Women & ICL series continues

Our readers will recall that this past fall, IntLawGrrls co-sponsored our first symposium along with the American Society of International Law, on the topic of Women and International Criminal Law (full program here).
The papers featured at this symposium will be published in a special 2011 issue of the International Criminal Law Review dedicated to Judge Patricia M. Wald, an IntLawGrrls guest/alumna. Some papers were commissioned; others we received through a global call to papers. We've been spotlighting these papers over the last few months -- Diane Marie Amann's post on her paper is here, Jaya Ramji-Nogales' post on hers is here, and that of Dina Francesca Haynes, Naomi Cahn, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is here. Jaya's paper, also subject of an earlier post, is now available online here. We'll continue to post these as we move into the production phase.
Today we feature another paper, posted below, by Margaret deGuzman (left), another IntLawGrrls alumna and Assistant Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia. We're delighted to welcome her back. Meg's paper engages the question of "Why Should International Courts Prosecute Sex Crimes?" The full paper, available here, is part of her ongoing work on gravity as an organizing principle for international criminal law and prosecutorial discretion.

Look On! Asylum Cases Brought to the Theater

(Look On! takes occasional note of noteworthy films and stage productions.)

Playwright Jefferey Solomon has written two exceptional plays based upon real asylum claims and cases brought in United States immigration courts. The first, De Novo, depicts the case of a fourteen-year-old boy named Edgar Chocoy who fled Guatemala City when MS-13, the largest gang in Central America, put a hit on his life. He traveled over 3,000 miles through the desert, and across the borders of three countries in search of his mother who had left him at the age of six months to work in the United States. Detained by the Department of Homeland Security upon his entry, Edgar, normally quiet and timid, spoke clearly and loudly about his fear of being deported: “I’m afraid to go back. They’ll kill me.” A pro bono immigration lawyer helped Edgar argue his asylum case in Denver, but the Immigration Judge ordered Edgar deported to Guatemala. He was murdered seventeen days later. The play weaves together court transcripts, interviews, letters and other documentary sources to reconstruct the gripping and poignant true story of the case whose outcome prompted a national outcry and a fundamental reconsideration about the way in which the government handles the many thousands of unaccompanied minors in immigration custody.
The second play, Tara's Crossing, tells the story of a transgendered asylum seeker from Guyana and her uphill battle to prove her claims of persecution from within the confines of U.S. Immigration Detention. The play, inspired by interviews with asylum seekers from around the world, deals with the hurdles that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered asylum seekers and refugees face in proving that their fears of persecution are well founded particularly when detained.
Solomon’s theater company, Houses on the Moon, based in New York City, aims to educate the public about the perils that vulnerable asylum seekers face navigating US immigration procedures and laws, particularly as most are unrepresented. As IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales has documented in her co-authored pieces on asylum claims, the likelihood that an asylum seeker will be successful when unrepresented by an attorney falls to about 14%.
The Boston premiere of De Novo, presented by New England LawBoston’s Center for Law and Social Responsibility, will take place at the Stuart St. Playhouse on Wednesday February 9th at 6:30 with post play discussion with the artists and law professors to follow. The show is free and open to the public (rsvp to Martha.S.Drane@nesl.edu).

Criminal Justice for Gendered Violence and Beyond

Many of us gathered at the American Society of International Law on October 29th to honor the remarkable Judge Patricia Wald by bringing together our perspectives on women and international criminal law. IntLawGrrls Naomi Cahn and Dina Francesca Haynes, and guest Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (pictured below right) presented our paper on Criminal Justice for Gendered Violence and Beyond, drawing concepts from our forthcoming book, On the Frontlines, to be published by Oxford University Press in September 2011.

In the article, which will be part of a special volume of the International Criminal Law Review edited by IntLawGrrls Diane Marie Amann, Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Beth Van Schaack, we argue: 1) that sexual offenses that arise during and post conflict are not yet sufficiently addressed, 2) that even so, the focus on sex crimes diverts attention from accurately assessing the actual harms perceived by women and 3) that legal reform and post conflict reconstruction should precede the creation of tribunals.
Our responses to sexual offenses committed during and after conflict are still insufficient in multiple ways. Though the jurisprudence of the ICTY and ICTR has taken us some distance, courts still fail to capture the full range of harms that flow from sexual violence. Furthermore, the successful prosecution of sex based crimes still requires significant external pressure and advocacy, multiple structural barriers still exist with the gathering of evidence and protection of witnesses, and the sentences and number of cases pursued is still disproportionately lower than other wartime offenses. Despite the failures in sufficiently addressing wartime sex based offenses, the focus on sex crimes as the crime associated with women and war diverts attention and resources from properly assessing what women truly perceive as harm and accordingly limit our ability to redress those harms. Finally, the timeline for pursuing prosecutions is not yet in sync with post war “safety.” Tribunals are established before women and victims of war have developed any sense of security. Accordingly, we recommend that legal reform and post conflict reconstruction processes should precede the creation of criminal tribunals.

