0:00 – 4:18

Juliana has been researching the concept of freedom from slavery across three cohorts: survivors, law enforcement officials and providers of care in the USA and the UK.

Todd and Juliana begin by discussing the idea of ‘freedom’ and how it is slightly different depending on the cohort’s perception and lived experiences. She states that their definitions are not entirely different but have different priorities. The biggest similarity across the cohorts was a universal agreement that freedom means being free from coercion and free will to do as you wish.

4:19 – 8:09

Todd asks whether responses lean towards ‘freedom from’ rather than ‘freedom to’ do things and Juliana says they were more frequently framed as ‘freedom to’. For example, having the ability to defend yourself against those who would try to limit your free will.

She also mentions that a common concept of freedom was the ability to heal from the damage inflicted by modern slavery and human trafficking.

Todd asks if Juliana got a sense of how long it took for survivors to feel free? To which she replies no, and it is very individualised, but it is not when you are physically removed from your trafficker.

8:10 – 19:02

Todd moves the discussion on to the methodology behind Juliana’s research by asking why she chose the UK and the USA. She highlights three key reasons:

• Their shared principles.
• Their perception that they are leaders in the fight against modern slavery.
• Public discourse around legislation that can be drawn upon.

Juliana points out that access to three groups was really varied but most were very engaged. One of the hardest groups to access were survivors and she relied on referrals from practitioners and other survivors.

Juliana then outlines the steps she took in utilising the Q methodology in her research:

1. Concourse - she pulled together 700 statements relating to freedom.
2. Q sample - Juliana narrowed this down to 49 statements for the participants to look at. She discusses how difficult this process was.
3. Hit the road - took statements to different cohorts with an organising mat. She asked them to read the statements and pick the two they agreed and disagreed with the most. Then place the remaining cards in order of agree/disagree alternatively.
4. Score - the placement of each statement is assigned a score, but this is not written on the mat.
5. Factor analysis - each statement has a number, which is put into a Q study package allowing you to create a frequency and weighting analysis.

19:03 – 20:49

Juliana discusses some of the preliminary results and patterns but notes she has not finished the analysis.

20:50 - end

Todd asks what Juliana hopes to achieve with this research? She hopes this will start a conversation in the modern slavery world and allow us to be able to answer the question what freedom is. She envisages two main audiences:

1. Policy makers - to help them consider what legislation directs us towards. What are survivors freed to? And how do we build steps to get them there?
2. Practitioners - to help service provision to act with greater efficiency.

00.00 - 01.57

As a member of the House of Lords Baroness Young became interested in ethical fashion due partly to her own lack of knowledge about the fashion industry but also the need to focus on the issue of modern slavery in the fashion industry, and the need to make politicians “sit up and take notice”.

1.57 – 11.09

There is a suggestion that people need to be more aware of where their clothes come from, how they are made and what is happening in the supply chains.

• First seeds sown by the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh which raised awareness of the possible links between fast, throwaway fashion and elements of modern slavery

But Baroness Young says this requires:

• Moving public attitudes away from notions of cheap throw-away fashion
• Changing business models in the industry; the example cited is the Zara business model

Demand in the fashion industry is volatile. Zara is set up to respond rapidly to surges and changes in demand, which is why it is so successful. It operates a system of real-time delivery but that often means sub-contracting out production to meet very short deadlines, but with decreasing control over the impact on the supply chain and its implications for forced overtime.

Some companies have a supply chain involving 10,000 suppliers.

Fashion trends are constantly changing so there is constant pressure on suppliers to meet very tight production deadlines, which has additional ramifications for the labour force and human rights.

11.09 – 13.00

As a member of the House of Lords Baroness Young believes she is in a good position to influence policy making in the following ways:

• As a member of parliament she finds it relatively easy to build a rapport with companies to develop dialogue and to help them improve their internal policies towards meeting the conditions of the modern slavery act
• She has access to government and through that influence on policy making
• Her work on cross party groups is also influential through the collection of evidence and the publication of reports

13.00 - 14.20

Emphasis placed on the systematic and rigorous collection of evidence rather than reliance on the anecdotal, for example the work of The Rights Lab, and Todd adds:

• Evidence is hard to collect
• Victims are hard to find
• Practices are difficult to observe

However, advances in science and technology are now being used in evidence collection.Todd mentions Rights Lab work using satellites to detect modern slavery.

14.20 – end

The discussion shifts to consider how sport and modern slavery intersect. Baroness Young finds that there is little realisation within the business of sport of how it can impact on human rights.

One of the roles of the All Party Parliamentary Group is to encourage sports organisations to recognise the existence of human rights issues within supply chains to include equality, discrimination, modern slavery and trafficking. Baroness Young notes that:

• Large sports organisations are notable by their absence at conferences on modern slavery
• The modern slavery statements of Premier League football clubs are "inadequate"
• Football clubs do not have statements on attaining SDG goal 8.7

Todd adds that there is a wide range of activity to investigate. Anecdotally, many branches of sport have human rights issues but hard evidence is in short supply. These include:

• The manufacture of the football kit
• The manufacture of the footballs, memorabilia and so on
• The recruitment of the athletes
• The Construction of the stadia

All of these involve large and complex supply chains, which are very difficult to monitor.

0.00– 1.57

Todd begins by reflecting on the size of the UN and asks James how it helps us understand the fight to end modern slavery.

• James agrees that the UN is a huge organisation and, as far as tackling slavery is concerned, it is:
  1. A forum for member states to talk about global problems like modern slavery.
  2. A set of technical agencies undertaking research to help us understand what modern slavery looks like on the ground.
  3. A set of organisations that can respond on the ground e.g. peacekeeping in conflict situations, delivering education programmes (Unicef, Global Children’s Fund) through to protection of workers’ rights by the International Labour Organisation
• James argues this allows the UN to look at the problem holistically revealing how it manifests itself differently in different places.

1.57– 4.56

The discussion moves to whether the UN treats modern slavery as a human rights problem. James says it does but that it is not straightforward because:

• Modern slavery plays out differently in different contexts.
• Modern slavery is treated differently by member states and described and viewed differently within the UN system.
• Some parts of the UN see modern or contemporary slavery as a human rights problem based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whilst others see it through the lens of labour rights or as a criminal justice problem.
• Todd points out that quite a bit of modern slavery discourse surrounds conflict and humanitarian law.
• James agrees - in the last few years the UN has been grappling with the connections between these different manifestations and how to respond to it. He offers the example of ISIS/Daesh in Iraq and Syria who use slavery to generate money, to attract fighters by offering enslaved women and girls and dominate the local population. This leads to mass displacement creating its own vulnerabilities to trafficking in Lebanon and other surrounding countries that host refugees. These flow on into North Africa and Europe creating new problems demonstrating the complexities in the way the problems connect.
• James suggests that the UN is present all along the chain and that there are human rights issues across the chain, but they are probably playing out differently in each case.

4.56 – 6.07

Todd moves the discussion on to modern slavery in a business context, mentioning the UN Global Compact and the Ruggie principles.

• James agrees modern slavery is increasingly a part of this but asserts that the anti-slavery movement “has been a little slow on the uptake” in engaging with the broader business and human rights discourse.
• He believes lessons are being learned by business and by government about how to ensure respect for human rights in the business world and that this is flowing into the modern slavery movement and having a positive impact.

6.07 – 11.48

Todd asks how the UN is moving towards the realisation of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals and associated 169 targets especially those relating to modern slavery.

• James points again to the size and complexity of the UN and the ambitious set of goals and targets at the heart of its operations. He explains how progression in one area might have a knock-on in others (both positive and negative).
• For modern slavery this has meant having to think about how efforts to end it connect to broader efforts to achieve sustainable development, e.g. education, gender, work or environmental goals and targets. This requires a more integrated approach and for individual agencies to look beyond their own self-interest.
• James outlines how Alliance 8.7, led by the ILO is at the heart of this. He describes it as “a multi-stakeholder circus tent” where everyone is welcome and can test the effectiveness of their responses. He explains the science of this is interesting as measuring the incidence of modern slavery is very difficult. He adds that the work of Rights Lab and within the UN has led to major strides in this area. There is still work to be done to establish whether they are meeting their targets.
• The best estimate from the ILO from 2016 is 40.3 million slaves in the world meaning 9,000 people a day would need to be moved out of modern slavery to achieve the target. As things stand, James acknowledged they don’t know if the figure is moving up or down.
• Todd adds that the number of people moving into modern slavery also needs to be taken into account. James agrees and mentions that Brazil, which has a good track record, has removed 50,000 slaves across 20 years suggesting there is a long way to go. Good research and evidence is fundamental to progress as is the availability of funding.
• Todd agrees and outlines the problems with statistics in this area.

11:39 – 12.49

Todd asks about Delta 8.7 and its relation to Alliance 8.7?

• Delta 8.7 is the knowledge platform of the alliance created by UN university centre for policy research.
• The aim is to make it easier for policy actors to understand the evidence in individual countries. James continues to explain how this is done using individual country dashboards which include easy to access and understand information on modern slavery along with other local factors.

12.49 – 14.07

In February 2019 there was an event called Code 8.7 which Todd asks James to talk about.

• James explains it is an exciting new initiative with other partners including Rights Lab, The Computing Community Consortium, The Turing Institute, Arizona State University and Tech Against Trafficking.
• Aim is to explore the use of artificial intelligence to help solve the problem of modern slavery more quickly. For example, image recognition using satellite imagery through to guided decision making for survivor case management.

14.07 – 16.27

Todd talks about previous podcast episodes with Patrick Ball, the Human Rights Data Analyst Group Executive Director, about machine learning and the discourse of perpetrators and Dr Doreen Boyd who used satellite imagery to identify brick kilns in South Asia. He asks whether this is evidence the UN would consider important in the fight against modern slavery.

• James says that we have to use every source of data available, and that artificial intelligence is important to sort non-traditional data streams. He believes that Code 8.7 offers new analytical pathways into the problem and also practical applications for helping accelerate response.
• Todd suggests James’ background as a lawyer is crucial in telling what machine learning and A.I. to look for. There is a fear that natural biases from coders will lead to a misuse of these new tools meaning that definitions and legal parameters become more important.

16.27 – End

With this in mind Todd asks what is the core content of modern slavery?

• James says target 8.7 “talks in one breath about modern slavery, forced labour, human trafficking and the worst forms of child labour” and believes this sends a powerful signal to political actors that there is a need for a collaborative response.
• Modern slavery itself is not a term of international law but an umbrella discourse term to encapsulate a range of things.
• A group of academic statisticians led by the ILO, has created a statistical methodology providing a basis for national survey methodologies giving us a common starting point regardless of the varying legal definitions. This will take several years to get results on the ground but James hopes other technologies will also evolve in this time to make a meaningful difference.
• He concludes by saying survivors have to be at the heart of this process with their explicit consent to avoid traumatising them and increasing vulnerability. Todd agrees and highlights the dilemma in human rights arguing that they are articulated differently in different areas. Emphasising the need to avoid a dissonance between the ivory towers of the UN and the reality on the ground.
• James says the first 3 words of the UN charter are “We the peoples” and then it goes on to talk about countries which creates a natural tension between intergovernmental politics and the people we are supposed to be serving.
• He asserts that the UN have to engage with the communities they are trying to help without being patronising.

Previous Rights Track podcasts of interest

Eye in the sky: rooting out slavery from space Dr Doreen Boyd on how satellite imagery is being used to root out slavery

How can statistics advance human rights? Patrick Ball about how statistics can be used to advance and protect human rights

Crunching numbers: modern slavery and statistics Sir Bernard Silverman about modern slavery and statistics listen to

References

1. Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (New York: Cornell University Press, 2013).

00.00 – 3.39

• Praxis is a development organisation based in India, aimed at supporting poor and marginalised communities.
• It works with the most marginalised communities who would otherwise be excluded such as the “dalit”communities, and particularly dalit women, on matters which are important to them.
• 17% of the Indian population are dalit(untouchables), which is the lowest category of people in the Indian caste system.
• Although it is easy to gain access to these communities in both rural hamlets and urban slums, the challenge is to how to get their concerns in front of policy makers.
• Referred to as ground level planning, a range of methods are used; participatory video, digital media and face to face meetings with policy makers.

3.40 – 12.10

The discussion moves on to describe the relationship between the dalit and higher caste groups in relation to bonded labour and forms of modern slavery.

• Modern forms of slavery in India have emerged from the caste system where high caste landowners engaged dalit as bonded labour. The dalit were effectively indentured to landowners, working on the land and receiving various forms of payment.
• This practice was abolished by The Bonded Labour Act 1976.
• Urbanisation has led to significant numbers of dalit living in underserved settlements or slums, seeking work in manufacturing industry in the city.
• They are vulnerable to exploitation and a system has evolved very similar to traditional bonded labour whereby money is advanced to the poor and marginalised, who then are obliged to work to pay off the debt.
• The very poor are vulnerable because they do not have easy access to cheap or safe credit and so cannot cope with emergencies that may arise, for example ill health, or other expenses such as weddings, funerals, and at festival times. Employers’ agents take advantage of the situation to advance money to vulnerable families who are then required to “work off” the loan. This involves long hours, bad working conditions, physical and sometimes sexual abuse of women.
• There are also instances of people not being paid for their work; e.g. the brick industry.
• The workers are not free to leave. Employers operate via a climate of fear and intimidation which is used to control the workers.
• Working with the labourers is challenging because they are in fear of the employers, and unwilling to speak about their situation or even to accept that they are in bondage.

09.55 – 14.20.

At this point a link is made with research by Austin Choi Fitzpatrick, who writes of a cultural acceptance of debt bondage in the villages, which is also borne out by the experience of the speakers.

This acceptance on the part of the labourers creates a situation whereby labour exploitation can occur. The question is how to change the labourer’s awareness of their situation. Praxis is working with Freedom Fund on a programme which involves;

• The formation of an action research group within a community which collects case study information, identifies what drives debt bondage, for example health, and works with the group to understand the link between poor health and bondage.
• The collection of evidence within and outside the group leads on to discussion, and the group are able to define what they understand by the term bonded labour and to relate it to examples of bonded labour within their local community.
• Once the group have identified examples of bonded labour the next step is to encourage action at the local level, which may be in terms of questioning traditional attitudes and practices and raising petitions.

14.20 – 17.17

The discussion now moves on to review the outcomes of the interventions made by Praxis. The main outcomes are:

• At the local level the development of action groups and raising community awareness is moving people out of debt bondage. However, on its own this does not offer the poor a viable alternative.
• There is very little data on bonded labour. Consequently, it is difficult to get policy makers to address the issue. Work with the Freedom Fund initiative feeds into this issue and is helping to raise awareness.
• They are seeking to re-open the discussion on the Bonded Labour Act 1976 to develop discourse with the government.
• They also want the focus to move away from citizen – state, and to broaden the focus to include major businesses and in particular the supply chains of those businesses.
• Praxis is a partner in Corporate Responsibility Watch which monitors the top 100 Indian businesses looking a number of indicators including their supply chains to see how compliant they are with labour laws, whilst at the same time influencing government policy.
• This is, however, a slow, incremental process.

17.17 – end

Todd reflects on the work of Amartya Sen on democracy and famineand wonders whether in the world’s largest democracy whether a similar argument could be applied to debt bondage and bonded labour.

The situation in India presents a number of constraints.

• The democratic process, although not broken, is flawed.
• Whilst current laws list basic entitlements which should be open to all this is not the case
• Two related issues are; getting the government to look seriously at the links between poverty, social rights, and bonded labour, and also to be able to hold government to account.
• A further constraint is that, in this multi-cultural society, development is not yet seen as the sole issue to be addressed.
• Removing the barriers to achieving basic rights is the key because it is the barriers which cause vulnerable communities to become trapped into bonded labour in the first place.

0.00 – 5.35

Todd begins by asking Dr. Redfern to describe the Clewer Initiative, and how he became involved.

• The initiative is the Church of England’s response to modern slavery although in reality it works closely with the Catholic Church and other faiths.
• In its own words it focuses on “enabling Church of England dioceses and wider Church networks to develop strategies to detect modern slavery in their communities and help provide victim support and care.”
• His participation arose out of his work with the food industry in Lincolnshire and in Derby. He was approached by nuns from the Clewer House of Mercy based now at Ripon, who invited him to become involved.
• The initiative, which is funded by the Clewer House order, involves building a network of modern slavery practitioners to share best practice and for professionals with expertise in different fields to work alongside volunteers who are better placed to provide comfort and emotional support to the victims.
• Todd suggests there are parallels with the Baptist church in the USA and the Civil Rights movement.
• Dr Redfern sees the role of the church as helping to connect the police, local authorities, charities and voluntary organisations.
• The Clewer Initiative is not a service provider. It aims to convene, enable, encourage and provide practical support.

