Enough Symbolism, We Need Real Climate Action: Why We Shouldn’t Let Governments Hide Behind Symbolic Climate Emergency Declarations

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Enough Symbolism, We Need Real Climate Action: Why We Shouldn’t Let Governments Hide Behind Symbolic Climate Emergency Declarations

Though symbolic climate emergency declarations can helpfully shape the narrative around climate change, advocates shouldn’t let them be used to mask government failures to take material action to combat the climate crisis.

Duncan Shaffer (unsplash)

The dawn of a new administration raises hopes among climate activists that the U.S. government may finally take the urgent action needed to avert climate catastrophe. High-profile climate advocates have recently called on Joe Biden to be the “climate president.” As part of this effort to push Biden on climate change, some–including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer–have argued that the president should treat climate change like an emergency by declaring a climate emergency and, potentially, using the emergency powers afforded the executive to take bold actions on climate change.

What would that look like? Would it materially advance climate action? Experiences around the world on climate emergency declarations offer an answer: it depends.

A handful of countries and hundreds of municipalities, cities, and towns worldwide have declared a climate emergency, and those numbers continue to increase. Countries that have issued climate emergency declarations include: New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, Bangladesh, and Argentina. Municipalities and cities likewise include: Sydney, Australia; New York City; Bogotá, Colombia; and South Chungcheong, South Korea. For some observers, this is an outstanding trend. The picture, however, is complicated upon further inspection and assessment of what these climate emergency declarations actually do.

While some of these climate emergency declarations are paired with material policy commitments and programs, overwhelmingly, these declarations are only symbolic. Although it’s important to shift the discourse on climate change so that its urgency garners more mainstream recognition, with less than ten years left to put humanity on track to avoid climate disaster, it just isn’t enough.

Below, we take a look at the climate emergency declaration trend and what it means for the new U.S. president.

What Is a Climate Emergency?

A climate emergency declaration is a resolution or piece of legislation passed by a governing body that recognizes climate change as an emergency and, generally, voices support for action commensurate with treating climate change as an emergency. The first climate emergency declaration was passed in 2016 in Darebin, Australia and hundreds of emergency declarations have been issued since.

Generally, climate emergency declarations tend to be non-binding resolutions. They may also be imbedded in larger climate legislation. If they are stand-alone resolutions, then they may be followed by additional climate legislation or policy commitments aimed at further reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The content of the declarations varies, but they all label climate change as an “emergency.” They generally include expressions of support for mobilizations of resources, particularly on a massive scale. Indeed, one of the goals of Climate Mobilization, an organization leading the climate movement push for emergency declarations, is to build political will using emergency declarations for WWII-level resource mobilization in the fight against climate change. Many declarations also support efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 or some other year in the near- to medium-term future. 

So, What Have Climate Emergency Declarations Actually Achieved?

Undeniably, climate emergency declarations have helped shift the discourse around climate change to better reflect the gravity and the urgency of the situation. This shift in the framing of climate change–from a problem that could be gradually addressed to one that requires immediate and profound action–is a goal of the climate advocates working to advance these declarations. Advocates argue that declaring climate emergencies can help trigger a “fundamental departure from [the] ‘normal’ mode of functioning” by waking people up to the existential threat posed by climate change. In other words, declaring a climate emergency can help shift people from functioning in a “business as usual” mode to a “climate emergency” mode by “telling the truth” about the nature of the climate threat.

Climate emergency declarations overwhelmingly, however, fall short of advancing material action on climate change. The climate emergency declarations issued by the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Spain, and  Argentina, for example, are non-binding insofar as they do not require the government to take any particular action on climate change. Moreover, the vast majority of these declarations have been issued by local governments, which typically don’t have the emergency powers that federal governments do. Even in places where climate emergency declarations are paired with substantive policies, like in  New Zealand, the policy itself may not be sufficient nor actually reflect, in material terms, the characterization of climate change as an emergency. In other words, though political leaders are employing “emergency” rhetoric, they are failing to match that rhetoric with the substantive action that we would expect to see governments take in emergency situations. Though these political leaders are “declaring” climate change as an “emergency,” they are not invoking the emergency procedures and powers permitted under law that are used in other emergency situations, such as natural disasters and war.

Why It Matters that These Declarations Are Generally Non-Binding and Symbolic in Nature

Though climate emergency declarations clearly help communicate the dangers of climate change, they also provide cover for political leaders who want to play the role of a “climate leader” without taking the tangible action necessary to actually lead on climate change.

Take Canada, for example. In 2019, the Canadian House of Commons passed a non-binding resolution expressing the legislative chamber’s view that climate change is indeed an emergency and requires a response requisite with its characterization as such. However, the very next day, the Trudeau administration approved a controversial pipeline expansion. The fact that the Canadian government can pay lip service to climate action through a non-binding resolution while at the same time advancing policies that undermine climate mitigation highlights the core limitations of climate emergency declarations as they have been designed thus far. Not all governments demonstrate inconsistency on climate change as extreme as this, but the effect is similar. Climate emergency declarations, which are overwhelmingly symbolic, allow political leaders to paint themselves as being serious on climate change without making actual commitments or taking any concrete actions to stem the climate crisis.  

What Does All of This Mean for the United States?

