On Wednesday, October 11, 2017, the UAB Institute for Human Rights sponsored an event titled: “Using Digital Story Telling to Promote Disability Rights.” This event featured Dr. Filippo Trevisan, Assistant Professor of Communications at American University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Trevisan is a disability rights advocate whose research features the use of technology to enhance accessibility for persons with disabilities. He is the Deputy Director of the Institute on Disability and Public Policy at American University, and an accomplished author, who released his book, Disability Rights AdvocacyOnline, last year. Dr. Trevisan’s presentation attempts to answer the question of how advocacy effectively inspires policy change for marginalized populations- most notably, for the disabled community.
Disability Rights
When the United Nations codified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, disability rights were first established at the international level of governance. This Convention is notable for its inclusion of actual persons with disabilities in the creation of this legal document, and for good reason. Persons with disabilities have long had to self-advocate for their rights, and the potency of grassroots efforts for disability rights distinguish this rights movement from other human rights movements. Dr. Trevisan, through the lens of information and communication technology, aimed to understand how formalized rights were impacted by the grassroots efforts of persons with disabilities.
Dr. Trevisan spoke of how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have significantly impacted the world of disability rights. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) says that ICTs have allowed persons with disabilities to “enhance their social, cultural, political and economic integration in communities by enlarging the scope of activities available to them.” ICTs have promoted self-advocacy by allowing persons with disabilities to directly participate in any number of activities by directly getting their voice heard- middlemen are no longer required for persons with disabilities to get their issues out into the world. By surpassing several links in the communication process, the voices and narratives of persons with disabilities are more authentically communicated to policy makers and all levels of governance: local, regional, national, and international.
By skipping these ‘middlemen’, the effectiveness of a message (such as advocacy for disability rights) is more prominent, and the intended effect (policy change) is more directly linked to the advocate. According to Trevisan, two main communication styles are used by disability rights advocates to persuade policy-makers.
Emotional Appeal Versus Rational Arguments
Breaking down the rhetoric used by disability rights advocates, Trevisan elucidated on two primary forms of persuasive messages: messages appealing to emotion and messages appealing to reason. Emotional appeals typically feature personal narratives, eliciting feelings of empathy and sympathy by the receiver of the message. By contrast, rational arguments (i.e. appealing to reason) offer evidence-based arguments in support of policy change. A challenge of human rights advocates (in this case, disability rights advocates) is deciding which, or in what combination, of these persuasive tactics is most likely to achieve the desired outcome.
Historically, policy-makers have favored (or been more susceptible to) appeals to reason, as evidence-based arguments offer a more sound and predictable argument for policy change (or lack thereof). However, upon analyzing cases in the United Kingdom and United States, Trevisan documented a noticeable modal shift in successful argument tactics. Instead of favoring rational appeals, policy-makers are starting to respond and succumb to emotional appeals; this change is most clearly documented in policies related to persons with disabilities. This has huge implications for advocacy efforts and policy-makers alike. Bygone are the days where statistics and figures hold greater weight than personal narratives and stories. Perhaps we do indeed live in a “post-fact world” (though hopefully not). The question now becomes: why are emotional appeals more effective than rational arguments? And how can we marry these two approaches to achieve both: 1) successful persuasion of policy-makers to codify human rights and 2) create the emotional appeal from a sound and practical argument?
Growing Social Media. Source: mkhmarketing, Creative Commons
The Power of Stories
The answer to the first question lies in the power of story; Trevisan argues the impact of personal story-sharing in disability rights advocacy cannot be overstated. The importance of persons with disabilities telling their personal stories has proven to be very effective when it comes to advocating for their rights, and Dr. Trevisan mentioned two critical components to story telling: 1) the voice of the person telling the story, and 2) the storyteller feeling his or her voice is heard. Dr. Trevisan states his research led him to find “individuals [with disabilities] are now able to participate in crowd-sourced campaigns, and they want to.” He goes on to say persons with disabilities generally feel authentic in their narrative-sharing and the significant strides in disability rights implementation (for example, the CRPD) shows their voices are being hear.
Persons with disabilities have been particularly effective in their use of crowdsourcing- the virtual participation in efforts such as rights-advocacy. While crowd-sourcing has been a great way to get stories out into the world, the particular mixture of rational vs. emotional components is up for debate. How narrow should the stories be? If someone has to edit these stories, who should it be and what gives them the right to do so? Should there be no editing of the stories? If not, what if the stories do not pertain to the cause? Is it right to cut out someone’s story that they want to tell? How can we (consumers of information) be sure we are receiving an authentic and genuine message from a credible source (especially in a “post-fact world”)?
Dr. Trevisan’s cunning research of story-telling in disability-rights advocacy suggests the paradigm of successful policy change is shifting: from rational appeal to emotional connection, from the presentation of hard facts to the telling of personal stories. Moving forward with this new knowledge, human rights researchers and advocates must find a way to marry objective reality with the subjective story of humanity.
For a list of our upcoming events, please visit our events page.
co-authored by Lindsey Reid, Ajanet Rountree, Nicholas Sherwood, and Nora Hood
house. Source: oatsy40, Creative Commons
Domestic violence, domestic abuse, domestic terrorism, intimate partner violence (IPV)—all refer to abusive patterns of behavior within the context of relationship. While a universal definition has not been agreed upon, this blog operationally defines IPV as “causing or attempting to cause physical or mental harm to a household member or engaging in activity toward a family or household member that would cause a reasonable person to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.” In other words, IPV transpires when an individual exerts abusive control over another, resulting in a pattern of physical and/or psychological pain. Due to the extensiveness of IPV, we concur with the CDC assessment that IPV is a public health and a human rights issue, as stated in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”. While we tend to think repressive governments or other sinister forces violate human rights, survivors of IPV experience and endure human rights violations within their home. With this blog, we aim to raise awareness of your rights in a relationship.
What is Intimate Partner Violence?
The vagueness of the term “IPV” makes recognizing and combatting this human rights violation difficult; as is the case with any vague definition in the human rights literature. One thorny issue in particular is the oftentimes (over)emphasis of the physical elements of IPV. To be completely clear: IPV, or any form of relational abuse or neglect, refers to physical and psychological maltreatment of an individual. Just because there are no physical scars does not mean it is not abuse. Psychological IPV includes behaviors such as: creating psychological isolation, sexual abuse (unwanted sexual contact, inhibiting access to birth control, unwanted sexual comments, and pressuring or threatening someone into sex), economic abuse (taking actions in order to maintain total control of the household’s finances), and digital abuse (using technology to control, stalk, or manipulate the survivor). This list is neither complete nor comprehensive; IPV as a human rights violation can take many, many forms.
Who are the victims and survivors of IPV? The classical answer is a wife or husband with a marriage; this is why the original term to describe IPV was ‘domestic abuse’ (implying this crime occurs within a domestic setting). The new term of IPV expands that outlook to include unmarried partners, as well as any form of relationship with emotional closeness and proximity. IPV can happen between married partners, and IPV can happen on a first date.
The Changing Demographics of IPV
As ‘battered wife syndrome’ has fallen out of favor, the IPV has been shaped and expanded to include male, female, and child survivors and perpetrators alike. While majority of IPV perpetrators are male, human rights advocates and laypersons alike must recognize perpetrators come in all genders and ages. In previous decades, cultural stigma against male victims may have pressured men from speaking out against their abusers; therefore, the actual gender breakdown of this crime remains unknown.
Male and female perpetrators themselves utilize markedly different forms of violence, which may compound efforts to qualify and deconstruct the gender breakdown of IPV. Machado et al. studied Portuguese men and discovered a pattern among their female perpetrators: “self-partner aggression”. They characterize self-partner aggression as the occurrence where the female injures herself in some way and then claims to be a victim of domestic violence to the police. She (the perp) takes advantage of confirmation bias, recognizing society generally believes that the male partner is abusing his female partner as it confirms gender stereotypes and social norms. Female abusers may also be more likely to use weapons or other objects to cause harm. One study involved a sample of 2,760 victims using the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1987 to 2003 found that 6% of the male victims had been stabbed with a knife, while 1% of the female victims had. Additionally, they found 10% of the male victims had been hit by an object that was thrown by their abuser, while 3% of the female victims had. However, male victims were less frequently found to have experienced violence through direct contact such as grabbing or pulling, with 20% of them having experienced it, while 53% of the females had.