Top 100 'Grrl

Cheers to IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, honored earlier this month on the Irish Legal 100, an annual list compiled by the New York-based Irish America magazine. (Married as I am to an honoree on another of the magazine's lists -- a Top 100 Irish American -- I took special note of this award.)
As detailed in prior posts, Fionnuala's the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law and is Associate Dean for Planning and Research at the University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis, as well as Professor of Law at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and cofounder and Director of the university's Transitional Justice Institute. A noted scholar in areas of gender, armed conflict, and states of emergency, she contributed a post this summer on the release of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report on the 1972 paratrooper killings of civilians in Derry. And we're delighted that she will join her coauthors, IntLawGrrls Naomi Cahn and Dina Francesca Haynes, to discuss their paper, "Criminal Justice for Gendered Violence and Beyond," at the "Women and International Criminal Law" conference that IntLawGrrls is hosting this Friday in Washington.

Heartfelt congratulations!

Human Trafficking at a Tipping Point

The issue of human trafficking has reached a tipping point. On the same day that I pass by The Body Shop, and see their request that customers sign a petition to stop “sex trafficking of children and young people,” apparently co-sponsored by UNGIFT and UNICEF, a student admits that until I began introducing him to the existence of the issue, he was utterly unaware that people were being bought, sold and exploited around the world.
While many people remain unaware that men, women and children are subjected to indentured servitude, debt peonage and other forms of human trafficking, celebrities and corporations and even conservative American politicians have embraced the issue, at least aspects of it. Angelina Jolie and Microsoft Corporation, through their co-funded and founded organization KIND (Kids in Need of Defense), fund pro bono legal training for unaccompanied children, including children who are trafficked. In her capacity as YouthAIDS Global Ambassador, Ashley Judd has become an advocate against human trafficking. Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon lend their cultural and legal feminist star power to aspects of the issue. Conservative and moderate politicians such as Olympia Snowe support bills directed towards international violence against women, including human trafficking.
If corporations situated in the Northern Hemisphere; and conservative, moderate and liberal politicians; and celebrities; and law enforcement and all branches of government are lined up in support of aspects of the issue, then why have we failed so miserably to find and then secure assistance to victims of human trafficking and why have we failed to prosecute traffickers? The answer of course is multi-fold, but part of the problem lies in the bifurcation of the issue. The Body Shop wants us to sign a petition to prevent sex trafficking of children. What about the trafficking of Sri Lankan and Nepalese men into Iraq and Afghanistan to provide support services to US troops and their allies? Angelina Jolie and Microsoft will help unaccompanied children. What about agricultural laborers threatened with blacklisting if they complain about non-payment or exploitation? Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon are concerned with the lack of consent inherent in sex work. What about women who agree to sex work but then have their earnings withheld until they “pay back” their traffickers?
The issue is complex (as IntLawGrrls Janie Chuang and Dina Francesca Haynes have regularly articulated here and here), and the interest of celebrities, politicians and the corporate world is not only laudable, it is often rich and deep. The people who elect to become involved in the issue often become very knowledgeable about it, and yet each selects one aspect in which to become involved, further bifurcating the issue, polarizing the debates and alienating victims who do not fit within their funding or client profile. It is likely the interest in human trafficking will remain for some time. Let us work on making that interest as rich, as meaningful and as holistic as possible.

Guest Blogger: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (left) as today's guest blogger.
Fionnuala holds the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law and is Associate Dean for Planning and Research at the University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis. She's also Professor of Law at the University of Ulster and cofounder and Director of the university's Transitional Justice Institute, with offices in Belfast and Derry, respectively the largest and 2d-largest cities in Northern Ireland.
In her guest post below, she discusses the release last week of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report on the 1972 paratrooper killings of civilians in Derry, placing the event in the context of transitional justice discourse.
Fionnuala's previously been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, Visiting Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Associate Professor of Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a Law & Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University. She received her LL.B. and Ph.D. from the Law Faculty at Queen's University in Belfast, and also holds an LL.M. degree from Columbia.
As is evident from her list of publications (SSRN here), Fionnuala's an internationally published expert and scholar in the areas of human rights, gender, and other issues related to transitional justice, on feminist legal theory, and on states of emergency. Law in Times of Crisis (2006), which she co-authored with Minnesota Law Professor Oren Gross, received a 2007 Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law, the organization for which she just began a 3-year term as a member of the ASIL Executive Council. She's at work now on a book on gender, masculinities, and transitional justice, co-authored with IntLawGrrls Dina Francesca Haynes and Naomi Cahn.
Fionnuala's many awards include a Fulbright scholarship, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann Scholarship, a European Commission award, and the Lawlor fellowship.
The Irish government twice has nominated her to the European Court of Human Rights. Fionnuala served as a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission by appointment of the Minister of Justice, from 2000 to 2005. She remains an elected member of the Executive Committee for the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, and is also a member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
She's just been invited to serve on the U.N. Roster of Experts for the Crisis Communications Unit, having already taken part: in a 2008 Expert Seminar organized by the Working Group "Protecting human rights while countering terrorism" of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force; in 2003 as U.N. Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of conflict and peace-making; and from 1996 to 1997 as a representative of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia.
Fionnuala dedicates her post to the woman who was IntLawGrrls' 1st transnational foremother, whose anglicized name is Grace O'Malley (a favorite not only of yours truly, but also of IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Gráinne de Búrca). (credit for photo of statue of O'Malley on grounds of Westport House, County Mayo, Ireland) Referring to Grace by her Irish name, Fionnuala writes that

