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In recent years there has been significant scholarship examining implementation and compliance, and the distinction and interplay between 'hard law' and 'soft law'. However, within this discourse less attention has been paid to the practical manner in which soft law is used, by whom and in what contexts. Moreover, the range of soft law 'findings' of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), namely provisional measures; decisions on individual communications; thematic and country resolutions; recommendations from country missions; advisory opinions; and General Comments, have received limited attention leaving a gap in literature and knowledge. More recently, with the emergence of National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs), established or designated in accordance with the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, there is a growing group of human rights bodies, operating at the domestic level, also generating a range of findings with the aim of influencing State behaviour. The publications submitted detail the findings from my research to address these gaps in scholarship, and capture the role of new bodies within this discourse. This body of work has examined the use and implementation of the findings of the ACHPR to identify the contexts in which they are used by key actors, and the factors which impact on the extent to which they are applied at the national, regional and international levels. My research has also examined the related theme of how the ACHPR and NPMs have interpreted their role to follow-up and monitor implementation of their findings, and identified the opportunities and challenges for them to apply this role in practice.

This thesis critically analyses the mobilisation of the language of human rights by and within three UN principal organs involved in counter-terrorism: The General Assembly, the Security Council and the office of the Secretary-General. The thesis shows that, in the context of counter-terrorism, human rights language is strategically deployed in order to assert or contest political power, legal authority and moral authority. Focusing on both the meetings and the soft-law output of these three organs, the thesis explores a number of ways in which the language of human rights is invoked in the context of the UN's counter-terrorism work. Firstly, the thesis shows how the notion of 'respect for human rights' is invoked in order to differentiate between a democracy-loving, peaceful, civilised 'us' and the barbarous terrorist enemy, sustaining the narrative of the war on terror that was written by the United States and its allies in the aftermath of September 11. Secondly, the thesis explores the rhetoric of states of the Global South. These states frequently use the language of human rights in order to criticise the counter-terrorism policies and practices of the United States and its allies in the war on terror, highlighting the irony in the latter's claims to be global defenders of human rights. Thirdly, the thesis examines how human rights promotion itself has, over time, come to be spoken of as a counter-terrorism measure. Finally, the thesis suggests that human rights provide a set of standards for evaluation of the conduct and decisions of UN branches. Thus, overall, the thesis charts and analyses the politics of human rights as it has played out in the UN's counter-terrorism work over the past two decades, reflecting upon the implications of these developments for both international law and the human rights movement.

Between 2000 and 2015 the Millennium Development Goals were the focus of much global attention and activity. They were selected in light of astounding poverty, with over 1 billion people at the time living on less than $1 per day. In a sense the MDGs were morally undeniable. The focus of this study is MDG2, universal primary education. It sets out to establish how and why MDG2 came to be selected. Whilst its selection seems obvious, for years developing countries complained about the short-sightedness of prioritising primary over secondary and tertiary education (Klees 2008). A task force commissioned by the World Bank and UNESCO at the time showed that the Bank’s rate of return analysis on primary education was flawed. It argued that developing countries need highly educated people to be economic and social entrepreneurs, develop good governance, strong institutions and infrastructure. In this way MDG2’s selection is problematic. Using case study method, first the literature is examined. Three hypotheses are generated: one based on a rational synoptic theory, one on critical theory and one on world society theory. A range of data are used to establish findings and test hypotheses. The study then considers implications of the findings for theory and the policy process. The findings show that priorities promoting more equal opportunities, such as MDG2, were gradually preferred. Whereas priorities promoting more equal outcomes, such as elimination of trade barriers, were gradually excluded. The study finds no evidence that the General Assembly ever voted on the list of 8 MDGs. Rather, the MDGs were selected by elite policy actors, addressing multiple interests. The study considers the assertion that marginalization of the poor does not happen because people harbor ill will toward them, rather because “The poor have no friends among the global elite” (Pogge 2011, p. 62).

