The Rights Track

In Episode 9 of Series 2 of The Rights Track, Evelyn Astor, Policy Officer at the International Trade Union Confederation in Brussels, talks about upholding the rights of workers around the world.

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

In Episode 8 of Series 2 of The Rights Track, Claire Thomas, Deputy Director of Minority Rights Group, talks about upholding the rights of minority ethnic, linguistic and religious communities around the world.

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?

In Episode 7 of Series 2, Todd talks to Iain Levine, Programme Director of Human Rights Watch about how the NGO collects and uses evidence to bring about change.

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?

In Episode 6 of Series 2 of The Rights Track, Todd talks to Meghna Abraham, Head of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Team at Amnesty International about how the organisation’s work helps to uphold and advance human rights around the world. They also discuss, The Great Palm Oil Scandal, a report by Amnesty taking some of the world’s most popular food and household companies to task over labour abuses in Indonesia.

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

In Episode 5 of Series 2 Todd talks to Islamic expert and former Pakistan High Commissioner to the UK, Professor Akbar Ahmed from the American University in Washington DC. They discuss the post 9/11 myths that have built up around Islam, the growing tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric in politics and society and the implications for people’s religious freedoms 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

In Episode 4 of Series 2, Dixon Osburn from the Center for Justice and Accountability in San Fancisco talks about how human rights organisations pursue justice, and the sort of academic evidence used in efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of human rights abuses and crimes.

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

In this special 3rd episode of our second series of The Rights Track, sociologist and feminist, Monica Casper from the University of Arizona talks to Todd Landman about the implications for women’s rights of a Trump presidency and what that might that mean for human rights more broadly.

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

In Episode 2 of Series 2, Todd talks to Elisabeth Witchell, Impunity Campaign Consultant with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) about the human rights issues associated with being a journalist and the work of the Committee in defending those rights. The discussion focuses on the Committee’s use of the Global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go free and which is used as evidence to lobby for justice and change.

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.

In Episode 1 of Series 2 of The Rights Track, we talk gay rights with Richard Beaven, successful businessman and Trustee of the LGBT campaign group Stonewall. Todd asks to what extent the struggle for gay rights has also advanced the human rights of the LGBT community and invites Richard to reflect on his personal and professional efforts to be its champion.

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

In Episode 12 of The Rights Track, Todd talks to Dr Karen Salt and Dr Christopher Phelps from the University of Nottingham about human rights in America through the lens of race. He asks his guests whether a Truth Commission might play a positive role in giving Americans the opportunity to pause for thought about some of the underlying problems facing American Society today.

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