Centre of Governance and Human Rights

This interview with Dr Graham Denyer Willis marks the first of the GCHR's Researcher Spotlights series. These videos focus on various academics at the University of Cambridge whose research relates to governance and or human rights topics.

Launch of a report, Citizen Media Research and Verification: An Analytical Framework for Human Rights Practitioners,’ by Christoph Koettl, Senior analyst at Amnesty International. The first in a new CGHR Practitioner Paper Series on ‘Human Rights in the Digital Age.’

A brief introduction to CGHR's research themes, by theme leads Dr Ella McPherson (Human Rights in the Digital Age), Dr Thomas Probert (The Right to Life), Dr Devon Curtis (Violence, Conflict and Peacebuilding) and Dr Sharath Srinivasan (Politics, Digital Technologies and the Media).

A short talk by CGHR Director Dr Sharath Srinivasan delivered at an event held in May 2015 to celebrate the Centre's first 5 years.

Head of Research and Development Dr Claudia Abreu Lopes introduces the work of Africa's Voices Foundation, a non-profit organisation spun out of CGHR research, at an event held in May 2015 to celebrate the Centre's first 5 years .

Director Dr Sharath Srinivasan describes CGHR's work under the research theme Politics, Digital Technologies and the Media, at an event in May 2015 to celebrate the Centre's first 5 years in May 2015.

CGHR Research Associate Dr Devon Curtis describes the work of the Centre under the theme Violence Conflict and Peacebuilding, at an event held in May 2015 to celebrate the Centre's first five years.

CGHR Research Associate Dr Thomas Probert describes the work of the Centre under the theme The Right to Life, at an event held in May 2015 to celebrate CGHR's first five years.

CGHR Research Associate Dr Ella McPherson describes the work of the Centre under the research theme Human Rights in the Digital Age, at an event held in May 2015 to celebrate CGHR's first five years.

CGHR Director Dr Sharath Srinivasan gives a brief overview of CGHR's first five years at an event held in May 2015 to celebrate the Centre's 5th anniversary.

Selma James on her latest contribution to Ralph Ibbott’s 'Ujamaa: the hidden story of Tanzania’s socialist villages'. Selma provides a provocative interpretation of Julius Nyerere’s political project and the insight it lends on contemporary global issues. Selma has authored many books across her career, including 'The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community'.

After a two-day meeting to discuss a report to the UN Human Rights Council, CGHR hosted an international panel of experts for a discussion of the uses of ICTs in the protection of human rights, particularly focusing on the opportunities and challenges associated with their potential for fostering greater accountability for violations. The panel: Christof Heyns – UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Christina Ribeiro – Investigation Coordinator, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court Christoph Koettl – designer and editor of Amnesty International’s Citizen Evidence Lab Eliot Higgins – creator of the Brown Moses blog, investigating the conflict in Syria Ella McPherson – CGHR Research Associate (chair)

CGHR talk by Professor Sir David Edward, 28th January 2015

Africa’s rapid digital revolution, especially through mobile communications, combined with radio’s popularity, offers a significant opportunity for engaging and analysing citizens’ voice quickly and in hard to reach places. The Africa’s Voices Foundation is a non-profit start-up growing out of interdisciplinary research at Cambridge's Centre of Governance and Human Rights. It combines social science insights with new approaches to data analytics, and is already supporting governance and development actors in a range of contexts. This presentation charts its genesis and its future ambitions.

On 19th June 2014, CGHR published and launched the outcome of its most recent collaboration with the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: a study of the incidence of violations of the right to life across the African continent. This study, Unlawful Killings in Africa is the product of a year-long collaboration between CGHR Research Associate Dr Thomas Probert and the Special Rapporteur.

Professor Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, delivers a public lecture at the University of Cambridge on the challenges for the laws and ethics of armed conflict posed by the development of Autonomous Weapons Systems.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994, in May 2014 the Centre of Governance and Human Rights and RCN Justice & Démocratie hosted a discussion session on the Rwandan genocide and the subsequent judicial process.

