Introduction
This report covers the second year of operation of the Committee for Human Rights (CfHR), from December 1996 through November 1997. The CfHR was established as a result of the work of its predecessor, the Commission for Human Rights, mandated by the Executive Board to design a permanent mechanism through which the human rights concerns of AAA's members and leadership could be addressed on other than an ad hoc and case-specific basis.
The various goals set for the committee reduce basically to two: First, we are to stimulate, lead, and nourish the professional discussion among AAA members over the linkage of anthropology and human rights. Second, we are to respond to cases of human rights abuse that are relevant to our profession, gathering information, and, where warranted, preparing briefing reports and proposing actions the AAA can take. In the latter the CfHR necessarily maintains a close working relationship with the AAA president and staff.
The CfHR works steadily throughout the year. Its eight members, half elected and half appointed to four-year terms, interact via telephone, fax, and especially e-mail, often daily. As chair I have found that our work is perpetually in motion. The members are strongly and personally committed to the Committee's mission and effectiveness, with an advantageous distribution of regional expertise and personal networks. I find that the chair's largest challenge is to keep up with them.
Tom Greaves, Chair
Committee Membership, 1997
The Committee's membership for 1997 has been as follows. (Terms are for four years, ending and beginning on the final day of the AAA annual meeting.)
Ellen Gruenbaum was elected by AAA ballot to the committee for a term running from November 1997 to November 2001.
Barbara Johnston was appointed to the committee by President Moses for a term running from November 1997 to November 2001.
Two names have been forwarded to the AAA Nominations and Elections Committee for consideration as candidates for the AAA's 1998 ballot to fill a term beginning November 1998 to November 2002.
Two current members will end their terms on the Committee in November 1997: Robert Hitchcock and Terence Turner.
In addition to our two committee working meetings scheduled during the 1997 AAA annual meeting, the CfHR has sponsored a two-part panel organized by Leslie Sponsel, "Mining, Oil, Environment, People and Rights in the Amazon." We were also instrumental in arranging a workshop and session on the application of forensics to human rights abuse documentation by Karen Ramey Burns. This workshop is cosponsored by AAA and AAAS. The Committee will hold an Open Forum during the meeting to get broad membership input for two matters of concern: (1) a question of how privatization is shifting development projects to agencies and corporations which are not accountable for human and cultural rights, and (2) on the plans of the Task Group on Ethnic Cleansing. Finally, through an e-mail network of anthropologists interested in human rights, the Committee will draw attention to about a dozen human rights-related panels, and the Committee's sponsored events, at the AAA annual meeting.
Wednesday, November 19
8:00-11:30 am / CfHR Committee Meeting
12:00-3:45 pm / Panel of relevance: Beyond the Myth of "Homogeneous and Monoethnic" Japan: Looking into the Futures of Anthropology of Multicultural Society and the Human Rights Issues. Ichiro Numazaki and Izumi Sato, organizers.
6:30-10:15 pm / CfHR-sponsored panel: Mining, Oil, Environment, People and Rights in the Amazon. Leslie Sponsel, organizer.*
Thursday, November 20
8:00-11:45 am / Panel of Relevance: Development and the Anthropological Encounter in the 21st Century. Michael Horowitz, organizer.*
12:15-1:30 pm / Session of relevance: Forensic Anthropology Faces Genocide by Karen Ramey Burns (cosponsored AAA and AAAS)
Friday, November 21
8:00-11:30 am / Panel of relevance: Imagining War and Imagining Peace in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives. William Derman and Marc Somers, organizers.*
8:00-11:45 am / Panel of relevance: Appropriation, Cultural Self-Consciousness and Commodification. Kathleen Lowry and Jessica Jerome, organizers.*
9:00-12:00 pm / Subscription Workshop on Forensics by Karen Ramey Burns (Sponsored by the AAAS)
1:30-3:30 pm / Session of relevance: Indigenous Organizations in Brazil, A Conversation with Alcida Ramos. Jim Weil, organizer. Sponsored by SLAA*
1:45-3:30 pm / Panel of relevance: Anthropological Perspectives on Rights, Citizenship and Democracy. Meg McLagan, organizer.