Gráinne Ní Mháille (c. 1530 – c. 1603), also known as Granuaile, was an important figure in Irish folklore and a historical figure in 16th century Irish History. While primarily viewed as a romantic and complex female pirate figure she represents for me a figure of feminist agency in a highly patriarchial society with much vigor and uniqueness in her tapestry of her life's story and choices.

Heartfelt welcome!

Go On! Human Rights Council review

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) From our colleague John P. Cerone, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law School in Boston (also the home institution of IntLawGrrls' own Dina Francesca Haynes), comes news of a conference entitled Reviewing the UN Human Rights Council: Looking backward and moving forward, to be held on Friday, April 9, at the W Boston, 110 Stuart Street.
Here's the invite:

Join experts from around the globe in a discussion of the history, efficacy, and future of the UN’s Human Rights Council. Participants will critically examine the work of the council with a view toward generating recommendations for the upcoming General Assembly review of the council. The diverse range of experts includes prominent representatives from the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations, the U.S. Department of State, diplomatic representatives from other council member states, civil society, and the academy.

The day will begin with an address by Kyung-Wha Kang (left), U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights; featured at a special luncheon will be these ambassadors: Juan José Gómez Camacho, Mexico's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva; Eileen Donahoe (right), U.S. Representative to the Human Rights Council; Mohammed Loulichki, Morocco's Permanent Representative to the United Nations; and Ali Treki, President of the 64th Session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Joining John -- who's Special Advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the Human Rights Council -- as panelists will be:
► Christina Cerna, Principal Human Rights Specialist, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
► Juliette De Rivero, Human Rights Watch
► Kate Gorove, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State
► Professor Hurst Hannum, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
► Andrew Hudson, Human Rights First
► Melanie Khanna, Legal Adviser, U.S. Mission to the U.N. and Other International Organizations
► Andrew Loewenstein, a Partner at Foley Hoag and Chair of the Committee on Public International Law and Human Rights of the Boston Bar Association
► Craig Mokhiber, Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights

► Suzanne Nossel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs
► Ted Piccone, Brookings Institution
► Bertram Ramcharan, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights ad interim
► Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International

Details and registration here.

IntLawGrrl interviewed

Congrats to IntLawGrrl Naomi Cahn, subject of an anthropologyworks blog interview regarding On the Front Lines: Gender, War and the Post Conflict Process, the book she's writing along with IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin.
Check out the interview here.

Gender, masculinities & post-conflict transition

As IntLawGrrl Amy Senier posted last fall, the United Nations is seeking to consolidate all U.N. agencies and divisions that address women's issues into a single entity. One of the issues that this new agency will certainly deal with is the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on which IntLawGrrls have posted, in particular:
► Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace, and Security, and, more recently,
► Resolutions 1820 (2008) and 1888 (2009) on sexual violence and armed conflict.
As IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, and I explore in Gender, Masculinities and Transition in Conflicted Societies, a paper on SSRN that is part of our larger project on gender and post-conflict societies, while conflict can provide a gender dividend for women, in most contexts the result of conflict for most women is a negative sum. Specifically:
► Economies stall during and after conflict, or they operate in black and grey markets where women are the least often employed or employable because of their legally enforced second-class status.
► Across most post-conflict transitions, women are the first to be fired and the last to be hired, with the large exception of the false (and temporary) economy built up around the presence of the international community, in which women are paid to fill the “camp follower” positions as housekeepers, cooks, administrators and, of course, for sex.
► Women and children also constitute the overwhelming number of refugees, and of people displaced from their home communities. The very fact of war can contribute to undermining the limited social stability and security of women in many societies, which is the precursor to any exertion of economic or social autonomy. (credit for 2009 photo (c) UNICEF of Central African Republic women waiting to register with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees at the Daha, Chad, refugee camp)
Issues related to the emergence of certain kinds of “hyper” masculinity in situations of conflict and in subsequent peacebuilding are critical to exploring the impact of conflict on women. The article argues that a failure to account for and be cognizant of these specific masculinities has a significant effect for women in particular, as well as the success of the conflict transition process. Finally, we show the critically significant impact of a gender lens by considering the effect of violent masculinities on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs.

