Pub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2022.2030207
Sarbani Sharma
Abstract Human rights violations through militarized control have been the cornerstone of Indian statecraft in Indian-administered Kashmir. This article offers a close reading of the April 2017 episode of using a civilian Kashmiri Muslim man as a human shield by the Indian Army in Indian-administered Kashmir. Whereas the existing scholarship on the relationship between militarization, human rights violations, and Hindutva politics have employed political or feminist analytical frameworks, this article focuses on rereading the episode of human shield usage to analyze how “universality” of human rights in India is being redefined. It reflects on how the ruling right-wing government in India appropriates the language of violations and afflictions to embolden its strategies to alter the grammar of human rights in India. Drawing on a discourse analysis of the human shield event, the article deliberates on how anthropology of Hindutva and right-wing extremism research could pay greater attention to the conversation between Hindutva theology of rights and neoliberal ethics when approaching questions of recurrent human rights violations in Kashmir.
{"title":"Epistemes of human rights in Kashmir: Paradoxes of universality and particularity","authors":"Sarbani Sharma","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2022.2030207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2022.2030207","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Human rights violations through militarized control have been the cornerstone of Indian statecraft in Indian-administered Kashmir. This article offers a close reading of the April 2017 episode of using a civilian Kashmiri Muslim man as a human shield by the Indian Army in Indian-administered Kashmir. Whereas the existing scholarship on the relationship between militarization, human rights violations, and Hindutva politics have employed political or feminist analytical frameworks, this article focuses on rereading the episode of human shield usage to analyze how “universality” of human rights in India is being redefined. It reflects on how the ruling right-wing government in India appropriates the language of violations and afflictions to embolden its strategies to alter the grammar of human rights in India. Drawing on a discourse analysis of the human shield event, the article deliberates on how anthropology of Hindutva and right-wing extremism research could pay greater attention to the conversation between Hindutva theology of rights and neoliberal ethics when approaching questions of recurrent human rights violations in Kashmir.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"158 - 173"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47788736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2022.2030205
Suparna Chaudhry, Andrew Heiss
Abstract An increasing number of countries have recently cracked down on non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Much of this crackdown is sanctioned by law and represents a bureaucratic form of repression that could indicate more severe human rights abuses in the future. This is especially the case for democracies, which, unlike autocracies, may not aggressively attack civic space. We explore whether crackdowns on NGOs predict broader human rights repression. Anti-NGO laws are among the most subtle means of repression and attract lesser domestic and international condemnation compared to the use of violence. Using original data on NGO repression, we test whether NGO crackdown is a predictor of political terror and violations of physical integrity rights and civil liberties. We find that although de jure anti-NGO laws provide little information in predicting future repression, their patterns of implementation—or de facto civil society repression—predict worsening respect for physical integrity rights and civil liberties.
{"title":"NGO repression as a predictor of worsening human rights abuses","authors":"Suparna Chaudhry, Andrew Heiss","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2022.2030205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2022.2030205","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract An increasing number of countries have recently cracked down on non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Much of this crackdown is sanctioned by law and represents a bureaucratic form of repression that could indicate more severe human rights abuses in the future. This is especially the case for democracies, which, unlike autocracies, may not aggressively attack civic space. We explore whether crackdowns on NGOs predict broader human rights repression. Anti-NGO laws are among the most subtle means of repression and attract lesser domestic and international condemnation compared to the use of violence. Using original data on NGO repression, we test whether NGO crackdown is a predictor of political terror and violations of physical integrity rights and civil liberties. We find that although de jure anti-NGO laws provide little information in predicting future repression, their patterns of implementation—or de facto civil society repression—predict worsening respect for physical integrity rights and civil liberties.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"123 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47042747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2022.2037411
Anntiana Maral Sabeti
Abstract Understanding where and how to bolster human rights is arguably the underlying motivation of most research in human rights and the greater field of political science. Increasingly, an emphasis on gender has been shown to prevent conflict and reinforce peace, thus demonstrating how a reinforcement of women’s rights benefits the sustainment of peace. Despite increasing evidence for this phenomenon, scholars have not fully explored the mechanisms through which a focus on women fosters and preserves peace. Using extant literature on women and peace, I identify two sets of policy instruments that may be more effectual than others in establishing gendered peace and preventing states from relapsing into conflict. I further categorize the policies into high-level and targeted policies and hypothesize that, contrary to intuition, high-level policies could be more effective at generating gendered peace. I test the models for each instrument using an updated version of the PAX-Gender database and find that more high-level gender policies are linked to longer-lasting peace treaties.