6:15-7:30 pm / Open Forum, Committee for Human Rights
Saturday, November 22
8:00-11:45 am / Panel of relevance: Getting the World's Attention: Indigenous Rights, Advocacy and the International Arena. Bartholomew Dean and Jerome Levi, organizers.
12:15-1:30 pm / Session of relevance: Open Forum, Committee on Ethics
1:45-3:30 pm / Panel of relevance: Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Identity. Lisa Valentine, organizer.
3:00-5:30 pm / CfHR Committee Meeting
Sunday, November 23
8:00-9:45 am / Panel of relevance: Anthropology and Human Rights in the Middle East. Barbara Michael, organizer.
* One or more CfHR members participates.
Committee Web Site
In keeping with its mission to expand and nourish human rights awareness among the AAA's membership and within the anthropology profession generally, the committee has been preparing a sizable body of material related to its work, to be available on-line. The committee's material will be accessed from the committee's web page within the AAA web site and will be a subordinate section within the AAA's general web site. The material is in the final stages of preparation and will be sent to AAA for mounting before the end of the 1997.
The material addresses five general functions: (1) information on how to contact members of the committee to convey human rights information and concerns, (2) information enabling members to ascertain the role, scope, history and activities of the committee, (3) information helpful to AAA members seeking to work or teach in human rights issues, or to collaborate with others doing the same, (4) information prepared by the committee on specific cases of human rights abuse and (5) bibliographic and teaching resources for the anthropology of human rights.
Arranged in a hierarchy of linked elements, the key components of the Committee's web site will be as follows:
Human Rights Cases
While all instances of human rights abuse should be opposed, the Committee usually limits itself to two types of cases. One is where anthropologists or their associates are themselves threatened because their professional work reveals an officially embarrassing instance of human rights abuse. A second is where a specific ethnic and minority group is subjected to human rights abuse, or threat thereof, targeted as a result of its cultural distinctiveness.
This year the Committee has gathered information on two instances where an anthropologist has been threatened for revealing human rights abuse, and on eight instances where the human rights of cultural and indigenous minorities are at issue. Confidentiality considerations suggest that it is wise not to identify the specific groups involved until the Committee decides to recommend AAA action; we examine many more cases than we proceed to act on. The cases on which we have gathered data in 1997 are located in Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Japan, Sudan, Uganda and Venezuela.
The Committee is likely to go forward to the AAA president with recommendations for action on two cases by the end of 1997 or shortly thereafter. Others may follow (or be dropped) at later points. The Committee is also monitoring developments in the struggle over the draft Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, currently stalled in the UN, and a similar effort within the OAS.
While the CfHR retains flexibility in how it responds to specific HR cases, the following steps are likely in the usual case:
b. An investigative report ("briefing document") is developed, drawing on consultations with colleagues who are familiar with the specifics of the case.
c. A plan for an appropriate AAA response is developed. Where appropriate a letter of protest, list of addressees, links to other associations and organizations, and other actions may be included.
d. These materials are conveyed to the AAA executive director, who may append comments and send the proposal to the AAA president for approval and action in the name of the AAA.
e. Once approved, the CfHR may assist in the dissemination of the report and AAA letters, in their conveyance to appropriate colleagues and networks, and, where relevant, to overseas anthropological colleagues and associations.
f. Where circumstances warrant, CfHR may issue a later update of its first briefing document and proposed additional AAA actions.
g. Report of the action is made to the membership in the CfHR's annual session at the annual meeting. It is hoped that the AAA web site can be an additional locus where information regarding these cases is accessible.
The Committee has finished work on a concise statement on Anthropology and Human Rights which will be forwarded to the AAA leadership with recommendation that it be adopted as an AAA position statement. The text of that draft follows:
Preamble
The capacity for culture is tantamount to the capacity for humanity. Culture is the precondition for the realization of this capacity by individuals, and in turn depends on the cooperative efforts of individuals for its creation and reproduction. Anthropology's cumulative knowledge of human cultures, and of human mental and physical capacities across all populations, types, and social groups, attests to the universality of the human capacity for culture. This knowledge entails an ethical commitment to the equal opportunity of all cultures, societies, and persons to realize this capacity in their cultural identities and social lives. However, the global environment is fraught with violence which is perpetrated by states and their representatives, corporations, and other actors. That violence limits the humanity of individuals and collectivites.
