Stanford University

Editors of 'Hope Deferred' recount stories of Zimbabwean tragedy

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The Program on Human Rights at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) in partnership with the Stanford Humanities Center, kicked off the first public event of the Human Well-Being and Human Rights Collaboratory series on November 30th to mark the debut of the book, Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives.  Director of the CDDRL Human Rights Program, Helen Stacy, introduced this event as part of a larger interdisciplinary research effort at Stanford University to examine the condition of human-well being and universal values from the bottom-up. Stacy explained that the language of human rights is often dominated by government actors and lawyers, who rarely hear the voices of victims and grassroots leaders in the policymaking environment.  This event focused on the human rights crisis in Zimbabwe, providing a platform for stories of human tragedy that put a face to victims who are often grouped together in anonymity. 

Stanford was the first venue for editors Peter Orner, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco University and Annie Holmes, Zimbabwean writer, editor, and filmmaker, to introduce their book to the public. Hope Deferred is the culmination of over 50 interviews the editors conducted in Zimbabwe and neighboring countries to capture the individual testimonies and document the lives of a diverse group of Zimbabweans devastated by the reign of terror that engulfed their country in 2000. Zimbabwe is one of the most well documented human rights crises in the world, but personal accounts of murder, rape, economic ruin, and human tragedy are missing from the mainstream dialogue. Orner and Holmes conveyed the magnitude of these events by providing first-person accounts of victims, culminating in an oral history of a crisis that has engulfed a nation of over 12 million people in economic and social ruin.

The editors read passages from their book and engaged in dialogue with Dr. Stacy, recounting the heartbreaking tales of opposition activists whose families were brutalized by the ZANU-PF, young women raped by soldiers, farmers evicted from their land, and soldiers who perpetuated these crimes at the hands of the government.  All of these individuals shared the common language of pain but sought to provide their personal testimony to begin the healing process.  The editors' hope that the emotional narratives of Hope Deferred will stir the attention of the international community and open up dialogue around the current crisis in Zimbabwe. The audience was clearly moved by these stories, directing poignant questions to Orner and Holmes about the Zimbabwean crisis, Mugabe's grip on power, and the impact of the refugee population on South Africa. 

While, the situation in Zimbabwe remains unsolved, this event and the series supporting it seeks to elevate the human narratives at the core of human-well being, and to place deeper humanistic understandings at the heart of the policy and legal responses to human rights crises.

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Principle, Pragmatism or Prostitution? Speaking Human Rights to Global Finance

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Professor David Kinley holds the Chair in Human Rights Law at University of Sydney, and is the Law Faculty's Associate-Dean (International). He is also an Academic Panel member of Doughty Street Chambers in London, the UK's leading human rights practice. He has previously held positions at Cambridge University, The Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, Washington College of Law, American University, and was the founding Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University (2000-2005). He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2004, based in Washington DC, and Herbert Smith Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge in 2008. He is author and editor of eight books and more than 80 articles, book chapters, reports and papers.

He has worked for 15 years as a consultant and adviser on international and domestic human rights law in Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Thailand, Iraq, Nepal, Laos, China, and Myanmar/Burma, and for such organizations as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, AusAID, and the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, and a number of transnational corporations, and NGOs.  He has also previously worked for three years with the Australian Law Reform Commission and two years with the Australian Human Rights Commission.

His latest publications include the critically acclaimed Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy (CUP, 2009), Corporations and Human Rights (Ashgate 2009), and The World Trade Organisation and Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Edward Elgar, 2009) Another edited collection entitled Principled Engagement: Promoting Human Rights in Pariah States will be published by UNU Publications in 2011.  He is currently working on another book investigating the interrelations between human rights and global finance.

David was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and brought up there during the 1960s and 70s.  He studied in England in the 1980s at Sheffield Hallam University and the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge, and after obtaining his doctorate from the latter in 1990 he moved to Australia.  He now lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.

