SSRMC

In my last blog post, I discussed the process of arriving at my research question: Given the criticism that it has promoted the use of essentializing language in peace agreements, how has UNSCR 1325 impacted women’s political participation in post-conflict states?

This question came to me in mid-Fall last year. At this point, I had read a lot (or at least it seemed like it—it was more than I had ever read for a college assignment!). I mostly focused on literature pertaining to UNSCR 1325: Women, Peace and Security and related topics, such as ambiguities in peace agreements¹ and how women impacted by conflict are framed by transnational advocacy groups.² Luckily, the next assignment was an annotated bibliography, which helped me to organize the articles I had read and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

As I mentioned in my previous post, one of the most useful articles I encountered was “Peace Agreements or Pieces of Paper?” by Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke (2010). This article assesses the language pertaining to gender-based and women’s issues present in peace agreements from both before and after the passage of UNSCR 1325.³ Altogether, this piece was useful because it was so comprehensive: It included both a qualitative and quantitative assessment of these agreements. Based on both types of analysis, the authors conclude that UNSCR 1325 had not substantially impacted the language surrounding gendered issues in peace accords. References to women had only risen by 11% (from 16% to 27%) after the passage of UNSCR 1325, a fact that the authors use to indicate that there is still “a long way to go before peace agreements systematically include references to women.”⁴

I found myself constantly referring back to this article because of the wealth of knowledge it provided (I think I nearly memorized it by the end of the semester). It was one of the few quantitative analyses I had come across in the body of knowledge on the impact of UNSCR 1325. However, while I found this article to be immensely helpful, I did notice some phrasing and generalizations in it that troubled me. For example, while the authors delineate between the pre- and post-1325 eras in their quantitative analysis, they lump all peace agreements together in their qualitative analysis. This methodology, while giving a detailed picture of the content of peace agreements’ references to women, did not help me better understand the qualitative differences between pre- and post-UNSCR 1325 peace agreements.

Fortunately, I found other scholars that were able to fill in this gap. Ellerby (2013) and Perkovich (2015) use content analysis to evaluate peace agreements’ references to women and gender, to determine that the quality of these references improved since the passage of UNSCR 1325 in 2000. According to Ellerby, peace agreements passed between 2005 and 2009 take a more balanced approach towards gender by supplementing provisions for protection for female victims with calls for gender balance in post-conflict politics.⁵ Further, Perkovich notes that between 2009 and 2014, a greater proportion of peace agreement provisions related to women’s and gender issues that displayed “precise,”⁶ actionable language, such as gender quotas and statements of intent to act on relevant provisions. Still, she also concedes that even in the two best examples of gender-inclusive peace agreements from between 2009 and 2014,⁷ problematic essentializing language remains.

These three articles gave me great insight into the impact of UNSCR 1325 on peace agreements. Even so, I had trouble finding articles that evaluated peace agreements with the same level of systematic rigor. For example, in “Translating UNSCR 1325 from the global to the nation: protection, representation and participation in the National Action Plans of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda,” Annika Bjôrkdahl and Johanna Selimovic (2015) use “discursive analysis” to evaluate the two countries’ National Action Plans (NAPs) on gender parity in their security and political sectors. The two authors conclude that while they appear to encourage greater participation in these spheres, the NAPs of both countries “to a large degree perpetuate the status quo.”⁸  I certainly found this article helpful to my understanding of the impact of UNSCR 1325, as it brought my attention to the superficiality of some countries’ commitments to gender equality in peace-building. However, when reading the article, I noticed that the authors do not clearly explain their methodology. Without this clarification, I found it difficult to discern if confirmation bias swayed the authors’ findings. Were the authors choosing quotes and examples from the NAPs that supported their preconceived notions about the effects of UNSCR 1325?