{"title":"Disentangling gendered peace: Observing gendered peace in policy","authors":"Anntiana Maral Sabeti","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2022.2037411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2022.2037411","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Understanding where and how to bolster human rights is arguably the underlying motivation of most research in human rights and the greater field of political science. Increasingly, an emphasis on gender has been shown to prevent conflict and reinforce peace, thus demonstrating how a reinforcement of women’s rights benefits the sustainment of peace. Despite increasing evidence for this phenomenon, scholars have not fully explored the mechanisms through which a focus on women fosters and preserves peace. Using extant literature on women and peace, I identify two sets of policy instruments that may be more effectual than others in establishing gendered peace and preventing states from relapsing into conflict. I further categorize the policies into high-level and targeted policies and hypothesize that, contrary to intuition, high-level policies could be more effective at generating gendered peace. I test the models for each instrument using an updated version of the PAX-Gender database and find that more high-level gender policies are linked to longer-lasting peace treaties.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"210 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46200326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-03DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.2013174
Emma Paszat
Abstract Sex that is considered nonnormative or undesirable is often subject to state sanction. In Rwanda in 2009 there was an effort to criminalize sex work and same-sex sex, but ultimately only the criminalization of sex work occurred. What explains these different outcomes? Although both groups are at higher risk for HIV transmission because of social stigma, these concerns were not sufficient. The political salience of the human rights argument that nondiscrimination is an essential government commitment in postgenocide Rwanda was used to reject criminalizing same-sex sex. However, neither politicians nor most civil society activists thought this human rights argument was applicable to sex work. Although criminalizing lgbt people was considered socially divisive, criminalizing sex work was considered necessary. Understanding these different outcomes reveals the limitations of human rights arguments on the regulation of sex in East Africa.
{"title":"Criminalization and rhetorical nondiscrimination: Sex work and sexual diversity politics in Rwanda","authors":"Emma Paszat","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2021.2013174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2021.2013174","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Sex that is considered nonnormative or undesirable is often subject to state sanction. In Rwanda in 2009 there was an effort to criminalize sex work and same-sex sex, but ultimately only the criminalization of sex work occurred. What explains these different outcomes? Although both groups are at higher risk for HIV transmission because of social stigma, these concerns were not sufficient. The political salience of the human rights argument that nondiscrimination is an essential government commitment in postgenocide Rwanda was used to reject criminalizing same-sex sex. However, neither politicians nor most civil society activists thought this human rights argument was applicable to sex work. Although criminalizing lgbt people was considered socially divisive, criminalizing sex work was considered necessary. Understanding these different outcomes reveals the limitations of human rights arguments on the regulation of sex in East Africa.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"542 - 557"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41558424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-03DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.2014795
Ann Quennerstedt
Abstract This article examines the academic discussion about human rights education for children and young people and argues that the current state of research does not provide sufficient support and guidance to nations, schools, and teachers in the establishment of human rights education in schools. The article’s aim is to add insights into how scholarly work may be contributing to the low uptake of human rights education in formal schooling. By drawing on educational children’s rights research and research on human rights education, three cardinal complications are identified; (1) that the main research fields that address education and rights do not seem to communicate, (2) that it is unclear what are the aims of human rights education are, and (3) that a curriculum for human rights education is missing. The cardinal complications are closely examined and discussed, and a middle ground is explored and progressively visualized.
{"title":"Children’s and young people’s human rights education in school: Cardinal complications and a middle ground","authors":"Ann Quennerstedt","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2021.2014795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2021.2014795","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the academic discussion about human rights education for children and young people and argues that the current state of research does not provide sufficient support and guidance to nations, schools, and teachers in the establishment of human rights education in schools. The article’s aim is to add insights into how scholarly work may be contributing to the low uptake of human rights education in formal schooling. By drawing on educational children’s rights research and research on human rights education, three cardinal complications are identified; (1) that the main research fields that address education and rights do not seem to communicate, (2) that it is unclear what are the aims of human rights education are, and (3) that a curriculum for human rights education is missing. The cardinal complications are closely examined and discussed, and a middle ground is explored and progressively visualized.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"383 - 398"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49275857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-22DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.2020627
J. Clark
Abstract This article discusses the relationship between health and transitional justice through a particular focus on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence. It is not, however, about the individual health needs of victims-/survivors, nor about possible ways that transitional justice processes might address these. Drawing on empirical data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda, it explores some of the health legacies of sexual violence in conflict and their wider significance for transitional justice. Embracing the World Health Organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, the article specifically seeks to demonstrate that conflict-related sexual violence (and its frequent entanglement with other forms of violence) affects not only individual but also social-ecological health. The article’s overall contention, thus, is that in the context of transitional justice, more than individual health matters. The broader “health” of social ecologies themselves is also critically important. Ultimately advocating a social-ecological reframing of transitional justice, the article utilizes Germond & Cochrane’s (2010) concept of “healthworlds” to explore what this reframing might look like in practice.