The point is: we must not settle for symbolic performances in lieu of the ambitious material climate action that is so desperately needed.

Instead, let’s continue to push President Biden to be the climate president and treat climate change like the emergency it is. After all, this is one of the last presidencies that can still undertake ambitious actions to avoid locking in climate wreckage in the coming decades. But, given the stakes, let’s not give this administration–nor any government–the opportunity to hide behind symbolic performances. That means pushing Biden to make hard, substantive commitments on climate change, including the use of the constitutional and legal powers afforded the president during emergencies, so that climate action doesn’t continue to languish in a Congress, still home to far too many climate deniers and climate minimizers.

July 6, 2021. Jacqueline Gallant, The Earth Rights Research & Action (TERRA Law).

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July 6, 2021 Youssef Farhat Post  

Public Transport, Private Profit: The Human Cost of Privatizing Buses in the United Kingdom

INEQUALITIES

Public Transport, Private Profit: The Human Cost of Privatizing Buses in the United Kingdom

The Human Rights and Privatization Project launched a report on the deregulation of local buses in the United Kingdom in July 2021. 

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The report finds that the government’s 1985 decision to privatize and deregulate the bus sector in England (outside London), Scotland, and Wales has failed passengers and undermined their rights. Taxpayers are subsidizing corporate profits, while private operators are providing a service that is expensive, unreliable, and often dysfunctional. Fares have skyrocketed while ridership has plummeted, undermining efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions. This approach has also significantly impacted individual’s lives and rights. We found that people have lost jobs and benefits, faced barriers to healthcare, been forced to give up on education, sacrificed food and utilities, and been cut off from friends and family. The government’s new strategy for England leaves this deregulated system in place, and does not address its structural shortcomings. 

The report finds that running a bus service premised on profit and market competition, rather than on the well-being of the public, leads to violations of people’s rights and is incompatible with human rights law. It calls for public control of bus transport as the default approach, which would be more cost-effective and allow for reinvestment of profits, integrated networks, more efficient coverage, simpler fares, consistency with climate goals, and public accountability. Given the importance of public transport on access to essential services and rights, it also calls for a statutory minimum level of service frequency.

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July 1, 2021 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized  

Why We Must Stand with Haiti’s Democracy Activists

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Why We Must Stand with Haiti’s Democracy Activists

When tens of thousands of people are on the streets decrying dictatorial actions, they’re cheered on as pro-democracy protestors. Yet when similar protests occur in Haiti, they are diminished and overlooked. Being on the right side of history requires that we listen to the voices of Haitian civil society.

In the days leading up to February 7, 2021, the U.S. State Department announced its support for the continued rule of President Jovenel Moïse in Haiti. This position was in direct opposition to much of Haitian civil society, including its vibrant human rights community, which condemned Moïse’s occupation of the presidency as an unconstitutional prolongation of his mandate, which they understand to have ended on February 7. This interpretation of Haiti’s Constitution is shared by Haitian legal experts, including its judicial oversight body, religious leaders and activists. Haitian civil society has been sounding the alarm about Moïse’s abuse of power for years, documenting links to a series of massacres, corruption, and the proliferation of gangs. There has never been a more critical juncture for those based outside of Haiti to listen to Haitian voices.

To emphasize this imperative, the Global Justice Clinic issued a joint statement on February 13 calling for the U.S. government to address the human rights concerns of Haitian civil society and hosted a panel discussion with NYU’s Hemispheric Institute on March 24 to hear directly from Haitian human rights defenders and civil society leaders about the current situation in Haiti.

The U.S. government is not alone in giving short shrift to Haitian civil society. Media coverage has failed to adequately convey the widespread outcry against this administration. Nor has it captured the energy and hope that buoys Haitian human rights activists in this moment. Emmanuela Douyon is an economist and anti-corruption activist with “Nou Pap Domi,” a collective of young Haitians committed to fighting corruption, impunity, and social injustice. She’s inspired by the continued involvement of civil society, especially as “a climate of fear has settled in” the country over the last few months due to insecurity, political violence, and kidnappings: “When I see people who fought against dictatorships – who were victims and suffered a lot – and they come back out here to stand up and to fight, that gives me a lot of strength. When I see people from my generation and younger who say they’re going to keep standing and defending their values, the rule of law, democracy – that gives me hope that we can do more.” [1] Rosy Auguste Ducena, a human rights attorney and Program Director for Haiti’s National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), describes how the continued broad-based engagement motivates her: “What enables civil society to continue playing its role… is that the people have shown they have the will to not give up in this battle – there is a will to see change… That’s the biggest message of hope we have. We’ve reached a moment where we, as civil society, are one with the people. When we see they’re taking their claims and demands into their own hands as their own, we don’t need to work for them; we’re working together and that’s the best hope we have in this current situation.”

