RightsCast

The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials from being held personally liable for constitutional violations, and thus poses a significant challenge for individuals seeking compensation for abuses of public power in the US. In light of continuing police brutality against Black Lives Matter protesters, many are calling for the doctrine to be reformed or abolished.

In this episode, Dr Haim Abraham is joined by Nimra Azmi, Prof. Joanna Schwartz and Dr Jennifer Page to discuss how qualified immunity shields police officers from personal liability for wrongful use of force, and how other avenues of justice and reparations might be explored.

Nimra Azmi is a staff attorney at Muslim Advocates, where she she uses litigation and other tools of legal advocacy to protect American Muslim individuals and communities from discrimination and bigotry.

Joanna Schwartz is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. She teaches Civil Procedure and a variety of courses on police accountability and public interest lawyering. Professor Schwartz is a leading  expert on police misconduct litigation in the US. Professor Schwartz additionally studies the dynamics of modern civil litigation. She is co-author, with Stephen Yeazell, of a leading casebook, Civil Procedure (10th Edition).

Dr Jennifer Page is a postdoctoral fellow at University of Zurich’s Department of Philosophy, where her research focuses on reparations and state accountability.

Dr. Haim Abraham is a Lecturer at the University of Essex School of Law. His research focuses on the liability of public bodies and officials and private law theory, and he teaches Tort Law, The Law of Obligations, and Contract Law. Dr. Abraham holds a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from the University of Toronto, a Master of Law degree from the University of Cambridge, and a Bachelor of Law degree combined with the Interdisciplinary Honours Program in the Humanities from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was on the editorial board of the Israel Law Review.

Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits the restriction of rights for any other purpose than those for which they are prescribed. It aims to prevent the abuse of power by state authorities, or the restriction of rights for illegitimate purposes. In this episode, Prof. Başak Çalı and Dr Corina Heri join Daragh Murray to discuss the history of Article 18, the case law around it, and whether it can speak to the rule of law crisis unfolding in Europe today.

Prof. Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Director of the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. Çalı is the Chair of European Implementation Network and a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex. She has acted as a Council of Europe expert on the European Convention on Human Rights since 2002. She received her PhD in International Law from the University of Essex in 2003.

Dr Corina Heri is a researcher in international human rights law. She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL) since 2017. Before that, she completed her PhD research at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2017.

Open Source Researchers of Color (OSROC), a collective of open-source researchers and investigators, recently published a guide to help protestors protect themselves against police surveillance both online and offline. Their guide includes tips on how to communicate safely before and during protests, how to evade facial recognition technology, and how to responsibly post or preserve photos and videos.

Access the Protestor Privacy Guide here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12On3cg4figX2arDOl3ymDGOyBqbtpB1bNVh7maCurRU/edit

Read more about the project here: https://citizenevidence.org/2020/06/03/protecting-protester-privacy-against-police-surveillance/

Shakiba Mashayekhi is a member of OSROC and has previously worked as a Project Manager at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Investigations Lab. @shxiba

Leenah Bassouni previously worked as an open source investigator at the Human Rights Investigations Lab at UC Berkeley and is currently a postgraduate student in MA Human Rights Law at SOAS. @diasporaleenah

Rachael Cornejo previously worked as an open source investigator at the Human Rights Investigations Lab at UC Berkeley and also works at the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. @RachaelCornejo

No Recourse to Public Funds is a key part of the UK government's Hostile Environment policy, designed and intended to make the lives of illegal immigrants difficult. In this episode, Kimberly Garande of We Belong and Andy Jolly of the University of Wolverhampton join Daragh Murray to discuss the impact that NRPF has on migrants' lives, and how hostile environment policies more widely have turned regular people, from NHS workers to school teachers, into agents of border enforcement. Plus, Koldo Casla of the University of Essex explains how the No Recourse to Public Funds policy puts the UK in breach of its international human rights obligations. 

Kimberly Garande was born in Zimbabwe and migrated to the UK aged 9. She now works as Outreach Officer at We Belong, an organisation of young UK migrants campaigning for a shorter, more affordable route to settlement.

