[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: [balkans] CfP: Human rights and public security (for Carnegie Council on Ethics)

[Agron Alibali]

  Florian Bieber <fbieber at yahoo.com> wrote: From Florian Bieber Sun Apr 7 00:30:32 2002
To: balkans at yahoogroups.com
From: Florian Bieber 
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 10:30:32 +0200
Subject: [balkans] CfP: Human rights and public security (for Carnegie Council
on Ethics)

Human Rights Dialogue, a biannual publication of the Carnegie Council on
Ethics and International Affairs, is seeking short essays (1000-1200 words)
for its Fall 2002 issue on human rights and public security.

In recent years, public security has become an increasingly urgent priority
for policymakers worldwide. The collapse of authoritarian governments, many
of which relied heavily on repression to maintain order, has left a legacy
of weak or dysfunctional police institutions. At the same time, there is
widespread public perception of increasing threats to security, both
domestic (e.g., disaffected urban youth joining gangs or militias) and
international (e.g., cross-border trafficking in drugs, weapons, and sex).
In countries wracked by civil war, separatist conflict, or clashes between
opposed ethnic or religious groups, citizens have still more reasons to fear
for their safety.

This widespread concern for safety poses new challenges for rights groups.
While there are often good reasons for such groups to continue to focus on
abuses by state security organs-in many places, reforms have stalled and
abuses by police and security forces continue-the public seems less
receptive than in the past to human rights concerns.

A recent survey in Argentina revealed an alarming trend: when asked if they
would support police torture if it would increase personal security, 80% of
residents said that they would support torture. This is a surprising fact,
especially in a country that has a history of abuse and brutality.  In the
wake of the U.S.-led anti-terrorist campaign, citizens in a number of
countries, the U.S. included, similarly have indicated a willingness to
trade rights for enhanced security.

For the past two years, Human Rights Dialogue has focused on the popular
legitimacy of an international human rights framework. In the coming issue,
we are interested in descriptive accounts of how human rights organizations
are responding, if at all, to the challenges sketched above. We are also
looking for critical perspectives on whether, in light of shifts in public
perceptions, rights groups should move away from their traditional focus on
abuses by government security forces. Finally, we are interested in how the
September 11 attacks in the United States and new anti-terrorism measures
worldwide are affecting the work of rights groups.

Submissions are especially welcome from activists or practitioners from
newly open societies and from regions where public security is threatened by
ongoing internal conflict, resource wars, criminal networks, guerilla
groups/non-state actors, or corrupt regimes. Essays should seek to address
one or more of the following questions by analyzing a concrete case study in
the author's country or institution of which he or she has first-hand
knowledge:

- Should rights groups with scarce resources give more attention to the
public's "right to security" and less to abuses by state security forces?
Or should rights groups stick to what they do best and ignore shifts in
public perceptions?

- How are rights groups responding to increasing public concerns with
safety? Are rights groups paying more attention to the role of nonstate
actors as agents of instability? Are they focusing on economic and social
rights violations that often generate increased insecurity?

- To what extent are rights groups working with new actors in the public
security field, such as government human rights commissions, special reform
task forces, foreign-government-funded police reform initiatives, and so on?

- Has the war on terrorism led rights groups to redouble their focus on
abuses by state actors or has it served as an additional impetus to address
other aspects of the "right to security"?

-Does the proper human rights prescription depend on the illness-if it is
crime, you use one strategy; if it is conflict as a result of resource wars,
another-or should human rights work on security issues be guided by a
single, unchanging set of principles?

Submissions should be no more than 1200 words and written in English. We
seek essays written in an engaging, informal, and testimonial style.  We do
not seek articles that are academic in tone or include footnotes.
Contributors are encouraged to use interviews in their essays.  Please see
http://www.cceia.org/themes/hrd.html for previous issues of Human Rights
Dialogue.

Publication in Dialogue is competitive.  Authors whose submissions are
selected for print must be prepared to respond to edits and queries.
Submissions that exceed the stated word length will, due to space
constraints, be shortened. The authors of selected essays will be asked to
provide us with a biography, contact details for the organizations that they
are affiliated with as well as for those mentioned in their articles, and if
possible a photograph of themselves. Please also be prepared to provide
photos or art to be considered for publication alongside the article. An
honorarium of $100 is awarded to authors whose work is selected for
publication. The deadline for submissions is June 21.

We encourage those planning to submit to contact us about their plans for
their articles as soon as possible.  Interested parties should direct their
inquiries to:  Jess Messer, jmesser at cceia.org or tel. 212-838-4120 or fax:
212-752-2432.

About the Carnegie Council and the Human Rights Initiative
The Carnegie Council, based in New York City, is a nonpartisan, nonsectarian
organization dedicated to research and education at the intersection of
ethics and international affairs. The goal of the Carnegie Council's Human
Rights Initiative is to provide a vehicle for new voices to enter into the
international human rights debate, and thereby provoke innovative thinking
about human rights among actors in the international community.

The Carnegie Council's Human Rights Initiative was launched in 1993 and is
now in its second phase.  The first phase, structured around a series of
workshops in Asia and the United States, provided topics for eleven issues
of Dialogue (See  http://www.cceia.org/themes/hrd.html) and a
widely-reviewed edited volume The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights
(Cambridge University Press, 1999).

The second phase of the Initiative continues to engage new and diverse
voices from around the world in global dialogue and mutual learning around
human rights concepts and action, with the goal of exploring how the human
rights movement could be better configured intellectually and operationally
to cope with the challenges of 21st century.  The underlying assumption
being explored in the second phase is what we have termed "the human rights
box":  namely, that the human rights movement is constrained by a set of
historical and structural circumstances that have enabled the human rights
framework to gain currency among elites while limiting its advance among the
broader population of the world. Participants' testimony, working knowledge,
strategies, analysis and reflections are shared through the regular
publication of our Human Rights Dialogue.

Please contact us or consult our website, www.cceia.org , for more
information.



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