Editor: Polli Hagenaars, Netherlands and Merry Bullock, USA/Estonia

Table of Contents

HIGHLIGHTS: Nelson Mandela International Day 2021

GNPHR NEWS

CONTENT AREAS: ARTICLES AND NEWS

  • Academic freedom / Higher Education
  • Children’ rights
  • Climate change
  • Covid-19 and human rights
  • Crimes against humanity – enslavement
  • Decolonisation processes
  • Human Rights Education
  • Human Rights and Psychology: theory, epistemology, ethics
  • Inclusion – Exclusion – Racism
  • Indigenous peoples’ rights
  • Mental Health and Human Rights
  • Migrants / Refugees
  • Peace Psychology

REGIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

PUBLICATIONS

CONFERENCES, EVENTS, EDUCATION, CALL FOR PAPERS, GRANTS

GNPHR

HIGHLIGHTS

Nelson Mandela International Day 2021: The rule of law and food for all
For Nelson Mandela International Day 2021, the focus will be on two critical intersecting challenges being faced by South Africa and many other countries – food insecurity and cultures of lawlessness. Covid-19 has deepened patterns of poverty and inequality. The numbers of people going hungry are growing. Social cohesion is under severe strain. Evidence of diminishing respect for ‘the rule of law’ is apparent everywhere.
https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/nelson-mandela-international-day-2021-the-rule-of-law-and-food-for-all

GNPHR NEWS

  • GNPHR invites you to contribute to the blog series!! Blog-Opinion pieces can be on general human rights issues; human rights education or strategies for raising the profile of human rights within one’s institution or professional life. Students are welcome to submit a blog on human rights issues/topics from the perspective of students, including questions about human rights and their implementation on student needs for learning about and addressing human rights. Please contact the GNPHR Blog editor (blogeditor@humanrightspsychology.org) with ideas for the blog  you would like to write!
  • GNPHR invites you to send news/information/events about relevant human rights issues or activities for publication in the bulletin.

CONTENT AREAS: ARTICLES AND NEWS

Academic freedom / Higher Education

SAR. https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/academic-freedom-media-review/ Protecting scholars and the freedom to think, question, and share ideas. https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/academic-freedom-media-review/

Children’ rights

Training Manual on Strategic Litigation and Individual Complaints Mechanisms for Children in Africa. ACPF, African Child Policy Forum, 2020. 

Strengthening children’s participation in their health: the new initiative of the Council of Europe. Annagrazia Altavilla, Ritva Halila, Maria-Andriani Kostopoulou, Laurence Lwoff, Katrin Uerpmann, The Lancet, Child & Adolescent Health, Volume 5, Issue 4, April 2021. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other human rights instruments, children are bearers of human rights with progressively evolving capacities to make their own decisions and a firmly anchored right to be heard and participate in decisions affecting them, both as individuals and as a group. Over time, the importance of the participation of children, particularly adolescents, in decision making on matters regarding themselves has been recognised in policy reports, youth health strategies, and position papers of medical societies.

Discourses of Childism: How covid-19 Has Unveiled Prejudice, Discrimination and Social Injustice against Children in the Everyday
Rebecca Adami, Katy Dineen, The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 29 (2021) 353-370, June 15, 2021
Do children suffer from discriminatory structures in society and how can issues of social injustice against children be conceptualised and studied? The conceptual frame of childism is examined through everyday expressions in the aftermath of policy decisions affecting children in Sweden, the UK and Ireland to develop awareness of age-based and intersectional discrimination against children. While experiences in Sweden seem to indicate that young children rarely suffer severe symptoms from COVID-19, or constitute a driving force in spreading the virus, policy decisions in the UK and Ireland to close down schools have had detrimental effects on children in terms of child hunger and violence against children. Policy decisions that have prioritised adults at the cost of children have unveiled a structural injustice against children, which is mirrored by individual examples of everyday societal prejudice.

COVID-19 and Children’s Rights: Space for Reflection, Tracing the Problems and Facing the Future. Volume 29: Issue 2 (Jun 2021): Special Issue: in The International Journal of Children’s Rights. Open Access.

