boards.

The teams noted with approval the uniformity of training and availability of reference materials that were widely used on the local level.

We also observed a great deal of uniformity in the implementation of the election process throughout the zone of monitoring.

The team was accompanied, at most times, by representatives of the NK government, who served as translators and facilitators, we appreciated the spirit of openness, access and collaboration before, during and after the election.

We also were satisfied with the manner in which spoiled ballots and ballots that were mismarked were handled according to established procedures as outlined in reference material provided by the CEC. This process was done effectively, transparently and efficiently.

As far as we could observe, the election procedures followed the NK election code.

The group observed that the training and preparation of candidate proxies (“Trusted People”) was inconsistent and seemed generally poor, preventing proxies from being able to fully advocate for the interests of their candidates within the bounds of established procedure.

Despite the presence of voters with physical disabilities, including the use of canes and wheelchairs, there was little if no formal provision made for independent access by people with physical disabilities to voting.

The group observed two occasions of what could constitute attempted voter intimidation. In addition, the team received first-hand reports of subtle and not-so-subtle forms of voter intimidation. The team observed one incident of inappropriate passive electioneering in a polling place.

The leading opposition candidate’s campaign alleged prior to the election in the Armenian press (15 June 2021) that government resources and personnel were being used by the incumbent’s campaign. Subsequent to the election in the candidate’s concession statement (20 July 2012) similar allegations were raised again, as well as in interviews with campaign staff.

We note that interaction between international monitor groups was not facilitated before and after the elections, creating a lost opportunity for collaboration and exchange of expertise. There was no formal mechanism for collecting the observations of international teams.

Preliminary Conclusion

We congratulate the people and election officials of the NK on an election that generally adhered to international standards.

We look forward to analyzing the enormous amount of qualitative and quantitative data we have collected and plan to issue a follow-up report with more specific recommendations. We believe that this election signals the probability that future elections in the NK will be more competitive. This may necessitate a reexamination of ballot security measures.

The degree of voter engagement, high voter turnout, the sophistication and acumen of the electorate, and the civic spirit of the voters suggests that the NK is creating a vibrant and vital democratic society.

One very important dimension of this election that we observed is that even the major losing candidate and his campaign, despite their concerns about fairness and irregularities, viewed this election as a critical step in the evolution of a fully democratic society. This same empowering sense of what the election meant was shared by a broad spectrum of NK society.

We look forward to working with the people of the NK to further strengthen their democratic institutions and provide any assistance that we can as they continue their journey in support of a vibrant, transparent, and free democracy.

UC Davis Human Rights Journal – Making the Case 1:2 2012

by kdw

Our undergraduates have produced the second number of the 2012 volume of Making the Case.

It is a tremendous effort and represents the work of some of our best and brightest. Several of the authors are Human Rights Minors. Some are going on the Human Rights graduate programs elsewhere. It was edited by Rachel Pevsner, who did a great job.

It’s a mix of historical works, interviews, art and music. I was impressed with all of the work, but especially essays by three of my students:

Geneva Brooks: Barriers to Resistance in
Rwanda and the Holocaust

Phoebe Bierly: Genocide Denial and the
Stolen Generations

Michael Hoye: Examining the Success of the
International Criminal Court

Link to the journal