By Michael Krennerich

The book offers a comprehensive and clear introduction for students and those interested in human rights, written by a renowned human rights expert. It not only provides an introduction to the diversity of issues, actors, and institutions in human rights policy and politics but also offers assistance and suggestions on how the complex reality of human rights politics can be described and analyzed with the help of political science and related disciplines. It deals with civil society engagement in human rights as well as state obligations and international efforts to protect human rights. This is an open-access book.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2024. 180p.

By Sotoudeh, Nasrin

The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. Nasrin Sotoudeh is an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who has been called "Iran's Nelson Mandela." Sotoudeh is a longtime opponent of the death penalty, an advocate of improving imprisonment health conditions, and an activist dedicated to fighting for the rights of women, children, religious and ethnic minorities, journalists and artists, and those facing execution. As a result of her advocacy, Sotoudeh has been repeatedly imprisoned by the Iranian government for crimes against the state; she served one sentence from 2010 to 2013 and was sentenced again in 2018 to thirty-eight years and six months in prison and 148 lashes. Her work has been featured in the 2020 documentary Nasrin, by filmmakers Jeff Kaufman and Marcia S. Ross. For this important work, she is the recipient of the 2023 Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, marking the award's tenth year.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023. 83p.

By Jessica L. Decker Sparks 

Year-on-year, the number of migrant fishers crewing United Kingdom-flagged fishing vessels is seemingly increasing. Primarily from European states, the Philippines, and Ghana with fewer numbers of fishers from Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka, there have long been concerns and reports of systemic pay and wage inequalities, pervasive labour abuses, and exploitative immigration schemes. In January 2020, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) (2007) Work in Fishing Convention (C188) came into force in the United Kingdom (UK). In conjunction with the Modern Slavery Act, on paper, the UK has one of the most stringent fisheries labour regulation environments; yet the abuse of migrants continues. From June 2021 through October 2021, the University of Nottingham Rights Lab conducted an independent baseline study of working conditions across the UK fishing fleet (108 surveys and 16 interviews covering England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were collected). Several key findings confirmed the concerns long raised by other stakeholders. First, despite fishing crew being eligible for skilled-worker visas, there is no evidence of non-European (non-EEA) migrants working on these skilled-worker visas. Instead, non-EEA migrants continue to enter the UK through the use of transit visas which exploits a lack of legal clarity in UK immigration law. As a result, migrant fishers are required to work a “majority” of their time beyond the 12 nautical mile boundary (although this is not quantified or explained and is therefore open to interpretation, which makes enforcement difficult) and have no legal authority to “enter” the UK when returning to port following their 1st fishing trip and repeatedly thereafter during their 10- 12 month contract. As a result, they are forced to live on board the vessels, creating multiple employment dependencies that can be readily exploited by vessel owners. Additionally, vessel owners and recruitment agencies are issuing fishermen’s work agreements (FWAs) that are non-complaint with ILO C188. In practice this means migrant fishers are unduly treated as violators of UK immigration law even when other parties are responsible for the illegal nature of their migration, recruitment, and work. As a result, they are intimidated and prevented from seeking help, can be denied access to medical care and insurance if injured or compensation for the family if killed, and can be denied the right to repatriation if “caught.” Furthermore, 18% of migrant fishers reported being forced to work on a vessel not named in their contract. Because the transit visa scheme ties them to the one vessel named in their contract, when this situation occurs, migrant fishers are again in violation of immigration laws through no fault of their own 

Nottingham, UK: University of Nottingham Rights Lab, 2022. 51p. 

By Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) 

In order to drive down labour costs, there has been an increasing reliance on non-European Economic Area (EEA) migrant fishers in the UK fishing industry. Lack of worker protections and oversight, poor conditions, and a significant power imbalance between worker and employer has meant that we are now seeing systemic exploitation of migrant fishers. This briefing explores how the current system facilitates this exploitation and sets out key recommendations on how to address this situation.

London: Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), 2024. 4p.

By Rachel M. Perera

Using newly available data on all civil rights complaints submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights related to racial discrimination in discipline between 1999 and 2018, I provide the first systematic evidence on how modern federal civil rights enforcement is used to address racial discrimination in discipline. I find that less than 50 percent of complaints received each year result in a federal investigation. I also find that 70 to 80 percent of investigations are closed due to insufficient evidence of a civil rights violation. Results also suggest that districts with higher shares of minoritized students, higher levels of segregation, and districts with larger racial educational gaps are more likely to receive a civil rights complaint after controlling for other district factors.

