By The International Crisis Group

What’s new? A violent siege of Haiti’s capital in early 2024 triggered the creation of a transitional government and the eventual arrival of a Kenyan-led mission to help counter the gang threat. But infighting has paralysed the government, empowered the gangs and made it unlikely that planned elections can come off safely. Why does it matter? Haiti urgently needs a legitimate government able to lead the campaign to curb gang violence and respond to the country’s dire humanitarian emergency. But holding polls prematurely could backfire, allowing gangs to play a deciding role in the vote and entrenching their power. What should be done? Haiti’s transitional authorities should strive to overcome internal wrangling and chart a realistic path to safe elections and constitutional reform. With future U.S. funding in doubt, the UN Security Council must find a way to support either the existing international security force or a peacekeeping mission to weaken the gangs.

Efforts by Haitian politicians and their foreign partners to quell surging gang violence have yet to bear fruit. A transitional government drawn from the country’s main political forces took office in April 2024, promising to hold the first elections in nearly a decade. Soon thereafter, the first contingent of Kenyan police disembarked, part of an international security mission tasked with loosening the gangs’ stranglehold on the capital Port-au-Prince and its vicinity. But the hopes invested by Haitians in the transitional government and the foreign mission remain unfulfilled. Partisan infighting and corruption allegations have prolonged political dysfunction. Violence rages, with gangs perpetrating some of the worst massacres ever as the understaffed, underfunded foreign mission struggles to rein them in. With safe elections looking improbable in the near term, transitional authorities should get past their internal disputes to plot a realistic course to polls and constitutional reform. The UN Security Council, for its part, must decide how best to respond to Haiti’s request for support in fighting the gangs. February 2024 saw a grim milestone in the gangs’ growth but also the beginning of what seemed to be a concerted effort to stabilise Haiti. Instead of fighting one another, gangs banded together to mount a multi-pronged assault. Besieging Port-auPrince, they cemented control of more than 80 per cent of the city, emptied jails, ransacked police stations and forced the airport to close. With Prime Minister Ariel Henry stranded in Kenya, where he had been negotiating deployment of the security support mission, the time was ripe for a bold response. Caribbean countries, the U.S. and other foreign states gathered Haiti’s leading political forces for a summit in Jamaica on 11 March, prodding them to form a transitional government to take Henry’s place. The idea was that with a new cross-party government promising a route to fresh elections, the country’s leaders could arrest plummeting public trust in the state and the collapse of its institutions. In tandem, the foreign mission would arrive to join local police in beating back the gangs. Marrying the goals of rebuilding legitimate government and restoring security, the plan was geared around leadership by a new Transitional Presidential Council, alongside a prime minister whom it would appoint. This arrangement, however, proved to be a seed of fresh strife. Council members clashed repeatedly with the first prime minister, Garry Conille, a long-time UN official. Conille’s dismissal in November and replacement by businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé ended the impasse, while also sending a clear message that the council would run the show. But the wrangling did not stop. Council members are also at loggerheads with the political groups they are supposed to represent, known as the “sectors”, which see the councillors’ growing independence as a threat to their interests. Some parties are so affronted by their supposed loss of power that they have demanded a radical overhaul of government. Lastly, corruption charges against three councillors, who have refused to resign or cooperate with the authorities, have corroded the government’s public standing. To make matters worse, plans to push through constitutional reform, to be voted on at referendum in the first half of 2025, as well as hold elections before year’s end, have made scant progress. Members of provisional electoral bodies were appointed only in December, and Haiti lacks an up-to-date voter register. Moreover, polls held in current conditions would be unsafe for candidates and voters alike. Despite isolated achievements by police and the foreign mission in their campaign against the gangs, these groups control much of the capital and essential roads to the rest of the country, while fighting is expanding into other regions. In the past five months, gangs have carried out at least four massacres – carnage that has claimed around 400 lives. Staggering the voting schedule or placing polling stations outside gang-controlled territory could make balloting possible in some areas. But the result would likely be very low turnout, possibly under the 20 per cent witnessed in Haiti’s last polls in 2016. Gangs could also sow fear in places under their sway to ensure that their allies win positions of power. Instead of rushing toward elections, the transitional government should focus on the nuts and bolts of responsible governance. Drawing on the agreement that created the administration, it should establish an assembly where political groups represented in the Transitional Presidential Council can resolve their grievances without threatening to upend the state. The authorities should also act quickly to appoint a National Security Council and to provide the secretary of state for public security with the support required to map a strategy for reducing violence anchored in concrete, achievable steps. The government should also show it is serious about fighting corruption by ensuring that its members are held accountable. Transitional authorities should work alongside foreign partners to explore how security assistance from abroad can be made more sustainable and effective. It is all the more crucial that they do so at a time when funding from the U.S., Haiti’s main donor, has been partially frozen by the Trump administration, putting Washington’s commitment to underwrite future security operations in serious doubt. Donations for the multinational mission have fallen far short of what was expected, and not all the promised 2,500 officers and materiel have arrived. The UN could backstop the mission’s financial and logistical needs along the lines of its support for African Union forces in Somalia, but it is unclear whether this approach would address all the current gaps in its operations. The UN Security Council is also considering the possibility of turning the Kenyanled force into a blue-helmet peacekeeping operation, as the Haitian government has requested, which would help address the mission’s funding shortfall. Should the Council choose this option, the UN, in close coordination with Haitian authorities, should make the campaign to weaken gangs its priority and stand ready to follow up with support for state-building and development. For almost three years following President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination in July 2021, many Haitians cried out for a government that could build on broad public support to quell rising violence. The gang siege of Port-au-Prince appeared to mark a turning point. But Haiti’s transitional government has been drawn toward battles of self-interest rather than the pursuit of safe polls. The country’s new leaders should now rise to the occasion, working with foreign partners to stem the bloodshed that has tipped Haiti close to the breaking point.