Finally, IPV is not limited to adult perpetrators. Children can exhibit abusive behavior towards anyone in the household, whether another child or an adult. The normative assumption is parents possess the power in the home when compared to children, so it is difficult to imagine children as abusive. Control is the motivation for domestic violence and abuse; therefore, it is necessary that we pay attention when children perform violent actions, avoid brushing them off as merely “bad kids” because the behavior and consequences may have a serious impact on the present and future. Children exhibiting abusive behavior, if unchecked and untreated, may later show further signs of psychological deviance or disorder.
Stupid IV. Source: Laura Lewis, Creative Commons
Controlling to Death
Social researchers have long sought to understand the motives of IPV perpetrators in order to predict violent behavior patterns. By predicting situations of relational violence, social researchers can empower advocates, policy-makers, and survivors themselves prevent occurrences of IPV. Several conceptual frameworks of IPV exist, including the stress-diathesis model, feminist / gender studies theories, and a pathological need for psychological control.
The stress-diathesis model suggests abusive behavior results from high psychosocial stress on the perpetrator. As the stress load increases, the perpetrator takes his or her frustration out on a less-threatening target (the victim). In this model, attempts to mitigate or prevent IPV focus on the perpetrator eliminating or healthily dealing with stressors. This theory has fallen out of favor, as its deterministic view of patterns of abuse at times ‘excuse’ perpetrators for their behavior. However, these theorists take a biopsychological approach to understanding behavior, which indeed aids in painting a holistic portrait of motivations and emotions in general.
By contrast, feminist and gender-studies theories focus on the broad sociocultural factors compelling IPV in perpetrators. Exploring the notion of male dominance in interpersonal relationships, Ornstein and Rickne sampled 714 post-separated and divorced couples in Sweden in 2001. They suggest separation between partners triggers a loss of control (especially for the male partner), weakening his domination of the situation, thus increasing the escalations of violence in the relationship. Violence reported by the respondents showed high variance, including verbal abuse (i.e. name-calling and cursing) psychological abuse resultant from emotional vulnerability of the perpetrator (i.e. feelings of inferiority), and finally physical abuse (including stalking and physical / sexual assault). Overall, feminist and gender-focused theories explore how fundamental issues of identity (such as gender) influences the occurrence of IPV.
Finally, the “control” theory of IPV posits an unhealthy need for psychological control, regardless of gender, is the most significant factor predicting IPV. This theory formulates relational abuse is symptom of a person’s subjective feeling of lack of control in a situation. Violence is therefore the means to an end, with the ‘end’ being feelings of control. Controlling behavior can take many forms, including stalking. The National Council commission in Sweden issued a 2006 report of 4000 surveys that found 362 (3/4 of whom are women) responded to questions of stalking in their lifetime, with 3% in the previous year. In 2011, the establishment of Swedish stalking law brought a four-year prison sentence for those found guilty. It is imperative to note justice systems, regardless of locale, treat the symptoms of violence but not the roots.
Regardless of the underlying causes (such as stress, gender roles, or a need for control), each case of IPV is unique and complicated. Recognizing signs of an abusive relationship is the first step and often difficult for the survivor to admit. Leaving the relationship itself is a whole other ordeal. Ornstein and Rickne affirm Kit Gruelle, a victim advocate in North Carolina (NC), who insists battered women are the experts on their relationships- no one knows more about IPV than someone who has gone through it. Gruelle suggests there is a noticeable pattern in abusive relationships—the couple has good days and bad days, just like every other couple. However, the ‘normalcy’ of the good days in no way makes up for the deviance of the bad days. Perpetrators often wear a façade of kindness and normalcy in mixed company, which makes spotting these perpetrators even more difficult.
Deannaremained married to her husband, Robbie, for nine years. She returned to him three times over the course of the years despite police knowledge of threats and violent tendencies. ‘The police knew he was violent but they believed he wasn’t violent enough to kill someone’.
When Robbie kidnapped and beat her across state lines, courts sentenced him to 21 years in prison—majority of the sentence for the kidnapping rather than the abuse. Assault on a female is an A1 misdemeanor in NC, resulting in 150 days in jail, whereas theft is a felony. IPV (or domestic violence) laws in Alabama have a stratified penalty process, ranging from Class A misdemeanor to Class A felony.
Controlling and abusive behavior may persist, even when the abusive relationship terminates. Prison, for many abuse survivors, is the only place they feel safe due to a system that does not protect them.
Latina returned to her abusive boyfriend numerous times because of love and at the time of his death, there was a warrant for his arrest. Courts charged her with first-degree murder when she killed him, after years of threats and abuse left her blind in her right eye.
Gruelle concludes, “our criminal justice system requires that she be beaten enough to satisfy the system, and by the time it get to that point, she’s already been so worn down psychologically and physically and emotionally. That’s when it’s really time for advocates to step up and begin to treat her like she has some value because she’s been told now systematically that she doesn’t. The courts have told her that she doesn’t have value; her partner has told her that she doesn’t have value… and all that strips away from her. Advocates, instead of stripping away, we have to build back up.”
If You See Something, Say Something
It is important to understand the difficulty of reporting cases of IPV. Who wants to get their partner in legal trouble? Who wants to report their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, and partner is abusive to them? Who is ready to accept they themselves are abused? IPV, like other forms of sex-based violence, often leaves the survivor in a traumatized state. This can manifest psychologically (irritable mood, overeating / undereating, splitting, dependency, fear of being along or fear of being with the abusive partner, and increasing isolation) or physically (exhaustion, severe weight gain or weight loss, and jumpiness). The symptoms of abusive relationships typically run deep, and the longer the relationship lasted, the more difficult these symptoms may be to spot. One critical symptom to look for is increasing isolation. The IPV situations typically result from an over-controlling or obsessive partner. These controllers may begin their abusive pattern of behavior by cutting off the victim from social contact with others outside of the relationship; the less face-time the victim has with others, the less likely to victim will be able to ask for help. In total isolation, the victim is hardpressed to find an ally, and he or she may fall prey to hopelessness and further traumatization. If you believe you know someone is in an abusive situation, reach out.
IPV is a complex human rights violation, and efforts to combat IPV must be flexible, durable, and persistent. Many social scientists work on deconstructing the psychopathology of perpetrators and patterns of survival in IPV victims. Advocates use their voice and social capital to broadcast the plight of IPV survivors and the identity of perpetrators. Ethical policy-makers codify punishments for IPV perpetrators, and enact funding for NGOs and government organizations that help IPV survivors. Finally, you can take action too. If you see something, say something. If you see a friend or loved one is in a relationship that does not seem right, initiate a conversation. Commit to naming and preventing intimate partner violence whenever you see it.
If you or someone you know is or may be in an abusive relationship, here are authorities to contact: in immediate danger, call 911 and The National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233.
Ms. Hood considers domestic violence to be a form of domestic terrorism, and aims to raise awareness about the issue through her efforts including ThreeDaily.org.
“Freedom, cut me loose! / Freedom! Freedom! Where are you? / ‘cause I need freedom too! / I break chains all by myself, / won’t let my freedom rot in hell.” – Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Freedom
“15/365 Black Lives Matter.” Source: Dorret. Creative Commons.
Protest is the struggle for recognition of an injustice (see Protests: Movements Towards Civil Rights). The right to rebel against injustice is ingrained within most of the legal frameworks that our society operates under. It is not only expected, but encouraged. The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) says, “…it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by rule of law.” Put simply, the UDHR states it is essential to protest when human rights are being denied. Marches, rallies, and demonstrations are common forms of protest, but alternative protest methods can be just as effective as mass public action. One may not consider music, art, film, or science to be mediums for political dissent, but these methods are often surprisingly efficient, especially in the context of a tyrannical government.
“This Wall Is Not For Sale.” Source: John Orlando. Creative Commons.