Haitian advocates forcefully condemn the pressure by the international community to hold presidential elections this year and to facilitate a referendum to alter the constitutional structure of Haiti’s government. Woodkend Eugene, a human rights attorney from the Human Rights Office in Haiti (BDHH), acknowledges that while it can be “difficult for everyone to agree on a solution, what is certain is that what is happening right now is not the solution.” He stresses that the Haitian Constitution states clearly that there can be no amendments to the Constitution via referendum, that “we cannot go into an election with an electoral council that is not legitimate,” referring to the unconstitutional appointment of its members by Moïse, and in a context of “generalized insecurity where multiple people in power have been connected to armed gangs” (the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions against three such individuals in 2020).  Ms. Auguste also pointed out the potential consequences of pushing for elections now: “The international community might be pushing for it, but the Haitian people have said there are things they will not accept or tolerate, and that’s going into elections with this administration. The people won’t accept this referendum, and if this continues to be pushed, we risk falling into a post-electoral crisis… a bigger crisis than [what] we have now.”

Regarding the appropriate role of the international community and the U.S. government in Haiti’s affairs, Ms. Auguste made her message clear: “Firstly, we are not children…Let the Haitian people choose their own future, choose when elections are right for them and choose how their country will be led.”

Ms. Douyon urged the U.S. government to “avoid repeating history, as they did with Duvalier” and to be “on the right side of history” this time by “act[ing] to stand with the people.” U.S. support for the Duvalier dictatorship and its tragic consequences are well-documented.

The clarity and consistency in Haitian advocates’ analysis and recommendations is striking, particularly because Haiti is often painted by the media and foreign actors as a “problem-state”—a never-ending and uncontrollable locus of crisis where it is impossible to discern root causes. Each of the panelists demonstrated that these tropes should be rejected and that Haitian experts should be recognized for what they are—those best placed to assess what their country needs the most. If their recommendations were adopted, rapidly held elections would not be portrayed as the only viable path forward. Instead, the power grab of a man accused of collusion in grave human rights violations would be plainly unveiled.

When tens of thousands of people are on the streets decrying dictatorial actions, they are often cheered on as pro-democracy protestors. Yet when similar protests occur in Haiti, as they have over the last several weeks, these protests are diminished and overlooked. Being on the right side of history requires that we listen to the voices of Haitian civil society.

2021. Gabrielle Apollon

Gabrielle Apollon, Director of Haitian Immigrant Rights Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law.

[1] All of the quotes from the panel discussion have been translated from Haitian Creole into English.

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June 28, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

False Promises and Multiple Exclusion: Summary of Our RightsCon Event on Uganda’s National Digital ID System

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

False Promises and Multiple Exclusion: Summary of Our RightsCon Event on Uganda’s National Digital ID System 

Despite its promotion as a tool for social inclusion and development, Uganda’s National Digital ID System is motivated primarily by national security concerns. As a result, the ID system has generated both direct and indirect exclusion, particularly affecting women and older persons.

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On June 10, 2021, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justife at NYU School of Law co-hosted the panel “Digital ID: what is it good for? Lessons from our research on Uganda’s identity system and access to social services” as part of RightsCon, the leading summit on human rights in the digital age. The panelists included Salima Namusobya, Executive Director of the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), Dorothy Mukasa, Team Leader of Unwanted Witness, Grace Mutung’u, Research Fellow at the Centre for IP and IT Law at Strathmore University, and Christiaan van Veen, Director of the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project at the Center . This blog summarizes highlights of the panel discussion. A recording and transcript of the conversation, as well as additional readings, can be found below.

Uganda’s national digital ID system, known as Ndaga Muntu, was introduced in 2014 through a mass registration campaign. The government aimed to collect the biographic and biometric information including photographs and fingerprints of every adult in the country, to record this data in a centralized database known as the National Identity Register, and to issue a national ID card and unique ID number to each adult. Since its introduction, having a national ID has become a prerequisite to access a whole host of services, from registering for a SIM card and opening a bank account, to accessing health services and social protection schemes.

This linkage of Ndaga Muntu to public services has raised significant human rights concerns and is serving to lock millions of people in Uganda out of critical services. Seven years from its inception, it is clear that the national digital ID is a tool for exclusion rather than for inclusion. Drawing on the joint report by the Center , ISER, and Unwanted Witness, this event made clear that Ndaga Muntu was grounded in false promises and is resulting in multiple forms of exclusion.

The False Promise of Inclusion

The Ugandan government argued that this digital ID system would enhance social inclusion by allowing Ugandans to prove their identity more easily. Having this proof of identity would facilitate access to public services such as healthcare, enable people to sign up for private services such as bank accounts, and allow people to move freely throughout Uganda. The same rhetoric of inclusion was used to sell Aadhaar, India’s digital ID system, to the Indian public.

But for many Ugandans this was a false promise. From the very outset, Ndaga Muntu was developed chiefly as a tool for national security. The powerful Ugandan military had long pushed for the collection of sensitive identity information and biometric data: in the context of a volatile region, a centralized information database is appealing because of its ability to verify identity and indicate who is “really Ugandan” and who is not. Therefore, the national ID project was housed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, overseen by prominent members of the Ugandan People’s Defense Force, and designed to serve only those who succeeded in completing a rigorous citizenship verification process.

The panelist from Kenya, Grace Mutung’u, shared how Kenya’s hundred-year-old national identification system was similarly rooted in a colonial regime that focused on national security and exclusion. Those design principles created a system that sought only to “empower the already empowered” and not to extend benefits beyond already-privileged constituencies. The result in both Kenya and Uganda was the same: digital ID systems that are designed to ensure that certain individuals and groups remain excluded from political, economic, and social life.

