Foci

Business and Human Rights

In the burgeoning field of business and human rights, The Kenan Institute for Ethics is promoting dialogue among stakeholders, engaging students in the intersection between corporate activity and human rights, and conducting independent research.  In the past two decades, there has been a swift rise in the expectation of companies to consider and evaluate how their business practices may impact the human rights of those with whom they come in contact. Questions of responsibility, remedy, and what it means to be a “corporate citizen” have given rise to the field of business and human rights, a dynamic and evolving research area with a wide range of stakeholders including states, NGOs, corporations, civil society, and intergovernmental organizations.

Last year, the Institute convened a group of two dozen experts to discuss the then-new U.N. Guiding Principles for business and human rights, which were unanimously endorsed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in June 2011 after six years of extensive global consultation and research. Participants included faculty from Business, Law, Public Policy, the social sciences, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, as well as expert practitioners from multinational corporations, advocacy organizations, investors, and collaborative initiatives. Two of the five members of the new UN Working Group on business and human rights were also in attendance. All attendees participated in their personal capacity. Christine Bader, nonresident senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics in 2011-2012, wrote a report summarizing the group’s recommendations, which was published in February 2012.

This year, Brianna Nofil has joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics as the Stephen and Janet Bear Post-Graduate Fellow in Business, Law, and Human Rights. Nofil works closely with the UN Working Group to provide research support for group projects, develop new avenues of communication and dissemination of the guiding principles on business and human rights, monitoring global action around the Guiding Principles, and maintains the partnership between the Working Group and the Kenan Institute. Additionally, in collaboration with KIE faculty, Nofil is conducting an independent research project examining access to judicial remedy within the U.S. judicial system for victims of human rights abuses. Driven by the current Supreme Court case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, she is looking at how stakeholders have promoted and opposed the Alien Torts Statute as a method of remedy for foreign nations who have suffered rights abuses due to corporate activity. During the spring semester, Business and Human Rights faculty advisor Professor Wayne Norman will oversee a group independent study for undergraduate students to conduct research on additional case studies to expand upon Nofil’s project.

 

Environmental Justice

In a new partnership with the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Institute aims to contribute to interdisciplinary, collaborative, normative and empirical research to address critical environmental issues including sustainable provision of ecosystem services, design of environmental public policies, adaptation to climate change and mechanisms for international environmental governance.

A cornerstone of the environmental justice initiative is a collaboration with Paul Quinn College, a historically black college/university (HBCU) in Dallas, led by Deb Gallagher. With the Nicholas School for the Environment, the Kenan Institute will work with college officials in Dallas to study the relationship between HBCUs and locally undesirable land uses, participate in a student exchange to create social capital and promote environmental justice, and examine public policies to support sustainable development.

A one-day symposium, to be held on December 3, will address the ethical dimensions of conservation and development in Madagascar, specifically the illegal harvesting of precious woods from the island’s rain forests. It will be followed by an evening concert featuring  Malagasy musician and political activist Razia Said. Bringing together scholarship, activism, and entertainment, the symposium and concert will draw public attention to political, economic, social, and ecological crises in Madagascar; connect the particular crises in Madagascar to broader global challenges, especially in other poor regions of the globe; and educate members of the Duke and Durham communities about opportunities for action to alleviate such crises and ethical challenges that can potentially accompany those actions.

 

International Institutions

The Center’s research area on international institutions encompasses work by scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds who examine how international institutions define, promote, or hinder human rights worldwide, both historically and in the present day. Topics of study vary from year to year, with animal rights, political theory, multiculturalism, and anarchy part of the focus this year, and human trafficking and humanitarian intervention the focus last year.

Last year’s activities included the two-day conference “Human Traffic: Past and Present,” headlined by a Duke alumnus Siddarth Kara, the one-day mini-conference “The History of Human Rights,” and a public lecture by and seminars with 2012 Visiting Fellow Dr. Anne Cubilié of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. We also co-sponsored a talk by Justice Edwin Cameron from South Africa entitled “Constitutionalism and Diversity: Sexual Orientation in South Africa” and a talk in our Monday Seminar Series by George Letsas of University College London entitled “Dialogue, Deference and the Legitimacy of International Courts.”

This year, we welcome Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, authors of Zoopolis, who will visit the Center from March 27-29 for a series of talks and workshops on animal rights, political theory, and multiculturalism. They will deliver a public lecture on Zoopolis, which constructs a relational vision of animal rights based on different species’ de facto association with human political communities. In smaller seminars, they will focus on national minorities and multicultural citizenship. On March 26, James C. Scott will give a lecture (co-sponsored by the Graduate Student Working Group on Justice) based on his recent work on anarchy.

 

Forced Migration and Human Rights

Whether a product of war, environmental hazard, natural disaster, or urban renewal forced migration—the involuntary removal of persons and groups from the places they call home—is one of the fastest growing social problems worldwide. The United Nations estimates that there are currently more than 42 million displaced persons worldwide and more than 50% of those are under the age of 18. And while we imagine displacement as temporary, the average refugee spends more than 17 years in a refugee camp. Displacement is a problem with multiple causes and far-reaching consequences, posing a range of ethical challenges for national and local communities worldwide.

The ethical challenges of forced migration and its human rights implications are a central area of research, education and engagement at the Center. For the past five years, we have run the Irish Migration Project through DukeEngage. Each summer, eight students spend eight weeks in one of the most dynamic and increasingly diverse cities in Europe, where they are placed in small organizations that work on issues including organizing and creating the infrastructure necessary to support the successful integration of migrants and refugees into Irish society. Since 2010, we have operated the Refugee Resettlement Project, a multi-site, community-based research project in eastern Nepal; Cairo, Egypt; northeastern Kenya; and Durham, a hot spot for third-country resettlement.  And in 2011, in a preview of Refugees, Rights, Resettlement (the 2012 Winter Forum) Emmanuel Jal, a South Sudanese musician, peace activist, and former child soldier, performed songs from his latest CD and spoke about his experiences as a refugee.

Students in the semester-long DukeImmerse: Uprooted/Rerouted, a research-based student and faculty collaboration on forced migration, strive to understand the contemporary dynamics of displacement and the challenges it poses. Uprooted/Rerouted aims to create concrete research-based interventions to address both the causes and consequences of displacement. Last year was the program’s pilot semester; applications for this year are due in mid-October.

Along with our community-based research with refugee communities in Cairo, Damak, Dublin and Durham, the Center will host an interdisciplinary workshop on Displacement, Human Rights and Humanitarianism this year. This event will bring together scholars and practitioners to consider the theoretical and practical dilemmas of humanitarian intervention in contexts of conflict-induced displacement.