Tuesday, August 10, 2010

IntLawGrrls

IntLawGrrls

Wyclef for President?

Posted: 10 Aug 2010 11:30 AM PDT

In 2004, Wyclef Jean--the noted Haitian activist, singer and former member of the Fugees-- released a song titled "If I were president," which served as a campaign promise of sorts. Here's a snippet:

If I were president
Instead of spending billions on the war,
I can use that money so I could feed the poor.
Cause I know some so poor,when it rains that's when they shower.
Screaming "Fight the power". That's when the war should devour.
Jean might just get the chance to discover what he could. Last week, he announced his intention to run for the Haitian presidency (against his own uncle and several others) The incumbent and much maligned Rene Preval cannot run again, thus Haiti will have a new president. Is Wyclef Jean the right man for the job?

The Haitian presidential line is filled with despots and dictators, members of the elite class and former Roman Catholic priests, illiterates, medical doctors, the powerful and the powerless. We haven't yet had a singer. Certainly, Jean's status as a well-known singer should not preclude him from serious contention; if Schwarzenegger with his dubious acting skills can govern the most powerful state in the Union (as a California resident, I might take issue with whether he's actually done a decent job, but that's a point for another day) why not a singer for Haiti? But does Wyclef Jean have what it takes to bring Haiti out of the darkest moment in its 216 year history?

On the one hand, Jean has strong support from the Haitian poor who see him as a local boy made good who never abandoned them. Although he moved to Brooklyn as a teenager, Jean takes great pride in the fact that he never renounced his Haitian citizenship in favor of the more advantageous American one (if he had, the Haitian presidency would be closed to him as Haiti does not recognize dual citizenship). When Jean faced sharp criticism over Yele Haiti, an organization started by Jean to help Haitians, he pulled together a press conference and brandished his passport as both a sword and shield. Surely one who retained his Haitian nationality years after leaving the island could never be guilty of the terrible acts his organization was accused of? Acts such as not paying taxes and spending donors' money on lavish travel and on Jean himself, for example. While I might argue that many who have brandished the Haitian passport before him have done those things and much worse, Jean's tactics seemed to endear him more to the Haitian community at home and abroad--my own family included. Organizational irregularities aside, Jean has strong ties to the Haitian community and has served as Haiti's Minister of Culture and Ambassador at large. Moreover, unlike much of Haiti's elite, Jean's wealth was not created on the backs of Haiti's poor. He doesn't have ties to Haiti's strongly entrenched and regressive ruling class. He is an outsider who presumably could not be so easily co-opted.

On the other hand, Jean has little experience to guide Haiti through this delicate period in its history. Billions of dollars has been pledged in the Haitian rebuilding effort, although much of it has not yet materialized. Will Jean know how to pressure the international community to provide the funds it has promised? Will he put the proper mechanisms in place to police corruption and ensure the funds are well spent? Does he have a viable plan to create a new economy for Haiti? Haiti's administrative capacity was lamentable before the earthquake, now it is simply non-existence. Can Wyclef Jean create a professional cadre of civil servants that can get the functions of the state working again for Haiti's ordinary citizens? Jean gave an interview to Rolling Stone recently where he addressed many of these concerns (see it here).

Even if Wyclef Jean win's the Haitian presidency, all is not done. Haiti's elite has a long history of brutally doing away with leaders they cannot control. But Jean has a song to sing for all of them:
If I was president,
I'd get elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday,
buried on Sunday. then go back to work on Monday.

Kudos to Jaya

Posted: 10 Aug 2010 01:04 AM PDT

Proud to report that Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication and Proposals for Reform (2009), coauthored by IntLawGrrls' own Jaya Ramji-Nogales (left), is the subject of the lead book review in the latest edition of the prestigious British journal, The Modern Law Review.
Reviewer Mike Sanderson (right), Kosovo-based Legal Consultant to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, sets out a superb account of the empirical research by Jaya and her coauthors, Andrew I. Schoenholtz and Philip G. Schrag. Sanderson's evaluation of the book, on which we've posted here, is nothing short of gushing. In the fashion of movie advertisements, here're a few snippets:
... I cannot recall another occasion where an academic work has been so widely trailed, at least in my own area of refugee and asylum law. There is good reason for this. ...
...
... truly eye-popping ...
... exciting ...
... Ramji-Nogales, Schoenholtz and Schrag seem to be stones that have rubbed each other smooth. Their prose is beautifully clear throughout. ...
... it is excellent value and deserves to be widely purchased and read. ...
Agreed!