Paradigms of housing policies in developing countries have undergone significant changes since the 1940s in the post-colonial era. The involvement of international development agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations with their substantial financial and technical resources have engendered a conventional narrative of the hegemony of paradigms sponsored by these agencies. It is in this light that the “enabling principles” of housing policy emerged as the dominant policy discourse from the 1980s. This housing paradigm -“enabling shelter policies” –was actively promoted by the World Bank and the United Nations, acting through its housing agency the UN-Habitat, for adoption by developing countries to reform their housing sectors from the 1980s. One of the main instruments of the enabling principles was the withdrawal or contraction of the state from direct housing development in preference for private sector-led and community initiatives in housing development. Government involvement in direct development of housing was conceived to be an ineffective policy choice which had little geographic impact and therefore had to give way to a systematised approach to housing delivery. Ghana was one of the first African countries to adopt these principles for the reform of the housing sector in the country. Two decades later, it has been observed that the government was making housing policy choices that contradicted the ethos of the enabling principles. In particular it was observed that the state was re-engaging in direct housing development. In the light of the past conception of these activities as being defective policies, their re-emergence was characteristic of policy “reversionism”. This concept of policy reversionism is adopted from theories of theology and criminal justice (where it is known as recidivism) in which processes of reform or progression are reversed. The question explored by the thesis is why housing policy reversionism was emerging and what were the generating factors. The thesis draws on a critical realist perspective to deconstruct the conventional narratives about the homogenous state and the hegemony of international agencies such as the World Bank and the UN in the advancement of “unproblematic” enabling principles through which the housing sector reforms were designed and implemented. In doing so the thesis established the heterogeneity of the state driven by competition for domination by sectoral, intra-state as well as supra-state interests. In this process, hegemony becomes vulnerable to manipulation as these principles were translated or “indigenised”. Furthermore it is established that this nuanced perspective is further complicated by a dialectical relationship between the contexts of events and prevailing material conditions and the actions taken by policy agents. These complexities layered the housing policy sphere in ways that masked the primary motivations of class interests and political legitimisation underpinning the incidence of reversionism.

This thesis describes and evaluates the attempts made by international and regional organisations to manage the arms of parties during peace processes - typically through peacekeeping deployments. It describes over 40 third-party 'arms management' initiative undertaken between 1949 and 1999. The analysis which follows suggests that five principal arms management strategies, or approaches, have been utilised during this period: arms retention and delimitation; co-operative disarmament; coercive disarmament; arms control; and arms-balancing. The overall aim of the thesis is to tease out the concepts, doctrines and thinking that underpinned these strategies, and to examine how they evolved and developed. It further seeks to determine their cohesiveness and effectiveness in stabilising peace processes, and to analyse the dynamics of peace processes, including the difficulties or predicaments faced by internal parties in demilitarising, and the impact these had on arms management outcomes. Finally, drawing upon this work, it seeks to establish what constitutes coherent and effective arms management policy in the new Millennium, and to set out policy and research recommendations. This research fills gaps in empirical knowledge: the existing literature, mainly situated in security studies, does not provide a comprehensive and collated descriptive account of arms management over the 1949-1999 period. It also provides new conceptual and empirical insights into arms control and arms-balancing, which have been virtually ignored in the field of peace-building; and it further develops the work undertaken on co-operative and coercive disarmament in the first half of the 1990s, which has since been neglected. It concludes that arms management is a highly problematic activity. Surrendering or accepting controls on weaponry frequently places parties, societal groups, and individuals, in a position of vulnerability or difficulty, particularly when military and political integration is sought.

This paper presents a strategic, solution-based plan as a companion to our recent article, Responsible Resource Development and Prevention of Sex Trafficking: Safeguarding Native Women and Children on the Fort Berthold Reservation, 40 Harv. J.L. Gender 1 (2017). As a second phase of our work to combat the issues of human trafficking and attendant drug abuse on the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation (MHA Nation), we developed a strategic plan to better understand the time, scale, and capacity necessary to address the rising social problems accompanying the boom of oil and gas development there. During our process, we discovered, through multiple engagements with tribes, that similar negative impacts of rapid economic development are occurring throughout the United States. In particular, many tribes are deeply concerned about the rapid increase in human trafficking on and near their reservations coincident with the entrance or re-entrance of the extractive industries. The paper is a generalized strategic plan for tribes and other stakeholders to consider in combating the social impacts of extractive industry development. Although the plan is designed to be universal in scope and aspires to assist tribes throughout the country, it does not purport to take into account the unique complexities of individual Indian communities. The history, values, and research are examined to develop a process that will best suit a Native approach to each of the solutions presented, informed foremost by our relationship with the tribal community on Fort Berthold, as well as other tribes nationally. A cornerstone of the plan is that services that center on cultural identity and draw upon family connections are a preferred approach for Native peoples. Further, any approach to trafficking of Native women and children must take account of the colonial genesis of trafficking, generational trauma, and other risk factors.