5.35 – 7.40

Discussion of the Clewer Initiative’s Car Wash App as an example of the practical efforts it is making to tackle modern slavery.

• A simple to use app which can increase awareness of modern slavery in plain sight.
• The app provides a valuable extra source of intelligence material to the police
• Todd points out that it is an example of crowd sourcing technology, which can engage the public with a countrywide reach across over 16,000 parishes.

7.40 – 10.00

Todd asks how bridges are built between faiths to work on the problem of modern slavery - mentions The Santa Marta Group as an example of another faith group that is involved

• Dr Redfern says that working with other faiths is not a top down process. Many faiths are locally autonomous and not subject to central direction. It works by inviting people to participate on their own terms and to use the tools and information provided in ways that work best for them.
• The approach also requires sensitivity, an understanding of cultural context when working with different faiths and cultures

10.00 – 13.40

Todd points out that some passages in the bible appear to endorse slavery and asks how the church comes to terms with that.

Dr Redfern suggests that the church can approach this in two ways.

• One approach is to say that it was historically contextual and that times have changed along with attitudes.
• The other view concerns an interpretation of what slavery means. He sees two forms of slavery.
• The abusive, controlling form or modern slavery
• People in general are enslaved by their own selfish needs and wants, some of which may be connected to the exploitation of individuals
• He adds that we are all complicit to some degree in supporting modern slavery for example mobile phones may well have components that have been manufactured using slave labour.

13.40 – 16.39

SDG 8.7 commits to the ending of modern slavery by 2030. Todd asks Dr Redfern to comment on whether he thinks this is achievable.

• He sees this as a political target and wouldn’t want to commit to it.
• He talks of encouraging signs. Set against the backdrop of the state retreating from the oversight of public life, business is becoming an increasingly important player in global citizenship.
• There is a clear inference that consumer pressure may become important with major companies in moving away from products produced using slave labour.
• He is less optimistic about the role of policy making in supporting the process.

16.39 – 19.38

Todd’s final question is about the impact the church, though its bishops can have on policy making in The House of Lords.

• Faith leaders sit on committees that help to frame legislation.
• House of Lords includes numbers of appointees with a wide range of backgrounds experience and expertise which can be drawn upon. This may be a better model for governance going forward.

0.00 – 2.32 The episode begins with a short clip of Kieran Guilbert of the Thomson Reuters Foundation who spoke to the Rights Track about a forthcoming project profiling the lived experiences of people who have been trafficked. Kieran begins by referencing contemporary examples of stories from survivors of slavery. His view is that while we know a great deal about trafficking we know little of how victims are helped to recover.

He speaks of a multi-media project featuring the survivors of slavery which takes as its starting point the idea that freedom from slavery is not the end of the story but the beginning of a new story which includes healthcare, counselling, education jobs and integration back into society.

2.33 – 3.07

Todd refers to the clip and asks Patricia Hynes to comment on Kieran’s suggestion that the conversation about trafficking needs to “move forward”. He then goes on to ask about the model of vulnerability that they have developed.

3.08 – 5.25

Patricia agrees it’s important to look forward, but doesn’t accept that we have full knowledge of what trafficking involves given that:

• the nature of exploitation is evolving
• whilst we know a great deal about sexual exploitation, little is known about the trafficking of men and boys from the countries they have studied
• there are gaps in national statistics on trafficking

In her view there is a need to focus on:

• plugging the gaps in our knowledge re trafficking
• identifying the next step is for survivors
• finding out more about needs of survivors or how they recover from trafficking

So look forwards but also look backwards.

5.26 – 6.05

Todd asks why their research focuses on people from Nigeria, Albania and Vietnam when the largest proportion of survivors listed in the National Referral Mechanism(NRM) are UK nationals.

6.06 – 7.08

In reply Patricia gives the following reasons:

• they were in the top 4 countries re: NRM referrals
• the focus on UK nationals is very much child sexual exploitation whereas they wanted to be able to use the International Organization for Migration’s determinants of migrant vulnerability model
• for funding purposes the countries had to be ODA eligible countries(the UK is not)

7.09 – 9.27

Todd moves on to ask how survivors can look forward to a positive future.

According to Patrick research conducted in the field indicated a lack of knowledge around trafficking to the UK and what support was given to victims on their return. However, given that it is difficult for the victims to remain in the UK in the longer term, it appears that on their return to their home country they find it difficult to access comprehensive support and assistance programs, leaving them vulnerable to being re-trafficked.

9.28 – 9.37

Todd asks Patrick to explain the IOM model of determinants of vulnerability

9.38 – 12.19

Patrick outlines 4 levels of determinants that affect vulnerability prior to, during and after the migration experience. It seeks to understand what might provide protection and resilience to the individual during the migration journey.

1. Individual - age gender, education, wealth/income/employment
2. Household and family - size, household wealth/family background
3. Community - how protective is the community of individuals, beliefs and practices - found to be a significant factor in placing people in vulnerable situations
4. Structural - access to safe migration opportunities, governance, rule of law, corruption, the socio-economic situation within the country

12.20 – 12.54

Todd summarises this as looking at vulnerability “from the micro to the macro”. He asks whether established cultural practices lead people into being trafficked unwittingly.

12.55 – 13.53

Patricia agrees and says their research in Albania confirmed this. She talks of a “code of silence” where trafficking is not mentioned.

She points to gender imbalance and the inability of the state to protect individuals as structural aspects of vulnerability and confirms that income inequality is also a major factor in vulnerability.

13.54 – 14.38

Todd refers to an earlier Rights Track episode with Austin Chioi-Fitzpatrick who has conducted research on the perpetrators of slavery and asks whether, during their research, they obtained information on the traffickers themselves.

14.39 - 17.35

Patrick replies that across the 3 countries the profiles of traffickers can be quite different. However they able to investigate the ways in which traffickers are able to recruit their victims and the role of households and communities in influencing the decision to engage with a potential trafficker.

They found that:

• traffickers often have strong connections directly or through intermediaries to the victim via family or community which develops feelings of trust and security in the individual.
• these people may have a higher status within the community which can create pressure on an individual to engage in the process
• the people approaching the individual may or may not be aware of the potential for trafficking to take place

• migration involves connecting an individual to a complex and shifting network of contacts and intermediaries, starting within their family and community but ending up elsewhere.

17.36 – 18.43

Todd moves on to consider the situation in the UK and the proposed Victim Support Bill.He asks two related questions:

1. What is the status of the victims; will they be returned to their home country or do they have asylum status how many?
2. Is the Victim Support Bill a welcome development?

18.44 – 20.04

Patricia says she supports the Victim Support Bill although she argues that it represents a beginning

• She supports the extension of the 45 day reception period which she argues is not long enough
• She suggests that even a 12 month extension period may not be long enough. Research shows it takes a long time for individuals to feel safe, secure and to be able to talk about their experiences given the extent of the traumas they have experienced.
• She Infers that the current system in the UK is not as supportive as it might be

20.05 – 21.37

Patrick refers to research he undertook with representatives from NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, Nigeria)

In all they have only supported 6 victims of trafficking who had returned to Nigeria from the UK. The assumption is that the number is greater given that Nigeria ranks in the top 5 NRM referral countries and this suggests that very few victims returning to Nigeria are able to access assistance and support back in Nigeria.

21.38 – 21.54

Todd asks about plans to share the research findings with policy makers and the wider community attempting to put an end to slavery.

21.55 – 22.28

Patricia explains:

• The research has generated substantial data set of 170 interviews (58 are of survivors) and there is a wish to disseminate it as widely as possible
• They are working on the final draft of a report to Parliament due in March; the working title is “Between two Fires”

In an interview recorded on International Anti-Slavery Day We also hear from David Westlake and Steve Webster of The International Justice Missionabout their approach to the problem.

0.00-6.20 mins

• David Westlake and Steve Webster talk about the partnerships they make to help them build and pursue a criminal case against the perpetrators of modern slavery an support the victims through the process and afterwards
• Todd’s asks Dan whether The Freedom Fund adopts the same approach
• In response Dan agrees that modern slavery is a crime and should be prosecuted as such but argues for a broader approach. He sees law enforcement as part of a solution but argues that we need to ask why people become enslaved, and suggests that it is because they are viewed as second class citizens with fewer rights, and thus more vulnerable to the exercise of power over them
• Todd picks up on this argument and in particular the idea that social norms within societies can lead to modern slavery being ‘acceptable’.
• By way of example Dan talks about the exploitation of migrant labour in the Thailand sea food industryworking in appalling conditions. He argues that Thai’s view such exploitation as permissible because they see these migrants as second-class citizens; a view that is tacitly supported, for example, by the police

6.20-11.30

• Todd points to the twin elements of deception and coercion which lead to migrants in Thailand becoming trapped on boats for months on end without pay and asks whether this fits the definition of modern slavery, which is confirmed by Dan
• Todd then goes on to ask what the Freedom Fund does to tackle the problem
• Dan explains the Freedom fund are working in many places for example; Thailand, India, Nepal and Ethiopia, and so that it depends on what the issues are in each place
• A key focus is prevention, via information to communities about the reality of the situations they may find themselves in, raising awareness of the deceptions practised by recruitment agencies, raising awareness of their human rights including the legality of their work situation, and organising them to watch out for traffickers
• The other strand is prosecution and advocacy to power holders to protect citizen’s rights
• Todd summarises the above and then moves on to ask about migrant workers in Qatar and the UAE and how they are coerced into a situation of modern slavery
• Dan refers to the programme in Ethiopia which focuses on female domestic workers and argues that deception and coercion occur all the way through the process from the pressure she feels to travel to the Gulf to support her family, the misrepresentation of contracts made by local brokers, the long hours she is forced to work, the and the degrading way she is treated by the family she works for
• He adds that The Freedom Fund is not against migration as such because of the economic benefits remittances However, he sees migration as ‘an entry point” which can lead individuals into modern slavery

11.30- 13.30

• Todd points to similar situations happening everywhere in the world including The USA and the UK
• Dan agrees but would see this as being an exception given the strength of legal institutions in countries like the UK and draws a distinction between the UK and Bihar where large numbers of people are in debt bondage
• Debt bondage is another form of modern slavery involving lower caste people working on the land to pay off debts either recently incurred or inherited. They often work unpaid or are charged exorbitantly high interest rates which they can never repay

13.30-17.30

• Todd now moves on to ask about the concept of “Hot Spots”what they are and how they are chosen?
• Dan explains that rather than spread their resources too thinly they concentrate on a limited number of slavery hotspots globally.
• They are chosen based on a number of factors; prevalence, whether there are local NGO’s they can support, the government’s position and a guarantee of sustainable funding
• The focus is on supporting front line local community based organisations which he feels have been neglected in funding the fight against modern slavery
• The role of the fund is to integrate the work of different organisations to ensure they share common objectives and to build a coalition working for systemic change in terms of criminal justice, and awareness raising, and advocacy to business organisations
• By way of example Dan refers to lobbying for more protection for migrant workers in the Thailand sea food industry, and pressing the Ethiopian government to develop policies to make economic migration safer rather than preventing migration

17.30-end

• Todd’s final question is about how the Freedom Fund measures success
• Success can be achieved by putting pressure on governments
• Success can be evaluated by universities who analyse which interventions are working best
• Dan points to the change in policy in Ethiopia from prevention of migration to developing policies for safe migration as an example of success

Todd summary:

• Shift away from criminal justice focus
• Increased attention to root causes of slavery including cultural norms
• Intervention raise awareness
• Some cautious optimism for achieving change over the long term

He starts by talking to David Blight about his recently published biography of Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era.

0.00-5.00

• David talks about his quest to find out over nearly a decade to understand why Douglas was so steeped in the Old Testament
• He mentions Old Testament scholars recommended to him including Robert Alter Walter Bruggemann and Abraham Heschel.
• He explains how reading those scholars led him to describe Douglass as a Prophet of Freedom

5.00-13.13

• David says what Douglass had to say about a host of issues related to issues of inequality still resonates today
• He goes on to explain that being a successful campaigner who achieved great things by the time he was in his forties he went on to see many of those victories eroded as his life drew to an end - he references the Jim Crow laws
• Douglass' power lay in his facility with carefully crafted words and prophetic language. He references the Fugitive Slave Crisis, the Dred Scott decision and the black exodus to Kansas
• David talks about his favourite words from Douglass' second autobiography My Bondage and my Freedom describing how he will continue use his voice, his pen and his vote in the fight against slavery and how he thinks that's all any of us has today to fight slavery.

Todd asks John Stauffer what lessons from history are being harnessed in what's been describes as the 4th wave of an anti-slavery movement

13.25-end

• John talks about the power of the voice in history and today (orally and written) - he references the first abolitionist newspaper, William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator and the response that drew from John C.Calhoun, a political advocate of slavery and someone credited with 'starting' the American Civil War
• Todd asks if it's the voices of slaves themselves that are more important or the voices of people who represent slaves - John says it's both
• John explains that even though there was no internet or social media to help spread anti-slavery messages, the power of public speaking then was as influential as the voices of celebrities today.
• John says the abolitionists, despite only being 5% of the population, may not have turned people into abolitionists, but they were effective in making people anti-slavery
• John says that silencing slaves is the weapon of modern day slave owners just as it was more than 100 years ago so that speaking out and bearing witness is the key to mobilising action to end slavery.

00.00 – 05.40

Discussion around quantitative analysis and why it matters in the field of human rights and anti-slavery research. Todd points out that there are aspects of lives (attributes) which can be quantified and that this:

• Adds precision to analysis
• Allows comparison between groups of people at different scales and across countries
• Allows researchers to explore the relationships between different attributes or variables leading to generalisations and predictions

Zoe then asks what this means for the relatively young field of modern slavery research. Todd agrees the field of modern slavery research is in its infancy, but points out that so is the use of quantitative methods in the field of Human Rights.

He points to an early work by Donald Greer in 1935 which mapped violence during the French Revolution and the work of Mitchell and McCormack, World Politics Vol 40 1988 as the first real attempt at applying quantitative methods to the study of Human Rights. He says the fields of Human Rights and Modern Slavery share certain characteristics:

• They study hard to find victims and practices
• They use the same models
• They share the same sources of data

Note: the study of hard to find populations and practices has the potential for measurement error which requires caution when dealing with the data and analysing the results.

05.25 – 11.20

Zoe points out that the field of human rights dates back to the 18thcentury and the work of the anti-slavery abolitionists and yet there is very little co-ordination between different groups working in the field of modern slavery. She wonders what Todd’s thoughts are on a human rights approach to modern slavery:

• For governments and NGO’s, who concentrate on a criminal justice approach
• International labour organisations who focus on modern slavery as a labour rights issue
• Now human rights has been seen as a development issue (see SDG 8 plus table)

Todd sees the study of modern slavery evolving in a similar way to human rights:

• Developing precise definitions and measurements of modern slavery
• Human Rights work on obligations of the state to protect rights could be applied to the prevention and detection of modern slavery
• Will need to move away from the narrow focus on civil rights violations and to look at what governments can do to create the socio-economic conditions to stop people falling in to modern slavery
• It needs to move away from a law-based focus and to engage with other disciplines for example, statistics, to see what they can add to understanding
• Techniques that have been developed in the field of human rights can also be applied to modern slavery; for example; “the who did what to whom” model, and multiple systems estimations
• Combining rigorous research with advocacy requires researchers to remain as objective as possible – this can be a challenge when you are also looking to change something e.g. abolish slavery

11.20 – 15.50

Discussion around defining what modern slavery really means. Todd says:

• As with other aspects of human rights such as torture, definitions are contested – mentions the Handbook on Reporting Torture
• Definitions of modern slavery should be neither too narrow nor too broad
• We live in a world where traditional indicators property, control, and coercion are not as obvious

Todd suggests modern slavery is the intentional denial of “agency” or freedom, and the task is to identify what the intentional denial of agency involves.

15.50 – 21.10

Slavery as a development issue. Todd points out that historically slavery provided an exploitable work force and was a tool for economic development. He adds:

• Slaves are a cheap form of labour, but he argues that this can be a drag on economic and social development because labour is not used efficiently, modern slaves are not wage earners or tax payers
• Liberation on its own is not enough - there needs to be strong financial support mechanisms otherwise people may fall back into slavery

21.10 – 27.50

Todd’s thoughts on The Rights Lab - measuring progress on HOW their 4 main questions might be answered.

