Human rights
Thomas Barnett noted this map in a recent New York Times story, overlaying it with the boundaries based on his core-gap theory.
A few comments:
- Gay rights are a strong indicator of values progression, as theorized by Ronald Inglehart; “postmodern” societies tend to have strong gay rights.
- Barnett supposes a causal connection between global connectedness and acceptance of gays. I suspect the connections are secondary, with connectedness driving prosperity, which boosts the kind of societal security which breeds acceptance of nonconformity.
- This gay right map illustrates a broader pattern: religiosity generally varies inversely with morality at a societal level, if by morality one means how well people are treated. This is likely not a direct link, but more that poverty drives both intolerance and fervent religiosity (per Inglehart).
Image: New York Times / Thomas PM Barnett
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For the Twitter futrchat on the future of human rights today, here are some resources and links. (Follow the conversation with #futrchat.)
- Freedom House checklist of political and civil rights — This is a good list of what might be called core human rights, though that designation is subject to a variety of debates.
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which codifies many political, civil, and social rights, and is accepted by most countries in principle, if not in practice.
- “A History of Violence” — An essay by Steven Pinker arguing that violence and brutality of all kinds have been decreasing for a long time.
- A report on fighting human rights abuses using technology.
- Ronald Inglehart on the relationship of social conditions and wealth to values, including values that shape attitudes toward human rights.
- Pew polling data on the attitudes of middle classes toward democracy; culture and class matter.
- In thinking about future drivers, what happens if the world becomes much more wealthy? This Asian Development Bank report offers a scenario in which both China and India have per capita incomes over $40,000 by 2050 — see pages 124 and 120.
- Some thoughts from Hplus on the relationship of transhumanism and human rights — see especially scenarios 3 to 5.
- Other human rights-related posts on this blog.
I used to wonder whether a society that became so networked that it could support a ubiquitous monitoring system would end up not using such a system for oppressive political control, both because of the flows of relatively free information that the networks would enable, and because the ability to run such a system implied a high level of socioeconomic development.
China appears to be answering this question, by building an immense surveillance system that will “cover a half-million intersections, neighborhoods and parks over nearly 400 square miles,” using as many as 500,000 cameras reporting to a central system, David Brin notes (from an NPR report). The monitoring system is ostensibly targeting crime, but could clearly be redirected for political surveillance — and in any case the line between crime and politics becomes blurred in China, for instance when social order is seen to include suppressing dissent by Tibetans or Uighurs.
Still, while China puts immense efforts into controlling expression on the Internet and mobile networks, these technologies have still provided new outlets for expression that have changed the role of public opinion in Chinese society. China runs a highly oppressive high-tech monitoring system, by some definitions, but it is also clear that new information networks are changing the nature of China’s politics.
So I won’t dismiss my original question about the role of technology. Its oppressive aspects will vie with its liberating qualities in coming decades, shaping human rights this century.
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Despite the title, this is not an overview but a few thoughts, in preparation for the APF Twitter chat on the topic today.
Transparency
Increasing transparency may be revealing how power is wielded, but it has a very long way to go. Most people, even in open societies such as the United States, have only a vague sense of which people and organizations hold and use power over them, and what they are doing with it.
Complexity
Complexity obscures power, even to its wielders — witness the 2008+ economic implosion, in which no one, even the powerful, actually knew what their actions meant.
It may also place it in unexpected locales. The maid who has accused the now-former IMF head of sexual attack may -– through no fault of her own –- damage the economy of Europe and even the world.
Machine power
We are passing power to machines. Obscure algorithms were key to the Great Recession, and increasingly determine wide swaths of our lives, such as what we see through search engines and other information portals. These algorithms may or may not reflect the actual intentions of those who created them, and those who use them.
State power
On the whole, states may be increasing their power. Especially in emerging markets, they have more money, technology, and skills in their hands, enabling them to do things that they couldn’t a couple of decades ago.
At the same time, the rawest use of state power, violence, is more constrained that it was. The ordinary repression of the 1980s is now beyond the pale for all but a few states, and can easily get a regime — at least one without power — referred to the International Criminal Court. This is the case nearly across the board: even today’s severe human rights violators tend to be restrained by the standards of the past.
A number of analysts have called for humanitarian intervention of some kind in Libya — a no-fly-zone at least, as suggested by the International Crisis Group, with others implying something more.
While such an intervention might become morally essential, several factors should give us pause:
- The anti-imperialist card — Any military intervention would greatly enhance the “foreign conspiracy” narrative in the region. All protesters would be more readily tarred with the accusation that they are agents of Western plots, seeking to invite in foreign domination. Given that even Mubarak brought up the theme, it would certainly be used to the fullest in Iran or Syria.
- Secondary costs — Western forces operating anywhere in the Muslim world would be seen by at least some fraction of Muslim publics as engaged in part of the “war on Islam,” no matter what the facts are.
- Encouraging passivity — That Arab publics believe they themselves can change their countries for the better is a crucial aspect of recent events. It is a backstep if outside intervention comes to be seen as necessary.
- Moral quagmire — Remember Somalia in the 1990s: moral certainty can rapidly evaporate on the ground. An intervening force might simply find itself backing one side in a tribe-on-tribe civil war.
- Difficulty — It appears that interventionists think an intervention is doable at little cost. That might be true with a no-fly zone (which is not likely to be very effective), but sending in troops might not go well. A few million Sunni in Iraq fought the main effort of the US military to a standstill for years, and some fraction of the populace might remain loyal to the former regime, even forming majorities in some areas. Recall also that only a few years after Saddam was overthrown, a majority of Iraqis approved of attacks on US forces.