Climate Change

A Dutch court rules that Shell must step up its climate change efforts. Stanley Reed & Claire Moses, NY Times, May 26, 2021. “Severe climate change has consequences for human rights, including the right to life. And the court thinks that companies, among them Shell, have to respect those human rights,”

Covid-19 and human rights

Mitigating the impacts of COVID-19: where are the mental health trials? Simon Gilbody at al., The Lancet, June 2021,
COVID-19 prompted rapid mobilisation of health services and medical science in the face of unprecedented challenges. When COVID-19 emerged in 2020, medical science delivered, and delivered quickly. Using large-scale multicentre trials, researchers in partnership with health services established the ability of cheap and scalable interventions (such as corticosteroids) to save lives, and rapidly showed the futility of anecdotally endorsed repurposed drugs (such as hydroxychloroquine). The effectiveness of vaccinations was quickly established in phase 2 and 3 trials, providing the confidence to roll out successful vaccine programmes.

See under Children’s rights

Crimes against humanity – Enslavement

Enslaved. The United Nations Outreach Programme. Educating the world about the history of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies, including racism. UN Enslaved series.

21 jun. ‘Ending racism, both the cause and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, is a global imperative for justice’, said UN Secretary-General @antonioguterres, on Juneteenth. ‘Racism is both the cause and the legacy of slavery. The impact of the slave trade remains visible in today’s racial injustices and inequalities. Ending racism is a global imperative for justice.’

International Slavery Museum (Liverpool): Delighted that we can reopen our doors from Tuesday 18 May. Free entry but to keep everyone safe, booking essential. It’s been too long.

Kapitalismus und Sklaverei (Capitalism and Slavery). Sklaverei, Kolonialismus und Genozid sind die Fundamente, auf denen der Wohlstand des Westens beruht. Die europäische Aufklärung war in Wirklichkeit zutiefst imperialistisch. So steht es in einer gerade erschienenen Studie des Sozialwissenschaftlers Kehinde Andrews, Professor für „Black Studies“ an der Birmingham City University. Sein Buch trägt den Untertitel „Wie Rassismus und Kolonialismus bis heute die Welt regieren“. Rainer Hank, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 June 2021. Die postkoloniale Dekonstruktion der Aufklärung folgt einem modischen Trend. Das muss aber nicht bedeuten, dass sie falsch ist. Zumal die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang zwischen dem Erfolg des Kapitalismus und dem rassistischen Kolonialismus zwar immer schon zum Standardrepertoire marxistischer Analysen gehörte, in den aktuellen identitätspolitischen Debatten, soweit ich sehe, aber eher am Rande traktiert wird.
[Slavery, colonialism and genocide are the foundations on which the prosperity of the West rests. The European Enlightenment was, in fact, deeply imperialist. This is what it says in a recently published study by the social scientist Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. His book is subtitled “How Racism and Colonialism Rule the World to this Day”. The postcolonial deconstruction of the Enlightenment follows a fashionable trend. But that doesn’t have to mean that it is wrong, especially since the question of the connection between the success of capitalism and racist colonialism has always been part of the standard repertoire of Marxist analyzes, but in the current debates on identity politics, as far as I can see, it is rather marginalized])

Foundations for a decolonial big data psychology. Cristina Jayme Montiel, Joshua Uyheng, Journal of social issues, June 16, 2021.
The accelerated datafication of social life has led to increased interest in advancing the use of big data in psychology. However, prevailing methodological preoccupations in big data psychology elide foundational issues which amplify the problems of modernity/coloniality, including the suppression of marginalized psychologies and the widening gap between researchers and their subjects.
We propose decolonial foundations for utilizing big data in psychological scholarship. We move beyond prevailing technical concerns with data processing, to engage situational practices of knowledge production. The ontological object of computing shifts from a universal psychology of numerous individuals, to a localized psychology of collectives. Epistemological priorities shift from contextfree definition and control, to prioritizing temporal responsiveness and linguistic fidelity to emergent psychological phenomena. Ethical guidelines extend beyond issues of personal privacy, and address socio-political concerns in fragile democracies.
Two Philippine case studies operationalize these principles through data collection practices at the local level, participaton in the design of algorithms, challenging bias, and preventing state interference. The piece concludes with suggestions foradvancing equitable practices of knowledge production within the computational and psychological sciences.

