OUVRAGE : P. Alston, S. Knuckey (eds.), The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding

Théo BOUTRUCHE

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.

TABLE OF 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. Frédéric Mégret, 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 Ní Aoláin,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. Théo 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

Philipp ALSTON, Sarah KNUCKEY (eds.), The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015 (564 pp.)

Editors:

Philip Alston is the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He has written extensively on a wide range of issues in the fields of public international law and international human rights law, and was Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal ofInternational Law for eleven years. As UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions from 2004 to 2010, he undertook fact-finding missions to 16 states. He was a member of the Security Council's Commission of Inquiry into the Central African Republic that reported in 2015. He is currently the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

Sarah Knuckey is the Lieff Cabraser Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School, Director of the Human Rights Clinic, and Faculty Co-Director of the Human Rights Institute. She has carried out fact-finding missions and reported on human rights and humanitarian law violations around the world, and has been an advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions since 2007. Previously, she was Director of the Initiative on Human Rights Fact-Finding at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

Contributors:

Philip Alston is the John Norton Pomeroy Professor at New York University Law School; and the UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Shreya Atrey is a Rhodes Scholar from India and received her DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford in 2015. Jay D. Aronson is Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Department of History, and Director of the Center for Human Rights Science, at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Patrick Ball is Executive Director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. David Bonilla is Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Public Interest Law Group, University of the Andes School of Law, Bogotá, Colombia.Théo Boutruche is an independent consultant on human rights and international humanitarian law. He has worked for the Georgia Fact-Finding Mission, Redress, Amnesty International, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Claude Bruderlein is Strategic Advisor to the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Allison Corkery is Director of the Rights Claiming and Accountability Program, Center for Economic and Social Rights. Rob Grace leads the research for the Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-finding project of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Pablo de Greiff is Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. From 2001-14 he was Director of Research at the International Center for Transitional Justice. He currently directs the Transitional Justice Program at New York University School of Law's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Catherine Harwood is a PhD Researcher at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University, in the Netherlands. Dov Jacobs is Assistant Professor of International Law, at Leiden University Sarah Knuckey is the Lieff Cabraser Associate Clinical Professor of Law, director of the Human Rights Clinic, and faculty co-director of the Human Rights Institute, at Columbia Law School. Molly Land is Professor of Law and Human Rights, University of Connecticut School of Law and Human Rights Institute. Laura Marschner is a doctoral candidate, Institute of Law, University of Zurich. Frédéric Mégret is Associate Professor, and holds the Canada Research Chair in the Law of Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at McGill University, Montreal. Patrick Meier is Director of Social Innovation at the Qatar Computing Research Institute. He previously co-founded and co-directed the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative's Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning and served as Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi. Rosette Muzigo-Morrisonhas worked as a Legal Officer at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) since 1995. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin holds the Dorsey and Whitney Chair in Law, University of Minnesota Law School, and is Professor of Law, Transitional Justice Institute, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Obiora Okafor is University Research Chair in International and Transnational Legal Studies, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University; and Chair, UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. Diane Orentlicher is Professor of International Law at American University. She previously served as Deputy for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. Department of State (2009-2011), and United Nations Independent Expert on Combating Impunity. Taylor Pendergrass is Senior Staff Attorney, New York Civil Liberties Union. Brian Root is the Quantitative Analyst at Human Rights Watch, based in New York. Daniel Rothenberg is Professor of Practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies and the Lincoln Fellow for Ethics and International Human Rights Law at Arizona State University. Margaret L. Satterthwaite is Professor of Clinical Law and Faculty Director of the Robert L. Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at New York University School of Law.Dustin Sharp is Assistant Professor, Kroc School of Peace Studies, at University of San Diego. He was the former Head of the West African Human Rights Training Initiative, and former researcher at Human Rights Watch. Justin C. Simeone is a Ph.D. Candidate in Politics and Social Policy at Princeton University as well as a J.D. Candidate and Global Law Scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center.Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice, Leiden University, the Netherlands. Larissa van den Herik is Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Susan R. Wolfinbarger is Project Director of the Geospatial Technologies Project at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.