Latin America & Caribbean Report N°107, Port-au-Prince/Mexico City/New York/Brussels : International Crisis Group, 2025. 40p.

By Asylum Aid, et al.

 Stateless people are not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its laws, and many have no right to live in any other country. The protection of stateless people living in the UK is an obligation under two post Second World War UN Conventions which the UK has agreed to implement1 and in 2013 the UK government introduced a statelessness determination procedure through which stateless people can gain recognition and regularise their status. However, protection continues to fall short both because stateless people face barriers to recognition, and because protections for those recognised are insufficient. Some recent changes have further reduced protection. Many people in British communities right across the UK are stateless or at risk of statelessness. Most are migrants, who are often forcibly displaced and some are children born in the UK to non-British parents. They are left in legal limbo, vulnerable to discrimination, poverty, and exploitation.2 They cannot work and are often denied access to essential services, including healthcare. While many of these issues overlap with those faced by others without immigration status, stateless people without a right to reside in any country face distinctive problems in resolving their status. Neither the 1954 nor 1961 Statelessness Conventions have been fully incorporated into domestic law which feeds into key policy and legal problems that create barriers to stateless people accessing protection and rights. These include: ● Problems with the statelessness determination procedure: Statelessness is inherently difficult to prove, and wrongly refusing someone recognition and the status that entails has grave consequences. Nonetheless, the current determination procedure contains excessive barriers to recognition, and has too few safeguards on decision-making. There is no right of appeal, and applicants are refused without interview and can be refused permission to stay on grounds which apply to non-stateless migration routes. All of this contributes to years of delays in decision-making for stateless people. ● Poor access to legal advice: Stateless people face huge barriers to accessing legal advice. In England and Wales, statelessness is not in scope for legal aid. However, even across jurisdictions where it is in scope, as it is in Scotland, there exists a UK  wide crisis in legal aid provision, including poor rates of remuneration, complex bureaucracy and large advice deserts. ● Detention: Because they exist in legal limbo and are often unidentified, stateless people are at disproportionate risk of long and arbitrary detention, which compounds the limbo and uncertainty central to their lives. Immigration detention in the UK has no time limit, and relatively few procedural safeguards, and statelessness is often not considered in detention decisions, despite the obvious impact which having no nationality has on the likelihood of a stateless person being admitted to another country. ● Limited access to family reunification: Changes made to the Immigration Rules in January 2024 have made it significantly more onerous for stateless people to be joined by their family members. ● Barriers to Citizenship: Some children born in the UK to non-British parents are left at risk of statelessness because Home Office decision-makers have wide discretion to deny them citizenship.3 Further, citizenship fees are too expensive, sometimes prohibitively so, but there is no fee waiver for adults. The 1961 Convention does not permit any fees to be charged for children’s citizenship applications, yet although fee waivers are available for children in principle, the process for obtaining a fee waiver for children is excessively onerous. This both places people at risk of statelessness, and prevents those recognised as stateless from finally accessing citizenship.     

Jesuit Refugee Service UK, Asylum Aid, the University of Liverpool Law Clinic, the European Network on Statelessness, and JustRight Scotland : 2025. 11p.