Conundrums in teaching decolonial critical community psychology within the context of neo-liberal market pressures
Hugo Canham, Brett Bowman, Tanya Graham, Garth Stevens, Malose Langa, Vinitha Jithoo, Daleen Alexander, Journal of social issues, June 14, 2021
[from the abstract]: In this paper, we provide empirically informed reflections on the difficulty of undertaking critically inflected, decolonial praxis in community psychology within the overdetermined global order of neo-liberalism. Using interviews with 10 alumni of the Masters in Community-Based Counselling (MACC) psychology program at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, we extend what have hitherto been largely theoretical debates about the fundamental constraints on teaching decolonial theory as an important touchstone of criticality in the context of the constraining forces of the free-market economy. We focus on our participants’ attempts to navigate the inevitable tensions between the tenets of decolonial critical community psychology and neo-liberal market pressures on employability. We analyze accounts of job-seeking and employment experiences of the program alumni to ask whether we may have to contemplate the imminent evacuation of critical community epistemologies within the context of a market-structured and professionally regulated psychology. We suggest that while the death knell of critical pedagogies and epistemologies has not yet quite arrived, more nuanced approaches to criticality may have to be adopted by the training programs that embrace them. We reveal that decoloniality’s emergent traction within the academy is not mirrored by the world of professional psychology. We contend that our apparently ideologically bifurcated curriculum together with fundamental constraints on practice opportunities in the world of work, do not support an easy leap into the decolonial breach.

Imperial delusions. Fara Dabhoiwala, NY Review of Books, July 2, 2021. In the summer of 1932 Eric Williams arrived in England from the British colony of Trinidad. Williams was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and also a noted Caribbean historian .

In a Palace of Colonialism, a ‘Quiet Revolutionary’ Takes Charge. The academic and historian Pap Ndiaye wants to turn around an institution with a problematic legacy so it tells the story of France’s immigrants. Farah Nayeri, NY Times, April 2021. — It was a monument to the power and glory of colonial France. When the Palais de la Porte Dorée opened in Paris in 1931, every corner of it was designed to extol the colonizing mission: from the bas-reliefs of laborers in faraway lands, to the frescoes of imperial magnificence, to the aquariums swarming with tropical fish.
That institution is now led by a man whose family members were among the colonized peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. Pap Ndiaye, a historian and academic of Senegalese and French descent, was last month appointed to revitalize the Palais de la Porte Dorée — an institution that was born as the Museum of the Colonies in 1931, and that now houses the Tropical Aquarium and the National Museum of the History of Immigration.

Human Rights Education

Human Rights Education Associates (HREA). The global human rights education and training centre. Search Results for: rights of refugees

Educating for Peace and Human Rights; An Introduction
Over the past five decades, both peace education and human rights education have emerged distinctly and separately as global fields of scholarship and practice. Promoted through multiple efforts (the United Nations, civil society, grassroots educators), both of these fields consider content, processes, and educational structures that seek to dismantle various forms of violence, as well as move towards cultures of peace, justice and human rights. Educating for Peace and Human Rights Education introduces students and educators to the challenges and possibilities of implementing peace and human rights education in diverse global sites. The book untangles the core concepts that define both fields, unpacking their histories and conceptual foundations, and presents models and key research findings to help consider where they intersect, converge, and diverge. Including an annotated bibliography, the book sets forth a comprehensive research agenda, allowing emerging and seasoned scholars the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the global fields of peace and human rights education.
Bloomsbury Academic, By: Maria Hantzopoulos, Monisha Bajaj https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/educating-for-peace-and-human-rights-9781350129733/ 

Human Rights and Psychology: theory, epistemology, ethics

Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘Caste’ Is an ‘Instant American Classic’ About Our Abiding Sin. Dwight Garner, NY Times, January 2021. Wilkerson’s book is about how brutal misperceptions about race have disfigured the American experiment. This is a topic that major historians and novelists have examined from many angles, with care, anger, deep feeling and sometimes simmering wit.
Wilkerson’s book is a work of synthesis. She borrows from all that has come before, and her book stands on many shoulders. “Caste” lands so firmly because the historian, the sociologist and the reporter are not at war with the essayist and the critic inside her.
Each country “relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement.”
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson, Random House.