Annenberg Institute at Brown University: EdWorkingPaper No. 21-413 

By Carl Davis, Marco Guzman, & Emma Sifre

Key Findings

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments. Undocumented immigrants paid federal, state, and local taxes of $8,889 per person in 2022. In other words, for every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue. More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022. At the state and local levels, slightly less than half (46 percent, or $15.1 billion) of the tax payments made by undocumented immigrants are through sales and excise taxes levied on their purchases. Most other payments are made through property taxes, such as those levied on homeowners and renters (31 percent, or $10.4 billion), or through personal and business income taxes (21 percent, or $7.0 billion). Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders. Those states are California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion). In a large majority of states (40), undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within their borders. Income tax payments by undocumented immigrants are affected by laws that require them to pay more than otherwise similarly situated U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants are often barred from receiving meaningful tax credits and sometimes do not claim refunds they are owed due to lack of awareness, concern about their immigration status, or insufficient access to tax preparation assistance. Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase. Under a scenario where work authorization is provided to all current undocumented immigrants, their tax contributions would rise by $40.2 billion per year to $136.9 billion. Most of the new revenue raised in this scenario ($33.1 billion) would flow to the federal government while the remainder ($7.1 billion) would flow to states and localities.

Washington, DC:  Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 2024. 42p.

By Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto

For the just-ended 2024 fiscal year, the Biden administration turned the tide at the U.S.-Mexico border after two years of record levels of irregular crossings, by deepening its carrot-and-stick approach alongside increased immigration enforcement throughout the Western Hemisphere, especially from Mexico. For the full fiscal year that ended September 30, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported 2.1 million encounters at and between ports of entry along the Southwest border—a 14 percent decrease from the nearly 2.5 million encounters recorded in FY 2023. The month of September represented the lowest monthly encounters of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization seen during this administration—with 54,000 encounters a steep drop from the all-time monthly high of 250,000 encounters recorded in December 2023. The September tally also represents the lowest level of irregular arrivals since September 2020, at the tail end of the Trump administration. An additional 199,000 encounters were recorded at the U.S.-Canada border during FY 2024, for a total at all borders of 2.3 million. The Biden playbook rests on narrowing asylum eligibility for migrants who cross the border illegally, expanding the use of lawful migration pathways, and encouraging Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and other regional partners to increase their migration controls and enforcement. Unauthorized crossings of the U.S. Southern border began to fall steadily in January as Mexico further stepped up its enforcement. Irregular crossings dropped even more sharply following the administration’s June implementation of the Secure the Border rule. This rule suspends asylum eligibility at the border when crossings reach a seven-day average of 2,500; the bar remains in place until encounters drop below 1,500 for 28 consecutive days. At the same time, options for lawful migration pathways—such as the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) parole program; use of the CBP One app to schedule an appointment to be screened for entry at a port; and Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) that allow migrants to be considered for protection or other pathways far earlier in their journeys—have led to more migrants arriving at ports of entry to be paroled into the country and as refugees.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2024.

By Felix Lösing

The British and American Congo Reform Movement (ca. 1890-1913) has been praised extensively for its ›heroic‹ confrontation of colonial atrocities in the Congo Free State. Its commitment to white supremacy and colonial domination, however, continues to be overlooked, denied, or trivialized. This historical-sociological study argues that racism was the ideological cornerstone and formed the main agenda of this first major human rights campaign of the 20th century. Through a thorough analysis of contemporary sources, Felix Lösing unmasks the colonial and racist formation of the modern human rights discourse and investigates the historical work of racism at a crossroads between imperial power and the white crisis.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2020. 396p.

By Center for Human Rights, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington,