1. How many slaves are there in the world?

This needs to involve use of:

• multiple measures
• generation of indicators
• precise definitions
• developing proxy measures
• looking at risk factors
• identifying where there is a high probability of slavery: e.g. the geospatial analysis based research being carried out by Doreen Boyd at Nottingham University

2. Why does slavery persist? Todd suggests three approaches/questions:

• What are the economic conditions which cause people to fall into slavery?
• What are the structural and institutional conditions, which allow people to fall into slavery?
• What are the cultural circumstances, which lead to forms of slavery becoming normalised?

3. What approaches to tackling slavery work?

• Map how many NGOs are working in this field and find out what they are doing
• Look at the success or otherwise of individual projects and understand why they were successful and importantly why they were not
• Compare different interventions and contexts to understand why they worked

4. What is the freedom dividend?

• Need to acknowledge there may not be one
• Identifying and measuring what constitutes a freedom dividend is very difficult
• The link between liberation and a dividend will be difficult to prove

Zoe mentions the business case for removing slavery from supply chains as a possible dividend in this respect

27.50 - end

Todd is asked to reflect on his highlights of the first year of The Rights Lab. They include:

• The passion of the researchers and the contributors to the Rights Track podcast
• The innovative ways of generating and analysing data
• The Geospatial work, which has revolutionised data collection. All human activity leaves a trace including slavery, and using geospatial analysis potential slavery activities have been identified enabling NGOs to be alerted and slaves to be liberated.

Todd finishes by talking about what next for The Rights Track including planned discussions with stakeholders and beneficiaries of the research and ideas to take the podcast on the road to talk to non academic groups involved in the struggle to end modern slavery.

Further links and resources

• Fuzzy set social science, Charles Ragin
• Rights Track interview with Kevin Bales
• Global Slavery Index
• Michael Ignatieff
• Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines
• Rights Track episode on the perpetrators of slavery with Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
• Rights Track interviews with Bernard Silverman, Andrea Nicholson and Minh Dang, Doreen Boyd, Alex Trautrims
• Satellite Sentinel Project– George Clooney
• Finding research pathways to a slavery-free world Zoe Trodd writes for Open Global Rights

00.00 - 06.06

• Discussion of what drew Austin to research the perpetrators of slavery: not enough known about them and their relationship with the people they hold in slavery. Also important to consider the role perpetrators play both in the enslaving and freeing of people
• Explanation of bonded labour in India, a practice where perpetrators are violating human rights but not local norms and where they don't see themselves as criminals, so the practice is in plain view
• Todd refers to the well known Star Trek Prime Imperative (Directive) to suggest a possible metaphor for how how Austin approached interviewing the perpetrators of slavery
• Austin says going in and labelling people immediately would have conversations to an abrupt end and explains how he took account of people’s own experiences and lives in his approach.
• Using open ended questions about local issues: the climate, government, local law enforcement and relationships with local labour and advocacy groups in the community, helped him develop a picture of the nature of modern slavery
• He avoided the use of abolitionist language and tried to learn more about how perpetrators see themselves

06.06 - 10.30

• Todd asks how Austin came to be accepted by the local community and built trust and rapport
• Austin explains how he discounted snowball sampling as a method and instead used a Leapfrog method - when he found people he believed to be perpetrators he got them to refer him on to others who were also involved with bonded labour
• It was a challenge to work out if perpetrators were telling the truth Austin did by triangulating what he was told ‘on the fly’ to see which bits added up and which bits didn’t.
• Austin describes how he grew his beard because that seemed to confer additional spiritual status within the community and shared his own family experiences as a grandson of a farmer to establish his credibility
• Todd summarises this as a rapport and empathy approach

10.30 – 17.20

• Austin explains he interviewed 40 perpetrators and 20 victims/survivors for his research and describes the main insights he gained were around

1. A sense of lost relationships with their workers who they felt earlier had been members of their family
2. A sense of lost respect of their workers that they had earned from relationships. Austin says it may have been a façade but found the choice of language was really interesting and what he was least prepared for

• Todd then asks Austin to say more about the relationship between perpetrator and slave
• He says that commonly the exploiter would be on the edge of the community or circle not separate from it (as for example a trafficker) and that then raises the issue of how people live together post emancipation
• Todd makes a comparison with community courts called Gacaca in Rwanda which leads on to a discussion about issues surrounding reconciliation within communities, and what restorative justice looks like
• Todd then asks if, once uncovered, perpetrators stop the practice
• Austin says in some cases that depends on access to capital and cash either, to go into legitimate business or to use their status and connections with the police as a credible threat to the labour force and to carry on as before

17.20 - 19.60

• Discussion around what motivated the perpetrators and how they rationalised what they were doing
• Austin explains in many cases perpetrators had inherited the situation of control but were asking themselves why they would continue given the negative political impacts and whether they wanted to be seen as perpetrators of slavery - there is also a suggestion that for many there are few alternatives to the status quo
• Austin then makes the point that there is not enough known about what it takes to come out of abusive relationships not least of all for the perpetrators – he adds it needs both victims and perpetrators to work together to reach some form of attributive justice
• Todd references the work of Bill Simmons discussed in Series 1 of The Rights Track and his upcoming book Joyful Human Rights which raises the idea that human rights abuse victims also have a normal side to the lives they lead and comments that this is also the case for perpetrators or abusers

19.60 - 24.52

• Todd wonders if Austin's research in India is applicable elsewhere
• Austin suggests that it applies where labour exploitation is embedded in cultural practices e.g. India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh
• In broader terms he says he is dealing with violation of human rights but not social norms and in stepping outside of the slavery context he recognises that social change means that current behaviours can become unacceptable - one question he raises is how we deal with behaviour that was once acceptable, and no longer is
• He makes a final point about the way we all find ways to excuse exploitive
• Todd highlights how our view of Human Rights principles is evolving, and how human rights terminology isn’t necessarily recognised by local communities
• He closes by focussing on Gramsci’s notion of false consciousness in which people didn’t know they were being exploited or accepted they were perpetrators

Further links and resources

• Watch a You Tube video of Austin talking about his research

00.00 - 04.10

• Todd begins asking Sir Bernard about the difficulties in researching "hard to find populations” such as the victims of modern slavery, and in particular the issues of sampling and bias when drawing inferences from such difficult to obtain data.
• Sir Bernard agrees and suggests that the only way to avoid errors is to construct mathematical models and construct a sampling methodology to describe the data. He explains that classical sampling methods are not applicable to the victims of modern slavery
• Todd points out that the only way to identify victims is if they come forward to the National Crime Agency and/or other referral mechanisms, to create different " convenience samples"

04.10 - 08.20

• Sir Bernard mentions similar work carried out in Kosovo on the difficulties of estimating the number of deaths as a result of the conflict in the Former Yugoslavia
• Todd suggests that in this and similar instances the focus was on the number of dead bodies and was relatively easy to count whereas modern slavery is much harder to define and thus counting the numbers involved is much more complex
• Sir Bernard agrees adding that counting the number of dead has a lower margin for error - with no clear definition of modern slavery, there will be greater uncertainty about arriving at a total number of modern slaves

08.20 - 12.41

• Todd asks Bernard about the estimate of modern slavery victims in the UK and how it compares with the rest of the world
• Bernard answers that the quoted numbers (10,000 - 13,000) for the UK are probably under-estimation but says the number is large and should concentrate the minds of politicians, the police and the public
• World wide the UK ranks towards the bottom in terms of the risk factors that lead people into slavery
• Todd develops this theme by comparing slavery estimates for India and Luxembourg in terms of absolute numbers and the percentage of the population, in particular the estimate of 100 for Luxembourg, a number which may not quite capture the fact that .work-xbased commuting may actual double the population for Luxembourg and by inference the number of possible slaves.
• Sir Bernard adds the caveat that it is an estimate based on comparisons with neighbouring countries, not a fully accurate number
• Sir Bernard argues that the recent legislation makes the UK increasingly hostile to modern slavery in comparison with other countries

12.41 - 15.26

• Todd turns to discuss government spending and asks what level of priority is given to modern slavery in comparison with other forms of crime
• In Sir Bernard's view the focus is less about budget allocations and more about agenda setting for the police and awareness raising for the public, NGO's and academics

15.26- 18.59

• Todd asks how can proxy measures be use to indicate the prevalence of slavery
• Sir Bernard lists the following possibilities:

1. Suspect bank accounts
2. Very cheap services e.g. low cost car washes
3. Individuals offering the same service in different locations
4. Suspicious financial transactions
5. Suspicious patterns of personal behaviour

• The development of reliable proxy measures is in its infancy - extrapolating from proxy measures to reliable numerical estimates is not easy
• Looking for change in reliable proxy measures may well be better indicators of the effectiveness of anti-slavery measures

18.59 - end

• Todd asks whether there is away that Big Data techniques can be used to enhance proxy measures
• In reply Sir Bernard suggests undertaking textual analysis on company policy statements on supply chains. Larger textual analysis would need to focus on specific sectors and investigators will need to know in advance what they are looking for.

Further resources and information

• 2017 UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery for current spending on anti slavery measures see Executive Summary page 4
• Harnessing the power of data to put an end to modern slavery Thomson Reuters blog
• Using big data and quantitative methods to estimate and fight modern day slavery Monti Narayan Datta University of Richmond, USA
• A Typology of Modern Slavery Offences in the UK, London: Home Office

0.00 - 6.45

• Doreen explains how previously she has been using satellites to look at tropical rainforests but more recently as part of the Rights Lab project has been using them to identify locations where modern slavery is occurring
• It takes many months to obtain completely cloud free images of the earth's surface but the resolution of the images is improving all the time
• Todd mentions examples of where satellites have been used to identify human rights abuses such as in Sri Lanka and in South Sudan
• A major part of the work to date has involved using satellite imagery to identify brick kilns in South Asia - brick kilns are often linked with modern slavery (around 70 per cent of workforce)
• The project covers the so-called Brick Belt which covers 1.25 square kilometres
• Todd points out that this is part of a much bigger problem and that certain industries are harder to spot from space

6.50 - 12.15

• Doreen talks about how her team used images from the free source Google Earth to count brick kilns in an area and then statistically estimate the size of the problem
• She explains how this information can then be used to expose and address the problem
• Todd outlines some of the statistical techniques and how they are similar across disciplines
• Discussion around who uses the evidence and how and why it is so robust and indisputable

12.15 - end

• The research team has also discovered evidence of modern slavery at fisheries in the UNESCO World Heritage site Sundarbans National Park in Bangladesh
• Doreen points out that as well as identifying human rights abuses the technology can also identify environmental issues
• Doreen outlines some additional work on charcoal production in Brazil
• Todd mentions the risks associated with following up on evidence on the ground but also how deployment of technology (e.g. use of drones) can overcome some of those problems
• Doreen talks about how being able to link environmental issues and modern slavery has had a role in promoting activism

Further resources and information

• Slavery from Space: Demonstrating the role for satellite remote sensing to inform evidence-based action related to UN SDG number 8 ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
• Satellite images could identify slave labour in India - Reuters video
• The Sentinel satellite European Space Agency website

0.00 - 03.50

• What does it mean to be a survivor of slavery? Andrea explains the world is only just beginning to accept that slavery still exists, and, although it has many similarities with 19th century chattel slavery, it does not look the same
• Todd describes a survivor as someone who was formerly a slave who has since been liberated - Andrea points out that even when liberated survivors are still attached to the experience of slavery and experience difficulty in "divorcing" from enslavement and the fear of re-enslavement
• Andrea makes a distinction between victims (a limiting term) and survivors (an empowering term) – in this context she sees victims as a ‘legal term’, someone seeking redress for offences committed against them using criminal law while survivors don't necessarily see themselves as victims
• Todd mentions an earlier episode of The Rights Track with William Simmons in which he stressed the importance of remembering that people who have suffered human rights abuses do not only identify themselves as victims – there are ‘joyful’ things about their lives too
• Andrea agrees stressing that many survivors of slavery are also scholars, activists, and leaders who are engaged in action against slavery and why it’s important to acknowledge and understand that

03.50 - 07.43

Todd introduces Minh Dang who is leading a project in San Francisco around the formation of the Survivor Alliance

• Minh explains how, as a survivor herself she became aware of a disconnect between academic research and the experiences of survivors
• She explains how her research seeks to build the voices of survivors into the design of research projects and anti-slavery solutions/interventions
• Discussion of how and why the voices of survivors can be incorporated into the structuring of research projects through the use of participatory methods and action research techniques
• Minh talks about her experience of a community-based participatory research study, evaluating an anti-trafficking task force in San Francisco, where the research questions and project design came from survivors and how her PhD is asking survivors how they define well-being to inform and assess mental health interventions and how that will help practitioners (doctors/nurses/counsellors) provide better support
• The San Francisco project is highlighted as one which features a multi-agency approach and is inclusive of the views and experiences of survivors – Minh mentions the project’s human trafficking report

07.43 - 13.45

• Andrea talks about The Survivor's Solution project, which focuses on the analysis of contemporary survivor narratives from NGOs, congressional testimonies, autobiographies etc.
• How the Survivors' Voices team at the Rights Lab are using a range of linguistic techniques including cognitive interviewing techniques and images created by survivors

See also: Anti-Slavery; The Usable Past

• Defining slavery is problematic - the 1926 definition focuses on rights of ownership - this creates issues for courts and NGOs so Andrea and Minh’s work uses survivors’ perceptions of what slavery is
• Emerging from the narratives are concerns that some forms of slavery are being missed such as the sexual slavery of men and boys
• The narratives are being mapped against the 169 Sustainable Development Goals
• While SDG 8.7 is very explicit in terms of slavery, others related to education, health, armed conflict, climate change and gender bias may also be relevant
• Minh adds that survivors don't identify as being ‘a slave’ until they are made aware - they may focus instead on domestic violence, poverty, racism or immigration issues

14.36 - 19.50

• Andrea agrees that labelling of their experiences is important for survivors and gives them something to hold on to and a community to belong to.
• Work with survivors around narratives has begun to reveal a great deal on perceptions of trauma, recovery, freedom and particularly what the definition of slavery means to them
• Discussion on the impact of enslavement on survivors and how people process what has happened
• Very little work has been done on trauma associated with slavery and it may not be the same as for survivors of other traumas such as the holocaust or domestic abuse, and evidence from survivor narratives shows post slavery trauma to be long lasting and complex and varied in impact on survivors - this project adds to that new and growing body of evidence
• Minh joins the discussion on how focus should be directed away from the moment of freedom to the longer term which is that rescue is not the end of the process but the beginning of a long journey to recovery

19.50 - 23.24

• Survivor Solutions has already thrown up specific strategic solutions from survivors which include public awareness campaigns, education programmes for vulnerable communities to reduce the power of traffickers, regulation of employment agencies, providing platforms for survivors to speak, monitoring of government anti-slavery programmes, and provision of safe housing

Other useful links:

• Modern Slave Narratives is a collection of real life stories from survivors found at End Slavery Now.
• Free The Slaves has a range of survivor narratives.
• Survivors of Slavery Laura Murphy
• An article in the Guardian discusses how survivors have been abandoned and risk falling back into slavery

0.00-8.00

• Explanation of what supply chains are and how they work - why and how certain supply chains are more complex than others and how they can differ across and between countries. What drives why and how supply chains are established: e.g. availability, cost, expertise, specialist resources. Why and how labour and the cost of labour are key to supply chains and winning business.
• Discussion around the existing obligations and protections (laws/human rights) that exist to protect workers. Alex explains that different countries operate within different legislative contexts. He cites Brazil as an example of advanced labour law and the UK as being the opposite with an increasing trend towards outsourcing low-skilled labour where the only way they can keep costs low is by providing worse terms and conditions to workers - he says this is particularly prevalent in the public sector.
• Todd mentions recent investigations into companies like Flatcom, Toshiba and Apple into unfair working practices and the work of the Fair Labor Association in Washington looking into these. He mentions an earlier episode of The Rights Track with Professor Shareen Hertel where workers rights and unfair practices were discussed but then asks Alex to outline some of the more exploitative practices that he’s been looking at.
• Explanation of where in the supply chain exploitative practices are most prevalent, what those practices look like and how it is detected

8.00-12.20

Alex mentions his recent research looking at exploitative practices in car washes and how, in some cases, it is clearly observable that workers are not* possibly being paid the minimum wage or that they are being coerced or forced to work. He explains that one of the biggest concerns is that there is a ‘normalisation’ of these practices

• Discussion around who is legally responsible for these activities e.g. if there is a car wash operating in a supermarket car *park* is the supermarket responsible for making sure illegal/unethical practices are not occurring?
• Alex explains the car washes have been the subject of considerable recent scrutiny by the Labour Abuse Authority and Anti-Slavery Commissioner and in the media recently with some high profile arrests
• Todd asks about public attitudes towards towards using services that they ‘know’ to be exploitative and asks if , rather like with free range eggs, if people knew the labour was sourced ethically they would be prepared to pay more for the service. Alex says there has been a change in how this is viewed and that many members of the public are ‘wilfully ignorant’ and choose not to behave ethically because they do not necessarily see a direct benefit to themselves of doing so. When it comes to businesses ‘turning a blind eye’ to what might be happening in the car parks, he believes however that increasingly it is being understood and accepted that ignorance is not a defence and that legislation will be developed to enforce that.