Procedural fairness: Between human rights law and social psychology. Cathérine Van de Graaf,
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, February 2021. Fair procedures have long been a topic of great interest for human rights lawyers. Yet, few authors have drawn on research from other disciplines to enrich the discussion. Social psychological procedural justice research has demonstrated in various applications that, besides the final outcome, the manner in which one’s case is handled matters to ordinary people as well. Such research has shown the impact of procedural justice on an individual’s well-being, their acceptance of unfavourable decisions, perceptions of legitimacy and public confidence. The ECtHR has confirmed the desirability of these effects in its fair trial jurisprudence. Thus far, it remains unclear to what extent the guarantees offered by Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to a fair trial) coincide with the findings of empirical procedural justice research. This article aims to rectify this and uncover similarities between the two disciplines.

Inclusion – Exclusion – Racism

Breaking the ‘otherness’ fixation. Diversity is held as the pinnacle of progressive thought, but full inclusion is far from becoming a reality. Halleh Ghorashi, Public seminar, May 25, 2021.
Normative thinking. Research shows that without inclusive structures, any intentions and attempts to reach diversity will not lead to the necessary change in the status quo. Therefore, such attempts remain superficial and their impact is short-lived. To make a difference, it is essential to link diversity programs with actual inclusion. And that requires a more structural approach that challenges normative thinking. See also under Migrants and Refugees. 

Indigenous peoples’ rights

Introduction to this section reporting the discovery of mass graves in Canada – by Josephine Tan, President, International Council of Psychologists
The residential school system was one of the tools used by the Canadian government to assimilate the Indigenous peoples – the First Nations, the Inuit, and the Métis.  Over 130 residential schools operated between the 1870’s and into the 1990’s when the last school closed down in 1996.  It is estimated that over 150,000 Indigenous children were taken away from their families and communities and placed in the schools.  The objective was to eradicate the Indigenous culture by breaking the bonds between children and their parents and families.  In essence, it was a process of cultural genocide to prevent the transmission of the Indigenous culture to the future generations.  Many of the children in the school were abused physically, sexually, psychologically, and spiritually, and it was not uncommon to hear reports of neglect of their basic medical and survival needs.  Several attempted or ran away, and there were also accounts of suicide. The schools were funded by the government and were run by religious orders, particularly the Catholic Church.
Survivors of the residential school system have often spoken of graves of Indigenous children on the grounds of the residential schools.  It is only recently with the discovery of mass graves in the Kamloops residential school in British Columbia that the full horror of the residential school system is understood to a greater extent by the Canadian public.  It is not known how many children died when in the “care” of the residential school system.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that was struck to document the truth about the residential school system mentioned 3,200 confirmed deaths in one of its reports “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Project”; however, it is believed that the number is much higher.
Canada is going through a painful but necessary process of truth and reconciliation in which the truth has to be acknowledged in order for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canada to take place.  Reconciliation will be a long, possibly multi-generational, process that requires healing, redressing of past harm, addressing the destructive consequences of colonization, and the creation of a more just, equitable, and inclusive country.  The discovery of the mass graves in British Columbia is a reminder to Canadians to fulfil the TRC call to actions, in particular with respect to missing children and burial information.  Efforts are currently undertaken to locate graves in other residential schools.

‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada. An Indigenous community says it has found evidence that 215 children were buried in the grounds of a British Columbia school, one of the many in Canada set up to forcibly assimilate them. Ian Austin, NYTimes, May 28, 2021. Now an Indigenous community in British Columbia says it has found evidence of what happened to some of its missing children: a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children on the grounds of a former residential school. Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said on Friday that ground-penetrating radar had discovered the remains near the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which operated from 1890 until the late 1970s.

How Thousands of Indigenous Children Vanished in Canada. The discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of a defunct boarding school in British Columbia has rekindled discussion of a sinister time in Canada’s history. Ian Austin, NYTimes, June 7, 2021. The discovery of the graves has given new impetus to the nation’s debate on how to atone for its history of exploiting Indigenous people. Many are asking how so many children could have wound up in that burial space.