ASIL International Refugee Law Interest Group

We welcome and celebrate the creation of a new Interest Group in International Refugee Law, launched through the American Society of International Law. As IntLawGrrls have often posted, the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons touches on a number of fields of study, including Human Rights Law, Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law, and the Law of International Organizations. We note that refugee law also hosts huge implications for gender and gender studies, as women and children vastly outnumber men as both refugees and displaced persons. The issues that impact refugees and displaced persons, such as lack of shelter and housing, lack of physical security, inability to receive an education, lack of employment options, lack of access to status determination processes, and the attendant psychosocial impacts of those difficulties therefore impact women to a greater degree than men, and arguably exacerbate existing gender inequality.
The interest group focuses on the few existing fora that exist for sharing information across issues related to refugee law and aims to fill that gap. It aims to provide a cyber meeting place to cross reference materials available through multiple resources, such as NGOs dealing with refugee and IDP topics, IGO networks for exchanging information on, e.g., the various national guidelines for refugee status determination, as well as academic scholarship and practitioner's observations on refugee law. The creation of this interest group fills a gap within the field of refugee law and should provide several tools for those concerned with refugees and displaced persons to better access and share information.

Post co-authored by Dina Francesca Haynes and Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Go On! Trafficking in Sex & Labor

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) IntLawGrrls will be well represented at the University of Pennsylvania Law Review symposium to be held November 13 and 14 at the Philadelphia-based law school.
"Trafficking in Sex and Labor: Domestic and International Responses" is the title of the conference, which features a keynote address by Catharine MacKinnon, Michigan Law Professor and Special Gender Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, about whom we've posted. Here're the panels:
Labor Trafficking:

IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes, New England School of Law; James Gray Pope, Rutgers-Newark; Dr. Joel Quirk, University of Hull, England; Ms. founder Gloria Steinem; and Martina Vandenberg, Jenner & Block. Penn's Tobias Barrington Wolff will moderate.

Trafficking and Immigration Policy:

Jennifer Chacón, University of California, Irvine; Jennifer "J.J." Rosenbaum, Southern Poverty Law Center; and Jayashri Srikantiah, Stanford. Penn's Sarah Paoletti will moderate.

International Responses to Trafficking:

IntLawGrrls Diane Marie Amann (yours truly), University of California, Davis, and Janie Chuang, American University, as well as Norma Ramos, Coalition Against Trafficking of Women. Penn's William Burke-White will moderate.

Sex Trafficking:

Dr. Denise Brennan, Georgetown; Michelle Madden Dempsey, Villanova; Dr. Melissa Farley, of the San Francisco nonprofit Prostitution Research and Education; Illinois attorney Kaethe Morris Hoffer; Ann Jordan, American University; and author/activist Christine Stark. Pamela Shifman, UNICEF, will moderate.

Details and registration here. (photo credit)

Door finally open to gender-based asylum claims?

After 14 years of limbo, Rodi Alvarado may receive a grant of asylum.
As IntLawGrrl Amy Senier then posted, this summer the administration announced its intention to adopt regulations that have been pending since Matter of R-A- was first litigated in the mid-1990s.
This week, in a one-paragraph brief issued from the office of Chief Counsel Ron LeFevre, the Department of Homeland Security announced that Alvarado “is eligible for asylum and merits a grant of asylum as a matter of discretion.” This succinct brief not only paves the way for an Immigration Judge to grant her asylum, but appears also to be following through on the promise to adopt and implement regulations creating broader possibilities for gender-based asylum brought under the claim of "membership in a particular social group."
Alvarado (above left) fled horrific domestic violence at the hands of her husband, including his attempts to induce an abortion by repeatedly kicking her in the abdomen, as well as dragging her down the street by her hair and using her head to break mirrors and windows. Her attorney throughout these 14 years, Karen Musalo (right), Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, should be congratulated for tirelessly pursuing the government's 14 year old promise to revise the regulations.
Let us now see whether the administration follows through in the face of inevitable criticism that the decision opens the floodgates to hoards of victims of domestic violence who go unprotected in their own countries.

Look On! Kids hopping trains to the U.S.

