The Rights Track

In Episode 11 of The Rights Track, Todd talks to Professor William Paul Simmons from the University of Arizona about marginalised groups and his latest research on the joyfulness of human rights.

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

• 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

• A Mountaintop Day in South Africa in April 1994

• 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

In Episode 10 of The Rights Track, Todd talks to Professor Shareen Hertel from the University of Connecticut about the world of business and human rights. They discuss how the rights of poorer people can best be protected at work and how social and labour movements come together to prevent abuse and to lobby for change.

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

In Episode 9 of The Rights Track, Todd talks to professional lawyer and human rights researcher Professor Meg Satterthwaite from New York University about human rights advocacy. They discuss what it’s like working across academia and practice, the challenges around evidencing impact and the role of data visualisation in communicating findings effectively.

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

• 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!

• 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

In Episode 8 of The Rights Track, Todd talks to Professor Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, International Chair of Human Rights at Wilfred Laurier University in Canada about state food crime, what it is, where it’s happening, why she believes it should be considered an international human rights crime and the challenges around prosecuting it.

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.

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

• 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

• 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

In Episode 7 of The Rights Track, Todd asks Patrick Ball, Director of Research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, how and when statistics can be used to advance and protect human rights. Here are some notes from the interview including useful links and some additional resources from our partner, openGlobalRights

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

In Episode 6 of The Rights Track, Todd asks James Ron, Professor of International Affairs at the University of Minnesota, about his work with David Crow at the Centro de Investigation y Docencia Economicas, CIDE comparing public attitudes to human rights in and across four different countries.

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?

In Episode 5 of The Rights Track, Todd asks Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Professor of International Affairs at the New School in New York, about human development and her work to develop a way of measuring and comparing how well countries do at upholding their social and economic rights obligations.

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

In Episode 4 of The Rights Track, Todd asks Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Hull, about modern day slavery, the challenges in identifying and counting victims, his work on the Global Slavery Index and how it’s used to hold Governments and countries to account over the problem. He also discusses his book, Blood and Earth in which he looks at how modern day slavery and climate change intersect. Here are some notes and links on their discussion:

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

Episode Note from Todd Landman

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

In this Episode of the Rights Track, Todd asks Amanda Murdie of the University of Missouri about the methods she uses to look at when and how NGOs and INGOs are most effective.

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