1998 Annual Report Tom Greaves, Chair
November 15, 1998
Table of Contents
Part I: Organizational Matters
This report describes the third operational year of the AAA’s Committee for Human Rights, covering the period from December, 1997, through November, 1998.
Because readers of this report may be puzzled that this is only the CfHR’s third year, a short explanation may be useful. The AAA’s Executive Board established the Commission for Human Rights in 1992, following extensive groundwork laid by the late Patrick Morris.1 Within the AAA, a commission is a working group established for a finite period of time, to accomplish a specified charge. The Commission for Human Rights, chaired by Leslie Sponsel, completed its three-year life in 1995 and, in fulfillment of one of its charges, proposed to the Executive Board a permanent committee, to be named the Committee for Human Rights, with a proposed charge and operation protocols. The Executive Committee approved the Commission’s proposal and the Committee for Human Rights (hereafter, CfHR), began its work in December, 1995. Thus, 1998 completes the third year of Committee existence, and the sixth year of the AAA’s regularized involvement with human rights.
The Committee’s charge is quite detailed, but basically boils down to two missions. One is internal to the Association: to expand awareness and stimulate collegial deliberations regarding the impingement of human rights on anthropologists and vice versa. The other is external: to process and manage the involvement of the Association in human rights issues. The thrust of this annual report is to describe the Committee’s work in these two arenas.2
The CfHR consists of eight members (Attachment #1) whose personal expertise, networks, linkages to other organizations (including AAA sections), and interests tend to complement one another, providing the CfHR with an intentionally designed, broad range of intellectual and practical tools. Not every part of the world and every human rights permutation is covered, of course, but within the constraints of a membership of eight, the Committee’s range is an essential asset.
In accomplishing the above broad charges the CfHR works continuously throughout the year, with little diminishment even in the summer months. Our eight members meet twice a year in face-to-face meetings, but the large bulk of our work is accomplished by e-mail, telephone and fax throughout the year. Speaking as chair, I can say that membership on the CfHR is a very large commitment. If I may further say so, the service my committee colleagues render to the Association and the profession is prodigious.
Tom Greaves, Chair
Committee for Human Rights
1 The AAA has involved itself in human rights issues sporadically for most of its existence, beginning with Boas. The Camelot debate of the 1960s and the Thailand issues of the early 1970s are the most prominent AAA human rights events of more recent times. In 1990 the AAA appointed a Special Commission, chaired by Terence Turner, to investigate the acutely jeopardized homelands of the Brazilian Yanomami. The report of the Special Commission (1991) and subsequent AAA intervention appears to have been centrally important in stopping the appropriation of all but small, isolated reserves in the Yanomami area and precipitating Brazilian agreement to a very large, contiguous Yanomami homeland. The Yanomami action added momentum to the idea that the AAA have a permanent mechanism to deal with human rights matters. The late Patrick Morris was a key and indefatigable figure in this effort, leading to the Commission for Human Rights in 1992, and its permanent successor, the Committee for Human Rights, in 1995.
2 The Executive Board's charge is actually phrased in six parts, which are only very generally described in these two categories. The full charge can be accessed in the CfHR's website.
Part I: Organizational Matters
A. Committee Membership, 1998
The Committee’s membership for 1998 has been as follows. (Terms are for four years, ending and beginning on the final day of the AAA annual meeting.)
1998 will mark the end of four-year terms, half elected and half appointed, on the CfHR and the beginning of its transition to the AAA’s new, all elected, three-year term standard. Next month (December, 1998) Carole Nagengast and Ellen Messer will end four years of committee service. Their places will be taken by:
Lucia Ann McSpadden (Life and Peace Inst., Uppsala), appointed to a one-year term ending in December, 1999. This position becomes elected thereafter.
One consequence of the Reorganization Plan is the difficulty it poses in maintaining the breadth and complementarity - rather than redundancy - of the expertise, personal networks, human rights issues, and interests of committee members. When two committee members significantly overlap, the committee’s resources are thereby diminished.