Anthropology as a profession is committed to the promotion and protection of the right of people and peoples everywhere to the full realization of their humanity, which is to say their capacity for culture. When any culture or society denies or permits the denial of such opportunity to any of its own members or others, the American Anthropological Association has an ethical responsibility to protest and oppose such deprivation. This implies starting from the base line of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and associated implementing international legislation, but also expanding the definition of human rights to include areas not necessarily addressed by international law. These areas include collective as well as individual rights, cultural, social, and economic development, and a clean and safe environment.
Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights (Proposed)
The American Anthropological Association has developed a Declaration that we believe has universal relevance:
People and groups have a generic right to realize their capacity for culture, and to produce, reproduce and change the conditions and forms of their physical, personal and social existence, so long as such activities do not diminish the same capacities of others. Anthropology as an academic discipline studies the bases and the forms of human diversity and unity; anthropology as a practice seeks to apply this knowledge to the solution of human problems.
As a professional organization of anthropologists, the AAA has long been, and should continue to be, concerned whenever human difference is made the basis for a denial of basic human rights, where "human" is understood in its full range of cultural, social, linguistic, psychological, and biological senses.
Thus, the AAA founds its approach on anthropological principles of respect for concrete human differences, both collective and individual, rather than the abstract legal uniformity of Western tradition. In practical terms, however, its working definition builds on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights, the Conventions on Torture, Genocide, and Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and other treaties which bring basic human rights within the parameters of international written and customary law and practice. The AAA definition thus reflects a commitment to human rights consistent with international principles but not limited by them. Human rights is not a static concept. Our understanding of human rights is constantly evolving as we come to know more about the human condition. It is therefore incumbent on anthropologists to be involved in the debate on enlarging our understanding of human rights on the basis of anthropological knowledge and research.
Task Groups on Human Rights Abuse
The committee has inaugurated two working units we call "task groups." Their purpose is to provide a means by which the Committee can address human rights abuses which are, regrettably, "generic"--that is, of a type that occurs repeatedly. Rather than focusing on a succession of specific cases, the Committee is seeking to illumine the nature of those types of abuse, to develop a well-grounded assessment of its relevance to anthropology, and to develop and gain AAA endorsement of a position statement, backed up by a published "white paper" on these issues.
In order to accomplish these goals, the Committee has devised the "task group" vehicle, linked to the committee by overlapping membership, but including anthropologists outside the committee as well.
The two task groups are (1) the Task Group on Ethnic Cleansing, co-chaired by Carole Nagengast and James Peacock, and (2) the recently established Task Group on the Human Rights of Women, chaired by Ellen Gruenbaum. Our Ethnic Cleansing task group will be seeking membership input at the Committee's Open Forum at the 1997 Annual meeting. The Task Group on the Human Rights of Women will be accomplishing preliminary organization at the 1997 meeting.
Task groups operate on a time line of about 18 months to define their area, assemble scholarship on the issue, consult relevant colleagues on the matter, and draft a white paper and proposed position statement for Committee review and then forwarding to the AAA leadership.
Publications
A Committee-organized AAA panel at the 1995 Annual Meeting has become a special issue (volume 53, number 3, 1997) of the Journal of Anthropological Research, "Human Rights vs. Cultural Relativity." The issues guest editors are Terence Turner and Carole Nagengast. The issue contains six articles. The Table of Contents for the issue, plus citations to two other publications associated with Committee work, follows:
Introduction: Universal Human Rights versus Cultural Relativity
Carole Nagengast and Terence Turner
Human Rights, Human Difference: Anthropology's Contribution to an
Emancipatory Cultural Politics
Terence Turner
Pluralists' Approach to Human Rights
Ellen Messer
In the Name of Culture: Cultural Relativism and the Abuse of the Individual
Elizabeth M. Zechenter
Women, Minorities, and Indigenous Peoples: Universalism and Cultural
Relativity
Carole Nagengast
The Good Side of Relativism
Elvin Hatch
Two other items should be noted, associated with the Committee's work:
Rabben, Linda
[In press] Unnatural Selection: Can the Yanomami and Kayapo Survive
Civilization? London: Pluto Press.
Morris, Patrick and Robert Hitchcock, eds.
[Forthcoming] International Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples and
the Environment. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
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