12.20-end

• More detailed explanation of Alex’s car wash research and how he and colleagues investigated a car wash and modelled all the relevant statistics to show that there was no way its workers could have been paid the minimum wage.
• How the research is being used on a bigger scale by police forces in their efforts to investigate other car washes
• Todd mentions how the 2015 Modern Slavery Act is working to ensure large businesses are being transparent about their supply chains and to state publicly how they will fight modern slavery but asks how do they know what’s happening and put practices in place
• Alex says he believes the Act is doing a great deal to encourage good supply chain practice but says the challenges in achieving this are huge for some companies and that it is almost impossible to guarantee.
• Discussion around how the Unchained Supply Project is working to help companies detect, development and implement measures against modern slavery in supply chains and procurement activities

Other useful links

• Modern slavery challenges to supply chains management - research paper
• Advancing supply chain management for the challenges of Modern Slavery - blog post
• Thomson Reuters Anti-Slavery Summit 2017 - Supply Chain Risks Panel - panel discussion

0.00-3.21

• Alison explains how she and the Rights Lab team are working to define and explain what a slavery free community looks like
• Much attention on the national picture, but to date very little has been done to understand what slavery looks like at a local level - this is a gap in policy because most work to prevent it takes place locally
• Slavery free communities project is all about responding to the problem at a local level using available resources and better serving people to respond to and then prevent modern slavery

3.21-10.18

• Discussion on how people may be ‘rescued’ from slavery but then go back into it because of a lack of support/services
• Explanation of different stakeholders and help available and the challenges around co-ordination of services
• Alison mentions detailed reports produced by Her Majesty’s Constabulary on police response to modern slavery. There are questions as to whether police are best placed to take a lead and the need on tackling modern slavery for more community and voluntary sector engagement
• The National Referral Mechanism is run by the Salvation Army and works to identify victims of trafficking or slavery - Alison points out that other NGOs working with the Salvation Army team to be national or regional rather than local
• Potential role of the community at large to help stop and prevent the problem. Alison mentions the Clewer Initiative by the Church of England which is trying to use faith communities to try to detect and eradicate slavery

10.18-18.10

• How the research is working to make Nottingham a slavery-free city - Alison outlines the basic tenets for this as outlined by slavery expert Kevin Bales in his book, The Slave Next Door
• Example of how front line staff in a business might support the detection and eradication of slavery households e.g meter readers who go into homes
• Alison explains that she and colleagues are also interested to know how you make an economy slavery free. This goes beyond existing supply chain legislation outlined in Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act and to think of their role as corporate citizens
• Alison explains how the project is working with the Red Cross to look at better survivor support
• Discussion around the need to strengthen the sharing of intelligence between agencies and how banks and hospitals might help.
• Alison describes some of the data that might be useful in the mapping of slavery including Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO) and anti social behaviour complaints.
• The importance of front line training for e.g. nurses in Accident and Emergency but the challenges surrounding this.
• How behavioural economics or ’nudging’ could help to raise public consciousness of modern slavery so that it’s more obvious.

18.10-end

• Description and discussion of the recent Rooney case which led to the jailing of 11 people for modern slavery offences and the available sanctions
• Role of the Modern Slavery Act in increased sentences
• How agencies and police forces are using the tactic of ‘disrupting’ patterns of crime as well as detailed investigations needed to secure a modern slavery conviction
• Making Nottingham a slavery free city by 2030 is going to be challenging but changing people’s mind set in that time is achievable concludes Alison.

Other useful links

• Some US anti-slavery organisations like Allies against Slavery are developing thinking on slavery-free city theory and objectives
• A recent article in the Independent on what Alison and colleagues are trying to do to create a slavery-free Nottingham
• Alison’s recent work with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner to map anti-slavery partnerships in the UK

0.00-6.20

• Discussion around the recent renewed interest in modern slavery including a mention of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and Anti Slavery Day which was created by the Act.
• Zoe mentions the recent announcement that the agreed estimate of the number of slaves in the world now stands at 40.3 million according to the United Nations, the ILO (International Labour Organisation) the Walk Free Foundation and the IOM (International Organisation for Migration).
• Target 8.7 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is to eradicate slavery by 2030
• Bellagio Harvard Guidelines are used by The Rights Lab team to define modern slavery which comes from the Slavery Convention of 1926. Zoe explains what that means in practice.
• Zoe stresses the importance of being clear on what slavery is in order to tackle it. She mentions a Rights Lab project looking at mental health which is looking at whether slavery survivors require interventions specific to what’s happened to them

6.20-15.18

• Zoe explains the work of the Rights Lab and how it will lead to a range of pilot activities and interventions which will be evaluated to see what works and how what does work will become a “freedom blueprint” a document that shows what needs to be done to eradicate slavery by 2030..
• Todd asks about importance of recognising the ubiquity of slavery including the problems in the UK and of using the latest techniques and methods to measure it accurately. Zoe agrees and goes on to mention Rights Lab work to develop a national slavery index as well as the existing global slavery index
• Zoe describes how satellites are being used to try to “see slavery from space” and mentions research which showed hundreds of child slaves being used on a UNESCO World Heritage site and describes how satellites have been used to root out slave labour in India
• Explanation of how researchers draw the link between satellite images and the use of people as slaves in a particular area and what they do with that information.
• Zoe stresses the importance and the value of working at in individual level with survivors of slavery to ensure their voices are heard and represented in the research

15.18- end

• Discussion moves to the Anti Slavery Act, what it means for organisations and large businesses and how the Rights Lab is analysing how businesses are responding to the Act’s requirements for them to demonstrate that slaves are not used at any point in their supply chains.
• Zoe mentions how some industries have agreed to move towards a ‘slavery-free’ guarantee for their products and Todd describes the potential benefits to a company of that in respect of having a trusted and respected brand.
• Zoe describes a willingness on the part of many different industries to do something about the issue of modern slavery but are not sure what to do - she hopes Rights Lab research will provide them with a clearer picture of what they can do and the tools to do it.
• Zoe outlines what she hopes the Freedom Blueprint will look like and some of the key considerations

Ending slavery by 2030 is now a key objective for the United Nations, which, by making it one of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 8.7), has placed anti-slavery work as a top priority. Slavery is a new focus for the UK government, with the introduction of an act of Parliament, which Teresa May says “has delivered tough new penalties to put slave masters behind bars where they belong, with life sentences for the worst offenders”.

There can’t be many people out there who would disagree with the ambitions outlined here, but it’s essential we don’t just look for quick wins in the form of urgent liberations and prosecutions, but that we use robust, evidence-based strategies for whole scale abolition. In that way we get our thinking on the right track about the issue, understand the problem, and help create meaningful and effective solutions.

Achieving that and giving a clear voice to sound evidence on human rights has been the clearly defined ambition over the last two years of The Rights Track, a podcast whose principal ambition is to get the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today.

Today, on Anti-Slavery Day, the attention of The Rights Track podcast turns exclusively to the challenge of modern slavery, as it positions itself at the heart of The Rights Lab, the world’s first large-scale research programme helping to put an end to slavery once and for all.

Why a podcast?

The multi million pound project, based at the University of Nottingham, is already attracting attention and interest from key figures and organisations around the world including the UK’s Anti-Slavery Commissioner Kevin Hyland OBE. It’s getting high profile media coverage and continuing to spread the word as widely as possible will be key to achieving the end goal.

Digital and social media provide a host of opportunities to share the evidence being developed in ways that blur the distinction between academic outputs and the work of human rights practitioners and which fulfill an ever-increasing demand for rigorous evidence from human rights organisations.

The last few years, there has been a growing interest in the production and consumption of podcasts. In 2013, Apple announced it had over a billion podcast subscribers spread across 250,000 unique podcasts in more than 100 languages, and that more than 8 million episodes have been published in the iTunes Store to date.

In 2016 The Economist proclaimed the podcast had come of age and 2017 was declared the Year of the Podcast.

Audience research figures in the US estimate that 112 million people have listened to a podcast at least once. 67 million are listening to podcasts every month, 42 million every week. Those listening on a weekly basis listen, on average, to five different podcasts. In the UK, podcasts have also grown in popularity. In 2015, one in five people reported ever downloading a podcast. Although fewer than one in ten people listen every week, those who do consume an impressive 6.1 hours per week.

Discussion about whether podcasts can start to take hold in countries such as India, where slavery is a major problem, but where there is little or no culture of listening to talk radio is also beginning to emerge.

There has never been a better or more exciting time to be podcasting and to be using podcasts not just to share research findings but to really engage with everyone who’s interested in finding out the hard facts and understanding what’s needed for change and, in this case, to take individual and collective responsibility for ending the scourge that is modern day slavery.

Getting our thinking on the right track

From how many slaves exist in the world and where they are to why slavery exists and persists, what can work to end it and the difference that freedom makes – there is plenty for us to talk about on The Rights Track.

We’ll be talking to project leads and external partners from the Rights Lab on their ongoing work that ranges from making UK cities slavery free to observing slavery from space using the latest cutting edge satellite technologies, as well as work on how to assist survivors of slavery.

The research and our podcast are all underpinned by something described “rigorous morality”; a fusion of rigorous empirical research and advocacy: a values- based, problem-oriented approach which means that we do more than just talk about the problems of modern slavery: we’ll give a voice to the evidence and the solutions, change the conversation and, in doing so, help to set society on a course to end it.

The fact that podcasting can help capture these stories, ideas and voices in such a compelling way is why we believe it is key to the research programme.

Slavery stands on the edge of its own extinction and this incredible research programme will show how it can be eradicated for good. The Rights Lab will bring research rigour to a global community that has awoken to the historic possibility of ending slavery in our lifetime.

Can a podcast help with that? We think it can!

Episode 1 will be published November 9!

• Follow our progress by subscribing to the podcast in iTunes. Click on the Apple Podcasts icon above
• Tell us what you think and get more involved with the project by becoming a member of our Facebook Group
• Join in the Conversation on Twitter @RightsTrack

0.00-12.55

• Heidi starts by explaining the work of the SPLC since its formation in the 1970s when it tried to make the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act “a reality”
• She mentions a civil suit the SPLC brought against the United Klans of America in the 80s which made the organisation realise the lack of information that existed about hate groups and how and where they operated.
• Heidi describes the sorts of groups that are listed including Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-semitic and other racist/hate group. She provides a definition of a “hate group” and gives examples of the sorts of groups on SPLC’s hate group list
• The SPLC publishes 2 lists - Active Hate Groups and Anti Government Groups
• Todd asks specifically about the Christian Identity movement and Heidi explains their ideology
• Some people in the US argue (especially online) that there is no difference between the Ku Klux Klan and Black Lives Matter - Heidi explains the difference
• Heidi mentions the SPLC’s Hate Map and the hate crime data the organisation collects and how the two sets of data differ

12.55-17.20

• The discussion moves on to the difference between free speech and hate speech in the US. Heidi explains the First Amendment Right, which protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. She explains how that plays out in reality in respect of hate speech within and, she argues, as a result of the Constitution
• Todd asks Heidi for her thoughts on the events in Charlottesville in August 2017

17.20- end

• How SPLA tracks and collects hate speech data on social media and how SPLC can use that data to track radical right movements and their activities
• Heidi mentions the group Stormfront.org and a recent conference it held. She goes on to talk about some of the positive developments by organisations such as Facebook post Charlottesville to take down hate speech material from its site.
• Where SPLC’s support is coming from including the American Civil Liberties Union
• Heidi reflects on her concerns and hopes for the future. She says she is heartened by recent resolutions among politicians condemning white nationalists but concerned by what the transition towards a US where white people are no longer in the majority might signal in terms of hate groups and hate speech remaining at the fore.

In Episode 11 of Series 2 of The Rights Track Todd talks to the internationally acclaimed environmentalist photographer Garth Lenz about the idea of crimes against the environment and how his photography helps to make a case for environmental rights.

• Garth talks about the power of photography in helping to change the way people think e.g. about injustice or war and how it can motivate people to demand change
• He talks about why Canada where he is based is such a powerful example of “industrial sacrifice” because the sites are so vast and why photography is such a good medium for communicating that to a broad audience
• Todd asks Garth about how he conveys the idea of vastness such as in his photos of industrialised landscape such as that at the Tar Sands Development
• Garth talks about finding a point of reference such as equating the size of a single truck being used with the size of a family home and how doing this helps link what’s happening with the environment and human rights

• Todd outlines the tensions around the human rights arguments i.e the right to economic development and prosperity and the need to explore sustainable development and also the more philosophical debates around where the environment sits in debates around human rights
• Garth argues there is not a major tension between the needs of humans and the needs of the environment - he believes they both need a healthy ecosystem
• Garth talks about a recent project around Houston and Port Arthur in the US where he says there are huge Fortune 500 companies juxtaposed with some of the highest rates of unemployment, poverty and poor health
• Garth mentions recent work he has been undertaking for the Environmental Integrity Project in Pennsylvania looking at the human cost of fossil fuel development particularly where people have signed over rights to companies to extract fuels and then find, for example, that their water supply is contaminated - he feels that nothing changes until the privileged and rich are affected in the same way.
• Todd picks up and describes the so-called “fracking process” which is what Garth has been talking about and Garth goes onto talk about some of the knock ons success as earthquakes in places where they don’t normally happen.
• Garth goes on to mention recent wildfires in British Columbia and their impact on communities and individuals including his own asthmatic daughter - he says he could not imagine as a child a point in time when people would be scared to go out and breathe the air or drink the water without wanting to take action as a society

• Discussion around some of the policy responses to environmental issues such as recent moves in France and the UK to ban the production of petrol and diesel vehicles and the shift towards hybrid vehicles
• Todd raises the question of where the power will come from to fuel electric cars - he mentions plans to develop nuclear power in the UK
• Garth believes the moves in Europe are encouraging and agrees the fuel will need to come from a wind range of sources - he says the US and even Canada are far behind
• He argues that plugging electric vehicles into coal powered stations for recharging is better for the environment than driving petrol or diesel fuelled cars because of the major reduction in greenhouse gases even though he acknowledged it’s not ideal

• Discussion about President Trump’s preference not to be a signatory to the Paris Climate Change agreement and what motivates Garth to keep up his work
• Garth points out that at a federal, state and local level people are saying that Washington may have a view but they will continue to make their own decisions and moves regardless and that this makes him feel more optimistic going forward
• Todd urges Rights Track listeners to watch Garth’s emotional and gripping Ted Talk

0.00- 5.30

• Gonzalo provides some startling statistics on numbers of refugees (In 2016 65.6 million forcibly uprooted - more than 20 millions seeking safety across a border, 40 million uprooted but who stay within their country - 20 people displaced every minute of every day)
• Majority of refugees 55% come today from just 3 countries: Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan - Syria alone more than 5 million, South Sudan at highest rate
• Focus in the media has been on the arrival of refugees in Europe, but important to remember that 85% are in developing countries like Turkey, Pakistan, Iran who host millions of refugees - most refugees by far stay in their region of origin

5.30-15.40

• Gonzalo talks about the ‘secondary movement’ of refugees and explains that a significant drop in refugee funding to regions in the Middle East was a driver for refugees to leave and try to come to places like Europe. He says the emphasis needs to be on strengthening the aid to those developing countries so they can meet the minimum needs (water, food, health) of refugees in countries close to them and also provide them with new opportunities otherwise they will want to move.
• People think the majority of refugees are simply fleeing poverty but that is not the case
• Gonzalo explains how the rights of refugees are enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention and how important it is that countries which have signed up to the convention live top to their commitments because it is a legal obligation
• Gonzalo rejects claims that the Convention should be revisited or scrapped, explaining it has helped save millions of lives. He believes the problem is not the convention itself, but the failure of certain Government to uphold their commitments
• Todd asks Gonzalo for his thoughts on the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement that all refugees were welcome and whether her statement was moral or misguided
• Gonzalo says her statement showed great leadership and that the problem was that other leaders did not follow suit - not enough solidarity within Europe
• Gonzalo believes there has been too much focus on stopping boats making the dangerous journey to Europe without thinking about the alternative and without providing the sort of aid that might help/encourage them to stay where they are

15.40-end

• Some discussion about the UK position. Gonzalo describes UK as one of the most important donors of humanitarian aid in the world, giving substantial funding for example to help Syrian refugees in places like Jordan and Lebanon. It has also stepped up numbers of Syrian refugees that it will help resettle
• Todd summarises some of the key points made by Gonzalo in the interview

0.00-6.50

• Evelyn starts by explaining what worker’s rights are. She mentions those rights laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations, the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in International Labour Organisation conventions and recommendations and she goes on to outline examples.
• How can these rights be measured in practice as well as in principle? The ITUC has developed a Global Rights Index to measure the degree to which worker rights are being respected.
• Evelyn talks about some of the work she’s been doing in South Asia around minimum wages
• Discussion around Global Rights Index, and what a basic minimum wage or a living wage looks like in practice and what the ITUC thinks the approach should be and how they campaign for change and raise international awareness.
• Todd mentions and explains the Vernon Product Cycle and how that plays out and impacts on wages around the world.