{"title":"Social ecologies of health and conflict-related sexual violence: Translating “healthworlds” into transitional justice","authors":"J. Clark","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2021.2020627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2021.2020627","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article discusses the relationship between health and transitional justice through a particular focus on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence. It is not, however, about the individual health needs of victims-/survivors, nor about possible ways that transitional justice processes might address these. Drawing on empirical data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda, it explores some of the health legacies of sexual violence in conflict and their wider significance for transitional justice. Embracing the World Health Organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, the article specifically seeks to demonstrate that conflict-related sexual violence (and its frequent entanglement with other forms of violence) affects not only individual but also social-ecological health. The article’s overall contention, thus, is that in the context of transitional justice, more than individual health matters. The broader “health” of social ecologies themselves is also critically important. Ultimately advocating a social-ecological reframing of transitional justice, the article utilizes Germond & Cochrane’s (2010) concept of “healthworlds” to explore what this reframing might look like in practice.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"575 - 592"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42363242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-15DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.2013175
M. Murphy
Abstract Although the field of transitional justice is expanding rapidly, research on its effects remains underdeveloped, despite its presumed importance for human rights and democratic consolidation. The field suffers from incompatible approaches and definitions, disputed causal models and conclusions, and a multiplicity of dependent variables. Quantitative work struggles to ground measurement and hypothesis testing in nuanced conceptions of transitional justice’s causal processes. Robust understanding of effects requires integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches while balancing accuracy with parsimony. This article first revisits and builds on a key quantitative work: Olsen et al.’s Transitional justice in balance (2010). Using an expanded dataset to repeat their descriptive and statistical analysis of the effects of transitional justice, the article finds results only marginally consistent with their original findings. This reassessment is the basis for proposed revisions to their causal model, conceptualization, measurement, and hypothesis testing. The proposed approach includes a two-step causal model, differentiated measurement of transitional justice mechanisms, and hypotheses that are more deeply grounded in the insights of qualitative studies. These revisions provide a framework with rich potential for comparative quantitative analysis of the effects of transitional justice.
{"title":"How does transitional justice matter? Expanding and refining quantitative research on the effects of transitional justice policies","authors":"M. Murphy","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2021.2013175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2021.2013175","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although the field of transitional justice is expanding rapidly, research on its effects remains underdeveloped, despite its presumed importance for human rights and democratic consolidation. The field suffers from incompatible approaches and definitions, disputed causal models and conclusions, and a multiplicity of dependent variables. Quantitative work struggles to ground measurement and hypothesis testing in nuanced conceptions of transitional justice’s causal processes. Robust understanding of effects requires integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches while balancing accuracy with parsimony. This article first revisits and builds on a key quantitative work: Olsen et al.’s Transitional justice in balance (2010). Using an expanded dataset to repeat their descriptive and statistical analysis of the effects of transitional justice, the article finds results only marginally consistent with their original findings. This reassessment is the basis for proposed revisions to their causal model, conceptualization, measurement, and hypothesis testing. The proposed approach includes a two-step causal model, differentiated measurement of transitional justice mechanisms, and hypotheses that are more deeply grounded in the insights of qualitative studies. These revisions provide a framework with rich potential for comparative quantitative analysis of the effects of transitional justice.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"485 - 499"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47004578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-21DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.2007364
Sam R. Bell, Richard W. Frank
Abstract Some existing human trafficking research has examined how trafficking laws and regulations deter traffickers. This research, however, has paid little attention to how states’ freedom-of-movement policies influence human trafficking. Existing policy debates suggest two possible effects. Europe’s experiences with open borders have led to claims that freedom of movement decreases the likelihood that traffickers are detected, thus making human trafficking in and out of states more likely. By contrast, movement restrictions could create an environment in which people become more vulnerable to traffickers. We use data from 182 countries from 2001 to 2017 to test whether freedom of movement increases or decreases human trafficking flows. We find that it is necessary, theoretically and empirically, to consider freedom of foreign movement both locally and in a state’s neighborhood, because freedom of movement increases human trafficking when the local and neighborhood practices diverge from each other.