Concept Art
Protesters often face government suppression and violence when they attempt to voice any opinions in opposition to the state. Examples throughout history have given us classic acts of protests such as Martin Luther King’s March on Washington and the Arab Spring uprising. However, more subtle acts of protest are necessary within repressive regimes that quickly and easily censor dissidents. Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous political dissident, voices his opinions in an unorthodox manner – art. He famously painted a Coca-Cola logo on a 2000-year-old Han Dynasty urn and later shattered another one in a photo series. The urns were valuable in themselves, being thousands of dollars apiece, but the value lay mostly in the cultural heritage of the objects – the Han dynasty represents the golden era of the Chinese history that many yearn to return to. In response to outrage over the broken urns, Ai says, “General Mao used to tell us that we can only build a new world if we destroy the old one.” We, as American citizens, are used to dramatic public acts of protest, and may find his method to be overly passive and without impact. However, Ai Weiwei has been targeted, beaten, and arrested multiple times in the name of “inciting subversion of state power” (Richburg).
Cultural context is key when understanding the most effective method and medium of protest. An American artist gave a more recent and flagrant example when the artist Christo abandoned a $15 million dollar effort to create an enormous public art display in Colorado. The project, titled Over the River, was an effort to “suspend 1,000 silvery fabric panels” over several miles of the Arkansas River. Over the River was to intrigue and generate dialogue about art; the project had jumped through hurdle after legal hurdle with environmentalist groups and was in its final stages of approval. Planned over a twenty-year period and personally funded by the artist, the effort ceased after the election because the work was set on government-owned land. Christo said, “I use my own money and my own work and my own plans because I like to be free. And here now, the federal government is our landlord. They own the land. I can’t do a project that benefits this landlord” (Capps).
“Street Art and Graffiti at Dalymont [ this is a working class protest ] -124720.” William Murphy, Creative Commons. Street Art
Some of the most deeply moving work to dissent against oppression is done by low-income, underprivileged minority groups. Art is defined within a social context, which is why some forms of art have been glorified as ‘true art’ while others have been demoted. Classical art painted by wealthy artists like Michelangelo are worth millions of dollars and featured in prestigious galleries while art forms that have historically belonged to women like sewing, crafting, and embroidery are demeaned. Up until the Harlem Renaissance, the art world treated black art similarly. Romare Bearden once said, “A concrete example of the accepted attitude towards the Negro artist recently occurred in California where an exhibition coupled the work of Negro artists with that of the blind.” Though Bearden published this essay in 1934, the attitudes towards black art are still not up to par. Society tends to think that the art that makes it into MoMA or the Louvre is end-all-be-all of artistic culture, but work done by professionally trained artists is not any more relevant or significant than work by self-trained artists whose canvas is the streets – the only difference is notoriety. Young black street artists often cannot gain that notoriety because the legacy of oppression has pushed black populations into urban areas and deprived them of resources, rights, and economic mobility. Street art is one way groups choose to protest the political occurrences that have suppressed their ability to thrive.
Graffiti as an artistic medium provides young urban dwellers the means to protest their situation through action against the state. One may ask, is graffiti art or vandalism? The short answer is yes. It is art; it is vandalism. Art is relative. The end goal of most art is to evoke a sentiment that influences others emotionally or philosophically. If we look at it this way, graffiti is a more powerful artistic statement than traditional artworks such as Monet’s Water Lilies. The perpetuation of vandalism occurs when artists view their world as divided into cheap real estate for gentrification. Other forces such as war, offensive political rhetoric, and police violence increase the drive to create graffiti. Graffiti artists express their cultural frustration in ways that their peers deem appropriate; often, young black men are denied the ability to express their sadness and fear without being subject to disdain (Aubrey). In a chaotic world often terrorized by police brutality, lack of economic or social mobility, and systematic discrimination, graffiti offers a creative outlet for frustration and allows artists with limited resources to make their voices heard.
“El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” (the united people will never be defeated). Source: 16:9clue. Creative Commons.
Poetry and Music
Poetry and spoken word have also become powerful tools used by many communities with shared cultural trauma. Black women, often dehumanized, commodified and oversexualized by society, have found a powerful outlet in poetry. Poetry gives a path for different communities to express their anger and have it heard in a significant and impactful way. Artistic traditions of expressing hope, fear, and protest are deeply rooted in oppressed communities. This most notably has occurred within the black community, where poetry, song and dance have been tools of cultural unity and generate hope against oppression.
Modern music has adapted to the climate of political tension and has slowly begun incorporating anthems of justice and power. Rap and hip-hop have been particularly strong conductors of this trend. “Rap has developed as a form of resistance to the subjugation of working-class African-Americans in urban centers… rap has the powerful potential to address social, economic, and political issues and act as a unifying voice for its audience” (Blanchard). Beyoncé’s Lemonade centered on themes of justice for the black community after deaths from police brutality. The visuals accompanying Freedom, a track from Lemonade, show the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner holding photos of their late sons. Hip-hop as a genre has long been a medium for shared feeling within the black community, but artists of all genres have recently been taking stronger and more public stances on political matters.
Celebrities have even taken part in public protests such as when Madonna opened for the Women’s March on Washington in the beginning of the year. Lady Gaga protested after the election by standing outside Trump Tower with “love trumps hate” signs. Green Day protested at the 2016 American Music awards by prefacing their performance with a chant of, “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!” Public figures have adapted to the divisive nature of the times with the incorporation of political statements in their work.
“Don’t Mess with a Chemist.” Source: Scattered1. Creative Commons.
Science
The scientific world may seem limited to hard data, crunching numbers and running tests, but the recent change in administration has caused a shift in how scientists relate to politics. A man who who once called global warming a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese presently leads the United States. Enraged by the blatant dismissal of the scientific consensus that the world is in fact warming, many employees of scientific government agencies have resigned or otherwise protested. The emergence of social media accounts for “rogue” national departments has been a startling revelation. There are currently over a dozen rogue accounts, including @RogueNASA, @AltNatParkSer, and @ActualEPAFacts. These accounts run by actual employees of these agencies who feel that their ability to report accurate information has been censored – a violation of their human rights. Outrage over Trump’s statements on science has even led to a new world record by Autonomous Space Agency Network who achieved the first protest in space in April. They launched a weather balloon with a message attached: a tweet that reads, “Look at that, you son of a *****.” The tweet references a quote by former astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who once said, “You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out [to space] and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a *****.”
From this, it is easy to see how protest has evolved into a multilateral effort spanning across different segments of society. Music, art and science have all become fertile grounds for innovations in protest. Protest is not always an organized public action. It is often a cultural compilation of attitudes and actions that has formed in rebellion to a societal injustice. Protesting is not always loud, dramatic or direct; cultural and legal differences make some forms of dissent far too dangerous to commit under certain regimes. We cannot always judge others based on their perceived inaction in the face of injustice – protest is a unified effort, executed in a variety of forms, including methods less obvious than others.
Extending or removing support from artists who create political content can be an effective an act of protest for or against their stance. Engaging in scientific debate and spreading awareness of censored issues can effect meaningful change. Taking a moment to admire the work of a graffiti artist can be an act of rebellion. If protests were limited to marching down the street holding picket signs, the world would be at an impasse for change. We must take pride in the forms of protest that are most accessible and most meaningful for us to rebel against injustice and create a better world.
20Set Barcelona 14. Wikimedia: Màrius Montón, Creative Commons
After an enormous earthquake destroys the city of Lisbon in Candide, Voltaire poignantly asks the reader, “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others” (Voltaire, 26)? Increasingly, the most potent of political earthquakes – nationalism – is enjoying a powerful rebirth following a long and tortuous decline in the aftermath of World War II. People across the globe are beginning to envision a different world, a better world – one in which they possess a nation of their own. Whether this rebirth will result in bloodshed on a scale not seen since the 1930s or in a peaceful resolution of differences is yet to be seen, but in all likelihood it will be determined on the opposite side of the Iberian Peninsula – in Catalonia.
Since at least the 1920s, the issue of self-determination – which can be defined as the ability of a distinct people to establish a nation of their own and exercise unimpeded sovereignty in their own affairs – began to be adopted into the lexicon of human rights. Woodrow Wilson was one of the first to interject self-determination into human rights, claiming that “nationalities … should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development” in his Fourteen Points. Ultimately, this belief influenced nearly every major, Western-produced document concerning human rights. Self-determination is explicitly guaranteed to all peoples in the Atlantic Charter, the Declaration by the United Nations, the United Nations Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights among others.