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Chip Pitts Lecturer in Law, Stanford Law School Commentator
David Kinley Chair in Human Rights Law at University of Sydney Speaker
Conferences

Civilians in War Zones

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Richard Goldstone served on South Africa's Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court from 1990 to 1994. During the transition from apartheid to multiracial democracy, Goldstone headed the Goldstone Commission investigations into political violence in South Africa. He was credited with playing an indispensable role in the transition and became a household name in South Africa, attracting widespread international support and interest. Goldstone's work investigating violence led to him being nominated to serve as the first chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. On his return to South Africa he took up a seat on the newly-established Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2009, Goldstone led an independent fact-finding mission created by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War.

James Campbell's research focuses on African American history and the wider history of the black Atlantic. He is particularly interested in the long history of interconnections and exchange between Africa and America, a history that began in the earliest days of the transatlantic slave trade and continues into our own time.  In recent years, his research has moved in the direction of so-called “public history," the ways in which societies tell stories about their pasts, not only in textbooks and academic monographs but also in historic sites, museums, memorials, movies, and political movements.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is cofounder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, a member of the Policy Advisory Board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and served as a senior consultant to the President's Council on Bioethics. His scholarship focuses on the interplay of law, ethics, and politics in modern society. His current research is concerned with the material and moral preconditions of liberal democracy in America and abroad.

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Richard Goldstone Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Keynote Speaker
James Campbell Professor of History Panelist Stanford University
Peter Berkowitz Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow Speaker Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Seminars

Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Workshop #5

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Building on the foundation of 2009-10 workshop Legalizing Human Rights in Africa, the 2010-11 interdisciplinary research workshop will extend the examination of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa to broader questions around second and third generation rights. The workshop will canvas human rights insights from a broad sweep of disciplinary expertise, such as history, science, engineering anthropology, sociology, philosophy, law and political science. The goal of the workshop is to broaden human rights scholarship beyond single disciplinary domains.

Because the field of second and third generation human rights is broad, we have narrowed the discussion topics to the most urgent ones that are well suited to interdisciplinary analysis by anticipated workshop participants. Initial sessions will lay the foundation for the generational framework of human rights in Africa and the recent progression beyond civil and political rights. The workshop will proceed to discuss a wide range of the most significant and timely second and third generation human rights challenges in Africa.

Co-sponsored by the Center on African Studies and the Stanford Humanities Center.

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Richard Goldstone Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Speaker
Helen Stacy Moderator
Workshops
Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Second and Third Generation Human Rights in Africa: Health equity and AIDS treatment in Africa

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Dr. Katzenstein completed his undergraduate and medical degrees as well as a residency in Internal Medicine and Fellowship training in Infectious Diseases at the University of California San Diego. He continued fellowship training in virology and Infectious Diseases with Dr. Colin Jordan at U.C. Davis, moving to the University of Minnesota to a faculty position in Infectious Disease in 1984. He was a visiting lecturer for two years in the Departments of Medical Microbiology and Medicine at the University University of Zimbabwe as the AIDS epidemic was first recognized in Southern Africa. In 1987, he returned to the U.S. to take up a senior research fellowship at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the Food and Drug Administration in the Vaccine Branch, evaluating early candidate HIV Vaccines and diagnostics. Dr. Katzenstein returned to California in 1989 to work with Dr. Thomas Merigan and the AIDS Clinical Trials Group. He continues an active collaboration with his colleagues in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa in prevention, perinatal transmission and vaccine research. At Stanford, Dr. Katzenstein participates in studies of multiple drugs and drug combinations in Clinical Trials in the U.S. and Europe and is the principal investigator for Stanford's Virology Service Laboratory in the center for AIDS Research. At Stanford he teaches an undergraduate course in Global AIDS, attends on the Infectious Disease service and supervises both laboratory and clinical fellows conducting AIDS Research. He remains actively involved in studies of HIV infection in Zimbabwe, spending 2-3 months a year in Southern Africa.

Professor Katzenstein's research interests include treatment and evaluation of HIV infection in the United States and Europe through the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). His international HIV pathogenesis work includes studies in Zimbabwe, South Africa. The lab currently is focused on drug resistance, envelope tropism and the pathogenesis of HIV.

