North Korean Human Rights: Naming and Shaming

A while back, there was an exchange between John Feffer and Roberta Cohen on North Korean human rights. John argued that naming-and-shaming are ineffective, if not counter-productive and instead argued for a human security approach to human rights (i.e. provide aid and development assistance). I later weighed in on the politics between these two camps.

I thought about John's point again on whether naming-and-shaming actually works on North Korea. Roberta mentioned that they did sign the UN Treaty on Human Rights as a sign of progress; this might be stage two of Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink's five-stage spiral model on human rights change. I was reminded though, thanks to a post on the Duck, that there actually is academic literature on the effectiveness of naming-and-shaming strategies. Amanda Murdie and Dylan Davis ran a quantitative analysis on this using some creative (in a good way) methods to measure shaming and human rights change. Cullen Hendrix and Wendy Wong also have a forthcoming article in BJPS.

The verdict: Yes, naming-and-shaming do have a qualified/conditional impact. Translation: naming-shaming has to be done under certain conditions (i.e. they're effective on autocratic but not democratic regimes) and in conjunction with some other factors (i.e. when domestic NGOs are present are INGOs are also weighing in). For North Korea then, human rights activism may have at least a weak effect on the regime: there are no domestic NGOs or civil society to support transnational activists, but there is pressure from the UN and North Korea is autocratic.

The Justice Conference

I gave a talk at my alma mater last fall titled, "Rights, Mercy, and Social Justice for the Oppressed: Reflections on Faith and Politics." I'm not particularly an expert on said topic and for full disclosure I relied quite a bit on Tim Keller's Generous Justice to help me organize my thoughts. The basis for the talk, however, was really just my reflections on justice through some of my research on North Korean human rights and humanitarian aid. I wasn't aware of this until just now, but there's actually a whole conference dedicated to faith and justice which will take place in a few days. The Justice Conference. Definitely a lot more material to rely on next time I give such a talk.

Drones and Bases

Back in 2008 when I was rewriting the conclusion to my book on anti-base protests, there was a lot of discussion about AFRICOM and the possibility of building new bases in sub-Sahara Africa. As the Post reports, this is now becoming reality with the expansion of drone technology. Meanwhile, drone use is likely to expand in the Middle East Here's a brief about UAE purchasing surveillance drones from the U.S. Will we see protests against U.S. bases in Africa soon?

Update (2/28/13)

• Niger base confirmed. Media reported last week that about 100 troops are now in Niger. 
• Also, a symposium on the drone debate

Drone Policy Scrutinized

The media and blogosphere are abuzz these days on drone policy as Obama nominee for CIA director John Brennan, a strong supporter of ongoing drone strikes, undergoes his hearing.  The Diane Rehm Show on NPR hosted an interesting conversation on the subject yesterday. A colleague of mine at CUA also wrote a piece on the ethics of drone strikes while reflecting on just war tradition (this became an issue b/c a leaked Justice Department memo used just war theory as part of its legal basis for drone strikes.

The Administration touts the drone program as a success based on the number of kills and the assumed reduction in insurgent attacks which would have taken innocent lives. The truth is, counterfactuals are difficult to measure, and it's difficult to verify the effectiveness of a program when its mostly run under the radar. At the same time, the very success of the drone program may be related to its clandestine nature.

Activists, reporters, and human rights groups have been arguing that drone strikes, or more accurately civilian casualties associated with drone strikes, are creating more enemies (Brennan disputes this argument).  More awareness = more backlash = more legal, diplomatic, and PR obstacles for the CIA and military to clear. While the intelligence community might believe that such obstacles would hinder the effectiveness of drones there might be some argument for claiming that it could improve the program in the long run by a) developing strategy, technology, and operational doctrine which aim to further reduce collateral damage; b) providing greater clarity on rules which may protect our interests as other actors begin to acquire drone capabilities; c) give drone attacks greater public legitimacy here and abroad - it remains high among the U.S. public, but may drop with more attention.

Now that the "cat's out of the bag" meaning increased scrutiny domestically by Congress and public,  and more countries will acquiring or expanding use of drone technology internationally, it will be interesting to see how drone surveillance/strikes and its legal framework unfolds. Will other countries build their legal basis for strikes based on precedence set by the U.S. actions? Imagine a scenario where Mexico kills suspected drug lords in Tijuana; China conducts surveillance on Tibetans; or Iran attacks suspected U.S. military facilities in Iraq.

Some other interesting tidbits I learned from this week's burst of news: U.S., Great Britain, and Israel are the only three countries with armed drones. China is probably next. Also, Pakistan, which in the past publicly condemned but privately condoned drone attacks may be shifting its position. To date, the U.S. has conducted more strikes (347) in Pakistan than any other place. Washington post has a nifty tracker for this data along with data for Yemen and Somalia, the two other countries where drone strikes have been a regular occurrence.

Update #1: Washington post reports Obama Administration still has not revealed how drone policy would become more transparent.  As Karen DeYoung argues, "The question now is how much more the administration can say without violating secrecy restrictions on its own covert actions [or I might add compromising the security of missions involving drones]".