It might be said that this sacrifice is outweighed by the longer term organizational benefits of widening the participation of the AAA’s general membership in AAA committees. As chair it seems to me that we ought to find a means of accomplishing both. The Committee could, for instance, assist the Nominations Committee in vetting candidates, suggesting groupings that promise strength, complementarity, while preserving participatory openness. Currently no mechanism exists for doing this.
To assist the Nominations Committee the CfHR has accumulated a list of candidates for the three positions to be elected in 1999, and has provided a suggested ballot pairing of them. The six names we have sent to the Nominations Committee are in no way a perpetuation of some sort of inner circle. The names are mostly self-nominated, include both senior anthropologists and recent PhDs, and represent a range of ethnicities, racial affiliations, gender, and, of course, regional and topical expertise. However, there is no regularized way of inputting these nominations into the Nominations Committee deliberations.
Recommendation: In next year’s nomination cycle we would be happy to work with the Nominations Committee, vetting, on an advisory basis, the names accumulated through the Nominations Committee’s call, perhaps supplemented by invitations jointly issued by the CfHR and Nominations to the extensive human rights membership Directory maintained by the CfHR (see below). The result could fully achieve both the "openness" the Reorganization seeks, and the complementarity that enables the CfHR to best serve the AAA. The AAA Executive Board could usefully suggest that such consultations take place between the Nominations Committee and the CfHR.
Part II. Addressing the Membership
A. The Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights
The AAA membership ballot of 1999 will mark a major turning point in the CfHR’s effort to apprise American anthropologists of the regular and often inescapable connection between anthropology and human rights. Over the past four years the CfHR has labored to produce The Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights. It was aired at last year’s Open Forum at the annual meeting, and comments have been gathered from the membership at various points. The background for such a statement was laid at a centrally important symposium at the 1996 annual meeting (later published as a special issue of the Journal of Anthropological Research), and at a second CfHR-sponsored symposium at the 1997 meeting. It was then sent to the Executive Committee.
Last Spring the Executive Board directed that the Declaration be published in AN (it appeared in the September issue, p. 9), be vetted again before the membership at the 98 annual meeting, and appear on the 1999 ballot. If approved by the membership, the Declaration will take its place among some eleven policy statements of the AAA that serve to articulate professional perspectives on matters important to anthropology and anthropologists. The statements on Ethics and on Race are other recent examples.
The CfHR views this initiative as signally important. It will be examined closely in the Committee’s Open Forum, an annual event at the Annual Meeting (see below). The Committee will also be conducting an informational effort through its Human Rights Directory (see also below) so that, as much as possible, the AAA membership will be broadly informed when the ballots are received.
B. Events at the Annual Meeting
The Philadelphia meetings will include several events in which the CfHR participates. On Thursday evening the CfHR’s sponsored panel, "Women’s Human Rights: Developing the Agenda" will be presented, chaired by Ellen Gruenbaum.
On Friday the CfHR holds its Open Forum (this year titled: "Human Rights, An Anthropological Imperative.") in which the Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights will be open for membership comment. Input will also be sought on various CfHR 1998 initiatives (see below and Attachment #2). This Annual Report will be distributed at the session.
The Committee has encouraged a number of other human rights-related program events, and those, together with others generated by the membership itself, have resulted in more than 20 symposia where human rights are the central issue (See Attachment #3).
C. The Human Rights Directory
In January the CfHR established a list of 118 anthropologists who agree to be listed in a directory maintained by the Committee for consultation in connection with its work. This group is central to the way in which the CfHR expands its human resources, expertise, and participation beyond its 8 members. Sixty-two of this group have allowed their listing to be placed on-line in the Committee’s website (see below) where they may be contacted by colleagues, journalists, or others using the on-line directory to seek information or assistance. The on-line Directory listings can be accessed directly by using the URL: http://www.aaanet.org/hrdirect.htm
Two undergraduate students, Kimberley McGrath and Jill Owczarzak, under the direction of the Committee chair have invited all Directory members to update their listings, and have accumulated nearly 50 new individuals who will be listed in the next on-line Directory update, to go active before the end of 1998. These colleagues were initially identified through the content of papers presented at recent annual meetings and through other invitational means.