In recent years, local and state governments in Washington have taken important legislative and executive action to protect vulnerable residents from rights abuses. Many of these actions, such as the so-called “sanctuary” laws of Keep Washington Working (2019) and Courts Open to All (2020) Acts, seek to protect the rights of migrants by limiting the degree to which local authorities can collaborate with civil immigration enforcement by ICE or CBP. More recently, the language of “sanctuary” has also been used in the context of the right to reproductive health care at both the state and local levels. On June 30, 2022, Governor Jay Inslee issued a directive prohibiting the Washington State Patrol from “providing any cooperation or assistance whatsoever” with efforts to investigate or prosecute those seeking access to reproductive health care in our state. And some local jurisdictions have followed suit. On July 5, 2022, King County Executive Dow Constantine issued an order banning the King County Sheriff and other county agencies from providing any information or assistance with efforts to “obstruct, restrict, diminish or discourage” access to reproductive health care. On July 26, 2022, the Seattle City Council voted to bar local police from assisting in investigations or executing warrants issued by other jurisdictions that criminalize seeking or assisting in abortions. These strongly worded directives are important statements of Washington state values. Yet research conducted in Washington and elsewhere shows that data gathered by state and local law enforcement remains accessible to both law enforcement from other states, and federal immigration enforcement agencies, through interoperable databases. ICE documents show that federal immigration agents have deliberately increased their use of digital tools in recent years in direct response to the limitations created by local policies designed to limit collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. Although it remains to be seen whether out-of-state attempts to prosecute people for seeking or providing, access to abortions in Washington will pass legal muster, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) data documenting presence at abortion clinics in our state could be deployed as a powerful tool to flaunt Washington policies. For Washington to live up to its promises to provide “sanctuary” for those exercising their lawful rights in Washington, our state and local governments must take steps to close the gaps in existing systems of digital surveillance. Towards this end, the UW Center for Human Rights has launched an effort to understand the practices of digital surveillance in our state and their potential to undermine access to the very rights protections our government has pledged to uphold. This report focuses on just one dimension of this multidimensional threat: the dangers posed by the misuse of automated license plate recognition technology by law enforcement agencies. Future reports will examine other digital tools.

Seattle: University of Washington,  CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS,  HENRY M. JACKSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 2022. 23p.

By Jane Buchanan, Giorgi Gogia, and Arzu Geybulla.  

The 74-page report, “‘We Try to Stay Invisible’: Azerbaijan's Escalating Crackdown on Critics and Civil Society,” documents the government’s concerted efforts to decimate civil society and silence its critics. The authorities have arrested dozens of people on politically motivated, bogus criminal charges. They have also arbitrarily enforced repressive laws that push independent groups and media to the margins of the law, heightening their vulnerability to retaliatory criminal prosecution. The groups documented 33 prominent cases of criminal prosecution, detention, and harassment. They found that Azerbaijani authorities have deliberately misused laws regulating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to deny certain groups registration and funding, exposing people affiliated with them to criminal charges. Azerbaijani authorities continue their assault on critics and dissenting voices. They use politically motivated criminal charges to prosecute and imprison human rights defenders, journalists, and civic and political activists, and arbitrarily enforce highly restrictive laws regulating non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The crackdown has intensified in the lead-up to the November 2024 UN Climate Conference (COP29) in Baku. Among those being prosecuted are veteran human rights defender Anar Mammadli, who co-founded a climate justice NGO, prominent anti-corruption activist and academic Gubad Ibadoghlu, and media professionals with the independent outlets Abzas Media and Toplum TV. Many independent groups have had to close, and activists have had to go into exile or continue their legitimate work on the margins of the law, at great personal risk. “We Try to Stay Invisible” is based on over 40 interviews with NGO leaders, lawyers, journalists, youth activists, and others, as well as in-depth analysis of laws and regulations used to target or constrain NGOs. The report documents the government’s concerted efforts to silence critical voices in the country. Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now call on the Azerbaijani government to immediately and unconditionally release those held on politically motivated charges, end the crackdown against civil society and independent media, and ensure that civil society groups and independent media can operate without undue hindrance before, during and after COP29. They should also amend repressive laws regulating NGOs. It calls on Azerbaijan’s international partners to set clear expectations for human rights improvements and impose concrete policy consequences should those requirements not be met.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2024. 80p.

By The University of Washington, Center for Human Rights 

Documents provided to UWCHR under FOIA reveal that despite voicing concerns about cleanliness at the NWDC multiple times over three years, ICE chose never to sanction GEO for failing to comply with its contract to operate the Northwest Detention Center. This, cross-referenced with other ICE and GEO documents UWCHR has reviewed, reveals that despite receiving credible information about conditions at the facility that threatened the health and well-being of those detained, and despite the complaints of its own employees, ICE repeatedly failed to invoke its contract enforcement mechanisms to force GEO to comply with basic cleanliness standards. Records show the situation persisted for three years and resulted in what ICE employees deemed an unsafe working environment. If ICE’s employees felt unsafe, it is unsurprising that the people forced to live in that environment have repeatedly expressed grave concern  

Seattle: The University of Washington Center for Human Rights , 2023. 9p.