By Amnesty International

Peaceful protest is a powerful and public way for people to make their voices heard. It has long been a vital means for advancing human rights around the world. However, in Europe, the right of peaceful assembly is increasingly coming under attack, with state authorities stigmatizing, impeding, deterring, punishing and cracking down on those organizing and participating in peaceful protests.

This report documents an array of trends and patterns of human rights violations that curtail this right, and contains detailed recommendations for states to ensure that everyone’s right to protest is protected, respected and fulfilled.

London: Amnesty International, 2024. 209p.

Edited by Virginia Mantouvalou and Jonathan Wolff

In developing her conception of structural injustice, Iris Marion Young made a strict distinction between large-scale collective injustice that results from the normal functions of a society, and the more familiar concepts of individual wrong and deliberate state repression. Her ideas have attracted considerable attention in political philosophy, but legal theorists have been slower to consider the relation between structural injustice and legal analysis. While some forms of vulnerability to structural injustice can be the unintended consequences of legal rules, the law also has potential instruments to alleviate some forms of structural injustice. Structural Injustice and the Law presents theoretical approaches and concrete examples to show how the concept of structural injustice can aid legal analysis, and how legal reform can, in practice, reduce or even eliminate some forms of structural injustice. A group of outstanding law and political philosophy scholars discuss a comprehensive range of interdisciplinary topics, including the notion of domination, equality and human rights law, legal status, sweatshop labour, labour law, criminal justice, domestic homicide reviews, begging, homelessness, regulatory public bodies and the films of Ken Loach. Drawn together, they build an invaluable resource for legal theorists exploring how to make use of the concept of structural injustice, and for political philosophers looking for a nuanced account of the law’s role both in creating and mitigating structural injustice.

London: UCL Press, 2024. 334p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo

"The Politics of Policing in Greater China" delves into the intricate relationship between law enforcement and state power in the diverse regions of China. Through a comprehensive analysis, this book explores the historical development, organizational structures, and contemporary challenges facing police forces in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

Examining the cultural, political, and legal dynamics shaping policing practices in Greater China, the authors navigate through the complexities of maintaining social stability, enforcing laws, and addressing issues of corruption and human rights. From the traditional models of policing rooted in Confucian principles to the modern adaptations in response to globalization and technological advancements, this book offers a nuanced understanding of the evolving landscape of law enforcement in the region.

"The Politics of Policing in Greater China" presents a thought-provoking narrative that uncovers the intersection between state authority, social control, and the protection of individual rights within the unique contexts of Greater China. A must-read for scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in the intricacies of policing in a rapidly evolving society.

Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. 329p.

Edited by Håkan Hydén Roger Cotterrell David Nelken and Ulrike Schultz

This open access book pays homage to Reza Banakar, who passed away in August 2020, exploring the many different areas of socio-legal research that he worked on and influenced. It begins with a summary of his career and explains how he sparked a debate on the identity and aims of legal sociology. The book is then split into 5 sections: - Theory, including chapters on normativity and the stepchild controversy; - Methods and interdisciplinarity, illustrating how Banakar encouraged socio-legal scholars to push the boundaries of existing socio-legal knowledge through interdisciplinary imagination and methodological flexibility; - Legal culture, with particular focus on Iran - 2 areas of special interest for Banakar; - Law and science, covering topics such as human rights, the right to life, and the COVID-19 pandemic; and - Applied sociology of law, inspired by Banakar’s engagement with empirical research and case studies. As well as honouring Reza Banakar's memory and unique thinking, the book aims to advance the sociology of law by demonstrating the interconnectedness of the legal and the social from a broad range of perspectives.

Oxford; New York: Hart/Bloomsbury 2023. 495p.

By Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska, Marharyta Zhesko

The Analysis includes in depth review of the case-law of the European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR), in regards to hate speech and hate crimes. Considering the ever-growing jurisprudence of the ECtHR in this area, it looks into the most significant and impactful decisions and the recent landmark judgments on the topics.

Vienna: Austria: OSCE, 2021. 108p.

This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience.By Erving Goffman

NY. Anchor. 1959. 269p.

By Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union

Human Rights Watch / ACLU joint submission regarding the United States’ record under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

It has been nearly 30 years since the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Yet progress towards compliance remains elusive—indeed, grossly inadequate—in numerous key areas including reparative justice; discrimination in the US criminal legal system; use of force by law enforcement officials; discrimination in the regulation and enforcement of migration control; and stark disparities in the areas of economic opportunity, education, and health care. Racism and xenophobia persist as powerful and pervasive forces in American society. The ICERD is an important part of the solution: to confront these global problems effectively, the US needs to confront discrimination head on and proactively and swiftly engage in efforts to meet its international obligations. This report and its detailed appendix offer an initial roadmap for the US government to fulfill its obligations under the treaty.