In England, 1.3 million school-aged children rely on Free School Meals throughout the year. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has launched a food voucher scheme to ensure that children who were missing school do not go hungry. However, by planning to end the voucher scheme before the summer holidays, the government is leaving children to go hungry and increasing the strain on local organisations already struggling to meet the basic needs of desperate families across the UK .

Many have spoken out about this issue and are placing pressure on the government to reverse their decision to end the food voucher scheme, including 16-year-old student Christina from London and footballer Marcus Rashford. You can read more about their campaigns here:

The Good Law Project and Sustain’s campaign: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/dont-let-children-go-hungry/

Christina’s petition: https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-don-t-take-away-lunches-for-1-3-million-kids-on-free-school-meals

Marcus Rashford’s letter to MPs: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jun/15/protect-the-vulnerable-marcus-rashfords-emotional-letter-to-mps

Candice James is Manager of Loughborough Community Centre at Max Roach in Brixton, South London. Twitter: @can_jam

Imogen Richmond-Bishop is Communications, Research, and Advocacy Manager for Just Fair, an organisation which monitors and advocates for the protection of economic and social rights (ESR) in the UK. She is also the Right to Food project coordinator for Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming.

UNHCR have released a set of documents relating to protection considerations in the context of the COVID-19 response here: https://www.refworld.org/covid19.html

Roughly 75% of refugees live in overcrowded camps, settlements or shelters around the world, where they lack access to adequate sanitation, and are therefore extremely vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode of RightsCast, Dr. Madeline Garlick of UNHCR and Professor Geoff Gilbert of the University of Essex discuss the work to protect the 80 million people of concern to UNHCR globally, and how that work is adapting to the challenges posed by Coronavirus.

Dr. Madeline Garlick is Chief of the Protection Policy and Legal Advice Section at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She is also Guest Researcher at the Centre for Migration Law, Radboud University, the Netherlands, and teaches on an occasional basis at Sciences Po, Paris, Oxford University and at the College of Europe, Bruges. Madeline was responsible for UNHCR’s liaison with the EU institutions from 2004–2013. She has worked for the Migration Policy Institute, the UN in Cyprus and Bosnia and Herzegovina on legal issues related to the rights of displaced people. She is a qualified barrister and solicitor in Victoria, Australia.

Geoff Gilbert is a Professor of Law in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law from 2002-15 and is co-Editor-in-Chief as of September 2019; he also sits on the Advisory Board. In 2014 he was appointed a consultant to UNHCR (with Anna Magdalena Rüsch) on Rule of Law: Engagement for Solutions and is part of the Solutions Alliance Thematic Group on Rule of Law. He has carried out human rights training on behalf of the Council of Europe and UNHCR in the Russian Federation (Siberia, the Urals and Kalmykskaya), Georgia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Kosovo.

Get updates from ECCHR on the trial here: https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/trial-monitoring-first-trial-worldwide-on-torture-in-syria/

In the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany, two former Syrian intelligence officials are currently on trial for crimes against humanity. Anwar R and Eyad A are both accused of torture which allegedly took place between 2011 and 2012 at the General Intelligence Directorate’s al-Khatib detention facility in Damascus, also known as Branch 251.

Universal jurisdiction provides states jurisdiction over crimes against international law even when the crime did not occur on that state’s territory and when the perpetrator is not a national of that state. However, the principle has been relatively underused in recent years. Could the Al-Khatib trial be the turning point in a new resurgence of universal jurisdiction cases?

Joumana Seif started her work as a human rights activist in Damascus in 2001 with a focus on political prisoners. As a lawyer, she supported the democratic movements in Syria, representing political prisoners. In 2012, one year after the start of the uprising against the Assad government, Seif left Syria. She co-founded the Syrian Women's Network and Syrian Women Political Movement (SWPM). In May 2017, she joined ECCHR as a research fellow in the International Crimes and Accountability program with a particular focus on sexualized and gender-based violence.

Andreas Schüller joined ECCHR in 2009 and directs the International Crimes and Accountability program. He graduated from law school in Trier, Germany, studied in Orléans (France), holds a LL.M. advanced degree from Leiden University, Netherlands, in Public International Law and International Criminal Law and is admitted to the Berlin bar. Schüller works on US torture and drone strikes, UK torture in Iraq, war crimes in Sri Lanka and Syria as well as further international crimes cases. He publishes and lectures on international criminal law and human rights enforcement.