Proliferating Forms of Exclusion

Beyond the fact that Ndaga Muntu was designed to directly exclude anyone not entitled to access public services, those who are entitled are also being excluded in the millions. For ordinary Ugandans, accessing Ndaga Muntu is a nightmarish process rife with problems every step of the way. These problems, such as corruption, incorrect data entry, and technical errors, have impeded Ugandans’ access to the ID. Vulnerable populations who rely on social protection programs that require proof of ID bear the brunt of such errors. For example, one older woman was told that the national ID registration system could not capture her picture because of her grey hair. Other elderly Ugandans have had trouble with fingerprint scanners that could not capture fingerprints worn away from years of manual labor.

The many individuals who have not succeeded in registering for Ndaga Muntu are therefore being left out of the critical services which are increasingly linked to the ID. At least 50,000 of the 200,000 eligible persons over the age of 80 in Uganda were unable to access potentially lifesaving benefits such as the Senior Citizens’ Grant cash transfer program. Women have been similarly disproportionately impacted by the national ID requirement; for instance, pregnant women have been refused services by healthcare workers for failing to provide ID. To make matters worse, ID requirements are increasingly ubiquitous in Uganda: proof of ID is often required to book transportation, to vote, to access educational services, healthcare, social protection grants, and food donations. Having a national ID has become necessary for basic survival, especially for those who live in extreme poverty.

Digital ID systems should not prohibit people from living their lives and utilizing basic services that should be universally accessible, particularly when they are justified on the basis that they will improve access to services. Not only was the promise of inclusion for Ndaga Muntu false, but the rollout of the system has also been incompetent and faulty, leading to even greater exclusion. The profound impact of this double discrimination in Uganda demonstrates that such digital ID systems and their impacts on social and economic rights warrant greater and urgent attention from the human rights community at large.

Additional resources

June 12, 2021. Madeleine Matsui, JD program, Harvard Law School; intern with the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights.

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June 12, 2021 Dev Account Event Summary  

‘Chased Away and Left to Die’: New human rights report finds that Uganda’s national digital ID system leads to mass exclusion

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

‘Chased Away and Left to Die’: New human rights report finds that Uganda’s national digital ID system leads to mass exclusion

Uganda’s national digital ID system, a government showpiece that is of major importance for how individuals in Uganda access their social rights, leads to mass exclusion. This is the key finding in a new report titled Chased Away and Left to Die, published today by a collective of human rights organizations. The report is the outcome of 7 months of in-depth interviews with a multitude of victims, health workers, welfare workers, government officials and other experts on the national ID, referred to by Ugandans as Ndaga Muntu.

Report cover featuring an interviewee holding documents and being photographed on a phone.
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The report argues that the Ugandan government has sacrificed the potential of digital ID for social inclusion and the realization of human rights at the altar of national security. “Ndaga Muntu is primarily a national security weapon built with the help of Uganda’s powerful military and not the ‘unrivaled success’ that the World Bank and others have claimed it is,” said Christiaan van Veen, one of the authors of the report and based at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

Obtaining a national digital ID is described as “a nightmare” in the report. Based on official sources, the report estimates that as many as one third (33%) of Uganda’s adult population has not yet received a National Identity Card (NIC), a number that may even be rising. Many others in the country have errors on their card or are unable to replace lost or stolen IDs.

Since Ndaga Muntu is mandatory to access health care, social benefits, to vote, get a bank account, obtain a mobile phone or travel, the national ID has become a critical gateway to access these human rights. As one individual in Nebbi in Northern Uganda, put it succinctly in the report: “Ndaga Muntu is like a key to my door; without it, I can’t enter.” This can literally mean the difference between life and death. A woman in Amudat, in Northern Uganda, described the consequences of not having the national ID for access to health care: “Without an ID […] no treatment. Many people fall sick and stay home and die.”

The report urges the Ugandan government to immediately stop requiring the national digital ID to access social rights. “Government has to go back to the drawing table and rethink the use of Ndaga Muntu,” said Angella Nabwowe of the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights, “especially when it comes to tagging it to service delivery, because many people are being left out.”

Researchers focused their fieldwork in various parts of Uganda on documenting evidence of exclusion of women and older persons from health services and the Senior Citizens’ Grant (SCG) tied to Ndaga Muntu. Since 2019, patients are required to show the national ID to access public health centers. The report details how women, including pregnant women, are ‘chased away’ by health care workers for failure to show their ID. Previously, there was no single, rigid ID requirement to access health care in Uganda.

In March, the Ugandan government also announced its intention to require the national digital ID for access to Covid-19 vaccines. But a lawsuit based on this research by two organizations that co-authored the report, the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights and Unwanted Witness, led to a quick reversal of that policy by the government.

The impact of Ndaga Muntu on the elderly in Uganda is equally heart-wrenching. The report recounts the story of Okye, an 88-year old man from Namayingo in Eastern Uganda whose date of birth was registered incorrectly, ‘making’ him 79-years old instead. The result for Okye is that he is not eligible for the life-saving government cash transfer for persons over 80 (SCG). Okye is not an exception. Senior sources confirmed to the authors of the report that at least 50,000 Ugandans over 80 have similar mistakes on their national ID that make them ineligible for government assistance or do not have a national ID at all. That number is almost certainly an undercount and points to mass exclusion among Uganda’s 200,000 older persons over 80.
The consequences of not having a national ID for older persons can be tragic. Nakaddu, an 87-year old woman in Kayunga district in Central Uganda told researchers that she did not get the cash grant for the elderly: “I don’t get the money, but I don’t know what to do. […] I can no longer dig. My arm is not okay. I cook for myself. Those ones [pointing to the neighbours] give me some food.”