The effects of the Directory, we hope, are to assist our colleagues in identifying and contacting others interested in similar issues, thereby generating greater professional activity and deliberation within our profession. The larger, the more current, and the more visible the Directory is, the more impact it will have.
The anthropological contribution to human rights is a constantly developing matter. CfHR’s job is not to insist on our own approaches, but to cultivate and stimulate an ongoing dialog within the Association and the profession. It is that dialog that defines the human rights imperatives and applications to which anthropologists will subscribe.
D. Task Groups on Women’s Rights and Ethnic CleansingThe Committee has formed two task groups, composed of committee members and non-members, to study two forms of human rights abuse which appear repeatedly in unrelated settings. One, chaired by Ellen Gruenbaum, examines the multiplicity of forms of abuse of the human rights of women; the other, chaired by Jim Peacock, looks at the ghastly phenomenon of ethnic cleansing. The end objective of each task group is to develop cross-culturally valid definitions of these phenomena and a carefully constructed statement supplying valid anthropological judgments regarding these customs and behaviors.
The two task groups will be presenting preliminary work during the Open Forum meeting at the 1998 annual meeting and gathering advice as they proceed with their work.
E. The Committee’s Web Site
1998 saw the establishment of the CfHR Web site, an extensive domain within the AAA’s website location. The CfHR website is intended to be a constantly accessible point of contact and information between the Committee and the AAA membership. Because the Committee operates in domains that may be controversial and may break new ground, it is essential that the AAA membership feel that the CfHR is not out of touch, not beyond the views of the membership base. While no communicational device does this perfectly, the CfHR website is an important tool.
The website contains principally the following types of information:
The Committee has its own e-mail address (aaa-cfhr@bucknell.edu) with which the membership can communicate with the Committee about organizational matters. In addition all CfHR members have their e-mail and other contacts listed for personal contact.
Part III. External Human Rights Initiatives
Operating by consensus, the CfHR intervenes in a limited number of cases of anthropologically relevant cases of human rights abuse. These interventions must be carefully selected so as not to overwhelm our ability to complete the "internal" part of our mission, detailed in Part II above. While the criteria for an "anthropologically relevant" case are necessarily flexible, the following explanation provided in the 1997 annual report remains valid: 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 cul>
More pragmatic factors include the following: Do we have (or can we obtain) expertise? Are the facts reasonably clear cut? Do we have time? Can we have a salutary impact?
When the CfHR intervenes in an abuse case, it may or may not result in taking action in the name of the Association. If that stage is reached, then the CfHR acts as staff to the AAA president, providing the information and suggested course of action.3 The AAA president is the only one who can speak on behalf of the Association as a whole. The Committee works closely with the President, who not only is an ex-oficio member of the Committee, but effectively is a member of the committee in a specialized role.
In 1998 we took up five cases, including the most complex case yet in the 6-year history of the Committee and the Commission. This is a case of extreme seriousness involving an anthropologist, the World Bank, and the human rights of the Pehuenche of central Chile.
3 The essential steps through which most Committee case interventions occur are listed in the Committee's website and may be accessed under "How the Committee Deals with Human Rights Cases."