06.50-11.00

• Evelyn explains how multinational companies continue to seek out parts of the world where they can source cheap labour and effectively bypass worker rights. She mentions a report produced by the ITUC about the labour rights violations in the supply chains of the 50 largest multi-national companies.
• Todd asks Evelyn about a recent report from Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights who is making a case for a universal basic income
• Evelyn goes on to explain the concept of a Basic Income and some of the ITUC’s reservations about it and its potential.
• Todd mentions Uber as an example of a company that has been criticised for some of its employment practices
• Evelyn agrees that the growing trend of what she describes as “bogus self employment” is part of the problem, but explains that there are many other practices around the hiring and firing of people that are of great concern to the ITUC including Governments which loosen labour market regulations and collective bargaining to try to attract businesses to their country.
• Evelyn makes the point that the evidence shows that these approaches don’t necessarily help economic growth either

11.00-end

• Evelyn talks about where ITUC works
• Discussion of a recent trial in Finland in which a number of people have been given a basic income
• Evelyn explains why the ITUC at this time is neither endorsing nor objecting to the idea of a Universal Basic Income - and why she would like to see further testing and evidence about its positive value and how it could be implemented effectively
• How workers’ rights can help address increasing inequality

0.00-6.07

Claire explains that MRG works with communities or groups rather than individuals who may be different because of the language they speak, their religion or their ethnicity. Further explanation of the areas of the world in which MRG works.

Todd asks Claire what she makes of recent indications from the US and the UK that there might be some sort of a “roll back” in their commitment to international human rights.

Claire outlines her concerns about what she sees as a ‘dramatic rise’ in anti migrant, anti refugee attitudes and associated hate crime over the last year in a number of countries, all of which goes against what MRG stands for.

Brief discussion of recent political events in The Netherlands and France, which saw a rise in support for the far right ahead of recent elections.

6.07-09.08

The sort of work that MRG does: advocating for minorities, working with refugees and migrants on the ground to capture evidence, and helping them speak for themselves locally, nationally and internationally at events such as Universal Periodic Reviews (UPRs).

Claire mentions a major piece of work in Iraq where MRG is gathering information electronically as part of its efforts to protect vulnerable groups and more traditional ‘on the ground’ work in South Asia to promote and protect religious freedoms.

Todd asks at what point MRG pulls back from a community or country to let them manage issues themselves.

09.08 - 17.54

Claire and Todd discuss the challenges of identifying a route to success and following it. They talk about a log frame (logical framework) approach to activities designed to promote human rights. Claire points out the need for flexibility because of changing conditions and contexts.

What success looks like - when does MRG know its work has had an impact? Claire explains that its not all about what MRG does itself, but how it might have influenced others e.g. a duty bearer to make a change so credit is inevitably shared.

Claire explains how MRG approaches a new project by identifying what the big blocking factors are to realising rights. She explains how MRG tries to get to the discriminatory attitudes in people’s heads as well as tackling discriminatory practices by changing laws.

17.54-22.00

Claire describes a street theatre programme in 7 countries to tackle racism.

Further discussion about the challenges in evaluating the effectiveness of programmes like this.

22.00-end

Todd asks Claire whether its possible to put the more extreme and hateful attitudes that have been unleashed in recent months back in their ‘Pandora’s Box’.

Claire thinks there has been a recent resurgence in the values of diversity but says it’s not clear how it will be done or how long it will take.

Further links from Minority Rights Group

• Middle East and North Africa: Drama, Diversity and Development
• Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights
• Past Programmes and Evaluations
• Drama and diversity

Suggested links from our partners at OpenGlobalRights

• Human rights evaluation—who is it really for?
• Learning from each other: human rights and development evaluations
• Finding the unexpected impacts of human rights work
• Can rights organizations use low-burden self-reflection for evaluation?

0.00-08.00

• Iain explains what HRW does, where it works and which human rights issues it gets involved in including women’s rights, children’s rights and the rights of the disabled
• How HRW approaches its work by investigating and exposing human rights violations to bring about change including raising awareness among policy makers and journalists and making recommendations about what needs to be done to end violations, bring perpetrators to justice and to ensure people are better protected going forward
• What investigation involves: witness statements and interviews, photography, satellite imagery, statistics, records etc. to build a full picture
• At what point in an investigation HRW judges it has enough info to move to start exposing violations - being sure of the rigour and credibility of the findings including an internal review process and timing of release to maximise impact.
• Iain’s concerns around ‘Fake News’ and what he sees to be as a declining respect for objectivity, expertise and facts

08.00-11.10

• Todd asks how HRW cuts through human rights compassion fatigue to get their stories and messages out into the public domain, . Iain agrees it has become more challenging but talks about the relatively recent power of social media and how HRW uses it to maximum effect. He also talks about the importance of human stories and visual imagery and the need to be concise in whatever language they are using. HRW has more than 3 million Twitterfollowers
• Explanation of how HRW analyses and evaluates its engagements on Twitter

11.10-13.15

• How HRW documents and understands any change it may be responsible for. Iain acknowledges it’s an area where HRW wants and needs to be stronger
• How researchers are able to describe progress and the trajectory the work is on but ultimate goals such as passing a new law, the implementation of sanctions or deploying a peacekeeping force to protect civilians in a conflict are harder things to come by and take time. HRW is working internally to improve this side of their work and to learn and employ good practice from other organisations etc.

13.15-end

• The work HRW undertakes in the United States (looking at things like foreign policy, surveillance, torture, Guantanamo Bay etc.) and how and why it is important.
• The implications for human rights of the election of Donald Trump and how that has impacted HRW’s work.
• The work that HRW is doing on Environmental rights including looking at climate change
• Iain mentions recent work in Kenya looking at how climate change is impacting on the indigenous population, HRW’s efforts on pollution and toxicity in terms of securing people’s rights to health and water including access to information, rights to free speech etc and protecting environmental activists who he says are most under threat.
• Todd mentions the Dakota pipeline controversy in which environmentalists and indigenous local people objected to the building of a pipeline over fears of contamination and damage
• Iain explains that HRW’s role was small but agrees the case highlights the importance of the organisation’s role in protecting people’s right to speak out and protest against developments that they believe could be harmful to the environment and its people.
• Iain concludes by outlining the scale of HRW’s operations in 90 countries with more than 400 staff and how they are placing more staff on the ground in countries where violations are taking place to secure its international footprint.

Additional resources from our partners at OpenGlobal Rights

• Internationalizing the human rights movement: creating a North-South bridge?
• Shaming and blaming: assessing the impact of human rights organizations
• Quantitative data in human rights: what do the numbers really mean?
• Missing torture amongst the poor
• Will technology transform the human rights movement?

0.00-7.50 mins

• How and when Amnesty came to start working on economic and social rights, having been known initially for its work in the area of civil and political rights
• Explanation of how Amnesty conceives economic and social rights compared with civil and political rights. Meghna cites example of ‘forced evictions’
• Meghna explains where the approach to economic and social rights differs from other human rights.
• Todd asks Meghna about the challenges around comparing the economic and social rights of different countries
• Meghna points out how useful the guidance provided by the United Nations’ Committee on Economic and Social Rights is to Amnesty in providing certain benchmarks

7.50-11.55

• How Amnesty goes about collecting evidence to assess how well or badly countries are doing at upholding the economic, social and cultural rights of its citizens
• Meghna explains how different types of evidence are collected from individuals and Governments and how data and statistics are gathered on the way states go about the business of protecting its citizens and to create a big picture to help make a case
• Further discussion of the use of new technology in evidence gathering but the challenges that remain of verifying evidence

11.55-end

• Discussion of Amnesty’s The Great Palm Oil Scandal report, co-authored by Meghna
• Meghna explains the background to the report including how Amnesty consulted on the ground over how to approach their investigation
• How Amnesty came to focus on the company Wilmar International
• Meghna explains the preliminary research including gathering testimonies and information from people on the ground about a range of things to do with people’s working conditions
• Explanation of Amnesty’s goals when publishing a report of this nature: i.e to effect change by influencing businesses and consumers who purchase products with palm oil to exert pressure on companies like Wilmar International to improve its workers’ conditions
• How follow up work is done to monitor progress and whether businesses or organisations identified as failing to protect and uphold the economic rights of its workers have made changes
• Todd mentions the case of Apple which was heavily criticised over the conditions of factory workers in China who were producing Apple products and how the company went on to work with a labur rights organisation in Washington D.C to look at labour rights and went about a period of reform
• Meghna explains how companies often have strong policies and the implementation of conditions on the ground and how Amnesty presses them for concrete change

Useful links and resources

• Measuring Human Rights by Todd Landman and Edzia Carvalho

• Useful links from our Partners at OpenGlobalRights*

• Advancing social justice through human rights at Amnesty International
• Moving Amnesty closer to the ground is necessary, not simple
• Justice over rights?
• New trend, old roots: “internationalization” in Amnesty’s history
• Data and human rights

0.00-8.20

• Myth-busting - Todd asks Akbar about the myth that has grown post 9/11 that Islam as a faith is somehow more inherently violent than other religions
• Akbar says he understands where the idea has come from but how, as a Muslim, he is baffled by it because the themes of mercy and compassion are so central to Islam. He mentions the term Ilm, a key Islamic term that denotes the inclusiveness of the religion
• Akbar goes on to talk more about Ilm - explaining that it is the place where Islam interacts with other religions. He reflects on his studies as a young man of poets such as Tennyson and quotes lines from Ulysses and the shared quest for knowledge shared by different cultures and religions. He stresses that knowledge is key and his belief that knowledge is being replaced by fake news and how it creates misperceptions and misrepresentations of individuals and groups of individuals and leads to violence.
• Akbar mentions the case of a Hindu shot dead in the US apparently the victim of a hate crime. Todd mentions the rise in anti-semitism in the US including a recent attack in his home town of Harrisburg
• Akbar explains how these attacks have extended to Muslims and reflects on the dangers of moving towards what he describes as a Hobbesian society

8.20-14.45

• Todd asks Akbar about the idea that Islam is somehow incompatible with democracy reflecting on his own experiences of travelling to Islamic countries where democracy functions well.
• Akbar talks about his work, Jinnah Quartet in which he sets out to illustrate the compatibility of Islam and democracy within the context of a modern state
• Akbar acknowledges that he can see why the current leadership of the Muslim world may lead the West and others to be doubt that Islam promotes democracy but says this does not mean that the majority of Muslims do not want democracy not that Islam rejects it.
• Akbar mentions the annual Muslim Haj pilgrimage where people from all backgrounds are treated the same, thus showing how egalitarian and democratic Islam is.
• The discussion moves to human rights and how Islam deals with individual versus group/collective rights
• Akbar says human rights, especially caring for the vulnerable, is at the heart of Islam - he gives a number of examples of how this works in practice and says that historically this was extended to people of other religions too.

14.45-end

• The discussion moves to Akbar’s book, The Thistle and the Drone, which received high profile endorsements both from famous intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and also the CIA
• The importance of tribal groups in tensions within and outside the Islamic world. Akbar exlpains how he uses the metaphor of the Thistle for the tribe and how it comes from Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad
• Violence and Islam and the language around terrorism under a Trump presidency compared with an Obama presidency
• Discussion of Trump’s pledge to “wipe radical Islam from the face of the earth”
• Akbar makes the point that the majority of ISIS victims are in fact Muslims themselves and says that the Trump administration is alienating and humiliating those who are his potential allies in tackling ISIS
• Todd mentions his own work in this area before moving on to ask about the implications of the US travel ban
• Akbar says the travel ban detracts from the need to tackle ISIS and not the way to go about it. He believes there is a need for the rhetoric to stop so that the younger generation are not adversely influenced by it and that the focus needs to be on “healing a fractured world”

/// Other useful links

• Akbar Ahmed’s latest film Journey into Europe

• Journey into Europe website

/// From our partners at the OpenGlobalRights blog

• Islamic ideals of peace and justice: are we overlooking something?
• Islamic and UN Bills of Rights: same difference
• What do Muslim women want? Finding women’s rights in Islam
• Trump, the other and human rights in society

0.00-7.10

• Explanation of the center’s mission and how the rule of law can be brought to bear in and on behalf of countries least able to hold perpetrators of the worst human rights abuses and crimes to account
• Dixon gives an example of a successful civil action brought in the US against former Pinochet officer, Pedro Pablo Barrientos who was accused of the torture and murder of a famous folk singer and had been living for 30 years in Florida
• Dixon explains how the legalities of the case worked and its wider significance and a discussion follows about the sort of justice and accountability the centre is trying to achieve on behalf of the victim’s family and the knock on impacts of the successful civil action in respect of a possible extradition to Chile.

7.10-11.00

• Discussion about ways in which a ‘creative’ approach can be taken to bringing human rights abusers to book. Todd mentions work by a colleague on the Ciudad Juárez murders in Mexico and how they showed that the US Alien Tort Act could be used to prosecute
• Dixon explains how in the case he cited earlier, the Torture Victim Protection Act was used to prosecute Barrientos and more recent efforts to prosecute the Syrian regime for war crimes under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Actincluding how the case has been put together with the help and support of France and how and where the case is being heard

11.00-17.30

• Discussion around the importance of academic evidence and expertise in pursuing cases and explanation of how it is used and applied by the center.
• Dixon mentions a Guatemala genocide case where forensic anthropologists were used to examine the remains of murder victims
• Todd references the work of Patrick Ball and an earlier podcast episode where Patrick outlines some statistical work around the same events. Dixon agrees this type of evidence is critical to the work of the center
• Dixon mentions another recent case representing 45 Cambodian Americans for atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge. The work has involved a partnership with Stanford University looking at the impact off mass trauma on mental health
• Can academics do more/better to provide evidence that can help in the pursuit of justice? Dixon talks about the links between democracy and human rights and ongoing conversations with academics like Latin American expert, Kathryn Sikkink at Harvard University. Todd mentions Kathryn’s book, The Justice Cascade: how human rights prosecutions are changing world politics.

17.30-end

• Todd references Stephen Hopgood’s book, The End Times of Human Rightscriticising the Human Rights movement
• Dixon talks about what he believes has been achieved and about the ability of the Human Rights movement to make positive incremental change over time

0.00-6.00

• Todd outlines plans for women’s marches across America to protest against the inauguration of President Trump and invites Monica to reflect on the main issues of concern to women under a Trump presidency
• Monica says there are national and local issues including in her own state of Arizona HB2120, legislation which she says would prohibit the teaching of social justice. She goes on to explain why she thinks the repealing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would be bad for women and children and her concern about the lack of any proposed replacement or discussion around it

6.00-12.00

• The discussion moves onto the implications for women in the economy and at work and her fears that women of colour and single mothers might become even more vulnerable to workplace inequalities and more marginalised
• Discussion around the challenges that might face people in trying to secure a minimum wage as well as healthcare, childcare.
• Monica talks about her concerns that Trump’s election has led to a bubbling to the surface of racist and sexist behaviour and that anecdotally she is hearing a lot.
• Monica talks about how all the above is playing out at the university where she works and the responses of her children including concerns among immigrant communities

12.00-15.00

• Discussion of Trump’s inauguration, threatened boycotts and Monica’s belief that any celebration of the inauguration and ‘normalising’ of it is a problem

15.00-20.00

• Discussion of the aims and ambitions of Saturday’s marches
• Monica says as well as making a point about Trump’s presidency, there are broader points around civil rights such as freedom of speech, rights to protest etc. that she feels are threatened by the new administration
• Todd talks about other historical examples of protest by women and other social movements and wonders if it will lead to a new wave of protests around other issues by other types of groups
• Monica says local marches will have a local flavour
• Discussion of the role of marches in Europe and whether they can achieve anything

20.00-end

• Discussion of the role of journalism in reporting in more depth the issues around social movements
• Monica says she hopes for more face to face conversations also so that people can learn from one another across communities and movements
• Discussion of security and concerns about violence at the marches

Apologies for the occasional poor quality of the audio in this episode.

