Doctoral Dissertation Research: Defining and Evaluating States' Obligations to Eliminate Racial Discrimination

该项目将分析联合国人权条约系统的问责程序在实践中是如何执行的。即使是那些按照问责要求进行合作的国家也从未充分履行其条约义务。通过研究三个哥斯达黎加政府官员小组和一个联合国专家委员会，每个小组都正式评估执行《消除一切形式种族歧视国际公约》的进展，研究人员将能够比较责任方？对《公约》内义务的解释？S广义规范。通过直接观察、半结构化访谈和参与性观察，研究人员将调查一个国家的官员如何使用人口普查数据、其他政府记录和公众咨询来构建一份关于歧视土著、非裔哥斯达黎加人和移民人口的报告。研究员还将观察联合国消除种族歧视委员会对这些国家报告的评估。这项研究将分析这些哥斯达黎加和联合国官员。对证据和条约解释问题的审议，特别侧重于他们如何理解“歧视”一词的范围。那么状态的边界呢？与之斗争的责任。该项目的调查结果将有助于对条约执行进程的实际了解。现有的对人权条约的宏观分析将未履行的义务归因于执行不力和不合作的国家。通过在不同层次上分析这一过程，本项目将为基于规范歧义和解释的解释开辟道路。其新颖的方法将产生对正在进行的改进人权条约问责制的努力有价值的调查结果。该项目还将支持培训一名社会科学家。

This project will analyze how accountability procedures of the United Nations human rights treaty system are carried out in practice. Even those states that cooperate with accountability requirements never fully meet their treaty obligations. By studying three groups of Costa Rican government officials and a UN expert committee as each formally evaluates progress towards implementing the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the researcher will be able to compare responsible parties? interpretations of obligations within the Convention?s broad norms.By engaging in direct observation, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation, the researcher will investigate how officials within a country use census data, other government records, and public consultations to construct a report on discrimination against indigenous, Afro-Costa Rican, and immigrant populations. The researcher will also observe the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as it evaluates such state reports. The study will analyze these Costa Rican and UN officials? deliberations over questions of evidence and treaty interpretation, focusing in particular on how they understand the scope of the term ?discrimination,? and the bounds of states? responsibilities to combat it.Findings from this project will contribute to practical knowledge of treaty implementation processes. Existing macro-level analyses of human rights treaties attribute unfulfilled obligations to weak enforcement and uncooperative states. By analyzing the process at a different level, this project will open the way toward explanations based in norm ambiguity and interpretation. Its novel approach will generate findings that are valuable to ongoing efforts to improve the human rights treaty accountability system. This project will also support the training of a social scientist.