A. The Pehuenche Case
The details of the Pehuenche case are recounted in detail in documents of the CfHR’s website. It’s fundamental features are here reproduced from the website:
The Pehuenche of southern Chile are being threatened by a series of hydroelectric dams planned for the Bío-Bío river. One dam has been built, and another, entailing the removal of about 1000 Pehuenche, is in final stages of preparation prior to ground-breaking. The initial dam was financed by the International Finance Corporation, a section of the World Bank Group. When problems developed, the IFC hired anthropologist consultant Theodore Downing to investigate, and then, prodded by the owner-power company, ENDESA, S.A., refused to allow Downing to disclose his findings to the Pehuenche, effectively preventing the Pehuenche from learning about plans affecting their cultural survival.The CfHR held both an open and a closed session at the 1997 AAA meetings in which we heard from Dr. Downing, from World Bank officials, from a Chilean sociologist, and others. Shortly thereafter we commissioned Barbara Johnston and Terence Turner to co-author a major briefing document, which was then, with the consent of the authors, augmented by Committee contributions. AAA president Hill reviewed and then conveyed the report to James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank Group with a March 19th letter asking for the Bank’s response to various failures and proposed a dialog to address the ethical bind which Bank policies had perpetrated on Dr. Downing. Apart from a brief acknowledgment of receipt, nothing further was heard from the Bank.
The CfHR then involved the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the AAAS, which proceeded to hold an all-day meeting on the matter this past September 9th which explored the case, the ethical predicament of the anthropologist, and the situation of the World Bank. Members of the CfHR presented information on the case. The AAAS committee followed several days later with a letter to the Bank expressing concern with several aspects of the case and urging that the Bank not delay further its response to the AAA. President Hill also sent a second letter renewing the AAA’s request. On October 21st President Hill received a reply from James Wolfensohn which, in essence, expresses distress at the episode but amounts to a polite refusal to dialog with the AAA on this issue. The letter can be accessed on the CfHR website (third letter in the sequence).
This egregious case has left the Pehuenche culturally weakened, their human rights violated, the professional damage to Dr. Downing unremedied, and little changed that would prevent such a case from arising again. Where the matter will go from here is under discussion by the Committee and with President Hill. The case demonstrates the ability that some of the world’s largest institutions have to simply ignore efforts to call them to account.
C. The Chiapas Letter
On June 2nd the CfHR received a memorandum from Dr. June Nash and others asking for the Committee’s intervention in the worsening situation in Chiapas, Mexico. Among the triggering concerns were a major massacre perpetrated on Mayan villagers at the village of Acteal, the expulsion of foreign human rights observers, and a disregard for the Accord of San Andres which committed the Mexican Government to negotiations.
The CfHR alerted the officers of the AAA’s SLAA, illustrating a practice we generally follow, involving AAA sections relevant to a particular case. Eventually we drafted a letter for President Hill’s consideration. SLAA polled its board of directors and lent its support to the text. President Hill approved the letter for signature and Rudolfo Stavenhagen agreed to support and circulate it in Mexico.
The letter was sent to President Zedillo in August. A reply is not expected. A letter of this sort joins letters from other groups and individuals, hopefully enhancing the attractiveness of pursuing a negotiation path and making it clear that credible international groups are observing with great concern.
D. Dominique Gallois and the Waiampi (Brazil)
On January 14th President Hill sent a letter to the President Cardoso of Brazil, his minister of justice and the president of FUNAI (Brazil’s Indian affairs agency) to express grave concern over the expulsion and harassment of Dr. Dominique Gallois of the University of Sao Paulo from further work with the Waiampi of the Brazilian state of Amapa. Our letter was also communicated to Brazilian anthropologists.
The Waiampi were resisting to an invasion of gold miners, disrupting their efforts to establish a sustainable forest products project. The miners were supported by the Amapa governor, the state prosecutor, and a national congressman from the zone. They ordered her expulsion and launched 3 lawsuits against her at ruinous financial cost to her. Dr. Gallois was blamed for fomenting the Waiampi’s resistance, a claim denied by her.
The AAA letter has received no reply (none expected). The function of the letter is to increase the pressure on the federal government to, in turn, constrain the state officials, and to signal that an external group is monitoring the situation. At last report the lawsuits have been dropped but we have not yet learned whether she has been permitted to re-enter the Waiampi area.
We also brought her case to the attention of the AAAS’ AAASHRAN system ("AAAS Human Rights Network") which broadcasts worldwide alerts when scientists suffer unjust repression in doing their work. A case alert on her was distributed recommending a vigorous international letter writing campaign, and widening awareness of the case.