Curiously, however, the European Convention on Human Rights – which is the most relevant document in this situation due to Spanish membership in the European Union – does not guarantee self-determination. In fact, it states that freedom of expression may be limited “in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, … or for maintaining the authority … of the judiciary” (ECHR, 11). As will be demonstrated later, the Spanish government has employed all of these arguments in its bids to stop the Catalonian independence referendum from coming to fruition.
Aside from the European Convention on Human Rights, the connection between human rights and self-determination – at least until recently – has not been prominently disputed. The question then becomes, how do we determine to which groups the right of self-determination applies? The general consensus is that this right is primarily granted to peoples demonstrating the characteristics of a nation. However, the question of who constitutes a nation, and on what basis, generates considerable disagreement, particularly in the West, which has long attempted to suppress its own nationalism as penance for the destruction wreaked by Nazi Germany.
Some claim that the nation is a figment of the imagination, that it is an invented national tradition, that it is an imagined community (Hobsbawm and Ranger; Anderson). This is not to say that it does not possess meaning – history clearly demonstrates that it does – but that there is very little actual quantitative or qualitative basis on which a nation can be delineated. Others suggest that the nation is real, but that its membership is constantly in flux, shaped solely by economic considerations, individual choices, and shared beliefs (Deutsch; Gellner; Kohn). This “civic nationalism” generally possesses a more cosmopolitan outlook, and it often taken to the extreme by intellectuals, such as Ernest Renan, who claimed that “a nation’s existence is … [simply] a daily plebiscite,” (10) a daily referendum.
Yet others still define a nation as something timeless and primordial (Geertz; Isaacs; Smith). To these theorists, physical characteristics, shared culture, shared history, and shared language – to put it simply – combine to create “a self-aware ethnic group,” which forms a nation (Connor, 279-88; Schmitt). In modern academia, this conception of the nation is generally regarded with scorn as an outdated, primitive view. Among many people, however, it still holds tremendous sway as demonstrated vividly by the universal opposition to immigration by nationalist, as well as by the decline in social trust in multi-ethnic areas of the United States (Putnam). While there exists some genetic overlap between different ethnic groups in border regions, generally speaking, ethnic groups, and the nations they constitute, remain homogenous and distinct from one another. And even if they did not, as Walker Connor notes, “what ultimately matters is not what is but what people believe is” (Connor, 379-88).
In determining if Catalonia possesses the right to independence and self-determination, one must first decide whether or not Catalonia constitutes a nation. As evidenced by the slogan above – which means “We are a nation, we decide” – Catalans clearly believe that they do. And all evidence unequivocally indicates that they are correct.
Indeed, Catalonia has previously experienced independence, existing as an independent kingdom until the fifteenth century when it was divided between the Spanish and French monarchies. Despite this conquest, Catalan culture – and a sense of “Catalan-ness” – survived and even thrived (Sahlins). The people of the region possessed a common language (Catalan), culture, symbols, and history that both united them and kept them distinct from their neighbors and conquerors. However, this distinctiveness was not preserved without a struggle. Various Spanish monarchs, as well as the dictator Francisco Franco from 1936 to 1975, sought to hispanicize the Catalans by banning their language and symbols. Attempts to resist were brutally and bloodily repressed, yet Catalonia’s distinctiveness survived into the current century.
After the death of Franco, the new Spanish Constitution granted Catalonia a limited form of autonomous self-government, and for several decades this largely satisfied the Catalans. Between 2009 and 2011, with the repression of Franco but a distant memory, this rapidly changed as various Catalan towns voted in symbolic independence referendums. In 2014, the first non-binding, Catalonia-wide referendum was held with a result of 81% in favor of independence.
Ultimately, this brings us to the Catalan independent referendum of 2017, which – due to the intransigence of both parties – threatens to engulf the Iberian Peninsula in its second civil war in under one hundred years. There were crucial differences between this referendum and those that preceded it. Unlike the previous referendum, the results of the 2017 referendum were binding. Furthermore, it was administered by a new Catalan leader, Carlos Puigdemont, who refused to swear the customary oaths of allegiance to the Spanish Constitution and monarch, King Felipe VI.
To many Spaniards, the referendum was an illegal act and those who participated were criminals. Following the announcement of the results, millions of Spaniards took to the streets, shouting slogans – as in the video above – such as “I am Spanish,” “No negotiations with traitors,” and “Puigdemont to prison.” It is abundantly clear that the Spanish government under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took a similar hardline view of the Catalan independence referendum.
Although the Spanish government was correct in its stance that the referendum was illegal, and it rightly questioned the legitimacy of the vote, it grossly violated the human rights of its Catalan citizens as established in nearly every human rights document. As previously noted, however, it did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights, leading – along with no doubt more cynical reasons – the European Union to support Spain’s actions.
Los independentistas catalanes han fracturado la unidad española
Addressing the Spanish nation in response to the Catalan independence referendum, King Felipe VI claimed that the separatists had fractured the unity of Spain, as well as Catalonia itself, and were undermining democracy. In an interview with El Pais, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy admitted that Catalans constituted their own nation, but denied their right to secede. Rajoy professed the belief that Catalans should abandon extremism, and work to coexist with the rest of Spain in a peaceful and mutually beneficial manner.
Are the Spanish monarch and prime minister correct? Or do the Catalan people possess the right to secede?
Although the Catalans do constitute a nation, and nations do possess the right to self-determination, the current iteration of the Catalonian independence movement possesses little, if any, basis for secession from a human rights or any other standpoint. This is true for several reasons. First, Spain is a highly functional democracy. According to the 2016 Democracy Index, Spain is the seventeenth most democratic nation in the world, several spots above the United States. If Spain were an authoritarian, dictatorial state, then Catalonia would present a stronger case, but Spain is not an authoritarian state, it is one of only 19 full democracies. And in a democracy no group should possess the right to unilaterally ignore the law or constitution simply because they disagree with it. An obvious exception would be if the laws were unjust; however, the Spanish Constitution and law – from an outside perspective – are not unjust in their treatment of Catalonia. In fact Spain has gone to great lengths to attempt to meet the demands of the Catalans – guaranteeing their right to autonomous self-government, granting the Catalan language official status, and pledging to protect their culture and traditions among other initiatives.
Today, Monday the 9th of October, Catalonia – despite Spain’s cancellation of its parliamentary session – will attempt to officially declare its independence. Prime Minister Rajoy, as well as King Felipe VI, have continually stated that there is no situation in which they would entertain actually allowing Catalonia to achieve independence. They have pledged to employ all of the means at their disposal to halt such a declaration, including ending Catalan autonomy and ordering the military to exercise its duty to maintain the territorial integrity and constitutional order of Spain.
Ultimately, the Catalan pursuit of a pointless independence, possessing little to no basis in human rights or even common sense, could see a return to the bloodshed that characterized the apex of nationalism – the 1930s. Already the signs can be observed. The referendum is serving to polarize both sides of the issue, heightening Spanish nationalism, and encouraging violence. Increasingly, many disillusioned Spaniards – in a last bid attempt to maintain their country’s longstanding territorial unity – will look for example to the last Spanish leader who was able to control the separatist tendencies of Catalonia: Francisco Franco. And if that occurs, Catalonia will certainly have created a different world, but will it be a better world for Catalans?
The United States has been plagued with natural disasters in the past few months. With Hurricane Harvey in August, Hurricane Irma in September, and Hurricane Maria hitting US territory Puerto Rico last week, recovery will be a long process. Unfortunately, the damage comes not just from hurricanes. On the West Coast and southeast Alaska, wildfires run rampant. Outside of the US, Central America has been under a tsunami advisory; landslides and droughts in Africa; monsoons in South Asia; floods in China, and the list goes on.
earth. Source: Medrawtchina, Creative Commons
Why is this happening? The answer to this question can be summed up in two words: climate change. NASA defines climate change as gradual changes in a region’s regular weather pattern over many years. Examples of these changes can be temperatures being higher or lower than what is normal in the area, or it can be an increase or decrease in annual precipitation. Climate change is not a sudden change in weather, such as a sunny day turning into a cloudy day in a matter of hours. The biggest factor is the rise in the globe’s temperature. Since 1970, the global temperature has risen around 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit each decade. While 0.3 does not seem like a big change, imagine your body’s internal temperature rising 0.3 degrees every ten days. Your body would go into shock trying to adjust, which is essentially what is happening with our planet. Small changes in the globe’s climate have large impacts.