The report blames the struggles and failures of the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) for many of the exclusionary problems with Ndaga Muntu. NIRA has faced criticism for its failure to enroll a larger part of the population, problems with issuing ID cards, high rates of errors, high costs imposed on individuals and allegations of bribery and corruption.
Perhaps NIRA’s biggest failure, however, has been the neglect of its responsibility for registering births. By prioritizing the registration of adults for the national ID over birth registration, the birth registration rate may have plummeted to as low as 13% of children under 1 years old. Meanwhile, the percentage of adults excluded from the national ID may be rising even as NIRA appears unable to keep up with the growing number of young people who turn 18 and become eligible for the national ID card.

“It is quite absurd to invest in registering the adult population for a national ID and forget about the next generation. It is as if NIRA’s left hand does not know, and does not care, what its right hand is doing,” said Dorothy Mukasa, Team leader at Unwanted Witness.
Digital ID systems have been widely hailed by international development organizations and private actors as ways to foster social inclusion and development and promise poor African nations the ability to ‘leapfrog’ towards becoming modern, digital economies. The report by the collective of human rights organizations shows a much darker picture of exclusion, missed opportunities, and significant financial costs.

Not only does the report estimate that the Ugandan government has already spent more than USD 200 million on its digital ID system in the past decade, comparable to the total budget of its Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development in that same period. But international organizations and bilateral donors have also poured many millions into Uganda’s health and social protection programs that are now risking to exclude millions from their reach because of Ndaga Muntu’s dysfunction. In an ironic twist, some of those same development partners, like the World Bank, are among the foremost champions of digital ID systems in Africa and have also funded NIRA.

Equally tragic is the fact that many of the benefits of digitalization are missed in this digital ID system. While NIRA maintains air-conditioned servers to house its National Identity Register in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, health care workers still register patients’ national identity information in paper booklets provided by NIRA. And the promised benefits of biometric verification are missed because many remote areas do not have fingerprint scanners or the internet and electricity to make them usable. And when modern biometric equipment worked, many older Ugandans, whose fingerprints have been worn away after many years of manual labor, were, as victims told us, “refused by those machines.”

The report recounts one macabre result of these missed digital opportunities, when an old and sick man was forced by officials to personally travel to a cash transfer distribution point to verify his fingerprints and receive his social benefit. The man set out on a boda boda motorcycle taxi and died on his way there. The last payment due to a deceased beneficiary will customarily be given to family members. Therefore, officials proceeded to take the dead man’s fingerprints.

A short documentary on the impact of Ndaga Muntu on women and older persons can be found here.

This post was initially published as a press release on June 8, 2021.

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June 8, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

‘Chased Away and Left to Die’

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Chased Away and Left to Die

How a National Security Approach to Uganda’s National ID Has Led to Wholesale Exclusion of Women and Older Persons

The Ugandan government launched a new national digital ID system in 2014, promising to issue all Ugandans with a national ID number and national ID card, while also building a large central database of identity information, including personal biographic information and digitized biometric information such as fingerprints and facial photographs. This 2020 report documents the continuing wholesale exclusion of large swaths of the Ugandan population from this national digital ID system, known as Ndaga Muntu. Based on 7 months of research together with our Ugandan partners the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) and Unwanted Witness, the report takes an in-depth look at the implications of this exclusion for pregnant women and older persons attempting to access their rights to health and social protection.

Download report

The report begins with a thoroughly researched overview of the origins and design of the national digital ID system, which was originally described by a prominent government Minister as a “national security weapon.” Although it was strongly linked to national security priorities of the government, the national ID system was also intended to serve a wide variety of uses, including identification and authentication for access to social services and healthcare. However, the implementation of this ambitious system has been filled with challenges—with the result that up to one-third of the adult population remains excluded. Despite robust political support and several waves of mass registration, progress in increasing coverage in the system continues to be frustrated by implementation challenges including budget shortfalls, as well as physical, financial, technological, and administrative barriers to access. All of these challenges have been exacerbated by an environment marked by inequality and discrimination. 

This has led to severe human rights consequences, especially for vulnerable groups such as older persons and women, who have been denied access to lifesaving social services. The report describes how Ndaga Muntu has now become a mandatory requirement to access both government and private services. This includes access to health care and social pensions, as well as the ability to vote, get a bank account, and obtain a mobile phone. In short, exclusion from the national digital ID has become a life and death matter for many people in Uganda. The report draws on focus group conversations and individual interviews with affected persons, as well as discussions with numerous government administrators and scholars, to share deeply contextualized personal accounts of how this mandatory requirement has had an impact on individual lives. 

Based on these extremely concerning accounts of exclusion, discrimination, and violations of economic and social rights, the report concludes with a series of actionable recommendations to mitigate the most pressing human rights concerns. This includes the need to ensure that the mandatory national ID requirement does not continue to lead to exclusion from fundamental rights and services, for instance by allowing for the use of alternative forms of ID. It also emphasizes the need to re-examine whether a national ID system designed to be a national security tool is fit for the purposes of inclusion and human rights. 