This report examines the reliability of an indicator used by the UN to monitor the progress of member nations on Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 related to improved universal water access. The report examines the international and national framework for development indicators with a case study on Morocco. This study discusses limitations posed by household surveys and post-census investigations on providers of water services. It proposes a methodology to harmonize conflicting indicator definitions that is leading to contested statistics. The new methodology combines user-based stratified sampling techniques and provider-based definitions of the population’s strata with satellite image processing to select households. Two experiments demonstrate improvements in the indicator’s precision and accuracy. A first experiment simulates the uncertainty of water access estimates resulting from a typical household survey. A second experiment provides the reasoning and implementation of the new sampling methodology, showing a clear reduction of bias and variance in water access estimates.

The technical capabilities of the Stuxnet worms-launched by the US and Israel against Iran's nuclear facility-prove that the operation could be considered an act of aggression, as defined in the Rome Statute. Further, this paper asserts that Article 51 of the UN Charter is insufficient to addressing malignant cyber operations. The paper is organized as following: 1) Introduction, 2) Research Limitations, 3) Context: International Relations Theory and Types of International Law, 4) Understanding “Cyber” Within The Scope Of This Paper, 5) The Stuxnet Operation, 6) Historical and Legal Roots of “Aggression” and “Self-Defense”, 7) Stuxnet as an act of aggression, 8) Why Iran Cannot Legally Retaliate, 9) Conclusion, 10) Bibliography.I draw my analysis from ICJ cases, the UN Charter and other foundational documents, technical analyses of the Stuxnet operation, and other historical and political books and articles.

This report examines the trends in deployment of peacekeeping troops by the United Nations to conflict areas. I argue that the most important factor in the decision by the UN Security Council of whether or not to send troops is the state of the international system. When there is discord amongst the five permanent (P5) members of the UNSC, peacekeeping missions are significantly less likely. Relatedly, I argue that P5 discord makes individual members less likely to contribute to established missions. I test these and two secondary hypotheses using logit estimation and find support for two of the three hypotheses.

This study examines strategic communication practices of the United Nations (UN) under the seventh Secretary-General Kofi Annan, including the successes and failures of Annan's revolutionary plan, through the lenses of strategic communication theories and the construction of a historical narrative. By focusing on the reorientation of the Department of Public Information and Annan's ambitious goals in terms of improving the UN image and leadership, this study attempts to show how Annan and the department implemented their plans and strategies to achieve a better UN image that was aimed at strengthening the UN's global leadership. This study not only broadens the perspective on the communication strategy of the UN under Annan's leadership, but the study also revises several commonly held public images of the UN: ineffective and inactive from a view of organizational performance; corrupt from a view of administrative bureaucracy; submissive from a view of international relations; and non-newsworthy from a view of the media. It explores the maneuvers Annan and the department performed to address such images, and further reinforces the importance of the UN as an indispensable and irreplaceable organization at the international level. In doing so, this study attempts to show that the UN - as one of the most representative international organizations in terms of pioneering use of strategic communication - would give an exemplary demonstration of how to utilize every means of communication strategies in order to achieve goals of international and non-profit organizations. Thus, this study uses a strategic communication perspective to evaluate the processes and outcomes of the UN's strategic communication.

Indigenous peoples are garnering more focus on the world stage, and as such it is critical to understand their role in development. Indigenous peoples are especially impoverished, and often face institutionalized discrimination by their governments and other forces. This repression, limited access to services, and resource predation endanger indigenous peoples’ lives and livelihoods. I attempted to identify indigenous peoples’ policies in seven major development international non-governmental organizations, and after finding none upon document research and staff interviews, propose theories for why this could be the case. I compare international non-governmental organizations’ lack of policies to the presence of policies in international organizations. The difference between these two types of organizations formed the base of my theories, which were based primarily around the organizational structure and the different types of pressure and expectations that they face. I argue, though, that international non-governmental organizations should have indigenous peoples’ policies for several reasons including the improvement seen in international organizations’ treatment of indigenous peoples and the importance of accountability and transparency in the development process. The Report finishes by suggesting avenues to test the theories proposed, and plans for indigenous advocates.