Scientific evidence shows that climate change is real and happening, and the earth’s climate is warming. As a result, the ocean’s temperature is also rising. A hurricane’s strength depends on three factors: water temperature, wind shear, and moisture in the atmosphere. According to Vox, “Warmer water and atmospheric moisture give the system energy. A low wind shear — i.e., sharp changes in wind directions as you go higher and higher in the atmosphere — keeps a hurricane from dissipating.” In an interview with Vox, meteorologist Klozbach claimed that he found the Atlantic Ocean, where Irma formed, is two degrees warmer than the ocean usually is this time of year. The strength of Hurricanes Harvey and Maria are substantially impacted by changes in the climate, as they too originated in abnormally warm waters.
As another result of the earth’s temperature rising, scientists have concluded that wildfires are “occurring about five times more often than in 1970…burning more than six times the land area as before, and lasting almost five times longer.” Wildfires can be caused by humans unintentionally by dropping a cigarette, or by natural causes such as lightening. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, every state in the western US has seen an increase in numbers of annual wildfires. The duration of the fires and their intensity are also a result of climate change. Because the earth’s temperature is rising, the soil becomes drier, droughts occur, therefore making chances of a wildfire increase.
What are other consequences of climate change? Aside from the damage to communities, mass displacement, or even death in extreme cases such as the 1,200 deaths caused by the monsoons in Asia, there are other long-lasting effects as well. After Hurricane Harvey flooded a large portion of southeast Texas with a record-breaking 51.88 inches, there were over 150,000 jobs created that were dedicated to post-flooding clean up and construction. However, the trio of climate change-powered hurricanes have potentially destroyed job growth for September and October by taking out over 80,000 payrolls. In addition to that, CSNBC Market Insider claims the damage caused by Hurricane Maria is predicted to keep citizens of the territory jobless until November. According to Diane Swonk, CEO of DS Economics, “We’re creating an average 175,000 jobs a month … The problem is it looks like the hurricane disruption will overwhelm those job gains in September to get them close to zero, and we’ll likely see a negative reading in October because of the sheer number of people that were affected in Puerto Rico. We really have a humanitarian crisis there.” As a usual result of hurricanes, gas prices shot up. Forbes reported that Texas had the highest gas prices it had seen since 2014 at almost $5 per gallon in Fort Worth.
Wildfires can also have positive and negative economic effects. Similar to the hurricane clean-up crews, the beneficial effects come either from rebuilding after a wildfire or fire suppression. Counter to that, Diaz found in a study conducted in 2003 that California had lost over $43 million in wildfire expenses that year. It was also estimated that about 5,000 fire-related jobless claims were filed in the same year. Due to the wildfires this year, parts of Texas have lost roughly $21 million in agricultural costs – without accounting for costs of damages on equipment. Wildfires also contaminate water supplies and produce air pollution. The largest concern with the drinking water supply is sediment filling reservoirs or basins, and sediment going into the air supply can result in long-term damage to lungs.
Arguably, the most important impact of these disasters is the social impact. When Hurricane Irma was destined to hit Florida, 6.3 million people were told to evacuate. Roughly 800,000 Texans have filed claims for help in after Hurricane Harvey. Over six states have seen damages to their agriculture because of wildfire damage. These cases of displacement and infrastructure damage can also have psychological effects. Thompson asserts that people show high levels of “anxiety, stress, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more signs of depression” when displaced after a natural disaster. Food security is also a factor in measuring the social impact. With damages to agriculture, this should come as no surprise. While the US is effected by droughts and agricultural damages, in less developed countries, such as the seventeen countries in Africa that have suffered from drought this year, food security is a much larger issue.
Over the month of September, the island of Puerto Rico experienced two traumatic hurricanes: Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria. The eye of Hurricane Irma, a category five hurricane, hit north of the Island on September 7, 2017. Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane to hit the island, left 1 million people without power. Shortly after Irma, Puerto Rico (PR) was ravaged again by another devastating hurricane. Hurricane Maria made direct landfall on Puerto Rico, resulting in a complete power outage in the island. 60,000 people were without electricity by the time Maria hit the island. Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló explained to CNN the island’s power grid is “a little bit old, mishandled and weak,” thus grid could take months to repair. Stemming from Puerto Rico’s power catastrophe, which especially strained the island’s power authority, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) filed for bankruptcy last July after racking up a $9 billion dollar debt. Not only did PREPA file for bankruptcy, so did Puerto Rico in May 2017. Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy is the biggest municipal bankruptcy ever filed in United States history, owing the US more than $70 billion, thereby complicating officials ability to borrow money for public use. Post natural disaster recovery is reliant on money and resources, and without adequate funding and focused government management, rebuilding the island’s power system will be strained at best. The Puerto Rican economy and infrastructure was already struggling, and the impact of Hurricane Maria will exacerbate the issue further.
Todos Somos Boricua!. Source: Thomas Cizauskas, creative commons.
Even though Puerto Rico is not an American state or located on the mainland, PR is an American territory. Legally, a US territory has “the status of commonwealth, a legal and political status that is above a territory but still below a state.” In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act, which granted U.S. Citizenship to Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico on or after April 25, 1898. Puerto Rican US citizens are entitled to the same inalienable rights as mainland US citizens. Puerto Rican US citizens are also entitled to equal FEMA federal government response to natural disasters. Puerto Rico is home to 3.4 million US citizens and, without power, millions of Americans will not have access to clean water, medical supplies, food, and basic public health services.
Food and Water
Currently, food and water supplies are at emergency levels throughout Puerto Rico. According to FEMA, 42% of the people on the island do not have access to potable water. Potable water is safe to drink and use for food preparation, without risk of health problems. The loss of power resulted in a lack of access to clean water to bathe, cook, or flush toilets since water cannot be pumped into resident’s homes. Limited clean water sources result in a substantial public health crisis. Without clean water, individuals are prone to malnutrition, and poor hygiene and sanitation; this amplifies the spread of communicable diseases across the entire island. Specifically, the CDC highlights proper water, hygiene and sanitation has the “potential to prevent at least 9.1% of the global disease burden and 6.3% of all deaths globally.”
As for food, 85% of the island’s food is imported from neighboring countries, like the Dominican Republic. Extreme infrastructural damage by Hurricane Maria massively disrupted the territory’s typical food imports. Maria additionally decimated Puerto Rico’s agriculture sectorresulting in a depletion of 80% of the crop value and local food production in Puerto Rico. The destruction of food imports and local food production is predicted to dramatically increase the cost of food itself and dramatically increase food shortages. These consequences will likely result in increased malnutrition of PR citizens, thereby increasing related illnesses and their effects, such as stunting and wasting throughout the island. Recently, President Trump temporarily waive the Jones Act which “requires goods shipped between American ports to be carried out exclusively by ships built primarily in the United States, and to have U.S. citizens as its owners and crews.” Governer Richardo Rosello of Puerto Rico requested the act be waived, as the Act hinder disaster relief efforts post Hurricane Maria. Lack of power and crumbled infrastructure continue to make the distribution of food and humanitarian aid a challenge and pressing human rights issue.
III MEF Marines prepare to provide assistance following tsunami in Japan. Source: DVIDSHUB, creative commons.
Health Care
“Just about every interaction with the health system now involves electricity, from calling a hospital for help to accessing electronic medical records and powering lifesaving equipment like hemodialysis machines or ventilators”
– Jullia Belluz, Vox
Puerto Rico’s health care infrastructure is devastated. Without an operational electrical grid, hospitals utilize gas-powered electric generators for energy. However, continuous diesel fuel shortages and lack water have ruthlessly weakened the capacity to treat patients throughout dozens of hospitals on the island. Likewise, numerus citizens injured during the hurricane have yet to be treated by health care professionals. Vulnerable populations, including: 1) children, 2) the elderly, and 3) persons with disabilities 4) life threatening health conditions, are at more severe risk for injury and death. Vulnerable populations such as the elderly and newborns require greater medical attention than the general population. Lack of power and hospital infrastructure becomes life threatening to patients needing live saving medical treatment.