The human rights issues emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe are unprecedented and wide-ranging. In this episode, Daragh Murray is joined by Judith Bueno de Mesquita and Koldo Casla to discuss the right to health and economic and social rights, but also the importance of international solidarity extending beyond human rights. Plus, we hear from Human Rights Centre alum Matteo Bassetti, who gives an insight into the current situation in Italy, where they are more than two weeks into a nationwide lockdown.

Judith Bueno de Mesquita is a Lecturer and Co-Deputy Director of the Human Rights Centre in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre. Her research focuses on health and human rights, development and rights, and economic, social and cultural rights. She has particular interests in sexual and reproductive health, as well as the work on health and rights of UN institutions. Her current research focuses on the relationship of health and other social rights, and climate change, health and rights. She is currently the coordinator of the Economic and Social Rights Academic Network UK and Ireland (ESRAN UKI).

In this blog post, Judith explores key human rights questions for the UK in the COVID-19 pandemic: https://hrcessex.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/covid-19-key-human-rights-questions-for-the-uk/

Dr Koldo Casla is Lecturer in Law and Deputy Director of the Human Rights Centre Clinic. He leads the Centre’s 'Human Rights Local' project. Between 2016 and 2019, Koldo was the Policy Director of Just Fair, leading the organisation's research, strategic communications, partnerships and campaigning on economic and social rights in the UK.

Read Koldo’s piece on the importance of solidarity beyond human rights: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/coronavirus-beyond-human-rights/

Modern technology - and the enhanced access it provides to information about human rights abuses - has the potential to revolutionise human rights reporting and documentation, as well as the pursuit of legal accountability. However, these new methods for information gathering and dissemination have also created significant challenges for investigators and researchers. The capture and dissemination of content often happens haphazardly, and for a variety of motivations. For this content to be of use to investigators it must be discovered, verified, and authenticated. These skills have therefore become critical for human rights organisations and human rights lawyers.

This panel, marking the launch of Digital Witness - the first textbook dedicated to open source investigations - brings together leading experts in the open source movement, discussing what the future holds for the use of open source techniques in human rights investigations.

Sam Dubberley, head of the Evidence Lab in Amnesty’s Crisis Response Programme, is joined by Yvonne Ng of WITNESS and Jeff Deutch of Syrian Archive to discuss the challenges of archiving social media content depicting human rights abuses, how this practice allows for the preservation of cultural memory, and how it might lead to justice for victims through legal mechanisms.

Alexa Koenig, executive director of the Human Rights Center and a lecturer at UC Berkeley, is joined by Lindsay Freeman, Senior Legal Researcher at UC Berkeley, and Ella McPherson, Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology at the University of Cambridge, to discuss their hopes and fears for the future of open-source investigations.

Digital Witness is the first book to cover the history, ethics, methods, and best-practice associated with open source research. It is intended to equip the next generation of lawyers, journalists, sociologists, data scientists, other human rights activists, and researchers with the cutting-edge skills needed to work in an increasingly digitized and information-saturated environment.

For more information about Digital Witness and to purchase a copy, head to this link: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-witness-9780198836070

Graham Dossett is a former police officer who now uses his experience to advise on policing and human rights issues. He is currently a member of the advisory council for the development of a Universal Protocol for Investigative Interviewing, led by the Association for the Prevention of Torture, the Anti-Torture Initiative and the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights. In this episode, Graham joins Daragh Murray to discuss the importance of ethical, non-coercive interviewing practices.

Graham Dossett is a Visiting Fellow of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. Having served as a police officer in the United Kingdom for thirty years, Graham gained extensive experience as a hostage negotiator and trainer. Since his retirement, he went on to complete the LLM in International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex and now works as an independent advisor in the field of policing and human rights.

You can read more about the project here: https://www.apt.ch/en/universal-protocol-on-non-coercive-interviews/

Graham’s personal website: http://www.p-hr.org.uk/home