Women’s rights occupy a contested moral and political position internationally. They are neither accepted as core values everywhere, nor always struggling for acceptance. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, was designed to be an ‘international bill of rights for women’ (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 2009). It codified non-discrimination within an international treaty to add legitimacy and strength to the implementation of women’s rights. The treaty’s reception reflects the contested nature of women’s rights. While the vast majority of UN member states are signatories, of all comparable treaties CEDAW has the largest number of reservations, many counter to fundamental provisions. CEDAW has supported women’s rights for more than three decades. Several barriers to implementation have been highlighted; a lack of resources for the CEDAW Committee and associated bodies and the quarantine of women’s rights from the human rights work of the UN (Chinkin 2010, p. 5; Lawson 1996, p. xxix). Delegates at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights raised the slogan ‘women’s rights are human rights’ to force acknowledgement that human rights were not equally applied to women. While these difficulties have begun to be addressed within UN processes, CEDAW’s efficacy has not been explored. The treaty’s content has received little critical attention, and my research helps fill this gap. Using philosophical inquiry, I have compared CEDAW to the International Bill of Human Rights (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and associated Covenants). Also I have assessed CEDAW against criteria drawn from Amartya Sen’s perspective on human rights as an ethical system and considered a range of feminist viewpoints critical of international law. I have found that, as well as strengths, CEDAW has limitations, omissions and flaws. Importantly, CEDAW does not provide a list of women’s rights (Burrows 1986, p. 80). Its focus on ending discrimination means that women’s relation to rights is mediated through actions by the state. This failure to recast the claimant of human rights as female undermines CEDAW’s legitimacy.

This historical investigation of U.S.-Turkish relations from the end of World War II to 1964 provides a greater understanding of the challenges inherent in the formation and implementation of U.S. policy in Turkey at a time when the Turks embarked on multiparty politics and a determined campaign to become a modern and distinctly European nation through ambitious economic development programs. Washington proved instrumental in this endeavor, providing financial support through the Marshall Plan and subsequent aid programs, and political sponsorship of Turkey's membership in international organizations such as NATO and the EEC. U.S. policymakers encountered various quandaries as they forged bilateral relations with the Turks, specifically reconciling democratization with Turkey's development and participation in the containment of communism. The Turkish government under Adnan Menderes demonstrated its reliability as a U.S. ally, providing troops to fight in the Korean War and cooperating in the construction of NATO bases and the modernization of its military, but it came under increasing pressure from the political opposition when its economic policies failed to secure long-term economic growth and stability. Starting in the mid-1950s the Menderes government adopted increasingly authoritarian measures to control dissent, a problematic situation for Washington, as it desired greater Turkish democracy while at them same time did not wish to compromise the growing American military presence in Turkey. The U.S. solution to dealing with Turkey's political tensions was one of nonintervention and detachment, an approach that produced greater Turkish resentment and compromised Washington's ability to manage the frequent crises of the 1960s including 1960's coup and the 1964 Cyprus crisis.

Abstract: The thesis explores in depth the negotiations to create the United Nations Organization through which Stalin sought to enhance the USSR’s power and prestige via traditional, military-oriented means. Although the Kremlin was relatively successful at maximizing Soviet power within the structure of the UNO, its inflexibility on issues such as Poland, Latin American membership, and other issues antagonized its wartime allies, the USA and Britain. This developing fracture seriously undermined cooperation among the victorious great powers both within the new organization and more broadly. As a result, the process of founding the UNO proved to be both a significant cause and reflection of the degeneration of the wartime Grand Alliance into the Cold War.

During the Reagan administration, American policymakers devoted billions of dollars to humanitarian relief in an attempt to create a commercial empire by exploiting natural disasters. My project will serve as an investigation of American international disaster relief– an audit of who mattered most, who lived, and who died.My project will discuss several major themes, each a topic of debate within the field of American history. On the surface, my research will probe a previously unexamined element of Cold War state-to-state relations – American disaster relief policy. I will examine and uncover the motives behind the idiosyncrasies of American foreign disaster relief, illustrating that policymakers viewed humanitarian, economic, and security concerns as mutually reinforcing when administering disaster relief.Looking more deeply, however, my project will uncover a second story that ran parallel to American Cold War interests. The implementation of disaster relief provided space for policymakers and private businessmen to negotiate the boundaries of an emerging neoliberal empire that was both justified by and concealed under traditional Cold War discourses. Nations that provided disaster aid thus dictated terms of development in catastrophe-stricken countries. A study of international disaster relief will consequently reveal the ideology of American policymakers, the limits to American power, and emerging global trends obscured by the waning Cold War.