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June 8, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

GJC Issues Statement on Haiti’s Constitutional Referendum

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

GJC Issues Statement on Haiti’s Constitutional Referendum

The Global Justice Clinic, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School issued a statement on June 8, 2021, calling on the U.S. government to join civil society’s demand that the government of Haiti cancel the planned constitutional referendum in Haiti. The referendum, which will ask Haitian people to vote “yes” or “no” on a new Constitution, is illegal. It is the most recent, bold effort by President Jovenel Moïse to consolidate power and comes on the heels of dozens of presidential decrees that undermine checks on the executive. Haitian civil society has widely denounced the referendum, noting its illegality and emphasizing the impossibility of holding a vote under the current administration. International actors are increasingly recognizing the illegitimacy of the referendum, and the danger to democracy that it poses. However, continued technical support and provision of aid to the government of Haiti to hold elections means that international actors, including the United States government, are tacitly supporting the unconstitutional vote. With long experience working in solidarity with Haitian civil society, and building off our February statement, the clinics urge the U.S. government to urgently and publicly call to cancel the referendum.

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June 8, 2021. Statements of the Global Justice Clinic do not purport to represent the views of NYU or the Center, if any.

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June 8, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

Civil Society and Downstream Users to Barrick: No Dominican Republic Expansion

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Civil Society and Downstream Users to Barrick: No Dominican Republic Expansion

Open letters from 88 organizations and 15 jewelry producers highlight the human rights, environmental, and climate consequences of proposed gold mine expansion 

Today 88 organizations from more than 21 countries released a letter calling on the Dominican Republic and Barrick Gold Corporation to stop the proposed expansion of the Pueblo Viejo gold mine, while more than a dozen jewelry producers joined a parallel letter echoing civil society’s concerns. The letters raise serious concerns over threats to local communities’ rights and the risk of significant environmental damage. They question whether the government and the company will be able to fulfill their promises to promote sustainability and climate resilience if the mine expansion is allowed to continue.

Download Parallel Letter

The Pueblo Viejo mine, about 100km outside Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic (DR), is one of the largest gold mines in the Americas. Barrick is looking to exploit lower-grade ore by expanding its processing plant and mine waste storage facilities. This would reportedly extend the life of the mine into 2040.

Affected communities and local organizations in the Dominican Republic have come out in opposition to the expansion, local politicians and experts have criticized the risks of the proposed tailings dam, and religious leaders have raised the alarm about the expansion. According to Heriberta Fernandez from the Centro de Reflexión y Acción Padre Juan Montalvo (Centro Montalvo), “Mining has created irreparable socio-environmental damages in the Dominican Republic. The extractivist model violates the fundamental rights of communities and territories. The proposal threatens critically important watersheds for agriculture and doesn’t have a social license to operate from local communities.”

The letters, signed by human rights and legal aid organizations, environmental non-profits, mining-affected community groups, and jewelry producers, among others, focus on the potential environmental and human rights impacts of the expansion, the lack of publicly available information regarding the expansion process, the aggravation of climate vulnerability that the expansion would cause, and the serious allegations of water contamination at Barrick’s operations in the DR and at other Barrick sites. The letters highlight the potentially dangerous impacts of the proposed additional mine waste storage facility, called a tailings dam, on downstream communities and vital watersheds.

“Barrick claims it is ‘serious about sustainability’ and community rights, and the Dominican government has committed to being an international leader on climate justice. The available evidence suggests the mine expansion is irreconcilable with these promises and must be immediately re-considered,” said Sienna Merope-Synge of NYU Global Justice Clinic’s Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative, one of the groups coordinating the letter.

Organizations confronting Barrick’s damaging environmental impacts and marred human rights record in other countries around the world have endorsed the letters, which argue that the company’s actions abroad casts serious doubt on its willingness to uphold the highest human rights and environmental standards in the DR. At the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea, Barrick dumped more than 6 million tonnes of tailings and 12 million tonnes of sediment from waste rock into a local river, under government permits. One organization from Papua New Guinea signed the letter with a message to communities in the DR saying, “We the Ipili Indigenous Women from Porgera are in solidarity with you in this battle.”

The letters were presented to the Dominican Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources as well as the CEO and President of Barrick Gold and the President of Barrick’s Dominican subsidiary in advance of the company’s annual general meeting in Toronto.

May 4, 2021.

Communications from NYU clinics do not represent the institutional views of NYU School of Law or the Center, if any.

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May 4, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

I don’t see you, but you see me: asymmetric visibility in Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

I don’t see you, but you see me: asymmetric visibility in Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program

Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program, the world’s largest conditional cash transfer program, is indicative of broader shifts in data-driven social security. While its beneficiaries are becoming “transparent” as their data is made available, the way the State uses beneficiaries’ data is increasingly opaque.

“She asked a lot of questions and started filling out the form. When I asked her about when I was going to get paid, she said, ‘That’s up to the Federal Government.’” This experience of applying for Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program (“Programa Bolsa Família” in Portuguese, or PBF), the world’s largest conditional cash transfer program, hints at the informational asymmetries between individuals and the State. Such asymmetries have long existed, but information and communications technologies (ICTs) can exacerbate these imbalances. ICTs enable States to handle an increasing amount of personal data, and this is especially true in the PBF. In June 2020, 14.2 million Brazilian families living in poverty – 43.7 million individuals – were beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família program.

