On January 11, Kathryn Sikkink was the featured speaker at the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Human Rights Speaker Series hosted by the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Next week, the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Speaker Series on Human Trafficking will welcome Karen Alter, a Professor in the Political Science Department and Law School of Northwestern University on Tuesday, January 18.  The Series is held in the Landau Economics Building, Room 140, from 5:30-6:45 PM and is open to the public.

Professor Kathryn Sikkink introduced her forthcoming book The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics, during the second session of the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Human Rights Speaker Series. Sikkink, a Professor of Political Science and an affiliate of the Law School at the University of Minnesota, presented what she called a “dramatic and puzzling change” in the global struggle for human rights – the striking and sudden emergence of individual criminal accountability for state officials who violate these rights.  She observed that the recent and dramatic cascade of legal proceedings against individual human rights violators marked a growing global consciousness around human rights. 

Professor Sikkink then focused on the challenge of establishing what effect, if any, the explosion in prosecutions has had. Pointing to data which suggested that states with human rights trial experiences had a lower level of repression, Sikkink theorized that prosecutions may help to establish and diffuse societal human rights norms that influence behavior both within a country and a region.  She proposed that these legal efforts are part of a broader “emerging decentralized, interactive system of global accountability” that refuses to remain idle in the face of human rights violations.