This concern continued to play out as I finished my annotated bibliography and eventually, my literature review. UNSCR 1325 has the potential to meaningfully transform peace processes so that affected women and girls can influence their post-conflict environment. Consequently, its language and impact deserves to be systematically analyzed so as to objectively determine its weaknesses and strengths.
Despite its shortcomings, UNSCR 1325 has positively impacted peace-building worldwide. While interning in DC this summer, I got to witness this impact at a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee markup of the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2016 (H.R. 5332). This bipartisan bill, authored by Rep. Kristi Noem (R-AL), calls for the “meaningful participation in mediation and negotiations processes seeking to prevent, mitigate, or resolve violent conflict” of women, and it mirrors much of the language found in the 18 recommendations of UNSCR 1325.
Given my concerns about the gap in the body of knowledge on UNSCR 1325 and my belief that women and girls affected by conflict can still benefit from its provisions, I think the next step in my research may be an article critique. My research stalled this past semester, but I plan to reanimate it this fall by breaking down my work into reasonable chunks, setting hard deadlines, and communicating more effectively with Professor Holmes. I’m excited to see where it goes!

¹Thomas M. Franck, Fairness in International Law and Institutions. (Oxford Scholarship Online: Published in print, 1995, Published online 2012). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198267850.003.0002; Daniel. Pehar, “Use of ambiguities in peace agreements,” in Language and Diplomacy, ed. J. Kurbalija & H. Slavik (Malta: Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies).

²R. “Charli” Carpenter, R. C. (2005) “Women, children, and other vulnerable groups”: gender, strategic frames and the protection of civilians as a transnational issue. International Studies Quarterly, 49(2), 295-334.

³Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke, “Peace agreements or pieces of paper? The impact of UNSC Resolution 1325 on peace processes and their agreements,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 59(4), 941-980. doi:10.1017/S002058931000062X

⁴Id., 968.

⁵Kara Ellerby, “(En)gendered security? The complexities of women’s inclusion in peace processes,” International Interactions 30, (2013): 435-460. doi:10.1080/03050629.2013.805130

⁶Lori Perkovich, “Empowering women or hollow words? Gender references in peace agreements,” Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University Spring 2015 (2015): 111-123.

⁷UN Peacemaker, The Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (from the Philippines), (January 2014), http://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/PH_140327_ComprehensiveAgreementBangsamoro.pdf; UN Peacemaker, Ceasefire Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Justice and Equality Movement-Sudan (JEM), (February 2013). peacemaker.un.org/sudan-ceasefire-jems2013; UN Peacemaker, Sudan Ceasefire Agreement.

⁸Annika Bjôrkdahl and Johanna Selimovic, “Translating UNSCR 1325 from the global to the nation: protection, representation and participation in the National Action Plans of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda,” Conflict, Security & Development, 15, no. 4 (2015): 311-335. doi: 10.1080/14678802.2015.1071973, 312.

In March 2015, I came across a CNN report detailing how young Western women were joining ISIS due to the terrorist group’s social media recruitment strategies. Apparently, the reporters suggested, ISIS was attracting women with images of kittens, Nutella, and emojis online. ¹ I thought this report was at the very least, bizarre and ungrounded, and at most, trivializing and infantilizing. From my perspective, convincing women to join the ranks of a group known for its gender-based brutality must require a far more nuanced and compelling strategy.²

I kept this report in mind as I progressed through my Introduction to International Politics class during the Spring 2015 semester. When Professor Marcus Holmes, my instructor, had the class write a policy memo on any subject that we wanted, I jumped on the chance to explore the issues raised in the CNN report: the interaction between gender, women, terrorism, and social media. While researching, I found that the CNN report contained a grain of truth, as scholars agreed that ISIS was using social media to recruit women.³ However, I also discovered that women’s motivations to join ISIS ran deeper, as women seemed to be joining for religious reasons and as a way of coping with their perceived social and economic marginalization.⁴

After I turned this policy memo in at the end of the semester and received my grade for the class, Professor Holmes invited me to join the Political Psychology and International Relations lab. As my first assignment, I had to write up three research ideas I could explore during the upcoming semester. Although I produced two other research ideas—refugee camps in France and examining gun control policy in the United States—I found myself returning to the ideas I came across in my research for the policy memo and decided to pursue research on gender, women, and conflict.

However, I decided to change my research’s focus. I remembered reading about United Nation Resolution 1325 (2000)—Women, Peace, and Security—as I drew up my policy memo. UNSCR 1325 acknowledges that conflict has unique impacts on women and girls. It also calls for greater gender equality in peacekeeping and enhanced protection for women and girls in areas affected by conflict.⁵ It seemed like Iraq and Syria were areas where women were particularly vulnerable to conflict—Human Rights Watch reported that ISIS thrives off suppressing women’s freedom of movement, dress, education, and employment—and thus, places where UNSCR 1325 could be implemented. Consequently, I hoped to study how the international community could use UNSCR 1325 to support women in Iraq and Syria.