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Helen Stacy Moderator
David Katzenstein Professor (Research), Medicine - Infectious Diseases; Member, Bio-X Speaker Stanford University
Workshops
Second and Third Generation Rights in Africa

Dan Banik

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Consulting Scholar, 2014-16; Visiting Associate Professor 2013-2014, 2010-2011
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Professor Dan Banik is a Consulting Scholar at CDDRL and is currently completing a study examining the impacts of development aid from Norway and China on poverty reduction in Malawi and Zambia. He is a professor of political science and research director at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and Environment (SUM). He is also holds a visiting professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

Prof. Banik has conducted research in India, China, Bangladesh, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa and Mexico, and directs the interdisciplinary research program 'Poverty and Development in the 21st Century (PAD)' at the University of Oslo. He has previously served as the head of the Norwegian-Finnish Trust Fund in the World Bank for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (TFESSD) and on the Board of the Norwegian Crown Prince and Crown Princess's Foundation. His books include ‘The Democratic Dividend: Political Transition, Poverty and Inclusive Development in Malawi (with Blessings Chinsinga, Routledge 2016), ‘The Legal Empowerment Agenda: Poverty, Labour and the Informal Economy in Africa’ (2011, Ashgate), ‘Poverty and Elusive Development’ (2010, Scandinavian University Press) and ‘Starvation and India’s Democracy’ (2009, Routledge).

Prof. Banik is married to Vibeke Kieding Banik, who is a historian at the University of Oslo.

 

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Are Amnesties Acceptable and Durable? The Conditional Support Among Victims in Five African Countries and Its Implications

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Transitions from conflict raise hard questions about accountability for past violations.  Criminal prosecutions and other sanctions are increasingly prevalent, but amnesties remain common.  Some argue the latter are essential concessions to secure and sustain peace, given the threat of violent backlash from those potentially subject to repercussions, who typically seek to insulate themselves from liability.  Meanwhile, a conventional wisdom is that those who suffered harms want punitive justice and will tend to reject amnesty.  Backer and Kulkarni evaluate these claims using original data collected since 2002 via surveys of over 2,800 victims of war and repression in the diverse contexts of Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa.  Our initial finding is unexpected: similar majorities of the respondents in each country actually approve of amnesty.  Yet the backing is practical, ambivalent and qualified.  Most view amnesty as necessary to avoid further conflict, albeit unfair to victims.  This concern can be mitigated if perpetrators are subject to various forms of restorative and reparatory justice.  The willingness of many respondents to acquiesce to amnesty also coexists with a strong desire for accountability.  In addition, unparalleled panel survey data shows that such acceptance can decline dramatically over time, due to policy actions and inactions.  The analysis suggests the appeal of conditional amnesties of limited scope, backed by follow through on means of redress, including prosecutions.

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David Backer Assistant Professor, Department of Government, College of William & Mary; Visiting Fellow, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame Speaker
Anu Kulkarni Visiting Scholar Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

New Forum on Contemporary Europe research project on History, Memory and Reconciliation

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In spring 2009, the Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) and the Division on Languages, Civilizations and Literatures (DLCL) delivered the first part of its multi-year research and public policy program on Contemporary History and the Future of Memory.  The program explored how communities that have undergone deep and violent political transformations try to confront their past.

Despite vast geographical, cultural and situational differences, the search for post-conflict justice and reconciliation has become a global phenomenon, resulting in many institutional and expressive responses. Some of these are literary and aesthetic explorations about guilt, commemoration and memorialization deployed for reconciliation and reinvention.  Others, especially in communities where victims and perpetrators live in close proximity, have led to trials, truth commissions, lustration, and institutional reform. This series illuminates these various approaches, seeking to foster new thinking and new strategies for communities seeking to move beyond atrocity.