Right to Adequate Health
The entire loss of power throughout the island exacerbates the intensity of Puerto Rico’s state of emergency. In our technologically advanced society, power is used in almost every aspect of our lives, especially in the US bureaucracy. Power helps us achieve our right to adequate health, explicitly defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is necessary Puerto Rico finds a timely solution to the territory’s failed power grid. The longer the communities live without power, the prospect of healthy and safe living environments remains grim. A complication furthering the aforementioned crises is the US’s congressional response to Hurricane Maria, which has been exceedingly disproportionate as compared to FEMA’s response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Two weeks after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, the president signed a $15 billion Harvey relief fund to help victims. However, for victims of Hurricane Irma, more than 20 days have passed since the initial hit on Puerto Rico. Two weeks later Hurricane Maria hit the island, and still Congress has failed to propose a spending budget for post-disaster relief. US officials claim they are waiting for greater insight into the full assessment of damage on Puerto Rico.
Hurricane Maria completely infringed on the rights of US citizens. The effects of Maria are going to negatively interfere with a population’s economic, social, and cultural rights explained in the UDHR. Food, water, and health care are all required to maintain adequate health. Delayed financial response by congress to Hurricane Maria will continue to perpetuate poverty throughout the region. Future PR recovery initiatives need to focus on rebuilding the island’s economy, and power grid infrastructure. Puerto Ricans are American citizens and are entitled to the same protection as all citizens; however, all people’s human rights should be protected regardless of citizenship.
Israel-06737 – Arab Bazaar. Source: Dennis Jarvis, Creative Commons
Many who know me from UAB see me as a traveler, who continually explores the Middle East; yet my first experience aboard was in a completely separate region. In 2012, I traveled across the globe for the first time with my school’s Japan Club for a two-week cultural exchange. I was keen on seeing the world. Our school group enjoyed the usual tourist activities but the interactions with my Japanese host family made the largest impact on my perception of other cultures, eventually setting me on my current course. I assumed before embarking on my trip that my host family would be ridged and slightly cold, an imposed stereotype of Asian families. They met me, instead, with overwhelming warmth and kindness as soon as I arrived. This changed my view of Japanese culture, and subsequently challenged the way in which I viewed other cultures. Upon this revelation, I turned my attention to the culture I saw most demonized in the US: the Arab world. Much of the information I received about the Middle East came through a post-9/11 lens. Therefore, I pursued an academic study of the region in college, educating myself about its culture, religion, and language in order to dispel my own personal biases along with the biases held by others who may not have had the opportunity to travel outside of their local sphere.
On multiple occasions, I have studied abroad in the Middle East during my academic career at UAB: Oman, The United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and worked for a summer in Turkey (discussion of its placement, as Middle Eastern or European is further down). There are so many elements of diversity in and between these regions, that it is difficult to compare them all. The most common question I receive when I return is whether I had to cover my hair. It is an understandable question as there are countless news stories about required or banned headscarves or religious swimwear in certain areas of the world. A headscarf covering is also a very visible sign that a woman belongs to the Islamic faith, and generally used as the image representing Islam itself. However, there are nuances to this custom that varies by country, city, and even neighborhood, and I have found that starting the discussion about this complex region with dress gives those unfamiliar with the topic a clear reference point on something they have heard about while reframing their views away from stereotypical beliefs.
My first introduction to the normal dress wear of the Middle East was in Oman, located at the southeastern tip of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. Out of the countries I have lived in, Oman has been the most conservative when it came to dress. Nearly all the women that our school group interacted with wore abayas, black long sleeve dresses paired with a headscarf, called a hijab. We were not required to wear either of these pieces because we are not Muslim; some of my classmates did don the outfit to blend in more on the street. My daily outfit was a pair of long pants, usually jeans, with a long sleeved blouse and a scarf around my neck. I employed this style for all my subsequent trips to the Middle East, even when it was not required.
Photo by Rebecca Hyde
The dress code rules were much laxer for foreigners compared to the locals in the United Arab Emirates, home of the cosmopolitan city of Dubai. With an international business presence in the country, most westerners wore anything ranging from business attire to short shorts, and some Arabs adopted this code. For the Emiratis who kept the traditional wear of abayas and headscarves for women, and long white dishdasharobes paired with a keffiyeh, a draping headdress for men, there were still differences from the Omani style. An easy spot was the difference in headwear for the men, as instead of a white draping headdress Omani men preferred to wear either a mussar turban or a kuma multicolored hat. For women, the difference is subtler. Women from both countries may choose to wear an abaya; you can gauge their wealth depending on the abaya’s material and the accessories paired with it. Rose gold watches are commonplace on the wrists of those shopping at Dubai mall, along with patterned silk abayas covering fashionable gowns underneath for at-home wear. Even if tradition dictates a certain dress code for outside the home, the women I saw found ways to make their style pop.
Shifting from the Gulf Peninsula, the Levant region (Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, etc.) have both cultural and international forces shaping their dress. During my stay in Amman, the capital of Jordan, there was a different stratum of dress code. In the more Western areas of the city, usually stocked with expensive coffee shops and foreigners, I found young male and female Arab students who have adopted the American style and were busy studying away in cafes. The women in this category wore their hair-uncovered majority of the time and frequently interacted with their male peers. I lived in a neighborhood outside of downtown where the dress wear was more of a blend. The men wore t-shirts and jeans, or semi-formal attire in businesses; the women would cover their hair but in such a way that they presented a coordinated look, down to their hairpins.
Hijabi fashion is making its mark in the Western world currently; you can see the roots of it on the streets of Amman. On the outskirts of Amman, the dress code becomes more traditional. Here many of the Palestinian and Syrian refugees reside, and these areas are often the poorer parts of Amman. In these neighborhoods, the men also wear t-shirts and jeans but occasionally add a red and white or black and white keffiyeh scarf. The red and white version is popular in Jordan, whereas the black and white version has deeper symbolic ties to Palestine. The women in these areas usually wear abayas, occasionally paired with a niqab, a veil that covers the face but not the eyes. When I travel to these areas, I dress more conservatively, and it is one of the rare occasions where I may cover my hair when I am out on the street.
As a note, in all the countries I have travelled to I have never seen a burqa, a covering where you can see no part of the women. The wearing of Burqas happens in the most conservative areas of the world; yet they are the most recognized covering styles among Americans due to the news coverage on Afghanistan and territories held by ISIS. I have included the names of the different styles as to give replacement terms when discussing Islamic head coverings, and in most cases, the garment worn by those in the US is a hijab.
Photo by Rebecca Hyde
I have yet to make it to North Africa and compare the average dress code in countries like Egypt and Morocco. The farthest west I have made it in the region is to Turkey. Turkey is an interesting and complex region. Most of Europe considers it an Asian or Middle Eastern country, while Turkey is pushing back to be considered European. It is a bridge between the east and the west and with that comes a substantial blending of traditions and customs. I worked in Izmir, the third largest city in the country and leans more politically liberal. Throughout Turkey, there is a large Muslim population; however, in Izmir, very few people cover their hair, and the city did not enact fasting laws during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting during daylight hours. Living in Izmir was the first time I was able to go to a restaurant and eat outside during Ramadan because there was not a strong adherence to certain strict Islamic principles in the general population. This differs greatly from cities on the eastern border near Syria, certain areas of Istanbul, and even certain neighborhoods within Izmir.
When volunteering with Syrian refugees in Izmir, the dress was much like the refugee areas in Jordan: more conservative with a larger division between the roles of men and women. Some Turks at my work warned me against travel to these refugee neighborhoods as they were known for crime and drugs; the more I went with the volunteer group, the more I found those fears were largely based in a fear of the “other” who spoke Arabic instead of Turkish, and dressed differently. Within the same faith, dress and culture is still a divisive topic. Before my travels, I viewed the Middle East as a single monolithic entity; however, through observing and speaking with those I met from the region, I now see that there is so much more to these countries than I had first assumed.
Dress is one of the many small aspects of a culture. Recognizing the diversity of dress in a region allows us an entry point into the culture as a whole. Actively learning why a group dresses, talks, or acts a certain way, while considering this information from the group’s perspective instead of looking through our own lens, we can come closer to understanding each other as complex human beings instead of 2D stereotypes that lack any kind of depth or nuance.