(Look On! takes occasional note of noteworthy films.) Everybody's talking about Which Way Home, the documentary about children from Central America who ride alone atop trains in their bid to make it to the United States. Directed and produced by Rebecca Cammisa, the film recently made its television début on HBO. (photo credit)
Many of us have written about unaccompanied minors; among them, IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales, in this post.
The United States has been particularly cognizant of the issue in recent years, inviting testimony before Congress on the perils of unaccompanied minors who were then being placed into adult detention -- that is, prison -- facilities. More recently, Congress addressed the issue within the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which included several provisions directing federal funding and resources to children (most often unaccompanied) who are subjected to various forms of human trafficking.
I have not yet seen the film, but The New York Times article about the movie states that it follows several boys from Honduras, passing through Mexico on trains and hoping to enter the United States to work or meet family members there. Having written and thought a great deal about human trafficking, as have other 'Grrls, such as Janie Chuang, I cannot help but wonder what will befall these children. If they make it to the United States, will they be detained? Will they fall into the hands of traffickers? If they do not make it to the United States, Mexico will most likely deport them. If they are not wanted by their families, or are victims of domestic violence, will Honduras protect them?
Several years ago, my students and I won asylum for a child from Honduras. His case was granted with a rare written opinion, in which the judge accepted the argument that his stepfather's abuse and the Honduran government's unwillingness to protect him constituted persecution. The judge was right. We had argued that Honduras had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in so doing had taken on affirmative obligations, but that Honduras nevertheless had failed to fulfill those obligations, ultimately leeaving our client unprotected. Typically, however, domestic violence claims have been denied in the country.
As IntLawGrrl Amy Senier posted a while back, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided finally to issue regulations on gender-based asylum claims. With this decision, an opportunity presents itself. Unaccompanied minors might avoid detention, find pro bono counsel and apply for special immigrant juvenile status, or even be granted asylum in the United States under the theory that their home country was unwilling or unable to protect them from domestic violence.
I look forward to seeing Which Way Home, but I look forward even more to seeing children like those depicted in this movie receiving some much-needed protection.

New IntLawGrrls: WILIG Co-Chairs Naomi Cahn & Ruthanne Deutsch

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure today to welcome as new bloggers the Co-Chairs of the Women in International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, better known as WILIG.
Naomi Cahn (right) and Ruthanne Deutsch (left) will be posting throughout the year about WILIG's events. (Ruthanne's joined Naomi as WILIG co-chair now that IntLawGrrl Susana SáCouto's become a WILIG co-chair emerita.)
The co-chairs' 1st post, the Go On! item below, announces a terrific upcoming program at ASIL headquarters, entitled "Gender Issues, International Law, and the New Administration." What's more, we're pleased to announce that Naomi also will post individually at IntLawGrrls.
Naomi is the John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. Her scholarship focuses on family law, feminist jurisprudence, and reproductive technology. Her most recent book is Test Tube Families: Why the Fertility Markets Need Legal Regulation (New York University Press 2009), and she's at work co-authoring a book on post-conflict and gender with IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes and our colleague Fionnuala Ní Aoláin. Naomi's both a Senior Fellow at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and a member of Yale Law School's Cultural Cognition Project, which examines public attitudes towards gay and lesbian parenting. From 2002 to 2004, she was on leave in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before entering academic in 1993, she'd practiced at the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson and at Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services. She earned a B.A. from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a J.D. from Columbia, and an LL.M. from Georgetown.
Ruthanne, an expert in constitutional law and public international law, practices as associate in the Washington office of Sidley & Austin. There she's taken part in briefing and preparing: cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate courts; and international trade matters before the U.S. Court of International Trade and the World Trade Organization. Ruthanne was graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where she's been a Global Law Scholar, an Executive Articles Editor for the law journal, and a Dean’s Visiting Scholar. She served as a law clerk to Judge Timothy B. Dyk, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Before embarking on her law career, Ruthanne had been an international development economist at the World Bank and at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Heartfelt welcome!

One small step for immigrants . . .

While the economic crisis may have pushed President Obama's plans for comprehensive immigration reform into next year and beyond, Democrats in the legislature are already offering a preview of good news for immigrants. Moreover, given the vast discretion awarded to the executive in enforcing immigration law, we may see a sea change in the treatment of immigrants before any immigration reform bill hits the floor of the legislature.
This Wednesday, Senator Leahy held a Judiciary Committee meeting to discuss the Uniting American Families Act of 2009, a bill that would extend those immigration benefits currently offered to married heterosexual couples to "permanent partners." The latter are defined as individuals over 18 years of age in a monogamous, financially interdependent relationship intended to be a lifelong commitment, but unable to marry. This amendment would thus allow an LGBT U.S. citizen in permanent partnership with a non-citizen to sponsor her partner for a green card and an LGBT asylee or refugee to designate his partner as a derivative recipient of his asylum or refugee status, among other benefits. The impact on LGBT couples would be tremendous, but of course, as the NY Times describes, political opponents have already reacted strongly. This will not be one of those "areas of agreement" that Obama seeks to identify; brace yourselves for a long, hard fight -- but at least it's being fought.
On the same day, Attorney General Holder confirmed that non-citizens are entitled to effective assistance of counsel in immigration hearings. This wise step vacated former AG Mukasey's decision in Matter of Compean (about which IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes posted here), less than two weeks before Obama took office, to overturn long-standing precedent establishing a framework for bringing ineffective assistance of counsel claims in immigration court. Bringing great cheer to the hearts of immigrants and proceduralists alike, Holder notes that the process used by Mukasey to overturn the ineffective assistance of counsel framework was insufficient, and seeks instead to create