Part 1: Contemporary History and the Future of Memory

In 2008-2009, this multi-year project on “History and Memory” at FCE and DLCL was launched with two high profile conference and speaker series: “Contemporary History and the Future of Memory” and “Austria and Central Europe Since 1989.”  For the first series on Contemporary History, the Forum, along with four co-sponsors (the Division of Literatures, Civilizations, and Languages, principal co-sponsor; the department of English; The Center for African Studies; Modern Thought and Literature; the Stanford Humanities Center), hosted internationally distinguished senior scholars to deliver lectures, student workshops, and the final symposium with Stanford faculty respondents.

Part 2: History, Memory and Reconciliation

In 2009-2010, we launch part 2 of this project by adding “Reconciliation” to our mission.  We are pleased to welcome the Human Rights Program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as co-sponsor of this series.  This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some work examines communities ravaged by colonialism and the great harm that colonial and post-colonial economic and social disparities cause.   The extent of external intervention creates discontinuities and dislocation, making it harder for people to claim an historical narrative that feels fully authentic.  Another response is to set up truth-seeking institutions such as truth commissions. Historical examples of truth commissions in South Africa, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Morocco inform more current initiatives in Canada, Cambodia, Colombia, Kenya, and the United States.  While this range of economic, social, political and legal modalities all seek to explain difficult pasts to present communities, it is not yet clear which approach yields greater truth, friendship, reconciliation and community healing.  The FCE series “History, Memory, and Reconciliation” will explore these issues.

The series will have its first event in February 2010. Multiple international scholars are invited.  Publications, speaker details, and pod and video casts will be accessible via the new FSI/FCE, DLCL, and Human Rights Program websites.

Series coordinators:

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Firoze Manji on challenges using new media to support social justice movements in Africa

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Firoze Manji is founding Executive Director of Fahamu - Networks for Social Justice, a pan African organization with offices in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and the UK.

Fahamu exists to support the development and growth of a powerful social justice movement in Africa. There are three core areas of activity:

Training: Fahamu aims to strengthen human rights organizations by providing training programs that include sufficient pre workshop preparation and post workshop follow-up to ensure substantive learning. Fahamu has created CD-ROM based training packages covering subjects from advocacy to financial management to gender violence and conflict.

News & Media: Pambazuka News is a weekly electronic newsletter providing commentary and analysis on issues of social justice across Africa, published in English, French and Portuguese. There are 26,000 subscribers and half a million unique visitors to the site. Content is also published on allafrica.com and it is widely used by mainstream media. Pambazuka was one of the first African organizations to use podcasts and videocasts.

Advocacy: Fahamu was heavily involved in efforts to persuade countries to sign up to the African Union's Rights of Women in Africa Protocol. The organization attracted a great deal of attention for its strategy of getting people to sign a petition via cell phones. Within 18 months it had persuaded the necessary 15 countries to ratify the Protocol.

Firoze shared a number of his insights from his experience using ICTs in these areas:

There remain real barriers to use of ICTs in Africa: Middle class Africans often have more than one cell phone each; penetration figures can therefore be misleading. The cost associated with text and especially voice services is prohibitive for many. While email is cheap, web surfing is expensive and due to low bandwidth, painfully slow. 

Paper formats are in some instances still the most useful: Feedback from students on Fahamu courses has shown consistent demand for paper resources. Students rarely have their own home computer or laptop and they may travel often; internet cafes can be unsafe environments for women alone. For these reasons, Fahamu continues to produce print resources. It also recently launched Pambazuka Press to promote African writers.  Books will be sold at cost to distributors in Africa and at commercial rates elsewhere.

Technology tools are a complement to, not substitute for real engagement: Analysis of the Rights of Women Protocol petition showed that less than 10% of signatures had come via cell phones. It was the political legwork of going through the protocol in person with each individual that made the real difference to the outcome. This confirms Firoze's view that tools such as cell phones cannot create social change where there is no existing real-world network for them to tap into. We need to be wary of fetishizing technology tools, attributing to them powers they simply cannot have.

Technology, Froze argues, tends to reflect and amplify existing social relations. So while ICTs can enable people to voice their own experience in a way that was not available to them before, they can just as easily serve to shore up existing power structures.

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