00.00-5.05

• Todd asks Elisabeth just how dangerous it is in certain parts of the world to be a journalist - Elisabeth says a ‘startlingly high’ number of journalists are not just killed but targeted, harrassed and murdered whilst doing their job.
• Elisabeth explains that in countries like Mexico, many journalists will not cover certain stories or topics because they are too afraid to do so.
• Elisabeth explains the CPJ’s Global Impunity Index 2016 which has identified 13 countries which account for 80 percent of the unsolved murders that took place worldwide during the 10-year period ending August 31, 2016.
• Todd asks about the rationale behind the Index/how it works etc. and about people who disappear

05.05-08.00

• Todd asks about the effect that a ‘climate of fear’ creates among journalists/self-censorship etc.
• Elisabeth gives some examples of how self-censorship impacts in dangerous areas
• A brief discussion of how citizen journalism can work and the risks associated with it compared with more traditional journalism

08.11- 11.30

• A discussion and explanation of the circumstances in which a journalist might be attacked and of the sorts of people/organisations behind the killings
• Further discussion about the types of stories a journalist might want to cover but might lead to them becoming a target
• Elisabeth gives a number of examples of the types of cases she comes across
• Balancing the desire to cover controversial stories and the risks journalists are prepared to take to shine a spotlight on an issue or controversy

11.30-17.40

• How the CPJ advocates on behalf of those who have been killed and tries to achieve justice for their families
• CPJ’s work with other international and local organisations to try to achieve prosecutions and ultimately prevent murders of journalists
• Elisabeth refers to the UN Plan of Action and the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists
• Elisabeth says the ultimate aim is to encourage countries to investigate and prosecute cases if it is not happening at a local/regional level
• What do trends show about how bad things are for journalists now compared with before?
• Discussion of what it means to be an “embedded journalist” and what the challenges/issues associated with that are

17.40-end

• Achievements for CPJ include increased prosecutions and convictions on the ground
• Also CPJ’s work on getting journalists released from prison

Elisabeth mentions the ACOS Alliance working to achieve a culture of safety for freelance journalists

Further information

CPJ has new data for 2016 - and since our interview with Elisabeth has published reports on journalists imprisoned and journalists killed. In the latter report on killed journalists, CPJ found the rate of journalists murdered to be down significantly for 2016. Althpugh the committee says it is a welcome development, it points out that it can also indicate that that in certain environments where there has been routine violence against the press, those media communities are now cautious or censored in other ways.

00.00-5.00

• Todd asks Richard for this thoughts on the successes and set backs faced by those fighting for equal rights for the LGBT community
• Richard says he feels positive about the legislative changes that have taken place in recent years especially the sorts of things Stonewall has campaigned for. He refers to increased diversity and inclusivity marked by major events such as the well known Pride marches which take place across the UK and in other countries.
• Richard says he believes that many homophobic and racist sentiments have been buried however and that events such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the United States have seen them rise again to the surface.
• Todd talks about his experiences as an American coming to the UK where he detected a ‘playfulness’ around homosexuality especially in the theatre and pantomime traditions that might have masked the sort of homophobia Richard is referring to.

05.00-10.33

• The discussion moves onto the linkages between homophobia and racism
• Richard talks about how leaders across time have used minority groups to take advantage of dissatisfaction in a population by making them out to be “a false enemy” in order to gain power
• Todd refers to the political theorist Ernesto Laclau’s concept of ‘the logic of equivalence’ where people from disparate backgrounds are all called the same thing and how that’s been used by politicians like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.
• Todd mentions an HMIC report of 6,000 hate crimes in the immediate wake of the EU referendum and a report by the Southern Poverty Law Centre on the numbers of hate crimes in the 10 days following the American Presidential election.
• Richard says there are also problems within minority groups and says he has witnessed a great deal of this
• Todd says this challenges the assumption that all minority groups will get on together
• Todd says the fact that there is a ‘white’ London Pride and a ‘black’ London Pride reinforces this

10.33 -16.12

• The discussion moves to the Women’s movement and comparisons with the issues faced by the gay community. Todd mentions a blog on the Verso Books site arguing that “Elite White Feminism Gave Us Trump”
• Richard talks about his experiences within business of the difficulties faced by women and what the businesses he has worked with are trying to do around issues of diversity and inclusion
• Richard reflects on the challenges businesses face in getting talented women into positions of seniority within business, the mistakes they have made and how businesses need to rethink their strategy to rectify this. He acknowledges it’s a particular problem in his own business of insurance where openly gay individuals who join the industry then go back into the closet after doing so.

16.12-20.12

• Todd refers to the Kinsey scale which indicates that 1/10 people is gay and yet the gay community is hugely underrepresented in many organisations. He asks if it raises questions about the validity about initiatives and groups that try to foster and promote gay rights
• Richard believes that people don’t necessarily want to define themselves by their sexuality
• Richard says LGB has come along way but T (Trans) hasn’t - he talks about some of his first hand experiences of working with Trans people to try to help them

20.12-end

• Richard reflects on his personal experiences with his own family and also about some of the massive support for Stonewall Campaigns such as the recent Sport Turns Rainbow football campaign and in schools
• He argues there is still a lot to do especially in countries where it is still illegal to be gay but concludes that he is positive and optimistic about the future

0.00-09.32

• Todd introduces this special final episode of Series 1 of The Rights Track by introducing his two guests and by explaining a little about why he wanted to take some time to discuss recent events in US in respect of violence against African Americans. He references two articles he has written - one on the statistical evidence surrounding the disproportionate levels of violence towards Black Americans and the second on his belief that America ought to consider setting up a Truth Commission to examine some of the underlying problems facing American society. He goes on to explain what a Truth Commission might look like.
• Todd references a recent UN report by the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent which also recommends a human rights commission .
• Karen talks about the importance of finding the right way to talk about race, violence and related issues. She mentions her research project, The Trust Map, which is looking at how trust can be repaired within minority communities. She says it’s important to think not just about a Commission, but about what would follow on from it.
• Todd mentions President Obama’s Commission on Police Violence - Dallas Police being held up as exemplar and yet violence happening on the city’s streets in recent months.
• Karen points out that problems like these are not solved overnight and the unrealistic expectations placed on Obama as a black President to achieve more because they assumed that America was “post racial” as soon as a black President was elected. She says she values the idea of people having the opportunity to share their experiences and knowledge about relevant events without necessarily having to quantify it.

09.32-20.00

• Christopher Phelps talks about America’s history of slavery and the so-called Jim Crow racial segregation and the challenges of modern day in spite of civil and political rights developments. He mentions earlier Commissions including the Kerner Commission looking at riots in the 1960s and the Commission that looked at the Watts Riot in 1965. He thinks a Truth Commission might be useful in gathering information and helping to get people talking about these issues in a constructive way but expresses concern that the circumstances and conditions for it, unlike in South Africa, may not lend themselves to it being effective.
• Todd talks about how a Truth Commission might work and where the data might come from and what he would want to see emerge from it by way of serious reform and a hard look at the relevant institutions.
• Karen reflects on the place where she grew up and the impact of issues like drugs and violence on the local community and the ways in which the community was acknowledged but not integrated.

20:00-26.00

• Christopher explains a little more about his thoughts on the South African Truth Commission and how the political and social inequality in South Africa differs from that in the United States making him suggest that a process of reconciliation would be fraught. He points out how civil rights issues specific to a country become intertwined with international human rights and how civil rights groups use international laws around human rights a.s a lever to change a situation in a particular country
• Todd reflects on his own work showing the gap between the legal changes improving the rights of Black American i.e. right to vote, access to education etc. and the lived reality of persistent social, political and legal inequalities. He says this gap is often used to lobby for change.

26.00-end

• The discussion turns to the Black Lives Matter campaign and Todd’s view that statistics clearly show disproportionate violence towards African Americans. Karen comments that there has been a continuous process of resistance through people’s day to day lives. She refers to US congressman John Lewis’s (she mistakenly says John Conyers’ but means Lewis’) use of the hashtag #goodtrouble on his Twitter account and a book called Necessary Trouble by Sarah Jaffe and the idea of what happens when you need to protest in a certain way to “trouble” the way certain issues are discussed. She points out that Black Lives Matter covers a wide and diverse range of groups not just groups looking at violence towards African Americans. She goes on to reference some of the sexual harassment allegations made against Donald Trump in the run up to the 2016 Presidential election and how that has prompted interesting and important discourse.
• Todd compares the Black Lives Matter movement to the Occupy movementand the similar strategies they employed. The discussion moves to how founding documents like the Declaration of Independence are used in ongoing lobbies for change. Christopher Phelps talks about the interaction of economic and social rights with political and legal rights and the need to balance both. He says he hopes the protest movements that have erupted in recent years manage to effect changes to policy. Karen mentions the flaws that exist in some of the original ‘founding’ documents used in the States and goes on to talk about her work on Haiti and the challenges that America’s history with slavery pose for modern discussions on racial equality.
• Todd reflects on the discussion and what it might mean for American history and for the future. He talks a little more about the role a Truth Commission might play. Christopher says that what could be happening in the States is a sort of ‘last gasp’ of people who don’t want to let go of the way things were. He says he’s optimistic about the attitudes of young people.
• Todd talks about the positive stories and ideas that have emerged across Series 1 of The Rights Track and how Series 2 will talk to people using academic evidence on human rights in their work to make the world a better place.

Useful links

• Radicals in America: The US Left since the Second World War
• Race and Revolution
• There’s no escaping the data: African Americans face injustice at every turn
• Why America needs a Truth Commission
• From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime review - disturbing history
• Greensboro Commission
• Brown v Board of Education
• An Appeal to the World
• Guardian investigation into killings of Black African Americans by police

0.00-7.20 mins

• Explanation and discussion of the term ‘marginalised others’ and how these groups are “branded”
• How this relates to the current migrant crisis in Europe, the UK and US and how it plays out in practice/politics/media around the world

7.20-13.30 mins

• Bill’s theoretical research tries to cut through discourse around marginalised groups including among human rights groups
• The importance of listening to and presenting voices that are not normally heard
• Todd asks Bill for his view on the Black Lives Matter lobby and the way it has been presented/misrepresented by some
• Bill mentions the French philosopher, Jacques Rancière and standing up for one’s rights
• Bill suggests the challenging discussions around Black Lives Matter may be a reason to be optimistic about the possibility of change although admits it may also be something of a sisyphean task

13.30-23.00

• Human rights is often framed in a very woeful way, but is this the best way?
• Bill talks about his content analysis of human rights teaching syllabi around the world and his reflections on how the negative terminology and language surrounding human rights impacts on students
• Are we only telling half the story when it comes to human rights? We should talk abut the joy associated with it too
• Todd talks about how The Rights Track podcast also indicates that there is a more positive story to tell about human rights. He specifically mentions episodes with Chris Fariss and James Ron
• Todd mentions Stephen Hopgood’s book, The Endtimes of Human Rights
• How looking at the joyful side of human rights opens up a new type of discourse and approach and a new way of looking at human rights
• Bill mentions his femicide research and his experiences talking with victims
• When we see people as victims we try to provide for them rather than learn from them says Bill
• Todd explains more about the circumstances of Bill’s research on the murders of numerous women in South America

23.00-end

• How can the joyful approach to human rights can be applied to questions around immigration?
• Bill talks about a former political prisoner in Eritrea who describes himself as a “human rights winner” rather than “victim or survivor”
• Migrants should not be reduced to their status as migrants or ‘victms’
• Bill acknowledges the complexities around the use of the term “joy” and how he is mindful of how that could be used to assume people have been helped enough or how people are sometimes “joyful” when carrying out abuses
• Todd concludes the interview referencing a book, The intimate history of killing

Further links provided by Bill Simmons

• The Marginalized Other - Facebook Page
• The Lost Boys Center Bill is President of the Board of Directors of this organization supporting the Lost Boys from South Sudan

Some of Bill’s favourite images

• A Mountaintop Day in South Africa in April 1994

Further links provided by our partners at Open GlobalRights

• Against reductionist views of human rights
• Decolonization—not western liberals—established human rights on the global agenda
• Human rights: past their sell-by date
• Human rights from the bottom up: beyond the ideological export model
• The hidden authors and missing histories of human rights

0.00-4.37

• Shareen talks about spending time in the field as a human rights researcher and advocate trying to help poorer people get work and to protect them from human rights abuses in the workplace *How Shareen’s academic work has fed into debates around human rights more widely, what they are, how they work, people’s attitudes towards them and how the local level work feeds into our understanding
• Discussion around how rights can emerge or be created as a result of social movements

4.37-10.20

• How Shareen conducts human rights research in a business context including surveys and participant observations, interviews etc./ corroborating evidence external sources, coding articles/archive information etc to build a story around these sorts of struggles
• What makes a successful rights movement? Shareen talks about pressures on poorer people and how NGOs and supporters can support social movements
• Some of the challenges/diffiulties that can emerge within social movements and how issues can be mediated/overcome

10.20-17.57

• How movements for change emerge within a business setting such as a factory where working conditions may be an issue
• How workers and consumers have a stake and responsibility in securing the human rights of workers creating products or providing services
• Shareen discusses the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s 6,000 company database that she has been using to assess the human rights performance of different sectors using a business and human rights framework
• How this work has prompted her to want to work more closely with the light manufacturing sector which is engaging least with workers’ groups
• How the ‘portability’ of light manufacturing businesses reduces the incentive for businesses to engage in dialogue with labour movements
• How the business and human rights framework can help companies make human rights a part of their own narrative
• Why businesses serving the college/university market are doing better then most - because students will protest if they don’t. Shareen gives example of a Living Wage Company called Alta Gracia in the Dominican Republic

17.57-end

• How does this translate to the consumer? discussion around whether people are prepared to pay more for ethical products
• Public opinion surveys in the States show more than 50% of poplar prefer to pay more to consume ethically and they want to see how the worker benefits from them paying more
• Making the business case for good practice. Shareen mentions the work of Richard Locke showing a clear link between productivity, product quality and human rights conditions
• Todd refers to the Ruggie Principles on business and human rights and Shareen explains how her work is closely connected to them

Additional links provided by Shareen Hertel

• Alta Gracia Appare
• UConn Today article on Hertel, Scruggs & Jeffords research on ethical consumption – consumers willing to pay more for ethical goods despite recession
• OpenGlobal Rights piece on Hertel’s research on Right to Food Campaign in India
• Hertel’s 2006 book, Unexpected Power
• Hertel (2010) article on public-private partnerships for human rights

Additional links provided by our partners at OpenGlobalRights

• Legal mobilization: a critical first step to addressing economic and social rights
• “What human rights?” Why some companies speak out while others don’t
• Mapping global business opinions on human rights
• Holding businesses to account in Latin America

0.00-04.10 mins

• Meg’s dual role as lawyer and researcher - what it means to have a foot in both camps
• The sort of research Meg is looking at - which methods are most likely to create change - why there is a gap in knowledge and understanding around the outcomes and impact of human rights advocacy work. The increasing pressure from funders of NGOs etc to evaluate and show impact. The importance of quantitative research in the context of achieving and demonstrating impact.

04.10-08.15

• Meg discusses work she is involved with on the right to water in gold mining areas in Haiti. She explains how local people get involved and ‘own’ the research, and the importance of balancing that with ensuring rigorous, robust methods that can be trusted.
• Why ‘comparable’ questions from other household surveys are used so that results from the project can be used in wider research in this area.
• The challenges of setting up this type of survey in a country like Haiti.

08.15 - 12.30

• How can human rights research be communicated most effectively to different audiences?
• The role and process of visualising data. The importance of making sure you don’t accidentally mislead people so making sure you have the right visualisation set in clear context to enable them to understand the data
• Meg gives an example of a data visualisation she used in research in Haiti on water use to make the issue relevant to her audience and help them understand it better
• Todd talks about how comics have been used to communicate injustice in Brazil.