New York: Human Right Watch and ACLU, 2022. 98p.

By Barney Afako, Orzala Nemat, Emadeddin Badi, Mary Fitzgerald, Ronald C.Slye and Srinjoy Bose

Transitional justice is a well-known area of theory and practice, but rarely are its central teachings applied as part of a negotiated conflict resolution strategy vis-à-vis “violent extremist” or jihadist groups. This new IFIT publication encompasses three original case studies on the issue. The case studies cover: 1) peace talks between the the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); 2) pre-2011 negotiations between the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG); and 3) post-2001 transitional justice and peace efforts in Afghanistan in relation to the conflict with the Taliban. Our research on “violent extremism” and transitional justice also involved the development of an original policy framework that draws on these three cases as well as earlier research published in partnership with UNU-CPR. Overall, this research underscores why negotiation cannot be discounted as an option with “violent extremist” groups, and how creative applications of transitional justice have the potential to make any negotiated deal not only more achievable, but also more legitimate.

Barcelona: Institute for Integrated Transitions, 2020. 204p.

By Christine Stewart

Papua New Guinea is one of the many former British Commonwealth colonies which maintain the criminalisation of the sexual activities of two groups, despite the fact that the sex takes place between consenting adults in private: sellers of sex and males who have sex with males. The English common law system was imposed on the colonies with little regard for the social regulation and belief systems of the colonised, and in most instances, was retained and developed post-Independence, regardless of the infringements of human rights involved.

Now the HIV pandemic has thrown a spotlight, not altogether welcome, on the sexual activities of these two groups. In Papua New Guinea, a growing body of behavioural research has focused on such matters as individual sexual partnering, condom use and awareness of HIV. My work, however, has a different purpose. I chose the terms in the title to highlight a nexus which I believe exists between the criminal law and negative attitudes of society. At an international level, the argument has been put that decriminalising sex work and sodomy will facilitate HIV epidemic management, reducing the stigma and discrimination these groups encounter and making them easier to reach. I undertook my research therefore with the aim of gaining deeper understanding of the effects the current situation of criminalisation might have on the social lives of these criminalised people today, in the country generally and in Port Moresby the capital in particular, and whether these effects might provide evidence to support the argument for law reform.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2014. 394p.

By Leopoldo Fergusson and Juan Fernando Vargas

Colombia is a Latin American outlier in that it has traditionally been a very violent country, yet at the same time remarkably democratic. This chapter explores Colombia's puzzle from a political economy perspective, shedding light on the broader relationship between democracy and violence. The chapter studies some of the most important democratization reforms since Colombia's independence 200 years ago. It argues that the reforms often failed to curb violence and sometimes even actively, though perhaps unintendedly, exacerbated violent political strife. Democratic reforms were unable to set the ground for genuine power-sharing. They were often implemented amidst a weak institutional environment that allowed powerful elites, the reforms' ex-ante political losers, to capture the State and offset the benefits of the reforms for the broader society. We conclude by highlighting the implications of the argument for other countries facing democratic reforms, as well as for Colombia's current peace-building efforts.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad del Rosario, Facultad de Economía, 2022. 21p.

By Robert Muggah and John de Boer

While widely considered a core pillar of the peace and security architecture, Security Sector Reform (SSR) is coming under fire. SSR theory and practice are criticized for being overly focused on traditional conflict and post-conflict settings and for being unable to adjust to unconventional settings marked by chronic crime and terrorism. SSR tends to be disproportionately focused on national institutions and less amenable to engaging at the subnational scale. Drawing on the experiences of so-called ‘citizen security’ measures in cities across Latin America and the Caribbean, this paper offers some opportunities for renewing and revitalizing SSR. The emphasis of citizen security interventions on multiple forms of insecurity, data-driven and evidence-informed prevention, the promotion of social cohesion and efficacy and designing crime prevention into the social and built environment are all insights that can positively reinforce comprehensive SSR measures in the 21st century.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2019. 58p.

Edited by Karl Harald Søvig; Marit Skivenes; Malcolm Langford

Norway tops international indexes on children’s rights but continues to attract criticism for its level of compliance with the Convention of the Rights of Child. This book is the first scholarly attempt to address this implementation paradox. The authors ask: What is the current level of implementation? How can we explain any gap in perceived performance? Can we improve our measurement of children’s rights? With the use of quantitative and qualitative methods, the volume examines a wide range of areas relevant to children’s rights. These include child protection and sexual violence, detention and policing, poverty and custody proceedings, asylum and disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, and childcare and human rights education. In addition, the book offers a proposal for an alternative statistical approach to measuring Norway’s performance. The book’s editors conclude by pointing towards the complex set of factors that complicate full realisation and the need for the Government to engage in proper measurement of implementation.

Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 2019. 452p.

By Human Rights Watch

This report, based on interviews with survivors and experts, and a survey, documents the spread and impact in South Korea of what are referred to there as “digital sex crimes.” Digital sex crimes are crimes involving non-consensual intimate images. These crimes are a form of gender-based violence, using digital images that are captured non-consensually and sometimes shared, captured with consent but shared non-consensually, or sometimes faked. These images are almost always of women and girls. This report explores how technological innovation can facilitate gender-based violence in the absence of adequate rights-based protections by government and companies.

New York: HRW, 2021. 103p.

By Sana Ashraf

In the past decade, Pakistan has witnessed incidents such as the public lynching of a student on a university campus, a Christian couple being torched alive, attacks on entire neighbourhoods by angry mobs and the assassination of a provincial governor by his own security guard over allegations of blasphemy. Finding the Enemy Within unpacks the meanings and motivations behind accusations of blasphemy and subsequent violence in Pakistan. This is the first ethnographic study of its kind analysing the perspectives of a range of different actors including accusers, religious scholars and lawyers involved in blasphemy-related incidents in Pakistan. Bringing together anthropological perspectives on religion, violence and law, this book reworks prevalent analytical dichotomies of reason/emotion, culture/religion, traditional/Western, state/nonstate and legal/extralegal to extend our understanding of the upsurge of blasphemy-related violence in Pakistan. Through the case study of blasphemy accusations in Pakistan, this book addresses broader questions of difference, individual and collective identities, social and symbolic boundaries, and conflict and violence in modern nation-states.

Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2021. 270p.

By Keith L. Camacho

Between 1944 and 1949 the United States Navy held a war crimes tribunal that tried Japanese nationals and members of Guam's indigenous Chamorro population who had worked for Japan's military government. In Sacred Men Keith L. Camacho traces the tribunal's legacy and its role in shaping contemporary domestic and international laws regarding combatants, jurisdiction, and property. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's notions of bare life and Chamorro concepts of retribution, Camacho demonstrates how the U.S. tribunal used and justified the imprisonment, torture, murder, and exiling of accused Japanese and Chamorro war criminals in order to institute a new American political order. This U.S. disciplinary logic in Guam, Camacho argues, continues to directly inform the ideology used to justify the Guantánamo Bay detention center, the torture and enhanced interrogation of enemy combatants, and the American carceral state.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. 313p.

Edited by Trudie Knijn and Dorota Lepianka

Justice and Vulnerability in Europe contributes to the understanding of justice in Europe from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. It shows that Europe is falling short of its ideals and justice-related ambitions by repeatedly failing its most vulnerable populations.

Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020. 288p.

Edited by Silvana Mandolessi and Katia Olalde

This volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the practice of disappearances in Mexico, from the period of the so-called ‘dirty war’ to the current crisis of disappearances associated with the country’s ‘war on drugs’, during which more than 80,000 people have disappeared. The volume brings together contributions by distinguished scholars from Mexico, Argentina and Europe, who focus their chapters on four broad axes of enquiry. In Part I, chapters examine the phenomenon of disappearances in its historical and present-day forms, and the struggles for memory around the disappeared in Mexico with reference to Argentina. Part II addresses the political dimensions of disappearances, focusing on the specificities that this practice acquires in the context of the counterinsurgency struggle of the 1970s and the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The third section situates the issue within the framework of human rights law by examining the conceptual and legal aspects of disappearances. The final chapters explore the social movement of the relatives of the disappeared, showing how their search for disappeared loved ones involves bodily and affective experiences as well as knowledge production. The volume thus aims to further our understanding of the crisis of disappearances in Mexico without, however, losing sight of the historic origins of the phenomenon.

London; New York: Routledge, 2015. 259p.

By Torunn Wimpelmann

Since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, violence against women has emerged as the single most important issue for Afghan gender politics. The Pitfalls of Protection, based on research conducted in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015, locates the struggles over gender violence in local and global power configurations. Torunn Wimpelmann finds that aid flows and geopolitics have served as both opportunities for and obstacles to feminist politics in Afghanistan. Showing why Afghan activists often chose to use the leverage of Western powers instead of entering into either protracted negotiations with powerful national actors or broad political mobilization, this book examines both the achievements and the limits of this strategy.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. 231p.