Write On! Vulnerability & the Corporation

Posted: 10 Aug 2010 12:03 AM PDT

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.)

On October 29-30 this year the Feminism and Legal Theory Project and the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative (both based in Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia) will hold a workshop on Vulnerability and the Corporation. The workshop is organised by me, Emory's Martha Fineman (below right), and Anna Grear of Bristol Law School in England. It will take place at Emory from 4pm, Friday, October 29, to approx 5pm Saturday, October 30. Here is the call for papers:
Vulnerability, understood as a universal and constant part of the human condition, is an important paradigm within which to consider and evaluate the ways in which states respond (or fail to respond) to individual, structural and community catastrophes. This workshop will build on the notion of a responsive state and consider the relationship between corporate structures, vulnerability, and state responsiveness. In the first instance, we recognize that increasingly corporations—whether operating on a local, national or transnational basis—act in ways that can either exacerbate or alleviate human vulnerability. Corporations can cause or complicate the inherent vulnerability of their employees and their dependents, as well as exploit the ecology and vulnerability of our natural and created environments. How should the state respond to this powerful potential for benefit or harm that is lodged in a "private" institutional actor? In addition, corporations may themselves be conceptualized as vulnerable entities. The corporation itself has been recognized as a "person" under the US Constitution, entitled to legal rights and protections and as a holder of human rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. How does the concept of corporate personhood differ from that of the natural person in law and what are the implications of those differences for state responsiveness and regulatory policy?

Papers proposed might consider (although are not limited to) questions related to:
► The identification as corporations as rights-bearers and the implications of the disembodiment of rights protection;
► The transfer of power from the state to the corporation and implications for individuals as citizens/consumers/subjects/objects of state-like power;
► The implications of the conceptualisation of corporations as legal persons with standing;
► Regulatory responses to the vulnerabilities produced by corporations including, in particular, questions of worker welfare, protection and environmental justice;
► State, regional and international responses to perceived corporate and market vulnerability and the vulnerabilities that may emerge from such responses;
► Distinctions between human vulnerability and corporate vulnerability and implications of such distinctions for appropriate state responses;
► The potential for the Corporate Social Responsibility and Business and Human Rights movements to enhance theories of appropriate state and corporate responses to vulnerability; and
► Connections and disconnections between experiences of vulnerability by and of the corporation between the Global North and the Global South.
Anyone interested in presenting their work should email an abstract of several paragraphs in length to mfineman@law.emory.edu, anna.grear@uwe.ac.uk, fiona.delondras@ucd.ie, and cdomozi@emory.edu no later than August 15th. Draft papers will be due by October 11th.

On August 10

Posted: 09 Aug 2010 10:44 PM PDT

On this day in ...
... 1920 (90 years ago today), in a community outside Paris, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed by representatives of the Allied Powers who'd won World War I and of the Ottoman Empire they'd defeated. By the treaty's terms the Ottoman Empire was abolished. Turkey was to give up rights to Arab Asia and North Africa, while Armenia was to become independent and Kurdistan autonomous, and Greece was to control specified regions. (credit for photo of Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos signing the treaty) "Rejected by the new Turkish nationalist regime, the Treaty of Sèvres was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne," Switzerland, the 1923 pact discussed in this post.

(Prior August 10 posts are here, here, and here.)

International Day of Indigenous People

Posted: 09 Aug 2010 06:38 PM PDT

Today, August 9th, is the 16th annual International Day of the World's Indigenous People. This day was first declared by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 49/214. (prior IntLawGrrls post) The date marks the day of the first meeting, in 1982, of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
Here is what Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had to say about this year's celebration:
Indigenous peoples still experience racism, poor health and disproportionate poverty. In many societies, their languages, religions and cultural traditions are stigmatised and shunned. The first-ever UN report on the State of the World's Indigenous Peoples in January 2010 set out some alarming statistics. In some countries, indigenous peoples are 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis than the general population. In others, an
indigenous child can expect to die twenty years before his or her non-indigenous compatriots.
The theme of this year's Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples is indigenous filmmakers, who give us windows into their communities, cultures and history. Their work connects us to belief systems and philosophies; it captures both the daily life and the spirit of indigenous communities. As we celebrate these contributions, I call on Governments and civil society to fulfill their commitment to advancing the status of indigenous peoples everywhere.

The photos in this blog post are all of Carrie Dann. She is one of the most inspiring women I have ever met, and an indigenous leader who has been fighting for the rights of the Western Shoshone for decades.

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