E. Assassination of Monseñor Juan José Gerardi Conedera (Guatemala)
On May 14th President Hill sent a letter to the President Arzu of Guatemala protesting the assassination of Monseñor Juan José Gerardi Conedera, director of Guatemala’s Recovery of Historic Memories project days after he had made public an historic report detailing human rights abuses against Guatemala’s indigenous citizens. The Gerardi assassination was taken by others as a warning of the consequences to be suffered by any intending to increase public comment on the human rights abuses, especially against Mayans, during the Guatemalan war.
No response has been received (or expected), but one notes that there have been few acts of repression in the months since the assassination, and that there has been some easing of tension and perceived threat. Hopefully the AAA letter contributed to the international outcry that may have stayed repressive forces from acting further at this time.
Attachment 1: AAA CfHR Contacts Guide (Updated 11/15/98)
Members
Ellen Gruenbaum
School of Social Sciences
California State University, Fresno
Fresno, CA 93740-8019
(O) 209/278-3013
(H) 209/438-7884
fax 209/278-7664
Home Address:
1611 E. Roberts Ave.
Fesno, CA 93710
Barbara Rose Johnston
554 Brooks Ave.
San Jose, CA 95125
408/271-9552
fax 408/978-1660
Ellen Messer, Director
World Hunger Program
Box l83l Brown University
Providence, RI 02912 USA
(O) 401/863-2875
(H) 617/782-7062
fax 401/863-2192
Carole Nagengast
Dept of Anthropology
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(O) 505/277-2635
(H) 505/268-2248
fax 505/277-0874
James Peacock
Dept. of Anthropology
University of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill
CB #3115, 306 Alumni Building
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3115
919/962-3094
(O) 919/966-4106
(H) 919/929-5815
dept 919/962-1243
fax 919/962-1613
Home Address:
306 North Boundary Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Linda Rabben
Amnesty International
402 Lincoln Ave.
Takoma Park, MD 20912
301/270-3003
fax 301/270-3003
Jennifer Schirmer
PONSACS
Center for International Affairs
1737 Cambridge St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
(O) 617/495-2605
dept 617/495-5580
(H) 617/576-3676
fax 617/496-8562
Home Address:
15 Gerry St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Members to Take Office, December 7, 1998
Lucia Ann McSpadden, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
Life & Peace Institute
66 Sandpoint Drive
Richmond, California 94804
USA
+1-510-215-6061
fax +1-510-237-4816
Ex-Officio Committee Members
Jane H. Hill, President
Department of Anthropology
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721-0030
(O) 520/621-4735, 2585
fax 520/621-2088
William E. Davis III, Executive Director
American Anthropological Association
2200 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600
Arlington, VA 22201
703/528-1902 ext.3011
fax 703/528-3546
Peggy Overbey, AAA Staff Liaison
Government Relations Director
2200 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600
Arlington, VA 22201
703/528-1902 ext.3006
fax 703/528-3546
Emeritus CfHR Members
Robert Hitchcock
Dept of Anthropology
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68588-0368
(O) 402/472-2480
(H) 402/475-5029
fax 402/472-9642
Victor Montejo M.
Native American Studies
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616
(O) 530/754-6128
dept 530/752-3237
fax 530/752-7097
(H) 530/666-3125
Les Sponsel
Dept of Anthropology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2424 Maile Way
Honolulu, HI 96822
(O) 808/956-8507
(H) 808/396-9334
fax 808/956-4893
Terence S. Turner
115 Eddy St
Ithaca, NY 14850
(O/H) 607/273-4840
fax 607/273-1032, 607/255-3747 (Cornell)
U of Chicago Office
773/702-7724
dept secy 773/702-8551
Deceased Member
Attachment 2: Agenda, CfHR Open Forum: "Human Rights, An Anthropological
Imperative."