At the core of the PBF’s structure is a register called CadÚnico, which is used for more than 20 social policies. It includes detailed data on heads of households and less granular data on other family members. The law designates women as the heads of household and thereby the main PBF beneficiary. Information is collected about income, number of people living together, level of education and literacy, housing conditions, access to work, disabilities, and ethnic groups. This data is used to select PBF beneficiaries and to monitor their compliance with the conditions on which the maintenance of the benefit depends, such as requirements that children attend school . The federal government also uses the CadÚnico for finding multidimensional vulnerabilities, granting other benefits, or enabling research. Although different programs feed the CadÚnico, the PBF is its most important information provider due to its colossal size. In March 2021, the CadÚnico comprised 75.2 million individual entries from 28.9 million families: PBF beneficiaries make up a half.

The person responsible for the family unit within the PBF must answer all of the entries of the “main form,” which consists of 77 questions with varying degrees of detail and sensitivity. All these data points expose the sensitive personal information and vulnerabilities of low-income individuals.

The scope of this large and comprehensive dataset is celebrated by social policy experts because it enables the State to target needs for other policies. Indeed, the CadÚnico has been used to identify the relevant beneficiaries for policies ranging from electricity tariff discounts to higher education subsidies. Holding huge amounts of information about low-income individuals can allow States to proactively target needs-based policies.

But when the State is not guided by the principle of data minimization (i.e. collecting only the necessary data and no more), this appetite for information increases and places the burden of risks on individuals. They are transparent to the State, while the State becomes increasingly opaque to them.

Upon registering for the PBF, citizens are not informed about what will happen to the information they provide. For example, the training materials for officials registering beneficiaries only note that they must warn potential beneficiaries of their liability for providing false and inaccurate information, but they do not state that officials must tell beneficiaries how their data will be used, nor about their data rights , nor any details about when or whether they might receive their cash transfer. The emphasis, therefore, lies on the responsibilities of the potential beneficiary instead of the State. The lack of transparency about how people’s data will be used reduces citizens’ ability to exercise their rights.

In addition to the increased visibility of recipients to the State, the PBF also releases the beneficiaries’ data to the public due to strict transparency requirements. Though CadÚnico data is generally confidential, PBF recipients’ personal data is publicly available through different paths:

  • The Federal Government’s Transparency Portal publishes a monthly list containing the beneficiary’s name, municipality, NIS (social security number) and the amounts paid.
  • The Caixa Econômica Federal’s portal– the public bank that administers social benefits–allows anyone to check the status of the benefit by inserting name, NIS and CPF (taxpayer’s identity number).
  • The NIS of any citizen can be queried at the Citizen’s Consultation Portal CadÚnico by providing name, mother’s name, and birth date.

In making a person’s status as a PBF beneficiary easily accessible, the (mostly female) beneficiaries suffer a lack of privacy from all sides and are stigmatized. Not only are they surveilled by the State as it closely monitors conditionalities for the PBF, but they are also monitored by fellow citizens. Citizens have made complaints to the PBF about beneficiaries they believe should not receive cash transfers. At InternetLab, we used the Brazilian Access to Information Law to gain access to some of these complaints. 60% of the complaints showed personal identification information about the accused beneficiary, suggesting that citizens are monitoring and reporting their “undeserving” neighbors and using the above portals to check databases.

The availability of this data has further worrying consequences: at InternetLab, we have witnessed several instances of fraud and electoral propaganda directed at PBF beneficiaries’ phones, and it is not clear where this contact data came from. Different actors are profiling and targeting Brazilian citizens according to their socio-economic vulnerabilities.

The public availability of beneficiaries’ data is backed by law and arises from a desire to fight corruption in Brazil. This requires government spending, including on social programs, to be transparent. But spending on social programs has become more controversial in recent years amidst an economic crisis and the rise of conservative political majorities, and misplaced ideas of “corrupted beneficiaries” have mingled with anti-corruption sentiments. The emphasis has been placed on making beneficiaries “transparent,” rather than government.

Anti-corruption laws do not adequately differentiate between transparency practices that confront corruption and favor democracy, and those which disproportionately reinforce vulnerabilities and inequalities in focusing on recipients of social programs. Public contracts, public employees’ salaries, and beneficiaries of social benefits are all exposed under the same grounds. But these are substantially different uses of public resources, and exposure of these different kinds of data has very unequal impacts, with beneficiaries more likely to be harmed by this “transparency.”

The personal data of social program beneficiaries should be treated with more care, and we should question whether disclosing so much information about them is necessary. In the wake of Brazil’s General Data Protection Law which came into force last year, it is vital that the work to increase the transparency of the State continues while the privacy of the vulnerable is protected, not the other way around.

May 3, 2021. Nathalie Fragoso and Mariana Valente.
Nathalie Fragoso, Head of Research, Privacy and Surveillance, Internet Lab.
Mariana Valente, Associate Director of Internet Lab.