Upon returning to campus and beginning my work in the lab, I gradually began to realize that this project would likely be unfeasible. For one, ISIS is nebulous and difficult to study, especially for an undergraduate student lacking the means to conduct field work. In fact, ISIS is so hard to pin down that I could not find the exact number of women who had joined its ranks while writing my policy memo, as no organization was able to count them. After talking to Professor Holmes, I decided to modify the direction of my research, broadening my area of interest to understanding the impact of of UNSCR 1325 on gender-inclusive peacebuilding.

One of the most useful articles I had read on the topic was “Peace Agreements or Pieces of Paper: UN Security Council 1325 and Peace Negotiations and Agreements” by Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke (2010), which included a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the language pertaining to gender-based and women’s issues present in peace agreements from both before and after the passage of UNSCR 1325.⁶ They found that references to women had not been “systematically” (p. 968) included in peace agreements before or after UNSCR 1325’s passage, and when they were included, they were often “ambiguous in terms of feminist gains” (p. 968). That’s to say, while UNSCR 1325 promoted the inclusion of both women’s issues in peace agreements and women in peace processes, it has not substantially influenced the content of language surrounding women’s issues in peacebuilding. Peace agreements continue to frame women as mothers and victims rather than agents of peacebuilding and political engagement. This kind of language is “essentializing,” meaning that it reduces women to stereotypes based on their gender.

Altogether, I found these findings surprising. UNSCR 1325 had been hailed as a landmark resolution that was supposed to pave the way for women in more active peacebuilding roles. Its sporadic—and often, superficial—implementation led me to wonder where the gap between its ultimate goals and its enforcement lay. Although my topic’s expansion gave me more flexibility in determining the direction to take my project, I also felt overwhelmed. Fortunately, the next lab assignment was a conceptual map, which allowed me to give order to arguments and ideas raised in the articles I had been reading. As I mapped out these ideas, I reflected on the Bell & O’Rourke (2010) article. If language can shape behavior,⁷ I thought, perhaps peace agreements’ essentializing gendered language could affect if and how women are involved in peace processes and the post-conflict reconstruction process. Eventually, I arrived at a potential research question: Given the criticism that it has promoted the use of essentializing language in peace agreements, how has UNSCR 1325 impacted women’s political participation in post-conflict states?

My conceptual map. Apologies for my messy handwriting.

¹Katie Sanders, “The truth about ISIS using Nutella, kittens and Emoji to ‘lure’ western women,” PolitiFact, February 19, 2015. Accessed May 22, 2016. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/19/cnn/truth-about-isis-using-nutella-kittens-and-emoji-l/

²Samuel Oakford, “Yazidi Women Captured by the Islamic State Suffer Terrible Fate,” Vice News, October 12, 2014. Accessed May 22, 2016. https://news.vice.com/article/yazidi-women-captured-by-the-islamic-state-suffer-terrible-fate

³Ghaffar Hussain & Erin Marie Saltman, Jihad trending: A Comprehensive Analysis of Online Extremism and How to Counter It. London: Quilliam Foundation, 2014, Retrieved from www.quilliamfoundation.org

⁴Rivka Yadlin, “Female martyrdom: The ultimate embodiment of Islamic existence?” in Female suicide bombers: Dying for equality? Ed. Y. Schweitzer (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 2006); Karen Jacques and Paul Taylor, “Male and female suicide bombers: Different sexes, different reasons?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31, (2008): 304-326. doi: 10.1080/10576100801925695

⁵United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1325 (2000), October, 31, 2000. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/

⁶Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke, “Peace agreements or pieces of paper? The impact of UNSC Resolution 1325 on peace processes and their agreements,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 59(4), 941-980. doi:10.1017/S002058931000062X

⁷Guy Deutscher, “Does Language Shape the Way We Think?” The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=1

This blog post is about how I came to begin, but not quite finish my research.

Let me explain.

Almost a year and a half ago, Professor Marcus Holmes, my Introduction to International Politics professor, asked me if I would be interested in conducting an independent research. As a sophomore and history major, I was reluctant to accept. Since I enjoyed research, I figured I could transfer my passion for history into exploring historical perspectives of international relations. I accepted the invitation.