CPA Statement on the Discovery of the Mass Grave of Indigenous Children in Kamloops. CPA Webmaster, June 2, 2021. The Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) is horrified to learn about the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of a Residential School in Kamloops BC. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and Indigenous communities who are grieving this incalculable loss. We stand alongside Indigenous communities in grief, anger and sorrow. The CPA is committed to being a partner and an ally in healing, mental health and wellness for Indigenous communities across the country.

Pope voices pain over deaths of indigenous children in Canada. France24, June 6, 2021. Pope Francis said on Sunday that he was pained by the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former Catholic school for indigenous students in Canada and called for respect of the rights and cultures of native peoples. However, Francis stopped short of the direct apology some Canadians had demanded. Two days ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Catholic Church must take responsibility for its role in running many of the schools. The residential school system forcibly separated about 150,000 children from their homes. Many were subjected to abuse, rape and malnutrition in what Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 called “cultural genocide”.

Mental Health and Human Rights

New WHO guidance seeks to put an end to human rights violations in mental health care
10 June 2021, News release
Globally, the majority of mental health care continues to be provided in psychiatric hospitals, and human rights abuses and coercive practices remain all too common. But providing community-based mental health care that is both respectful of human rights and focused on recovery is proving successful and cost-effective, according to new guidance released today by the World Health Organization.
Mental health care recommended in the new guidance should be located in the community and should not only encompass mental health care but also support for day-to-day living, such as facilitating access to accommodation and links with education and employment services.
WHO’s new “Guidance on community mental health services: promoting person-centred and rights-based approaches” further affirms that mental health care must be grounded in a human rights-based approach, as recommended by the WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2020-2030 endorsed by the World Health Assembly in May 2021.
See also: WHO Guidance and Technical Packages –  Please disseminate widely!

Telegraph Article – Seclusion, restraint and coercion: abuse ‘far too common’ in mental health services across the world

Video poem: The Power of Purpose – Community-based mental health care: the Power of Purpose
“What happens to a person when they are treated as less than human? When they are treated as a tranquilized problem that needs to stay docile and become more prisoner than participant?” This powerful poem, written and narrated by Scottish author, Erin May Kelly, sheds light on the human rights violations that are still far too common in mental health services around the world. The poem also explains what mental health care in the community can and should look like, and the tremendous difference that care provided with respect for people’s human rights, and that is focused on recovery, can make to people’s lives. 

Migrants / Refugees

A Systematic Review of Autobiographical Memory and Mental Health Research on Refugees and Asylum Seekers, Sanjida Khan, Sara K. Kuhn, Shamsul Haque, Front. Psychiatry, 4 June 2021

Low Cost Interventions to Mitigate High Cost Emotional Tolls: Improving Conditions When Unaccompanied Minors Enter U.S. Border Government Custody, Deborah A. Stiles and Jessica Walsh, Advocacy Co-Chairs, American Psychological Association International Psychology Division 52.

Denmark Passes Law Allowing Asylum Seekers to Be Processed Outside Europe. The law is the latest in a series of hard-line measures that have been introduced in recent years to discourage migration. Megan Specia, NY Times, June 3, 2021. Similar hard-line policies that relocate asylum seekers, including in Australia have been criticized by human rights groups in the past as unlawful and have been denounced for the lack of protections for asylum seekers. However, Dr. Tan, with the Danish Institute for Human Rights, said it would be much harder for Denmark to implement a similar system because of human rights protections laid out under E.U. law.

Towards a structural place for refugee perspectives in policymaking. Elena Ponzoni, Halleh Ghorashi, Mohammed Badran, Institute for Societal Resilience, Refugee Academy. Amsterdam, NL.
This text summarises the core points of the Refugee Academy report. In this advisory report, we provide conceptual tools for societal stakeholders that are involved in and committed to the inclusion of refugee perspectives in policymaking. Our report was written on the basis of previous research and knowledge that was gathered over the years within the Refugee Academy research group, supplemented with additional empirical data (interviews with refugee advocates and policymakers). The original circumstance that prompted our writing was a request by the Dutch Refugee Council (Vluchtelingen Werk Nederland), who asked the Refugee Academy for support in discerning challenges and opportunities for structural inclusion of refugee-led organisations and refugee advocates in Dutch policymaking. However, the final report is addressed to a large range of stakeholders, including refugee-led organisations and refugee advocates, policymakers at the national and local level in the Netherlands, main governmental and non-governmental organisations, research institutes and other relevant institutions.

