Full Description
Fact-finding is at the heart of human rights advocacy, and is often at the center of international controversies about alleged government abuses. In recent years, human rights fact-finding has greatly proliferated and become more sophisticated and complex, while also being subjected to stronger scrutiny from governments. Nevertheless, despite the prominence of fact-finding, it remains strikingly under-studied and under-theorized. Too little has been done to bring forth the assumptions, methodologies, and techniques of this rapidly developing field, or to open human rights fact-finding to critical and constructive scrutiny.
The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of fact-finding with rigorous and critical analysis of the field of practice, while providing a range of accounts of what actually happens. It deepens the study and practice of human rights investigations, and fosters fact-finding as a discretely studied topic, while mapping crucial transformations in the field. The contributions to this book are the result of a major international conference organized by New York University Law School's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Engaging the expertise and experience of the editors and contributing authors, it offers a broad approach encompassing contemporary issues and analysis across the human rights spectrum in law, international relations, and critical theory. This book addresses the major areas of human rights fact-finding such as victim and witness issues; fact-finding for advocacy, enforcement, and litigation; the role of interdisciplinary expertise and methodologies; crowd sourcing, social media, and big data; and international guidelines for fact-finding.
Contents
I. Introduction ; 1. Philip Alston and Sarah Knuckey, The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding: Challenges and Opportunities ; II. Critical Perspectives on Human Rights Fact-Finding ; 2. Frederic Megret, Do Facts Exist, Can they Be 'Found', and Does it Matter? ; 3. Obiora Okafor, International Human Rights Fact-Finding Praxis: A TWAIL Perspective ; 4. Dustin N. Sharp, Human Rights Fact-Finding and the Reproduction of Hierarchies ; 5. Fionnuala Ni Aolain,The Gender Politics of Fact-Finding in the Context of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda ; 6. Daniel Bonilla, Legal Clinics in the Global North and South: Between Equality and Subordination ; III. Victims and Witnesses: Empowerment or Extraction? ; 7. Theo Boutruche, The Relationship between Fact-Finders and Witnesses in Human Rights Fact-Finding: What Place for the Victims? ; 8. Shreya Atrey, The Danger of a Single Story: Introducing Intersectionality in Fact-Finding ; 9. Rosette Muzigo-Morrison, Victims and Witnesses in Fact-Finding Commissions: Pawns or Principal Pieces? ; 10. Daniel Rothenberg, The Complex Truth of Testimony: A Case Study of Human Rights Fact-Finding in Iraq ; 11. Laura Marschner, Implications of Trauma on Testimonial Evidence in International Criminal Trials ; IV. Fact-Finding for Advocacy, Enforcement, and Litigation: Purposes and Cross Purposes ; 12. Larissa van den Herik and Catherine Harwood, Commissions of Inquiry and the Charm of International Criminal Law: Between Transactional and Authoritative Approaches ; 13. Carsten Stahn and Dov Jacobs, The Interaction between Human Rights Fact-Finding and International Criminal Proceedings: Towards a (New) Typology ; 14. Pablo de Greiff, Truth without Facts: On the Erosion of the Fact-Finding Function of Truth Commissions ; 15. Taylor Pendergrass, Human Rights Fact-Finding in the Shadows of America's Solitary Confinement Prisons ; V. The Role of Interdisciplinary Expertise and Methodologies ; 16. Margaret L. Satterthwaite and Justin C. Simeone, A Conceptual Roadmap for Social Science Methods in Human Rights Fact-Finding ; 17. Brian Root, Numbers are Only Human: Lessons for Human Rights Practitioners from the Quantitative Literacy Movement ; 18. Allison Corkery, Investigating Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Violations ; VI. New Technologies: Crowdsourcing, Social Media, and Big Data ; 19. Molly K. Land, Democratizing Human Rights Fact-Finding ; 20. Patrick Ball, The Bigness of Big Data: Samples, Models, and the Facts We Might Find When Looking at Data ; 21. Jay D. Aronson, Mobile Phones, Social Media, and Big Data in Human Rights Fact-Finding: Possibilities, Challenges, and Limitations ; 22. Susan R. Wolfinbarger, Remote sensing as a Tool for Human Rights Fact-Finding ; 23. Patrick Meier, Big (Crisis) Data: Humanitarian Fact-Finding with Advanced Computing ; VII. Does Human Rights Fact-Finding Need International Guidelines? ; 24. Diane Orentlicher, International Norms in Human Rights Fact-Finding ; 25. Rob Grace and Claude Bruderlein, Developing Norms of Professional Practice in the Domain of Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-Finding ; Index