12.30-15.15

• The dangers of misleading people - how Meg and data visualisation colleagues have designed an online experiment to look at how people can be deceived with data visualisation - see the project website
• Discussion of how some media outlets have distorted data deliberately but also how some misleading representations of data are used unwittingly by human rights groups for example

15.15- 22.20

• Tips on what advocates should think about to try to avoid pitfalls. Important to have someone who knows how to work with data either on the team or as consultant
• Meg refers to recent Rights Track episode with Patrick Ball on the importance of knowing when a data visualisation might be inherently misleading perhaps because the data isn’t good
• Question the data before using it. Understand target audience and how they like to consume data - Meg shares interesting findings from her research on this. Wider discussion about the different ways of presenting data, what can work/not work with a general audience. The importance of accompanying narrative/additional information, clarification of what a data visualisation tells us.
• Mention of a book by Edward Tufte which is a great starting point for non academics interested in using data visualisation effectively

22.20-end

• Meg’s new work on the negative impacts that human rights work can have on human rights workers’ mental health

Other useful links provided by Meg Satterthwaite

• Data Visualization for Human Rights Advocacy
• The Persuasive Power of Data Vizualization
• How Deceptive are Deceptive Data Vizualizations?
• Mental health functioning in the human rights field: Findings from an international internet-based survey
• The persuasive power of data visualisations
• Website of the Data Viz project I discussed It gives names etc of all collaborators in this project and info on our work, as well as resources for those interested in using DV in their HR work
• Podcast co-hosted by colleague and collaborator Enrico Bertini on data viz: Data Stories
• Ten Challenges to the Use of Data Visualization in Human Rights Blog post by Meg’s colleague and collaborator John Emerson on ethical issues in HR data viz.
• Crowd-sourced list of data visualisation examples - please feel free to add!

Suggested links from our partners at OpenGlobalRights

• Doubling down on human rights data
• Data-driven optimism for global rights activists
• Why framing matters—and polls only give you so much
• Research-based messaging changes public support for human rights
• Quantitative data in human rights: what do the numbers really mean?
• Violence data: what practitioners need to know

0.00-4.48

• How Rhoda got interested in food crime. She mentions an article by David Marcus which discusses four levels of state food crime: intentional, reckless, indifference and incompetence and argues that the intentional and reckless starvation of citizens should be considered an international crime.
• Rhoda explains how she produced a case study for each of the levels: on North Korea, Zimbabwe, Israel and Venezuela. She has also examined malnutrition in aboriginal people in Australia and Canada.
• Discussion of the law and the legal basis for these claims. Rhoda argues that food crime should have same status as torture.
• Existing human rights laws include the rights to be free from malnutrition as laid out in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. International Criminal Court has a clause prohibiting extermination of populations.
• Laws have not been consolidated though and possible or likely punishments are not clear so a case has never been made.

4.48-12.55

• Rhoda mentions the important work of the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen who argued that famine was caused by countries who did not allow political opposition, elections or freedom of the press based in part on the Great Famine in Ireland in the 19th Century.
• In her book, State Food Crimes published by Cambridge University Press, Rhoda examines famines in countries with totalitarian regimes: Soviet Union and Ukraine in the 1930s, China in 50s and 60s and Cambodia in the 1970s. She also looked at countries where there was some level of democracy e.g. Canada (but not for aborigines) and Ireland (voting for the English but not for the Irish) and in Germany post World War 1.
• Rhoda outlines and explains four additional rights that she developed from this research: right to citizenship, right to mobility, right to own your land/property and right to work.

12.55 -17.10

• Further discussion about Venezuela and the effect of price controls and other actions of Hugo Chavez’ government including hijacking of media for his own purposes, land invasions and the rise of political violence up to and since his death in 2013 and the uncertainty and continuing political violence and protests surrounding the new Government of Nicolas Maduro including reports of power and food rationing.

17.10 - end

• Discussion around accountability - who can be held accountable by whom and how for the sorts of things that Rhoda’s research reveals? Rhoda uses North Korea as an example of a country that could potentially be taken to court for starving its own people. She points out that other concerns about North Korea’s nuclear capability and the wider threat of this to the region and other parts of the world tend to take precedence.
• Todd summarises points made around the inter-relatedness of rights, how international human rights law is powerful in some areas and not in others, how accountability is difficult to prove and the competing priorities around power and access to weapons etc.

Further information and resources

Famine Crimes in International Law, David Marcus, The American Journal of International Law Colonialism and Under development in Ghana Rhoda Howard-Haussmann’s blog

Rights and Rightlessness: Rhoda Howard-Haussmann on Human Rights

Related articles from Rhoda’s blog

• Hugo Chavez and the Right to Food in Venezuela
• Venezuelan Update: Food Situation Worsens
• Venezuela: Demonstrations and Repression under Nicolas Maduro
• North Korean Slave Labour
• Crimes against humanity in North Korea
• Cannibalism in North Korea
• North Korea: Still one of the world’s most awful places to live (and die)
• African Union Chooses Dictator Mugabe as New Chair
• Property Rights of West Bank Palestinians
• Water Rights of West Bank Palestinians
• Canada: Malnourishment of Aboriginal Children
• 21st Century Malnutrition among Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples

Other related articles from OpenGlobalRights

• Legal mobilization: a critical first step to addressing economic and social rights
• Can legal interventions really tackle the root causes of poverty?
• The international treaty on economic and social rights has positive impacts
• Historic step towards access to justice for ESCR violations at UN
• The twilight of human rights law
• Twilight or dark glasses? A reply to Eric Posner

Last week saw the high profile killings of two young black men: Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge Louisiana and Philando Castille in St. Paul, Minnesota. Both killings were captured on video and widely shared on social media, raising significant questions about the use of force by the police and the role that race has to play in such encounters.

Shortly after these two incidents, the city of Dallas witnessed an attack by lone shooter Micah Xavier Johnson, who killed five police officers and wounded six others, while causing mass panic during what has been reported to be an otherwise peaceful protest led by the Black Lives Matter social movement. The events in Dallas once again underlined the challenges surrounding race, rights, and the ready availability of high-powered weaponry, with all sides on these issues framing the events in ways that advance different political agendas.

Since the 1961 Presidential Commission, the world has seen the emergence and proliferation of so-called ‘truth commissions’ that have mandates to provide thorough accounts of so-called ‘past wrongs’ that have taken place during prolonged periods of conflict (e.g. El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Sierra Leone), foreign occupation (e.g. East Timor), and authoritarian rule (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and South Africa).

Based on the Military Tribunal in Nuremburg after World War II, truth commissions typically collect different kinds of evidence using different kinds of methods and then issue reports on their findings. The evidence includes converting and analysing large numbers of statements made to the commission, in-depth case studies of the lived experiences of different communities, public hearings from victims and perpetrators, and other forms of evidence, including survey data, forensic information, archival and documentary evidence among many others.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is probably the most well known. It showed that more than 21,000 reported killings took place during the period of Apartheid. The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commissionusing more advanced statistical techniques estimated that between 61,007 and 77,552 people were killed between 1980 and 2000. These and other statistical findings raise awareness about the true nature and extent of violence, the kinds of people who become victims, and findings on the perpetrators of the killings. In the United States, the total number of deaths from gun violence over the last three decades far exceeds the totals reported in truth commissions and other civil wars around the world in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

While there is much debate about the structure, design, outcomes, and impact of truth commissions, they do provide a moment in history for the public acknowledgment of past wrongs and a national reckoning, which seeks to be inclusive of all stakeholders, victims, survivors, and their families and friends.

Many lessons have been learned and many stories of suffering have been shared and acknowledged. Different models for truth commissions have been adopted, while debates in countries such as Spain and the UK (i.e. Northern Ireland) continue as to whether such a body would be appropriate. Indeed, it was only in the past few years that Brazil decided to establish its own truth commission to address the period of military rule between 1964 and 1985.

In the United States there is also a precedent. The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought to understand and explain violence that took place in November 1979 as a result of conflict between The Communist Workers Party and the Ku Klux Klan. The commission was independent and comprised democratically elected members who sought truth and healing for a city that had been left divided and weakened.

An American Truth Commission

What would an American Truth Commission look like? Like Greensboro, it would need to be independent and have either appointed or democratically elected commissioners, ranging from lawyers, academics, prominent religious leaders, leading media representatives, and members of the general public. It could be established by executive decree (as was done by John F Kennedy with the Commission on the Status of Women) and hosted by the US Institute for Peace (USIP), which has carried out analysis and support for truth commissions around the world.

The USIP was established by Congress and is located on the banks of the Potomac River in Washington DC. Its work could be assisted by the International Centre for Transitional Justice, a leading non-governmental organisation based in New York City that has also analysed and supported truth commissions around the world.

The American Truth Commission should examine the period from the promulgation of the War on Drugs in 1971 during the Nixon Administration to the present day. Its focus should be on the social, economic, legal, and political status of all groups in America. It should be inclusive of all main political factions and bear witness to all groups affected by the cycle of violence, poverty, and division in American society. It should carry out rigorous and systematic epidemiological analysis of gun violence, focusing on the true nature and extent of the violence. It should hear testimony from the gun lobby, gun control lobby, health professionals, the police and other law enforcement officials, civil liberties groups among many others with a view on violence in America.

Such a commission would take time and would produce a significant number of volumes, like the truth commissions mentioned above and much like the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War published last week in the United Kingdom. It would provide a moment of pause for America to listen to itself. To its own voices. To its own people. To its own pain. It would require maturity and patience, and it would require honesty from all sides.

The alternative to having such a commission is further division and a cycle of violence that will not solve any of the ongoing problems and the continued death of citizens. Many commentators worry that America is now at a significant tipping point, where unresolved differences, a highly contested and fraught electoral campaign, and the continued access to guns provides the foundations for a failed state and a downward spiral into civil war, or at least a chilling echo of the societal unrest that characterised America in 1968.

Only by stepping back, coming together, sharing stories, and once again connecting in ways that recognise our common human dignity can we find the much-needed foundation for peace, reconciliation, and a secure future for our children.

0.00-8.55 mins

• Todd outlines Patrick’s work testifying against Slobodan Milosevic, on numerous truth commissions and the evidence he provided at the trial of General Ríos Montt in Guatemala.
• How statistics can be used in general to advance human rights by showing patterns rather than specific individual cases
• What Patrick means by ‘making the violation the unit of analysis’ using example from El Salvador and how this approach can help in efforts to hold individuals and countries to account and how it prevents us from missing key information and complexities
• Todd talks about parallels with Chile

8.55-17.20 mins

• Patrick talks about where he gets his data and information from: voices/testimonies of survivors and victims of mass violence are collected and then coded for quantitative analysis
• How this is defined by the governing legal structure i.e. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rightsor local and domestic law
• Why the only truly reliable witness account is of killing/deaths and why this and violence are what Patrick and HRDAG focus on these in their research
• The key elements in a testimony that are required for the a violation to be counted and to tackle the problem of people fabricating evidence

17.20-23.32

• How statistical modelling can be used to account for unreported deaths
• Example of how in the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Patrick and his team came up with a figure of 69,000 deaths from 17,000 statements on human rights abuses between 1980 and 2000
• How concern about underreporting deaths during Apartheid in South Africa prompted Patrick and his team to develop methods to account for missing accounts
• Explanation of Multiple Systems Estimation and how Patrick employs it to estimate actual deaths and take account of the multiple views presented in data collection
• How this method helps to close the gap between what we think we know and what is likely to be the truth of the matter - how that can reveal the scale of the issue
• Explanation of how people in Lima reacted negatively to the statistics because they didn’t have a representative view of what had happened in war torn rural regions
• Anecdotal accounts versus statistical accounts - how statistical accounts can help us check our preconceptions

23.32-28.30 mins

• How the law community criticises use of statistics for failing to show ‘intentionality’
• Patrick explains how statistics are just one piece of the evidence when a case is being built and made in a court of law and the other information that is required to make that case
• The difference between proof and evidence and taking account of this in the process of showing human rights abuses and holding individuals, groups, governments and countries to account
• How statistics are one part of the puzzle of who did what to whom and why they are not a silver bullet

28.30-end

• New work by HRDAG on killings in Syria - challenges of collecting data but how NGOs have been collecting what Patrick believes to be reliable accounts of deaths

Other useful links

• How many Peruvians have died?

Related content on openGlobalRights

• Violence data: what practitioners need to know
• Quantitative data in human rights: what do the numbers really mean?
• Finding balance: evaluating human rights work in complex environments

0.00-5.46 minutes

• Todd sets the context including how in the UK attitudes have turned against human rights e.g. in the popular press and discussions around the Human Rights Act and whether or not the UK should get rid of it. How human rights are portrayed as protecting criminals and terrorists
• Jim explains how human rights has absorbed political and social baggage and taken on different meanings for different people
• Negative attitudes like those in the UK not apparent in other countries
• How Jim’s research is going about measuring attitudes to human rights and the countries he’s looked at (India, Morocco, Nigeria and Mexico
• Some human rights related background on each country and the reasons for selecting them
• Jim talks about his stance as a “critic” of human rights and of human rights organisations and his surprise at his findings on how positively ordinary people view them

5.47-11.51 minutes

• How Jim’s research defines ‘supportive’, what sorts of questions participants in the survey are asked and the scales used
• Some top level findings on overall support for human rights
• How the human rights community thinks the public ‘hates’ them for ‘protecting criminals and terrorists’ and how this sentiment is not supported by the data
• How the results might be different in countries where the human rights community has been ‘named and shamed’ or attacked by Governments
• Some discussion about trade offs between security and human rights - Jim explains how this will be for future surveys but this survey was just to gain some base line reactions from people
• Explanation of findings around trust in international and local human rights organisations - it’s much higher than for politicians but lower than for religious institutions

11.52-21.25

• More on the religious findings - challenging to decipher overall though Catholics most trusting of human rights organisations
• Discussion around links between levels of religiosity (social and personal) and support for human rights
• Most interesting findings from each country (inc. links with women’s rights, foreign v local funding, multi-national business i.e. oil exploitation, criminals and terrorists)
• People did not, on the whole, associate human rights with the US’ geo-political agenda - contradicts some current thinking, particularly Stephen Hopgood in Endtimes for Human Rights
• Why human rights groups need to engage with both Catholic and Muslim populations

21.25-end

• Broader messages of the research i.e. gap between what scholars and the human rights community thinks and what ordinary people think
• People think relatively positively about human rights
• Human rights world too immersed in a debate with elites and not with ordinary people
• Jim acknowledges that the work needs to go a lot further, be replicated and extended etc.
• Some details of the forthcoming book, likely to be called Diffusing Rights: The Human Rights Word and its Messengers out in 2017 with OUP

Other links

• James Ron’s personal website
• Marketing of rebellion, by Clifford Bob
• Open Global Rights *Data-driven optimism for global rights activists *Public opinion and human rights – What can (and can’t) we learn from surveys?

0.00-5.55 minutes

• Explanation of how the Human Development Index and associated reports came about and those involved in their concept and development
• The thinking behind the HDI and how it was designed to rival GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of economic success and a better measurement of how countries and their population are progressing and developing
• How the HDI challenged current thinking and perspectives on evaluating progress by focusing on freedoms to do and be what we value
• Defining well-being as people’s capabilities e.g. the ‘right to be able to read’ or the ‘right to have an education’

5.55-9.30 minutes

• How the HDI works - its scoring system
• How the HDI enabled measurement and analysis to catch the attention of policy makers, and global leaders for the first time
• How the Index offers us interesting new insights into how well or badly a country is doing in using its economic resources to better the lives of its people (examples given of Cuba and Costa Rica)

9.30-21.25

• An explanation of the difference between human development and human rights
• How Sakiko and colleagues came to develop the Social and Economic Rights Fulfilment Index (SERF)
• Sakiko’s personal motivation for setting up an Index for measuring social and economic rights and the links between human development and human rights
• The political (Reagan-Thatcher era) context and backdrop of the development the Index and the tensions around the ideas being put forward
• Sakiko draws comparison between some of the issues of that time with what’s been happening with austerity in countries like Greece
• How and why the HDI developed into the SERF Index
• Taking account of resource constraints in the measurement and analysis
• The challenges and debates among academics and practitioners around whether or not it was possible to create an effective measurement tool for economic and social rights
• How data was key to creating the index
• The sorts of things that were taken into consideration in the Index

21.25-26.34

• The components of the SERF Index and how those things are drawn from the core rights laid out in law in the International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights
• The Achievement Possibility Frontier - what it is and how it works
• Sakiko gives examples of how the Index is used to analyse a country’s performance on things like achieving the right to food/income etc. and compare that with other countries

26.34-end

• What the Index has achieved and how it has helped developed our ability to measure progress
• What the Index tells us over time
• The constraints that go beyond GDP, e.g. how something like Ebola can compromise how a country can deliver the right to heat
• SERF Index as a resource for researchers

Other links

• It’s about values: human rights norms and tolerance for inequality interesting article from Sakiko published on OpenGlobalRights

The publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century heralded a new age of engagement with the problem of inequality. Unlike previous work on inequality, Piketty turned his economic gaze away from developing countries and focused instead on patterns of income and wealth concentration in the developed economies of the United States and Europe. He argues that inequality matters for the long-term economic health of countries. But what about the consequences of inequality that reach beyond the economy?