Peace Psychology

Impactleaders international is an inclusive group of trainers, dreamers and developers of human potential all over the globe. For the last year, they have been bringing together a grassroots wave of people contributing to peace, creating peace as part of their daily life.  Since war is a business, we should invest in peace as a business. We shouldn’t leave peacebuilding to politicians and it can and shall be part of everything we do. See also under Publications.

Sites of Conscience
The need to remember often competes with the equally strong pressure to forget. Even with the best of intentions – such as to promote reconciliation after deeply divided events by “turning the page” – erasing the past can prevent new generations from learning critical lessons and destroy opportunities to build a peaceful future.
A Site of Conscience is a place of memory – such as a historic site, place-based museum or memorial – that prevents this erasure from happening in order to ensure a more just and humane future. Not only do Sites of Conscience provide safe spaces to remember and preserve even the most traumatic memories, but they enable their visitors to make connections between the past and related contemporary human rights issues. In this way, a concentration camp in Europe becomes a catalyst for discussions on modern xenophobia; a Gulag museum in Russia highlights repression of free speech now; and a 200-year-old slave house in Africa sparks action to help the 40 million people who are still enslaved today.
Every one of these activities (see website) – and thousands more underway around the globe – has its roots in the past and its sights on the future. Through these conscious and united efforts, the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience connects past to present, changing the world one memory at a time. 

Personal Data / Data Rights / Misinformation

Media bias delegitimizes Black-rights protesters, Danielle Kilgo, Nature, 19 May 2021.
Linguistic analyses show that powerful sources and sensationalist terms have long dominated the coverage of civil-rights protests. The protests following the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by police a year ago built on those that came before — in response to the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and far too many others. The global reckoning was a result of decades of work by advocates who prepared the public to engage with race and racism. One reason their message has taken so long to become mainstream lies in how the press typically covers protests.

REGIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

Europe

FRA / FRP Europe. https://fra.europa.eu/en

On the road to a human rights-based recovery from COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed gaps in respecting the fundamental rights to health, education, employment and social protection across society. FRA’s Fundamental Rights Report 2021 plots the pandemic’s wide-ranging impact on human rights and suggests how best to address increasing inequalities and threats to societal cohesion.

Fundamental Rights Report 2021. FRA’s Fundamental Rights Report 2021 reviews major developments in the field in 2020, identifying both achievements and areas of concern. It also presents FRA’s opinions on these developments, including a synopsis of the evidence supporting these opinions. This year’s focus chapter explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on fundamental human rights. The remaining chapters cover: the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights; equality and non-discrimination; racism, xenophobia and related intolerance; Roma equality and inclusion; asylum, borders and migration; information society, privacy and data protection; rights of the child; access to justice; and the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The coronavirus pandemic and fundamental rights: A year in review. This focus looks at COVID-19’s impact on fundamental rights. It underscores that a human rights-based approach to tackling the pandemic requires balanced measures that are based on law, necessary, temporary and proportional. It also requires addressing the pandemic’s socio-economic impact, protecting the vulnerable and fighting racism.

FRA’s latest report looks at how the Employers Sanctions Directive protects irregular migrants from exploitation. It focuses on how EU countries use the directive to enable exploited workers get justice. It identifies implementation gaps and suggests EU countries. You can download or order a print copy of the report at: https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2021/employers-sanctions-against-exploitation

PUBLICATIONS

Become a Peacebuilder and Impact Leader, a practical guide. Saskia Harkema, Futuro, May 2021.
There are more conflicts than ever in the world, more than 75 years after World War II. Question is: Have we really made a big effort to ban war? War has become an industry. Trillions of dollars are spent yearly on this machinery of mass destruction. The cost of destruction is massive. Whole countries are bombed to pieces in endless wars and millions of people lose their lives. We have come to justify violence as a legitimate way to intervene in conflicts. It is time to disrupt this way of thinking. We can prevent war, build peace and make an impact.