one that affords all interested parties a full and fair opportunity to participate and ensures that the relevant facts and analysis are collected and evaluated.

(In the meantime, the pre-Compean framework remains in place.) While this standard may seem a bare minimum of procedural fairness, it represents a great step towards transparency and fairness in an area of law heretofore characterized by neither. Here's hoping it's the first of many such steps.

Who Should Engage in Post-Conflict Reconstruction -- Civilians or Military?

Last week, President Barack Obama announced that although he hoped to send 300 civilians to Afghanistan, he was unable to find the economists, lawyers, and political scientists he had hoped to send. Therefore, he announced, he would instead engage soldiers and the military to do the post-conflict reconstruction programmatic work.

Post-conflict reconstruction is a relatively new field, if it can even be said to be a field, in which internationals and locals work to normalize and build sustainable institutions and infrastructure following war. Aspects of post-conflict reconstruction can include legal drafting, democratization, human rights institution building, gender mainstreaming (often sorely missing, as I have written in my article Lessons from Arizona Market: the Impact of Neoliberlism and the Free Market Mindset on Women in the Post Conflict Reconstruction Process).
The entire enterprise is highly susceptible to critique for a mulitude of reasons, many of which I have written in my article Deconstructing the Reconstruction: Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Post War Bosnia and Herzegovina. The enterprise smacks of colonialism, in particular when internationals are put in positions akin to governors of a colonial outpost, as was arguably the case in Kosovo and, for some of the postwar period, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This engenders fears of western imperialism, particularly when programs which work in the United States or Europe are imposed or superimposed onto other legal, cultural, political, and economic systems. It is particularly sensitive to the often whimsical and fleeting interests of donors (at the nation-state, organizational, and private level) that would often prefer to see their money used on "sexier" issues than those that have been carefully assessed to be real priorities.

The possibility, then, that military personnel would become the de facto internationals to engage in these operations still in a nascent phase of normative development, and already fraught with legitimate critiques from virtually every scholarly disclipline, is frightening. This is not to say that military personnel are not inherently capable -- or also are, in fact, economists, lawyers, and political scientists, although most are not. But military are on the ground to maintain and foster security, which is a different objective than having the skill and priority of creating sustainable rights regimes.

When I heard that President Obama was planning to send military personnel to do post-conflict reconstruction work because he could not find 300 U.S. civilians to do the job, I wanted to tell him that, in fact, although not well publicized, there are many divisions within federal agencies and private organizations that have produced thousands of U.S. civilian professionals and scholars who have already engaged in post conflict reconstruction work. For instance:

► A division within the Department of State sent hundreds of American lawyers to Bosnia and Herzegovina to assist with the first and second round of elections, and then seconded several hundred to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe as experts in human rights, elections, governance, democratization, media, education and gender.

► A different division of the Department of State has sent hundreds of American lawyers as Junior Professional Officers to the United Nations.

► The American Bar Association's CEELI program regularly sends lawyers and judges abroad to work in developing legal systems.

► A multitude of agencies of the United Nations employs Americans on a contract basis at any give time.

It is high time that the United States developed databases of expert Americans with international experiences and kept these people at the ready as potential surge teams. We exist in the thousands at any given time. Rather than turn these crucial tasks over to the military, already stretched to and beyond its capacity, the United States must begin to recognize its existing -- albeit informal -- core of civilians trained in aspects of post-conflict reconstruction. And it must find a way to make it feasible to call up and send these civilians, rather than to engage the military to become responsible for post-conflict reconstruction work.

A new direction for U.S. anti-trafficking policy?