Pacta sunt servanda---agreements must be respected---is the central guiding principle of international law. This principle is codified in Article 26 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, where it is stipulated in regard to international agreements that every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith. Following this statement, one assumes that after formally accepting to be bound by an international law, i.e. ratification, a state will make changes in order to honor the terms of the international commitment. However, is this the case with respect to international human rights laws? It has been argued that the goal of international human rights laws was to enhance progress towards greater respect of individual human rights based on the view that well-designed international human rights laws could promote peace, stability, and good governance. At the same time, it has also been argued that debates concerning international human rights law have taken place without much concrete evidence as to the effect or impact of the laws on state behavior. This dissertation contributes to the emerging debate about whether and how international human rights laws impact individuals' rights by evaluating the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), one of a number of international human rights treaties that have emerged since the United Nation's 1945 founding. The first part of the analysis comprises a statistical analysis of whether CEDAW ratification has contributed to an improvement in States Parties' promotion and protection of women's political, economic, and social rights. The second part of the project explores how CEDAW has contributed to women's rights in three countries---New Zealand, Tanzania, Uganda. Findings from the statistical analysis indicate that ratification of CEDAW can be associated with higher levels of government respect for some types of women's rights. Insights from the country case studies highlight examples of CEDAW incorporation into governmental and non-governmental initiatives aimed at increasing respect for women's rights. However, the country cases also underscore the challenges that further implementation of CEDAW faces.

This dissertation explores the literary representation of mestizaje and cholaje, two forms of conceptualizing the negotiations between ethnic identities and modern processes of state formation, during the period of national construction (1900--1952) preceding the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952. It is commonly held that the Bolivian Revolution produced a weak state because it imposed a modern rubric on a supposedly 'non modern' indigenous population. However, my discussion of eight pre-Revolutionary texts, starting with Alcides Arguedas and Franz Tamayo's essays in 1910 and ending with two novels written on the eve of the National Revolution, suggests that the revolutionary movement's real failure lay in its ambiguous engagement with subaltern readings of political and economic modernity. By subaltern I refer both to the urban lower classes and the rural indigenous populations of the country. One of the unintended consequences of the Liberal Party's installation at the helm of the state in 1900 was the increased (albeit often surreptitious) intervention of popular sectors in the country's political processes. The negative representation of this participation as cholaje in the essays of Arguedas and Tamayo betrays the elite anxiety about modernity's appropriation by subaltern groups. In 1910, Tamayo formulated mestizaje as a pedagogical strategy enabling the state to regulate their involvement in its political and economic functioning by transforming them into uniform and westernized citizens. During the 1920s, a period that marks the decline of the Liberal oligarchy's political domination, mestizaje hesitantly evolved into a state policy. Over the course of the next two decades, it metamorphosed from a strategy of survival adopted by a weakening oligarchy into the slogan of revolutionary nationalism promoted by the counter-elite, i.e. the leaders of the movements opposing the oligarchy, The shared pedigree of the oligarchy and these counter-elite is, however, revealed by the persistently ambivalent portrayal of cholaje. The conflictive representation of cholos as national subjects in the novels of Jesus Lara and Victor Hugo Villegas on the eve of the Revolution suggests the counter-elite's reluctance to embrace popular appropriations of modernity as the point of departure for an indigenous state model.

Together with human capital and financial capital, social capital is seen as completing the triumvirate of resources required for individual and organizational achievement, including in the context of entrepreneurship. I examine the ways in which social networks are used by entrepreneurs and organizations at distinct stages of their evolution---at the early stages of venture creation and as public corporations---and the effects that the networks have on performance at these stages. This research consists of three studies using narratives, surveys, and archival data. In the first study, I conduct in-depth interviews with 38 entrepreneurs and find that entrepreneurs select their relationships based on the level of uncertainty surrounding their ventures at different stages of development and their perceived accessibility of the relationships at these stages. In the second study, I use propositions derived from the first study to develop a model predicting (1) the effect of entrepreneurial stage (the start-up and the expansion stages) on network characteristics, consisting of network density (level of connectedness among members of the network), heterogeneity, and co-ethnicity (extent to which the members of the networks share the same ethnicity as the entrepreneur) and (2) the effect of these network characteristics on performance, conceptualized as amount of funding obtained at each stage. I then test the model using data collected through a survey of 91 Indian and Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs and 60 native-born white American entrepreneurs, highlighting differences between these groups. I find that the network characteristics as well as their effect vary by entrepreneurial stage and by immigrant/ethnic status. In the third and final study, using a new sample consisting of 362 public corporations in Silicon Valley, I predict organizational failure during the stock market crash of the year 2000. I find that the level of connectedness among the members of the organizational networks have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the propensity to fail. By distinguishing between entrepreneurial stages as well as entrepreneur characteristics and by investigating the effects as well as the formation of networks along multiple dimensions, my studies collectively extend the literature on social networks, entrepreneurship, and immigrant business activity.