In light of the outbreak of violence in South Sudan, CGHR organized a roundtable discussion to give a snapshot of the conflict and its consequences to date, exploring its underlying causes, the implications for Sudan / South Sudan relations and the consequences for regional and international efforts at peacemaking and peacebuilding in the Sudans in recent years.

A presentation on the insights and challenges of the first year of the applied research pilot 'Africa's Voices' by CGHR Research Associate Dr Claudia Abreu Lopes, given during a seminar on the 'Africa's Voices' project.

The French Embassy has generously sponsored a cycle of lectures and workshops which bring to Cambridge leading scholars from France to interact and foster research collaborations with experts in Cambridge from across the Schools of Arts and Humanities and Humanities and Social Sciences. In this second year of collaboration, the cycle of talks and workshops will explore the complex theme of identity in 21st-century France and beyond. The lectures, which will be given in English, are open to any member of the University. In this third lecture, co-organised by the Centre of Governance and Human Rights, Francois Burgat, director of research at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) will give a talk on When Authoritarianism fails in the Arab World: understanding the recourse to the Muslim lexicon. For the first time in decades, 'Arab revolutions', ushered in by the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, make it possible to seriously envision a phasing out of the autocratic machinery in the Middle East and North Africa.Whatever the end results of this awakening, the glimpse at a post-authoritarian era has already affected domestic and international political dynamics, if only by anticipation. In the parliamentary arenas, even if it is clear that its roots are to be found deep in the fourteen centuries of Muslim history and the realities or the myths of a long interaction with the West, the explanation of the rise of contemporary Islamism can be circumscribed within a timeline of the last hundred years or so. It is essential, to reach a better understanding, to distinguish two processes and so two levels of analysis: on the one hand, the essentially identity-centered reasons for which a generation of political actors originally choose to "speak Muslim", that is to say, preferentially and at times ostentatiously to have recourse to a lexicon or a vocabulary derived from Muslim culture; on the other hand, the diversified uses that such actors make of this lexicon, in each of the countries where the failure of Authoritarianism offers them new opportunities as well as in the North/South arena, contingent on variables which are simultaneously multiple, banal and profane, and so determine their different political claims and mobilisations. Francois Burgat is a political scientist, director of research at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research), and, since 2008, director of the Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO - French Institute for the Near East, http://www.ifporient.org), a leading multidisciplinary research institution at the service of knowledge production on the societies of the Near-East with a focus on Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Iraq. F.Burgat has carried research in the Maghreb, Near East and Arabic Peninsula for the last 30 years and worked in the University of Constantine in Algeria, at the Cedej in Cairo, and was between 1997 and 2003 the director of the Centre Français d'Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales in Sanaa, Yemen. His publications available in English include Islamism in the Shadow of al-Qaeda, Texas University Press, 2008;Face to face with political islam, Oxford, IB Tauris, 2002; and, with John Esposito (eds.): Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East, London, Hurst, 2002.

A panel discussion on the 2013 Kenyan elections with Professor John Lonsdale (Trinity College, Cambridge), Professor Bruce Berman (Queen's University, Canada) and Ms Njoki Wamai (Cambridge)

Quickfire interviews with participants in the CGHR ExpressionRepression event and expert meeting on the Safety of Journalists. with Christof Heyns, Pansy Tlakula, Frank La Rue and Celia Davies

Targeted violence against journalists is on the rise and in January 2012 alone, 10 journalists were killed worldwide. But why are journalists finding it more rather than less difficult to perform their job in the modern age of information dissemination? In what ways are they repressed or targeted in their work? What is the role of the State regarding impunity for the perpetrators of violence against journalists? And how can we stop this? These questions and issues were discussed during a public event organised by the Centre of Governance and Human Rights. The panel consisted of: Christof Heyns, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Celia Davies, former Cambridge graduate and Project Development Manager at Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety in Azerbaijan; Pansy Tlakula, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights; Frank La Rue, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Joel Simon, Executive Director, Committee for the Protection of Journalists Moderator: William Horsely, former BBC correspondent and UK Chairman, Association of European Journalists Chair: Sharath Srinivasan, Director, Centre of Governance and Human Rights

Thomas Tufte discusses how civic action and participation in social change in Tanzania is being effected by access to new, more interactive, civil society created media platforms.