Through a conversation about something as simple as dress, the complexity of a region can be revealed and open the door for richer discussions about the Middle East. However, I wouldn’t have been able to experience any of these countries without the help of study abroad scholarships offered to students interested in the world outside of the US and Europe. If you would like to study a critical language or do research abroad, UAB has great resources through the Office of National and International Fellowships and Scholarships. They have helped students win awards such as the Critical Language Scholarship, the William Jefferson Clinton Scholarship, the Boren Scholarship, the Rhodes Scholarship, the Fulbright Fellowship, and more. You can contact them with questions and set up an appointment at fellowships@uab.edu.
A plague to an outsider looks differently to an insider, particularly one who battles symptoms every day. The plague Kramer shouts of is HIV/AIDS and its decimation of the homosexual community. Until I watched this documentary, I had not considered AIDS a plague because its label was an epidemic or pandemic. My perspective on the topic was limited by my understanding of another’s plight. My first recollection of learning about HIV/AIDS happened in the early 1990s when Ryan White, a hemophiliac, died and Magic Johnson, a heterosexual basketball player, made his announcement. I still remember how as a middle-schooler, I rationalized the knowledge someone a few years older than myself died while also anticipating the death of one of my favorite basketball players. At the time, I had no idea the millions who succumbed to AIDS would die after a lack of treatment for the disease; nor did I know of the group of radical activists shaking up the government and scientific community with demands for intervention. The individuals of ACT UP, through the coalescence of anger and non-violent direct action, took the on the burden of the dying community. How to Survive a Plague chronicles the 10-year fight for antiretrovirual medications (ARV) needed to both save the lives of those living with the disease and help end the AIDS crisis in the US.
Greenwich Village in New York City was the epicenter of HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s. During its initial outbreak, the virus was widely considered a ‘homosexual’ disease. Hospitals offered no treatments and turned the dying away, placing blame and responsibility for the epidemic squarely on the victims’ shoulders. AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) began “fighting for their lives, patients and their advocates took matters into their own hands.” The activists, labelled fascists rather than concerned citizens, began locally – at NY City Hall in 1987, six years into the pandemic.
Peter Staley, a bond trader on Wall Street at the time, insisted, “I’m going to die from this. This isn’t going to be cured” because without government trials or treatments at that point in time, all hope seemed lost. Hope arrived in a scientist named Iris Long, who offered her time to explain and teach members of ACT UP the ins and outs of the scientific community, arming them with medication and funding information. Survival became dependent upon knowledge of what needed to go into the body; therefore, forming the Treatment and Data Committee (T&D). The goal of T&D remained reading medical journal articles as a means of raising awareness while arming the members with terms and ideas for advocacy. The first medical treatment offered was AZT.
AZT, for many infected including Staley, proved more harmful than helpful. First, it cost $1000 per year. Second, it was not widely available. Third, side effects were unbearable in some cases. Lastly, it did not prevent any opportunistic infections from attacking an already weakened immune system. Robert Rafsky questioned, “What does a decent society do with people who hurt themselves because they are human? A decent society does not put people out to let them die because they have done a human thing.” By 1988, over 800,000 people worldwide died of AIDS-related complications. For members of ACT UP, there was a direct correlation between the loss of American lives to AIDS and the government’s failure to make medications accessibly affordable and safe. Overseas markets had accessible medications, but Americans bought medication on the black market—the “buyers’ club”, a desperate means of saving their lives while protesting government agencies. The buyers’ club stored and sold medications not approved by the US FDA, and provided information about HIV/AIDS related infections, including opportunistic infections.
The US FDA tested and marketed ARVs at a significantly slower rate than Europe—7 to 10 years versus 9 months respectively. While the FDA sat on their power to make, test, and market medications, deceased patients gathered into garbage bags and refused by funeral parlors; disregarded and denied dignity, even in death. In 1989, hope arrived again through a partnership with Bristol Myers and NIH as activists used platforms to bridge the gap between science and themselves by reaffirming the same goal: saving lives. NIH increased research priorities and allowed activists to participate in panels regarding trials and treatments. By 1992, the death toll worldwide was more 3,300,000 and a small sample of ARVs was ready to trial in the US.
The goal of ARVs is to suppress and halt the progression of the virus. In the 1992 trial, researchers found that over the course of a week, suppression of the virus occurred but did not remain in most patients. Fortunately, in one participant dubbed “Patient 143”, viral load suppression stabilized over time. Despite this small victory, 1993-95 became the most difficult for the activists. Internal splintering of ACT UP created a division of priorities which resulted in the founding of the Treatment Action Group (TAG). George H.W. Bush argued a change in lifestyle and behavior could stop the threat/spread of AIDS, yet he failed to conclude that it is irrational to believe that others should change their behavior, specifically LGBTQ community, without him changing his response to their requests, demands, and deaths. Additionally, Europe confirmed the ineffectiveness of the ARVs that were accessible at the time. This setback meant a reframing, restructuring, and reanalysis of the AIDS research scientific process.
TAG activists, together with the scientific community, focused on the possibility of a triple drug combination rather than a single drug solution. In 1995-96, the Lazarus effect began to take place in patients after 30 days on the medications. The antiretroviral therapy (ART) combinations arrived too late for millions including Ryan White; however, they sustain and give life to millions of others including Magic Johnson. The decision of ACT UP activists spawned justice for humanity, not just the LGBTQ community. Staley summarizes, “…just so many good people [died]… like any war, you wonder why you came home.”
This Wednesday, October 4 at Birmingham Museum of Art, 6pm, ACT UP activist Peter Staley will participate in panel discussion “30 Years of Acting Up”. The panel is a part of the One in Our Blood exhibition taking place around the city, including AEIVA and Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
Trigger warning: this blog references graphic physical and sexual violence. Please do not read if easily affected by these topics.
The Uncondemned Movie Poster
On Thursday, September 21, the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Institute for Human Rights and UAB’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program hosted the screening of the documentary: The Uncondemned. The film explores the challenges and triumphs of a group of fledgling lawyers, investigators, and Rwandan women during a trial after the Rwandan Genocide. From their juridical victory, the legal definition of genocide was expanded to include acts of rape.
Background
Over the course of four months in the summer of 1994, roughly 800,000 Rwandan citizens were massacred in the east-central area of the country. The ethnic majority of Rwanda, the Hutu, murdered most of the Tutsi minority in an attempt of “ethnic cleansing” as a result of ethnic and religious tensions between the two groups. This decimation of the ethnic Tutsis became known as the Rwandan Genocide.
Death – Rwandan Genocide
On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying General Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu leader, was shot down by an unknown assailant. All the passengers on the plane crashed to their deaths, including the Burundian president, Cyprien Ntaryamira. Rumors place blame on the extremist Hutus for the murder as part of a revolt against the power-share agreement Habyarimana agreed to sign in accordance with the Tutsis. Another argument blames the Tutsis in the crash, using the act of terrorism as an attempt to regain power in Rwanda. Almost immediately after the plane crash, the murder of the Tutsi people began. Extremist Hutus began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus by setting up roadblocks and raiding homes. Radio stations ran by the extremists were encouraging civilians to attack and kill their neighbors.
The genocide was as horrifying as it was dehumanizing. Not all Hutu fighters had access to guns or even machetes, and much of the genocide was conducted using simple weapons such as sharpened sticks, large rocks, and common household items such as forks and knives – making death slow and painful. According to the film, bodies could be found in every village and on every hill. Its simplicity and scope earned it the title as the “most efficient genocide in modern history.” The first reconnaissance mission conducted by the United Nations (UN) reported one thousand Tutsi were killed in twenty minutes when the investigators first arrived.
Tragically, women endured gender based violence during the genocide. The total number of rape survivors will never be known, however countless women testified to being raped during the genocide. Stories of rape, whether gang-raped or with objects, are consistently mentioned. If they were not killed after being raped, the women were sold into sex slavery or forced into marriage. Additionally, they were traded among groups of men for them to sexually abuse them. Once the men were “done” with them, their reproductive organs were gruesomely mutilated with machetes, knives, bare sticks, or even acid. After pleading with her rapists to kill her, one woman testified they responded: she was to be kept alive so she would “die of sadness.”