Tom Greaves, Chair
Saturday, December 5th
12:15 - 1:30 pm
1. Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights
(* = CfHR Events or CfHR Sponsored Events)
Note: There are a number of individual papers dealing with human rights that are part of symposia which are not, as a whole, concerned with human rights issues. Those papers do not appear in the following list. Wednesday, December 2nd
Violence, Racism and Populations Dynamics
Elzbieta M. Gozdziak and Robert Rubenstein, organizers
12:00 - 3:45 pm
Violence and the State: Comparative Perspectives and Emerging
Ethnographies
Daniel Rothenberg and Paul Silverstein, organizers
2:00 - 3:45 pm
Indigenous Perspectives and Sustainability
Richard H. Moore, chair
6:00 - 7:45 pm
Forced Diasporas and the Construction of Suffering
Ann M. Rynearson and Don Seaman, organizers
6 pm to 7:45 pm
The Reception of Immigrants in Europe
Diane Lakein, chair
8:00-9:45 pm
Thursday, December 3rd
Globalization, Restructuring and Women’s Poverty
Catherin P. Kingfisher, organizer
8 am to 11:45 am
CfHR Committee Meeting, Part 1 *
1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Room 304, Level 3
The Growth of the City? Neoliberal Policy and "Vulnerable
Populations" in Philadelphia
Judith Goode and Jeffry Maskovsky, organizers
1:45 - 3:30 pm
Save the Rainforest? The Last Terrestrial Frontier Population
and Conservation, Past, Present and Future (AAA Presidential Symposium)
Anabel Ford, organizer
1:45 - 5:30 pm
Disappeared Populations: Forensic Anthropology, Human Rights
and the Latin American Experience (Invited Session)
Mercedes Doretti and Janet M. Chernela, organizers
4 pm - 5:45 pm
Health and Health Care for Children in Africa
Ruth D. Prince, chair
4:00 - 5:45 pm
Women’s Human Rights: Developing the Agenda *
Ellen Gruenbaum, chair
6:15 to 7:30 pm
Friday, December 4th
Social Inequalities and Human Biology; Political-Economic Perspectives
in Biological Anthropology (Invited Session)
Thomas L. Leatherman and Alan Goodman, organizers
4:00 - 5:45 pm
Saturday, December 5th
Sunday, December 6th
Contesting Policy Constructions of "Silent, Violent and Victim"
Populations
Asale Ajani and Victoria Sanford, Co-Chairs
8:00 am - 12:00 pm
Investing in Living Matter - Strategic Claims on the Biological
Adriana Petryna and Cori Hayden, organizers
10:15 am to 12:00 pm
Law and Rights
Paul J. Magnarella, Chair
10:15 am - 12:00 pm
Vital Politics: From the Poetics of Population Control to the
Patenting of Life
S. Hoon Song, chair
10:15 am to 12:00 pm
Migration, Resettlement and Human Rights
Orit Tamir, Chair
10:15 am to 12:00 pm
Attachment 4: Publications and Conferences Generated by CfHR Members, 1998
The following 1998 human rights-related items should be noted, associated with the Committee’s work:
Greaves, Tom
Johnston, Barbara Rose
Johnston, Barbara Rose and Terence Turner
Johnston, Barbara Rose and John M. Donahue, eds.
Rabben, Linda.
Schirmer, Jennifer
1998 The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. (Human Rights Series). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Spanish edition: Las Intimidades del Terror: el proyecto politico de los militares en Guatemala, with a preface by Edelberto Torres-Rivas. FLACSO-Guatemala.
1998 "Bringing the Past into the Present: Groups of Relatives of the Disappeared in Latin America". In, Human Rights: Positive Policies in Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. Hollis Pub. Co.
1998 "Prospects for Compliance: The Guatemalan Military and the Peace Accords". In, Guatemala After the Peace Accords (R.Sieder, ed). ILAS, University of London.
1998 Prospects for Compliance: The Guatemalan Military and the Peace Accords. Working Papers on Latin America. The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard, PaperNo. 98/99-1.
Forthcoming: "Democratization and the Legacies of Violence in Guatemala". Latin American Perspectives.
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