Though Philip Alston argues that extreme inequality is the very antithesis of human rights, one strand in economic theory has long argued that some inequality is not only good, but also necessary for development: concentration of income provides the needed capital for investment in businesses and jobs. This line of argument also holds that a period of increasing inequality is temporary and will ease with time as a country develops, and subsequently, income distribution becomes more equal. This argument and the policies that supported it characterised much of development economics from the 1970s and the so-called “Washington Consensus” on the need for developing countries to allow price mechanisms to allocate resources in their economies.

The period of so-called Reaganomics or “voodoo” economics a la Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in the 1980s took this argument and applied it to already developed economies such as the US and the UK, where marginal tax rates were slashed and the promise of “trickle down” benefits would create new businesses and jobs. Analysis of tax returns data, long-term income and wealth data, and new data visualisation on income inequality in the United States shows that the policies set out in the Reagan period have by and large continued, and that income inequality is now much worse than in the years just before the Great Depression. Remarkably, the top quintile of wealthy Americans own 84% of all income, a figure that is not dissimilar to those found in the other advanced economies analysed by Piketty, and a figure that remains largely unknown to most Americans.

As America is in an election year, the topic of inequality is at the forefront of the campaign. Bernie Sanders has made it a pillar of his campaign and seeks redress through a new programme of redistribution that harks back to the days of FDR, while Hilary Clinton speaks of “breaking down barriers” that have held the middle and working classes back from a decent and expected lifestyle. Republicans are not addressing the issue as openly as the Democrats, but late last summer, Donald Trump claimed that wealthy Americans would need to pay more tax, while middle class Americans should have a tax cut.

How does this rising and persistent inequality in advanced economies affect the protection of human rights? As Radhika Balakrishnan and James Heintz noted earlier in this debate, inequality threatens all rights, not just economic and social rights. In 2009, Marco Larizza now at the World Bank and I published a study in International Studies Quarterly, which showed that high levels of income and land inequality are related to high levels in the violation of personal integrity rights. Our paper was inspired by patterns of inequality and human rights abuse observed in the case of Brazil, which we then generalised across a pooled cross-section time-series data set of 162 countries for the period 1980 to 2004. Our argument centred on the micro-foundations for inequality in which the “haves” in society have incentives to maintain the status quo. They welcome government polices that maintain control of the resources that they have and prevent access for those “have nots” in society—prevention policies that may well include the violation of human rights.

In addition to the statistically significant relationship between inequality and human rights that we found, we argued further that the marginal effects of inequality are quite substantial both in absolute terms and relative to the other factors that we considered (e.g., democracy, ethnic fragmentation, domestic conflict, population size and economic development). In other words, redistribution of income can lead to improvements in the protection of human rights. Conversely, an increase in inequality can lead to a decrease in the protection of human rights.

Just as the problem of inequality has now travelled to the developed world, I am increasingly concerned that its relationship with the violation of human rights has also arrived. It is less common to speak of human rights abuse in the United States and other advanced industrial countries (for an exception see Foweraker and Krznaric) but consider a few stylised facts that sit alongside those already known about the increase in income inequality. The US has the highest incarceration rates in the world as a proportion of its total population (>700 per 100,000 people], where the increase in rates over time maps precisely the rise in income inequality. Over the last 40 years the total prison population has quintupled. Prison sentences in themselves are not human rights violations, but it is telling that policy changes that have led to the increase in incarceration rates (and not an increase in crime rates) coincide with policy changes that have led to concentrations of income.

Alongside the rising rate of incarceration, there has also been an increase in the number of police killings in the United States an increase in arrest-related deaths, and increasing concern over the militarization of US police forces. More worryingly, across both measures of incarceration and police killings, secondary analysis also shows that a disproportionate number of prisoners and victims of police shootings are African American, while data for 2015 confirm that the pattern of disproportionate killing continues unabated.

The consequences of inequality are not just confined to the economic realm. As resources become more and more concentrated in the hands of the few, there are strong incentives for those in positions of societal and governmental power to maintain the status quo. Mobilization against such measures and social dislocations that result from them are met with greater incarceration, greater firepower, and sadly, more state violence against those that are most marginalised in society. The lessons of Piketty are clear for the economy, but we must also remain mindful of the human rights consequences of inequality, and work to mitigate its worst effects.

Further information

This article was first published in the Open Global Rights section of Open Democracy and is reproduced here with their kind permission.

00.00-6.20 mins

• Why it’s important to measure slavery and why it’s a major challenge to do so
• The advances and pushes that have taken place in the last decade to account for slavery
• Some historical context around the abolition of slavery
• The importance of understanding and agreeing a core definition of modern day slavery rather than enumerating examples of it
• An interesting example of how slavery can operate in India

6.20-11.00 mins

• The Global Slavery Index - what it is and what it tells us about the prevalence of slavery in the world
• What data has been collected and is available
• Issues around sample sizes and how these have been addressed
• Qatar - how the Index has gathered information from individuals in ‘supplying countries’ to determine extent of the problem in a country which won’t allow researchers in to determine the extent of slavery

11.00-17.44

• Using a scale to ‘name and shame’ worst offenders via the media but why this approach has shortcomings
• How Kevin and colleagues have used the Index to push Governments and countries that ‘should and could’ be doing better e.g. Norway
• The geographical spread of slaves in a country and the developments being made in accounting for that
• Plans to survey individual states in India
• The thinking behind the maps presented on the Index and the techniques and sources used to get estimations and predictions for countries where surveys are not undertaken
• Work published in the Royal Statistical Society’s Worldwide Statistics Day issue on the work of the Global Slavery Index

17.45-22.33 mins

• Prevalence of slavery in Europe - research featured in Human Rights Quarterly
• Explanation of the ‘Dark Figure’ in accounting for crimes - the gap between the reported incidents of a crime and the actual figure and the problems applying that to slavery
• The large and alarming dark figures for for European, particularly Eastern European countries
• The proportions of victims of slavery that Kevin estimates are captured in the Index

22.33-30.00 mins

• Slavery in Great Britain - difficulties of applying surveys in rich countries
• Using multiple systems estimations in slavery crime (including an explanation of how that works)
• How Kevin worked with the Home Office and the legal/political/ethical challenges that posed
• How they used different lists to estimate slavery in GB as 11-15,000 cases
• Positive response from policy makers and civil servants and other countries in using this approach
• How these techniques could be employed at a local level
• Why reliable metrics can help progress

30.00-end

• Kevin’s book Blood and Earth
• Ecocide - what it is and why we need to think about it
• How Kevin came to investigate the links between slavery and environmental degradation
• The links between deforestation and slavery
• Some interesting facts and figures around slavery and what happens when you take deforestation into account
• What all this means for climate change i.e. the enforcement of anti slavery laws could help reduce carbon emissions

Additional reading for interest from our collaborator Open Democracy

• Workers’ rights really are human rights
• Beyond slavery

We are saddened to learn that Will Moore died on 19 April 2017. Professor Moore gave tirelessly of his time to advance the cause of human rights. He was a hugely successful and highly published scholar who not only advanced the quantitative analysis of human rights and political violence, but also supported students and early career researchers through inclusion, sharing, and co creation of knowledge. His contribution has been considerable and he will be sorely missed. It was a privilege to interview him about his work for this episode of The Rights Track.

In Episode 3 of the Rights Track, Todd asks Professor Will Moore, Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Arizona State University about the methods he uses to try to count victims of torture.

0.00-5.25 mins

• the challenges that organisations and researchers face when trying to count victims of torture accurately
• why Will and colleagues have moved towards trying to estimate the numbers better
• the traditional methods for counting victims of torture
• Amnesty International and the US State’s early efforts in this area
• the flaws in those approaches

5.26-11.27 mins

• Will’s Ill Treatment & Torture Data Collection Project
• accessing the data set and how to use it to draw inferences from it
• how Will developed some complex statistical models to help analyse the available data
• controlling for and correcting any potential bias caused the selective focus of organisations like Amnesty in focusing on particular countries at a particular time

11.28-15.48 mins

• the potential applications of the data set and associated statistical models
• the problems with using things like the Political Terror Scale and The Cingranelli and Richards Human Rights Data Project
• the standards that groups like Amnesty are trying to apply when raising human rights abuse allegations
• the ‘political’ calculations Amnesty is making to keep their supporters on board
• the considerations that groups like Human Rights Watch has when considering how to bring a case forward including real example

15.49-24.50

• how researchers can work with the data to try to get to a better estimate of the patterns of what is happening
• how the data have been coded by Will and his team
• the rich data that are available
• the CIA torture report and other well documented evidence of torture that has and will continue to emerge
• people’s attitudes in different countries to torture - Amnesty survey
• a summary of Will’s project, the data and its availability/open processes and procedures that have been used in its creation and use

Other useful links

• The Quantitative Peace blog mentioned by Todd by K.Chad Clay, Mapping Torture Allegations using ITT

0.00-5.20 mins

• the types of organisations Amanda researches and why
• what an NGO is, the sorts of things they are set up to do, how they are funded and operate
• questions of co-ordination and accountability including an example from Nigeria

5.20-12.17 mins

• the role of marketing and the conflict between inside and external communities when it comes to understanding and framing an issue
• how much this matters for the effectiveness on the ground when it comes to making a lasting difference
• professionalisation and financial sustainability of NGOs/viability
• the work being done on why NGOs do or don’t survive and the tactics they need to employ to remain viable
• an example Todd’s work looking at the work of NGOs for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see if they were doing what they said they would do
• why it’s important that NGOs be innovative and nimble

12.17-17.14 mins

• the notion of a trans national network of INGOs working between State level and the United Nations and whether it can achieve change at ground level
• Amanda’s analysis using large numbers of countries and organisations over time
• the main findings of Amanda’s work that human rights NGOs with a domestic presence and connection to the local population/community are able to make the most difference on the ground
• where NGOs are not able to work in a country, the ability to work from a neighbouring country or close by is also linked to greater effectiveness
• the risks faced particularly by human rights NGOs including terrorist attacks

17.14-21.15 mins

• what motivates Amanda to do the work she does and the theories she has tried to test
• the circumstances in which INGOs are least effective
• Amanda’s goats!

Other resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Find out more about Amanda’s book Help or harm: the human security effects of International NGOs
• Download The NGO Scramble article mentioned by Amanda from the Belfer Centre website
• Find out more about Clifford Bob’s book, The Marketing of Rebellion from the publisher’s website
• Find out more about Sarah Bush’s book Taming of Democracy Assistance
• Find out more about Todd’s work, Evaluation of Nine Non Governmental Human Rights Organisations
• Find out more about the book mentioned by Todd, The Power of Human Rights from the publisher’s website and The Persistent Power of Human Rights
• Find out more about the paper mentioned by Amanda on the risks facing NGOs. It’s called Why Target the Good Guys? and published in International Interactions: Empirical and Theoretical Research in International Relations

In it, Todd outlines how we got our podcast off the ground, why podcasting is such a great vehicle to discuss and share big ideas, how it works and why he thinks more academics should give podcasting a go.

0.00-5.00 mins they discuss whether:

• the way we measure the human rights performance of different countries has improved in recent years
• there is more information available on people’s lived experiences of human rights abuses
• our increased awareness of human rights problems has led to increased condemnation of countries
• our expectations of how a country will behave are higher than they used to be

05:00-13:02 mins is a discussion of Chris’ research, specifically Respect for human rights has improved over time: modelling the changing standard of accountability. This part of the episode includes:

• an explanation of ‘changing standard of accountability’
• the data Chris used and the model he created to account for how the quality of his source information might change
• mention of the Political Terror Scale
• The Cingranelli and Richards Human Rights Data Project
• an explanation of Item Response Theory
• an explanation of how the model Chris developed works to measure the human rights performance of countries more scientifically

13:03-22.20 mins Todd and Chris discuss:

• the availability of the data
• getting students/coders to work with the data
• dealing with possible bias in data
• how Chris is taking his research further by updating the data, using new sources of information and applying it to different types of human rights abuse including Civil rights abuses
• our perspectives of human rights abuses over time compared with what the evidence tells us - do events like the Paris attacks and Syria influence our perspective and make us think that human rights are less protected than before
• the importance of putting events like these into context systematically
• what Chris’ research tells us about what’s really happening with human rights over time

The project is gratefully funded by the Nuffield Foundation and features a collection of podcasts from leading scholars around the world engaged in systematic human rights research.

The podcasts are hosted by me, Todd Landman and are produced by former BBC journalist and founder of Research Podcasts, Christine Garrington.

This resource has been long in the making, and is now ready to be shared to the world. For this launch, we thought it might be good to provide some context and background to why we think this is a good idea.

Promoting and protecting human rights

In February 2016, I will have a new article appearing in the journal Human Rights Quarterly entitled Rigorous Morality: Norms, Values and the Comparative Politics of Human Rights. In it I argue that there is a strong role for empirical analysis that addresses fundamental normative questions. For us, the promotion and protection of human rights is one such area of normative focus that can and should be subjected to empirical analysis.

Since the 1980s, social scientists have developed a variety of theories, methods, and measures for comparing, assessing, and explaining the variation in human rights performance across many countries and over time.

Methods of analysis have included quantitative approaches based on the careful assembly of different kinds of human rights and human rights-related data, including data on events and violations, scales on human rights conditions, survey data on perceptions and experiences of human rights, and socio-economic and administrative statistics relating to human rights concerns. These approaches focus on the differences (or variation) in numbers as they relate to human rights and build models to explain that variation, which are then tested using advanced statistical techniques.

There have also been qualitative approaches, such as in-depth interviewing, participant observation, action research, ethnography, and narrative analysis, where the focus is on the difference ‘in kind’ of human rights experiences, interpretations, stories, impressions, and feelings among those who have suffered violations themselves or have had friends and families who have had similar experiences.

While quantitative approaches to human rights problems are primarily focussed on explanation of variation, qualitative approaches are primarily focused on understanding of human rights situations and experiences.

In either case, many scholars of human rights seek to use evidence about human rights to make strong inferences that can, and in many cases are, used for human rights advocacy.

Advancing human rights

Over the course of my research career in human rights, I have taught, researched, and applied social scientific methods of analysis to and for a wide range of human rights scholars and practitioners. In discussing this work we have been struck by the incredible passion across so many scholars for the subject and the amazing advances that have been made in the collection, analysis, and use of human rights evidence.

The human rights movement can be traced to the abolitionist movement in the 19th Century and certainly gathered pace in the inter-war years and in the run up to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, there has been a proliferation of international human rights law that has expanded both in depth (an increasing articulation and delineation of rights) and breadth (an increasing number of states that have ratified the international treaties).

This expansion in law and general global awareness about human rights is the fruit of much hard work from human rights advocates, practitioners, scholars, lawyers, diplomats, and national leaders who have come together in a wide range of public meetings at the local, national, and international level.

Advocacy work in human rights is often highly contested, fraught with difficulty, denial and setback, but has made tremendous advances over the course of the 20th Century. Human rights scholarship in general and social scientific analysis in particular has also made tremendous advances in the late 20th and early 21st century. There are undergraduate, postgraduate taught, and postgraduate research programmes dedicated to human rights, and scholars from these programmes go onto to do amazing things all over the world for the advance of human rights.

Connecting with wider audiences

Much of this work is disseminated through quite traditional means: classrooms, seminar sessions, academic conferences, peer reviewed journal articles, research monographs, policy papers, and advocacy documents. All of these are excellent vehicles for communicating human rights research and human rights findings; however, we feel that they nevertheless remain quite limited and often do not connect with wider audiences.

So we see The Rights Track as filling a real gap in the field of human rights research. The podcast format allows you the listener to engage with human rights research differently. You hear the scholar in his or her words. You learn about why they study what the study; how they studied what they studied; what they found out from their research and why that matters for human rights.

We have a wonderful community of scholars that we are going to share with you over the coming twelve months. They are a diverse group with a variety of different motivations for studying human rights. They have singled out a wide range of different questions that their research seeks to address and have used different research methods.

Above all,our Rights Track guests are curious and passionate about the state of human rights in the world. You will hear in their own words what has motivated them, how they have studied the world, what they have learned and why what they have learned is important for you to hear.

So, on this International Human Rights Day, we welcome you to The Rights Track. May all your evidence about human rights be sound!

Todd Landman