Critically analyses the international obligations on three key states – the hiring state, the home state and the host state of a PMSC – and identifies the circumstances in which PMSC misconduct may give rise to state responsibility.

Monday 24 January 2011, Senior Common Room, POLIS Ms Soo Hee Choi (Visiting Associate at CGHR and International Relations Officer, Communications and Cooperation Division, National Human Rights Commission of Korea)

Audio of presentation by Dr Bakker as part of Centre of Governance and Human Rights Research Group (http://www.polis.cam.ac.uk/cghr/research_research_group.html).

The New Media / Alternative Politics conference on 14-16 October debated the relationship between communication technologies and political change in the Middle East and Africa. Amy Saunderson-Meyer, from FreedomFone in Zimbabwe, Herman Wasserman of Rhodes University and Firoze Manji, editor of Pambazuka News joined this panel discussion at the opening session.

Dr Burde's paper drew on observational data of community-based schools in Afghanistan to examine the types of violence that affects education in Afghanistan and to explore the ways in which community-based schools may be less vulnerable to these types of attacks.

An event co-organised by the Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CG+HR), Cambridge, The Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA) and CRASSH, in which refugee academics shared their experiences confronting professional and personal threats in their native countries along with the challenges of settling and working in the UK.

Dr Scott Straus discusses his recent work on a comparative study of different trajectories of violence in civil war. The study focuses empirically on relatively recent (during the past two decades) armed conflicts in Rwanda, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Chad, and Senegal; the theoretical perspective builds on existing national-level explanations of genocide and mass killing.

The Centre of Governance and Human Rights was launched by the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) on 18 November 2009. An Inaugural Lecture was delivered by Dr Francis M Deng, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, on the topic of ‘Managing Diversity as a strategy for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities’.

David Cato, Advocacy/Litigation officer at Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), in conversation with Dr Andy Tucker (Deputy Director, University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies), on the grave human rights situation facing homosexuals in Uganda and their continued struggle for sexuality-based rights. Co-hosted by the Centre for Gender Studies and the Centre of Governance and Human Rights.

On the eve of celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, the Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CG+HR) hosted a roundtable discussion at King's College, Cambridge, with leading academics on Southern Africa - Stephen Ellis, Saul Dubow and Jocelyn Alexander - and Paul Trewhela, the author of a provocative new book 'Inside Quatro' on the human rights records of the ANC and SWAPO in exile. Chaired by the BBC World Service's Africa Editor, Martin Plaut.

On the eve of celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, the Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CG+HR) hosted a roundtable discussion at King's College, Cambridge, with leading academics on Southern Africa - Stephen Ellis, Saul Dubow and Jocelyn Alexander - and Paul Trewhela, the author of a provocative new book 'Inside Quatro' on the human rights records of the ANC and SWAPO in exile. Chaired by the BBC World Service's Africa Editor, Martin Plaut.

A seminar discussion with the editor of (Sokari Ekine) and a contributor to (Ken Banks) a new edited book – SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa (Fahamu, 2009) – which is the first of its kind to explore how and the extent to which new communications technologies are changing public action in Africa, and the impact of this on governance and people’s well-being. Sokari Ekine is an activist with a multidisciplinary background in technology, education and human rights. She is the author of the blog Black Looks (www.blacklooks.org). Ken Banks is the founder of www.kiwanja.net and the developer of FrontlineSMS (www.FrontlineSMS.com). He specialises in the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world and previously lived and worked throughout Africa for 16 years. This talk is part of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights Events series.