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May 3, 2021 Dev Account Uncategorized  

Fauna, Flora…and Funga: The Case for the Protection of Fungi Under National and International Law

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Fauna, Flora…and Funga: The Case for the Protection of Fungi Under National and International Law

Fungi are the Earth’s connective tissue and are crucial for human health and well-being. Yet, they have largely been ignored in international and national environmental law and policy. International negotiations this year provide an opportunity to fix this.

Fauna Flora Funga

After a year of postponed meetings and conferences, the international community is back on track and poised to meet several times this year to tackle urgent environmental threats. In May, states will negotiate the Post-2020 Global Framework on Biodiversity, which will guide state biodiversity efforts for years to come. In September, the global community will consider means to strengthen the global food system at the UN Food Systems Summit. And in November, the climate crisis will again be the subject of global consideration at COP26 in Glasgow.

Problem-solving strategies – including those deployed to address environmental threats – aren’t fully effective unless they cover all of the key components of the given issue. This much is obvious. And yet, in the past, these types of international governance convenings – international and national environmental law generally – have ignored a crucial player: fungi.

Life on Earth depends on fungi. The vast majority of plants, for example, depend on symbiotic fungi to obtain the nutrients they need and ward off disease; indeed, plants never would have migrated onto land if not for their partnership with fungi. Fungi are also essential for fixing carbon and vital nutrients into the soil, thus providing a service that entire ecosystems depend upon to function. Humans rely on fungi for food, medicines, and spiritual practices. Indeed, many of the transformational advances in healthcare achieved in the past two centuries relied on fungi: penicillin, for example, comes from fungi. Many future advances in medicine – for treating cancers, viruses, and mental illnesses – are similarly likely to come from fungi. Yet despite their utmost importance, fungi are usually ignored in both international and national environmental protections.

It’s an ignorance we can’t afford to sustain. If international and national environmental law and policy continue to discount the interests of fungi and the threats they face, then these laws and policies will be – at best – ineffective.

The Status of Fungi in International and Domestic Law

There are a number of international environmental treaties that explicitly aim to mitigate threats to flora (plants) and fauna (animals). This includes the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wilde Flora and Fauna (CITES), both are seminal pieces of international environmental law. The texts of CBD and CITES, as well as other international environmental treaties, explicitly reference flora and fauna as the subject of the protections that the treaties offer. The third F – funga, representing the diversity of fungi species – is conspicuously absent.

This is not an inconsequential oversight. Not only does it mean that fungi species don’t benefit from the legal and policy protections offered by these treaties, but it also suggests that fungi are somehow less important than plants or animals. This could not be further from the truth, as fungi’s essential role in ecosystems demonstrates.

This misleading message is reflected not only in the absence of fungi in international treaty texts but also in the work of important conservation institutions. Take the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), for example. It is an international organization that, among other things, gathers and analyzes data and conducts research on the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. As part of this work, IUCN compiles the Red List, which tracks the extinction risk status of plant, animal, and fungi species. However, while the Red List includes 43,556 plant species and 76,457 animal species, it only covers 343 fungi species. This is likely due both to a lack of attention paid to fungi species and the fact that, generally speaking, less effort has been made to identify fungi species relative to plant and animal species. Because there is a gap in IUCN’s work on fungi species and because IUCN’s data and analysis are critical in facilitating conservation work, it is more challenging to advance fungi conservation than plant and animal conservation.

In general, domestic law mirrors international law in its failure to explicitly recognize fungi as a distinct form of life with distinct needs. The major exception to this is Chile, where the concerted efforts of fungi activists to secure policy protections for fungi led to their explicit inclusion in a major environmental law passed in 2010. As a result of this, Chile’s main conservation law – which establishes procedures for protecting at-risk species – now includes fungi. 

What Can Be Done and Why It Matters

The aforementioned gap in international and national law needs to be filled by explicitly incorporating fungi. This begins with expanding discussions of flora and fauna to include funga – thereby making it the “3 Fs.” Policymakers and environmental advocates should work to ensure that fungi are clearly included in conservation frameworks. That may mean changing the text of a given national conservation law to include fungi or it may mean working at the agency-level to ensure regulations incorporate fungi.

Recognizing fungi in international and national law has important practical and symbolic consequences. Practically, it will unlock funding for fungi research, obligate governments to take certain steps to protect fungi, and limit certain activities harmful to vulnerable species of fungi. Symbolically, it signals the importance of fungi and their role in ecosystems. This is why we at the Climate Litigation Accelerator – in collaboration with fungi experts Giuliana Furci and Merlin Sheldrake – launched an initiative (FaunaFloraFungi) to fill this regulatory gap. The programmatic statement of the initiative is open to signatures and has already been endorsed by Jane Goodall, Michael Pollan, Donna Haraway, Andrew Weil, Andrea Wulf, Paul Stamets, Robert Macfarlane, Wade Davis, David Boyd and a number of other prominent scientists, naturalists, environmental advocates, and citizens from around the world.

Fungi are equal members of Earth’s web of life and fundamental to the health of humans and the planet. This year provides exceptional opportunities to update international and national law and policy to finally reflect this truth. Let’s make sure to use them.

April 27, 2021. César Rodríguez-Garavito and Jacqueline Gallant, The Earth Rights Research & Action (TERRA Law).

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April 27, 2021 Youssef Farhat Post