{"title":"The spatial dynamics of freedom of foreign movement and human trafficking","authors":"Sam R. Bell, Richard W. Frank","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2021.2007364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2021.2007364","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Some existing human trafficking research has examined how trafficking laws and regulations deter traffickers. This research, however, has paid little attention to how states’ freedom-of-movement policies influence human trafficking. Existing policy debates suggest two possible effects. Europe’s experiences with open borders have led to claims that freedom of movement decreases the likelihood that traffickers are detected, thus making human trafficking in and out of states more likely. By contrast, movement restrictions could create an environment in which people become more vulnerable to traffickers. We use data from 182 countries from 2001 to 2017 to test whether freedom of movement increases or decreases human trafficking flows. We find that it is necessary, theoretically and empirically, to consider freedom of foreign movement both locally and in a state’s neighborhood, because freedom of movement increases human trafficking when the local and neighborhood practices diverge from each other.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"365 - 382"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59933158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-21DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.2011712
M. Deyab, E. Elshaikh
Abstract Taking the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as a framework, this article tackles the numerous violations of children’s rights in Palestine that are reflected in Cathryn Clinton’s young-adult (YA) novel, A stone in my hand (2002). The article aims to illustrate how Clinton’s novel, like other contemporary YA fiction, explores major child rights violations in Palestine, such as arbitrary death, violent treatments, mental violence, illegal detention, torture of children, restrictions of movement, lack of health insurance, denial of good education, and poverty and unemployment. For this purpose, the article is divided into two parts. The first sheds light on the genre of YA fiction and the reasons behind its present interest in children’s rights worldwide, in general, and Palestine in particular, with examples of such literature. The second part discusses several articles of the UNCRC including, but not limited to 6, 19, 24, 27, 28, 31, 37, 38, and illustrates how Clinton’s novel elucidates the ways in which these articles are clearly violated.
{"title":"Am I not a child? Palestinian child rights’ violations in Cathryn Clinton’s A stone in my hand (2002)","authors":"M. Deyab, E. Elshaikh","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2021.2011712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2021.2011712","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Taking the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as a framework, this article tackles the numerous violations of children’s rights in Palestine that are reflected in Cathryn Clinton’s young-adult (YA) novel, A stone in my hand (2002). The article aims to illustrate how Clinton’s novel, like other contemporary YA fiction, explores major child rights violations in Palestine, such as arbitrary death, violent treatments, mental violence, illegal detention, torture of children, restrictions of movement, lack of health insurance, denial of good education, and poverty and unemployment. For this purpose, the article is divided into two parts. The first sheds light on the genre of YA fiction and the reasons behind its present interest in children’s rights worldwide, in general, and Palestine in particular, with examples of such literature. The second part discusses several articles of the UNCRC including, but not limited to 6, 19, 24, 27, 28, 31, 37, 38, and illustrates how Clinton’s novel elucidates the ways in which these articles are clearly violated.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"451 - 462"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44028248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-21DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2021.2004886
Bimal Adhikari, J. King, L. Santoso
Abstract What effect do bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have on women’s rights? We argue that BITs have divergent effects on women’s rights dependent on the type of women’s rights examined. We posit that BITs have a negative effect on women’s economic rights in host states because of an initial “locking in” effect, whereby states seek to become more attractive to potential bilateral partners by decreasing the quality of conditions prior to signing a BIT. Host states then become reluctant to prosecute foreign investors due to the threat of legal arbitration, which further enables foreign investors to engage in women’s rights violations. In response to the possibility of unrest generated by the BITs, host states then seek to improve women’s political rights, compensating women for the decreasing quality of economic rights in turn. In testing these assertions, our expectations are broadly and consistently confirmed.
{"title":"A BIT of help? The divergent effect of bilateral investment treaties on women’s rights","authors":"Bimal Adhikari, J. King, L. Santoso","doi":"10.1080/14754835.2021.2004886","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2021.2004886","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract What effect do bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have on women’s rights? We argue that BITs have divergent effects on women’s rights dependent on the type of women’s rights examined. We posit that BITs have a negative effect on women’s economic rights in host states because of an initial “locking in” effect, whereby states seek to become more attractive to potential bilateral partners by decreasing the quality of conditions prior to signing a BIT. Host states then become reluctant to prosecute foreign investors due to the threat of legal arbitration, which further enables foreign investors to engage in women’s rights violations. In response to the possibility of unrest generated by the BITs, host states then seek to improve women’s political rights, compensating women for the decreasing quality of economic rights in turn. In testing these assertions, our expectations are broadly and consistently confirmed.","PeriodicalId":51734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights","volume":"21 1","pages":"419 - 433"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43598995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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