Impactleaders international is an inclusive group of trainers, dreamers and developers of human potential all over the globe. For the last year, they have been bringing about a grassroots wave of people contributing to peace, creating peace as part of their daily life.  Since war is a business, we should invest in Peace as a business. We shouldn’t leave peacebuilding to politicians and it can and shall be part of everything we do.

Decolonizing Psychology: Globalization, Social Justice, and Indian Youth Identities. Sunil Bhatia, Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017. The book articulates an alternative vision of psychology in which questions of social justice and equality are seen as central to its mission, and it is argued that a psychology is needed that urgently and meaningfully speaks to the lives of the majority of the world’s population.

Training Manual on Strategic Litigation and Individual Complaints Mechanisms for Children in Africa. ACPF, African Child Policy Forum, 2020.

Russia: “Crimes against history”. International Federation for Human Rights (fidh), June 2021.
In this report, we analyse the human rights situation of historians, NGOs, activists, journalists, and other history producers working on historical memory of the Soviet past in Russia.

Russia: “History producers” attacked as regime attempts to control historical narrative. Press release, June 10, 2021.

Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities. Mahmood Mandani, Belknap Press Publisher, November 2020. In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe–from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan–the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority. Mamdani rejects the “criminal” solution attempted at Nuremberg, which held individual perpetrators responsible without questioning Nazism as a political project and thus the violence of the nation-state itself. Instead, political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice for perpetrators but a rethinking of the political community for all survivors–victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries–based on common residence and the commitment to build a common future without the permanent political identities of settler and native. Mamdani points to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa as an unfinished project, seeking a state without a nation.

The inextricable connection between the human and the non-human.
‘Anthropocene Psychology: Being Human in a More-Than-Human World’ (Routledge) by Matthew Adams, reviewed by Tony Wainwright. How should psychologists respond to the way human beings are changing the climate and our ecosystems? There is a lot happening on the psychology and climate change front, and not before time. Anthropocene Psychology is a deep dive into the ways in which human beings have changed both the world and themselves psychologically over time, exploring what Adams calls the ‘invitation’ that the Anthropocene gives us to better understand the inextricable connection between the human and non-human.

CONFERENCES, EVENTS, EDUCATION, CALL FOR PAPERS, GRANTS

The APA Convention takes place from August 12th to the 14th, and includes a skill building session, on ‘Psychology and Human Rights’ with Roseanne Flores.

Virtual Panel Presentation – On 23 September 2021, from 20:00 to 21:30, there will be a virtual panel presentation on the forthcoming book Emancipatory Human Rights and Higher Education. The panel presentation will be led by editors Felisa Tibbitts(Chair in Human Rights Education and UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Higher Education, SIM, Utrecht University) and Dr. André Keet (Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Engagement and Transformation, Nelson Mandela University). Register here.

ICP2021 – Conference Human Rights, Dignity and Justice – October 22-24, 2021. https://icpweb.org/icp-annual-conference/icp2021-virtual/ Join your colleagues for 2 days of exploring psychology and human rights! 

World Justice Challenge 2021 Finalists. The World Justice Project (WJP) is pleased to announce six winners in the World Justice Challenge 2021: Advancing the Rule of Law in a Time of Crisis competition. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s World Justice Challenge sought to identify, recognize, and promote good practices and high-impact projects and policies that protect and advance the rule of law in this time of unprecedented crisis.
Selected from a pool of 30 finalists and 425 submissions from 114 countries, each winning project will be awarded $20,000 USD for their work to protect and advance the rule of law in the face of COVID-19 challenges.
Meet the winners: https://worldjusticeproject.org/world-justice-challenge-2021/2021-winners

At the 32nd International Congress of Psychology (ICP2021), Prague – online-, 18-23 July 2021. https://www.icp2020.com/, several symposia, keynotes and round tables will be dedicated to human rights and psychology.

14TH European Public Health conference, 10 – 12 November 2021, virtual edition. Theme: Public health futures in a changing world. https://ephconference.eu/index.php

CONTACTS: Published by the Global Network of Psychologists for Human Rights – www.humanrightspsychology.org

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