For many in the anti-trafficking advocacy community, President Barack Obama's election was a basis to hope for much-needed change in U.S. policy to combat cross-border trafficking in human beings. But statements by Hillary Clinton (left) during her hearings for confirmation as Secretary of State signal that change may not be as forthcoming as one might have expected, as a recent post by Columbia Law Professor Katherine M. Franke (below right) notes. Augmenting these concerns is the fact that key actors who influenced the Bush Administration anti-trafficking policy are now positioned to affect anti-trafficking policy in the United Nations. Those actors left a legacy, moreover:
► Over the last eight years, the complex issue of human trafficking has been grossly oversimplified into a campaign to rescue women from brothels (as IntLawGrrls blogger Dina Francesca Haynes has analyzed here). Notwithstanding a legal definition (developed during the Clinton Administration) that encompasses the trafficking of men, women, and children for both sexual and non-sexual purposes, Bush Administration policies largely focused on sex trafficking (a phenomenon often inaccurately equated with "sexual slavery," as IntLawGrrls blogger Karen E. Bravo has noted here) and prostitution. This was in no small part due to the highly effective, coordinated advocacy efforts of self-described "abolitionist" feminists and faith-based organizations to turn trafficking into a crusade against prostitution-writ-large.
► These efforts culminated in State Department model legislation (for adoption by other countries) that targets prostitution and grants restrictions that require non-governmental (and certain international) organizations applying for U.S. funds to sign an anti-prostitution pledge -- measures that are problematic as a matter of international law and constitutional law.
► The abolitionists most recently sought -- unsuccessfully -- to amend the Mann Act to expand federal criminal jurisdiction to cover all local and in-state prostitution cases, raising strong objections from women's and immigrants' rights groups, the DOJ, national associations of district attorneys, attorneys general, and fraternal order of police, and even the Heritage Foundation.
So, given Secretary Clinton's conflation of trafficking and prostitution in describing her plans to address sex trafficking during her confirmation hearing, one has to wonder whether she will be willing or able to stand up to the same abolitionist pressures she once withstood during the negotiations over the U.N. Trafficking Protocol. After all, the Clinton Administration's refusal to adopt an abolitionist platform during the Protocol negotiations led then-First Lady Clinton -- as head of the President's Inter-Agency Council on Women -- to be viciously attacked by abolitionist feminists and conservatives for being "pro-prostitution."
On the international front, the appointment of the former President of Equality Now to head the New York office of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) raises the question of how much influence Equality Now's strong abolitionist stance will bring to bear on U.N. High Commissioner Navi Pillay (below left), who actually co-founded Equality Now. Until now, the OHCHR has stayed above the fray, hewing to the UN Trafficking Protocol's explicit guidance (in the official interpretive notes) that the legal treatment of prostitution be left to individual states to decide. Hopefully, High Commissioner Pillay will stay the course, if for no other reason than to avoid dividing the women's human rights community by taking sides in this fight.

So why the fuss? Whatever one thinks about the merits of prostitution/sex work, we cannot afford to have the limited resources devoted to anti-trafficking diverted to the broader issue of fighting prostitution, particularly given recent studies demonstrating the ineffectiveness of such campaigns and their potential for collateral damage. And the trafficking of men, women, and children for non-sexual purposes is a problem in desperate need of attention. Thankfully, the recently-passed 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Protection Reauthorization Act makes inroads towards addressing trafficking for non-sexual purposes, noting the "sense of Congress" that the Secretary of State should work with the ILO and UN to establish a multilateral framework between labor exporting and labor importing countries to ensure migrant worker protection. The 2008 TVPRA specifically addresses trafficking and exploitation of domestic workers by diplomats, a problem first exposed by Human Rights Watch nearly 8 years ago. Responding to problems identified by the GAO in this report, the 2008 TVPRA ensures that domestic workers are given an employment contract and made aware of their rights by US consular officials trained in U.S. labor standards. It also requires the State Department to keep records of allegations of trafficking or abuse by diplomats, and to suspend issuance of visas to missions concerning which the State Department has received credible evidence of worker exploitation that was tolerated by the mission.

Marching orders in place, the task now is for the State Department to see these provisions through and -- hopefully -- not get enmeshed in the interminable prostitution debates.

Deportees not entitled to effective counsel?

Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey certified yet another decision to himself, this one effectively eliminating the right to effective assistance of counsel for people in removal proceedings in immigration court. The decision, Matter of Compean, means that all persons in removal proceedings, including asylum seekers, have no statutory, constitutional or other right to representation or effective representation before being removed from the country.
Immigration professors and advocates are outraged at this latest in a string of decisions by the Attorney General to certify cases to himself -- cases governing issues left dormant or neglected over the course of the last eight years of this administration -- in a rush to make law before the inauguration of the new President this coming Tuesday. Last year, the AG certified to himself Matter of A-T-, dealing with female genital mutilation, in which this author wrote an amicus brief on behalf of 125 medical entities and institutions, and about which IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales posted here.
Concerned immigration advocates call this latest decision another attempt both to destroy the already minimal due process rights of noncitizens in the United States and to further limit the possibility of federal judicial oversight. Challenges to Matter of Compean are already being drafted and filed, but for the time being, this case is law -- and those about to be deported can no longer claim that their attorneys were ineffective in assisting them in court.