The film shows the use of rape as a psychological weapon to strip the humanity from more than just the individual Rwandan woman. The rapists wanted to both degrade larger groups of women the rape survivors were a part of and as a means to assert their superiority and population control. Throughout the history of armed conflict, women often become the targets of sexual violence– this is a common weapon used in larger crimes against humanity, such as genocide. Whether it comes in the form of physical abuse, rape, mutilation, or sex slavery, being a woman becomes a risk factor – no matter the age, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation, or any other characteristic outside of biology. Niarchos concludes rape is used to inflict terror and force cooperation, both on the female survivor and others in her close community. In Rwanda’s case, rape was used to humiliate Tutsi women and terrify the community as a whole; making the suffering of Tutsi women a violent means to the Hutus’ political end.
The UN declared rape as a war crime in 1919, however in cases prior to the Rwandan Genocide, rape was never prosecuted in this manner. In Resolution 1820 that was adopted by the Security Council at its 5916th meeting, of the UN Security Council noted “women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.” The International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) was the first time rape was pursued as a war crime and was the first tribunal enacted since World War II. The film, The Uncondemned, tells of the efforts taken by the UN to connect rape to genocide. The documentary focuses on the case the mayor of Taba, Jean Paul Akayesu, who was the first to face charges of inditement over genocide – including rape.
The team of lawyers sent by the UN was ambitious but inexperienced. Most were in their 30s, recently graduated from law school, and were taken to task by gathering intelligence to prosecute this case that was like none before it. More importantly, they deduced they must prosecute it in a way that laid the groundwork for future cases – setting legal precedence.
Woman Praying – Rwanda by Brice Crozier
Doctor Odette Nyiramilimo of Le Bon Samaritain Clinic in Kigali was one of many doctors who said almost every woman and adolescent girl who survived the Rwandan Genocide was raped. As she examined victims immediately after the genocide, she asserted that at least two cases of rape were coming in each day to her clinic. As mentioned before, the exact number cannot be known, which is due to a number of factors such as the stigmatism that surrounds rape. Across the globe, rape survivors are shamed and seen as guilty for the violent crimes committed against them. Eisler asserts this is especially prominent in societies that value men over women. Fear of reprisal compromises the reporting of rape, and this is particularly true in the case of Rwandan survivors. Bernadette Muhimakazi, a Rwandan women’s rights activist in an interview with Human Rights Watch, states many of the women were afraid to say anything because they know who their perpetrators are. These women know exactly who killed their families and who violated them. In many cases, these women live in the same community as their perpetrators.
“Women here are scared to talk because it was their neighbors who raped them.”
– Bernadette Muhimakzai
Prior to the visibility the tribunal brought, rape was viewed as a negligible outcome of war. The testimonies of the Rwandan women changed this perception, and rape was legally billed as a true war crime. The team the UN pulled together to prosecute this case proved to be successful in their endeavors, and justice prevailed; Akayesu was convicted of crimes against humanity and acts of genocide. The film concludes with rape survivors coming forth to name their rapists. While their sense of inner peace may never be fully restored, the tribunal gave the women a sense of justice and vindication.
The Institute for Human Rights, like many global NGO’s, aims to promote and protect human rights within our local, national, and international communities. Specific human rights issues have been explored on this blog, ranging from child marriage to the genocide in Myanmar. This is one approach to understanding human rights: picking apart the issues, analyzing human rights documents (such as the Universal Declaration for Human Rights), and working towards a world where human rights are universal and protected. Another way of conceptualizing human rights is through the lens of peace promotion. Whereas human rights are, typically, legal and political by nature, peace promotion calls upon a person’s moral and ethical faculties. While these concepts are similar in many ways (after all, laws are supposed to reflect the ethics of its society), ‘never the twain shall meet’ is more often the case. In preparation for the International Day of Peace – September 21st – this blog explores a central concept in both peace and human rights: human dignity. Human dignity, I argue, is why peace promotion is necessary for humanity and why its active promotion is ethically justified.
Dignity, Human Rights, and Peace
What is dignity? Many of us have a vague idea of what dignity means: self-worth, inherent value, spiritual or religious connotations, and the like. The operational definition of dignity in human rights and peace literature can be hazy as well; in fact, I have struggled to find a cohesive and comprehensive definition. Dignity seems to be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ concept, used with substantially different connotations, in many academic and applied fields.
The origins of dignity, in the formerly legitimate social systems of aristocracy, utterly juxtapose today’s definition (Kleinig & Evans, 2013). The medieval concept of dignity came from a ranked / hierarchical social system; ‘dignitaries’, a person who possessed dignity, held higher socioeconomic status than those who did not possess ‘dignity’. With dignity-from-rank came benefits: physical (in the form of land ownership) or metaphysical (with an endowment of gravitas). This conceptual framework of dignity shaped how the term was used in philosophy and other social sciences for many years, until the ideas of Immanuel Kant changed the relationship between dignity and ethical behavior. Sometimes, with the right idea and platform, words completely change their meaning within a society.
Moving away from the ‘ranked’ definition of dignity, Kant proposed a new form of dignity. First and foremost, dignity is shared by all humankind (this universality is also a feature of the current definition of dignity in the world of human rights and peace; Kleinig & Evans, 2013). Although Kant wasn’t the first to universalize dignity (many historical antecedents are found in Stoic and Renaissance theology), the popularity of Kant’s philosophy broadcasted the idea into the public sphere in such a way that the idea was intractable (Kleinig & Evans, 2013). In short, Kant emphasized the role of ethical choice and moral behavior in dignity. Dignity, in Kant’s view, is not a nebulous status enjoyed by the upper echelon of society. It is instead the byproduct of both a person’s God-given (in Kant’s words) ability to create an ethical code of behavior and a person’s choice to live by the code he or she created. Dignity is found in all persons because dignity reflects a skilled shared by us: our capacity to both make moral judgements and adhere to the rules we make. Through this example, we see how the concept of dignity experienced quite a stark transformation by going from an attribute only a select few possessed to an inherent potential all persons possess.
The story doesn’t end here, however. The definition of dignity is contested to this very day. While the role and influence of human dignity in human rights documents is uncontested (‘dignity’ is mentioned in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example), some thinkers propose the usefulness of dignity has been lost (Schroeder, 2012; United Nations, 1948). The vagueness of ‘human dignity’ increases the number of its applications, but Schroeder (2012) and other scholars claim the ‘one-size-fits-all’ mentality threatens the concept from within. They argue the dignity-based rights approach is fallible because the justification for rights comes not from human beings themselves, but from a philosophical virtue assigned to their experience. While the merits of this argument are important (one such example is the push for greater specificity in defining ‘dignity), the ubiquity of dignity in human rights literature makes the divorce of human rights and human dignity a herculean task. Dignity, with all its complications, is at the heart of human rights.
International Day of Peace
Moving away from the conceptual aspect of peace, let’s focus on a practical application. How can we identify normative values held by a society and whether these values are peaceful or not? One way is to look at cultural events and how these events are celebrated. Let us look at Independence Day as an example. On July 4th, many Americans attend cookouts, don red/white/blue attire, and a general attitude of patriotism is (hopefully) experienced by all Americans. By comparing the American independence celebration to other less extravagant independence day celebrations, we can make the assertion that America is an especially patriotic nation. Yet, what celebrations do we have for the concept of peace? We do not have a “Day of Kantian-Defined Human Dignity”, but we do have the International Day of Peace.
International Day of Peace is a celebration of the international values of dignity, human rights, and peace. First established in 1981, the United Nations unanimously voted to make September 21st the International Day of Peace. The UN stated the reason behind Peace Day: “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples”. This is a day to reaffirm each person’s and each nation’s commitment to a peaceful way of life and to celebrate the strides made towards peace across the globe. The theme for 2017 International Day of Peace is “Together for Peace: Respect, Safety, and Dignity for All”. The UN created a short video for 2017 International Day of Peace which can be found here.
The IHR is celebrating the International Day of Peace with INTO UAB today from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Stern Library. INTO UAB is hosting an International Day of Peace Food & Culture Festival. INTO UAB provides English-learning opportunities and education assistance for non-US students with aspirations to study at a UAB undergraduate or graduate program.
References
Kleinig, J. & Evans, N. G. (2013). Human flourishing, human dignity, and human rights. Law and Philosophy, 32(5), 539-564.
Schroeder, D. (2012). Human rights and human dignity: An appeal to separate the conjoined twins. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 15(3), 323-335.
United Nations. (1948). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
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