This is not a one-sided calculus. Other factors could overwhelm the considerations above:
- Human rights violations could reach the scale of a true mass-atrocity event.
- It could become clear that Libyan opinion is overwhelmingly in favor of intervention — there are already people calling for it on the streets.
- The Arab world could clearly and decisively endorse such an intervention.
With luck, this will all soon by moot, and the regime will disintegrate, with something less than civil war on the other side.
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Some patterns are emerging from the Middle East unrest that began in Tunisia.
This chart combines three factors that seem relevant:
Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, and Yemen are highly similar when plotted against these variables.
- They all have a “5″ level of civil liberties, as assigned by Freedom House; this might be characterized as medium-bad.
- While their income levels vary, they have similar poor levels of economic freedom, characteristic of the state-heavy Arab approach. This chart reflects a multiplier effect for higher levels of economic freedom.
Is it predictive? Where countries end up on the plot may reflect these factors:
- Countries too far to the right on civil liberties — at 6/7 levels — may be too repressive for people power to succeed. Thus, Iran already had its Egypt moment (for now), but it was suppressed. This will be tested as people attempt to demonstrate in Syria.
- Countries too high on the chart may be purchasing stability with wealth (and economic openness). Poverty is absent as a driver, and more of the population is effectively middle class. (Though note Bahrain, which cannot be called truly stable.)
- Countries to the left on civil liberties may be offering enough room to prevent a buildup. Morocco — which is hardly free — may be the test of that.
The Center for American Progress has released a new report on using technology to fight human rights abuses.
Sarah K. Dreier and William F. Schulz write about how mobile phones, social networks, satellite imagery, and DNA forensics can all be deployed to enhance and protect people’s rights.
Cell phones with photo capabilities convey images of human rights violations at a moment’s notice. Internet social networking tools enable activists to connect with one another and with sympathetic audiences to build worldwide networks for change. Electronic data analysis tools allow for vast amounts of information about human rights crimes to be collected and analyzed.
Among other measures, they call for Congress and the Obama administration to
- “Increase funding for scientific research and technology development that link to human rights.”
- “Increase the effectiveness of satellite imagery to document abuses by updating publicly available mapping databases” and increase “NGO access to commercial satellite imagery.”
- Develop “an ongoing, comprehensive effort to facilitate community monitoring. The U.S. government should commit to making satellite imagery of high-risk locations publicly available on a weekly basis.”
- “Support international prohibition of restrictions on cryptography.”
The authors also suggest that predictive modeling could provide early warning: “Scientists can … use advanced sensing technologies in tandem with predictive studies to identify regions at risk before they explode into conflict.”
Technology does not have to be cutting-edge to be highly useful:
Even a recycled, dated cell phone can be a significant boon to human rights and development. Every voter who believes that she or he has been inappropriately turned away from the polls can report that experience to the groups monitoring election violations.
It is clear from the report that creating more tools that support distributed human rights monitoring will be crucial, so that ordinary people can safely, secretly, and readily send calls, text, and images from mobile phones, which will shortly be truly ubiquitous.
To increase affordability, the report suggests that mobile networks in developing countries should provide “text messaging services to social change projects for little or no cost.”
Beyond the material in this report, use of technology for human rights might also be enhanced by:
- crowdsourced monitoring and research — enlisting remote volunteers to go through documents, monitor visual databases or live feeds, and other tasks (building on some early efforts by Amnesty International and others)
- crowdsourced geolocation tools to fill in more of the holes in global mapping they identify
- use of small, inexpensive UAVs in human rights work and related journalism
- deploying a dedicated NGO satellite — expensive but well within the budgets of, for instance, the Gates Foundation
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The Economist reports that the concept of “responsibility to protect” — the idea that countries have a responsibility and right to protect people when their own governments cannot or will not — is facing increased resistance at the UN.
Smaller Third World countries such as Nicaragua are leading the counterattack, characterizing the notion instead as the right to intervene — and a right which would only in practice be held by the rich and powerful. (Nicaragua’s role is yet another case of history coming back to haunt the United States, which characterized its proxy war on the Central American country in the 1980s as support for “freedom fighters.”)
The responsibility to protect may be crucial in securing a future in which human rights are broadly protected, but it will make only slow progress at best: too many small countries are suspicious that it will be only an excuse, not a principle, and too many more powerful players — including China, India, and Turkey — may be too worried that it might someday be brought up in the context of their own self-determination and human rights issues.
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The response to the removal of Honduras’ president by the country’s military illustrates an important change: democracy is now the norm in Latin America.
This is a stark change from the past, when coups were common and brutal human rights violations were the norm for even ostensibly democratic states. And the clear American response also shows how things have changed; the US was largely indifferent to military rule and human rights violations in the region well into the 1980s (with the exception of the Carter administration), but has since been fairly attentive to these issues (with some backsliding by the Bush administration in the 2000s).
In other words, a serous values change has transformed a large region, as part of a broader global trend.
(Image courtesy YamilGonzales, Flickr: attribution and ShareAlike license)
The Atlantic recently asked its panel of 40 foreign policy experts about prospects for democracy, publishing the results in March.
One question–do you believe the proliferation of democratic government is inevitable in the long run?–yielded these results:
Skeptics’ comments included these:
- “We seem to have forgotten that democracy is an organic phenomenon–that … it is the outcome of specific histories, cultures, ethnicities, and events.
- “New models quite far from Jeffersonian democracy (China’s ‘Market-Leninism’) could begin to catch the imaginations of transitional societies.”
Someone in the “yes” camp offered this remark:
- “Despite the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, people who are free to choose (as Mrs. Thatcher said) do choose to be free. And the information revolution enables more people to see lives in free countries.”
Image: Racoles (Flickr)