Heartfelt welcome to our newest IntLawGrrl, Dina Francesca Haynes

It's our great pleasure today to welcome a new IntLawGrrl, Dina Francesca Haynes (left).
Dina's an Associate Professor of Law at the New England School of Law, where she teaches courses related to immigration, international law and ethics. She has also taught at Georgetown University Law Center, American University’s Washington College of Law, and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
Prior to teaching law, she spent a decade practicing international law, including such positions as Director General of the Human Rights Department for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and as Human Rights Advisor to the OSCE in Serbia and Montenegro. She has also worked for the United Nations, serving as a Protection Officer in Croatia with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and in various position in Rwanda and Afghanistan for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She also was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in what was then known as the Immigration & Naturalization Service, and she clerked on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Dina earned her B.A. degree at the University of Denver, her J.D. at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and her LL.M. at Georgetown University Law Center. She's the author of Deconstructing the Reconstruction: Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (Ashgate 2008). Ethical issues related to the international civil serviceis the subject of her 1st post, below. Other areas of research and writing include immigration law, human rights law, human trafficking, public international law, international organizations, U.N. law, post-conflict reconstruction, humanitarian law, and migration.
She's chosen to dedicate her IntLawGrrls posts to Joan Fitzpatrick (1950-2003), at the time of her passing a leading human rights scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dina writes of Fitzpatrick (below left):

Joan Fitzpatrick was a brilliant teacher, an internationally renowned scholar and an admired human rights activist who dedicated her life to improving human rights around the world. She was also one of the few female international human rights lawyers practicing when I was a law student, and the only woman I could find then to look up to and emulate. When I took a position as a summer associate with Paul Hoffman at the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles, and I learned that she was working with him on the case to which I’d been assigned, ­Alvarez-Machain (later Sosa), I was thrilled. Her contributions to human rights law, the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers, and to forging a path for IntlLawGrrls everywhere were considerable and meaningful, and I am thankful for her work and legacy.

Today Fitzpatrick joins other transnational foremothers in the list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Ethics & international civil servants

(Dina Francesca Haynes describes her most recent article in this, her 1st IntLawGrrls post)

I began my article, Ethics of International Civil Service: A Reflection on How the Care of UN Staff Impacts their Ability to Fulfill Their Role in "Harmonizing" the World, when I was asked to join an informal working group based out of the U.N. Secretariat. The resultant article explores the extent to which the United Nations must “consider and provide for the mental and emotional well-being of its staff members, particularly those working in the field under extreme stress,” so that these international civil servants can carry out their work to facilitate world harmony.
► The article first discusses the nature and history of the concept of international civil servants, shaped primarily by Cold War mentalities and by the extraordinary leadership of Dag Hammarskjöld, who served as U.N. Secretary-General from 1953 to 1961.
► The second part of the article discusses the composition and goals of U.N. staff today, touching upon staff members’ roles in the protection of human rights in various settings and the struggles with geographic, cultural diversity and gender diversity. A large focus of this section addresses the obstacles to women’s participation in the United Nations and the U.N.’s efforts, only moderately successful, to boost women's participation.
► Part III of the article explores the kinds of ethical issues that arise from the conditions under which international civil service is carried out – conditions that can be very hard on civil servants’ mental and physical health. Staff members who are engaged in field work in a conflict or post-conflict setting, for example, work with traumatized and vulnerable people, who may be victims as well as perpetrators of mass atrocities. Security may be minimal, and daily life may well be filled with “a palpable air of discontent, deep-seated mistrust, hatred, malaise, anger and sadness.” In this challenging setting, staff members are expected to “exercise good judgment with the large discretion granted to them in an environment in which the work is fast-paced and responsive and where the field officer risks becoming accustomed to acting in reactive mode, to perpetually putting out fires.” In this section, I examine the extent to which staff members have access to the tools or resources that would help them thoughtfully choose an ethical course of action under difficult conditions. I draw in part from my own field experience to show that staff members are often not sufficiently prepared to cope with the situations that they will encounter, and do not always make the best choices (to put it mildly) as to how to conduct themselves properly. These factors result in problems like corruption and sexual harassment, along with even more serious problems, such as engaging in the trafficking of human beings and the violent deaths of the very civilians whom U.N. peacekeepers are charged with protecting.
► Finally, the last two parts of the article offer some thoughts on the kind of care and training that are needed to protect the emotional, physical, and mental well-being of U.N. staff members and thus help them to act in an ethical and competent manner in stressful situations.

I conclude with the observation that if the United Nations does not provide a properly protective and caring environment for its staff members, then it cannot “realistically hope to improve the possibility of preventing either burnout, trauma, or ethical misdealings by its staff members under stress.”