Before the spring semester of 2014 started, I wrote out a short biography about myself and some of the topics I was interested in researching. When the semester began, I enrolled in the Political Psychology and International Relations Lab, with Professor Holmes as my advisor. Being one of twenty or so student researchers, I was placed into a group of students who wrote similar biographies and research topics. My three initial research topics were on the impact of natural disasters on national confidence, protection of privacy over the Internet, and how students can change the views of national government.

As we discussed with the group about our research ideas, one group member stood out to me. She was interested in researching the politics of an apology between Japan and East Asian relations. Despite being a Japanese-American with an extensive knowledge of Japan, I was unaware of the political climate between Japan and other East Asian countries. Curious, I asked if I could work with her on the project.

We began by researching the politics of apologies (or apologizes), a relatively new area of study in International Relations. In fact, warring countries only began to expect or require an apology from the perpetrators after WWII. During and Second Sino-Japanese War and into WWII, Japan committed various wartime atrocities such as enslaving young women for prostitution (most commonly known as the Comfort Women) and conducting dangerous and unethical experiments on war prisoners. Still, seventy years after the war, China and Korea continue to distrust Japan’s intentions and are demanding an apology for wartime actions. Although my partner and I initially agreed to research together, we soon realized that we wanted to focus on different aspects of the Japan’s international relations. As a result, we decided that it was best to research the topics separately.

Independently, I created an “Idea Conceptual Map,” webbing out topics I believed to be related to Japan’ public apologies. I began to identify the different aspects that a political apology may have in the context of Japan, by looking into different examples of political apologies, cultural understanding of apologies, and the impact of who is communicating the apology.

After creating my conceptual map, I made an annotated bibliography as my first step of my literature review. I knew that literature on the politics of an apology were going to be limited, but I wanted to know broadly the impact of apologies in Japanese culture and how apologies influence people’s perception. I looked at mostly scholarly articles and a few newspapers and government notes. The articles I read ranged from how Eastern and Western cultures interprets apologies differently, to specific reasons for Japanese apologies, and to the different interpretations of wartime memory. All of the articles articulated Japan’s relationship and understanding of a political apology.

The more I researched, the more questions I had about Japan and the implications on the politics of an apology. Why did Japan just not apologize? Who is apologizing and who is receiving the apology? What is the focus of the apology? Realizing that I had more questions than answers, I decided to talk to Professor Holmes about narrowing down my research. As we talked, he suggested looking into Japanese national identity as a way to understand Japan’s reluctance to apologize. We predicted that Japanese national identity correlated to Japan’s reluctance to apologize, so I decided to look into how Japanese national identity changes overtime and measure their willingness to apologize for World War II atrocities. By the end of spring semester, I was committed to looking into the change in Japanese national identity between the nineteenth and twentieth century and how this change influences Japan’s willingness to apologize for past actions. I hoped to see a change or pattern in when the Japanese are more willing to apologize.

When fall semester began, I decided that my plan of looking at two centuries worth of national identity to be too ambitious to complete in a semester. Instead I decided to compare the national identity of Japan between 1995 and 2015. 1995 was the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, and also when the Prime Minister of Japan made the first public apology for wartime atrocities. In 2015, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo made another public apology for the seventieth anniversary.

However, these two apologies were met with very different national and international reactions. Comparing these two years appeared to be more manageable than looking at a broader time period. At this time, I also began emailing Professor Ted Hopf of the National University of Singapore and Bentley Allan of Johns Hopkins University to better understand how to measure national identity. These two academics were researching how to quantify national identity to help Constructivist theories ground their framework in quantitative data. In international relations theory, Constructivism rests on qualitative rather than quantitative understandings. By quantify national identity, a sound basis is produced for constructivist arguments. This processing of contacting Dr. Allan and Dr. Hopf slowed down my initial attempt to understand how to approach understanding national identity. In addition, this semester’s course work kept me overwhelmed, limiting the time I had to spend the time to complete my research.

In hopes to better understand Japan’s history and political climate, I took a class in the fall semester on Modern Japanese History and Politics of China and Japan, . I learned a lot about specific Japanese ideologies and approaches to political topics, especially when it came to international relations. These two classes, however, clarified my original question to me as to why Japan refused to apologize for World War II atrocities. As it turns out, the differing wartime memory and thawing of the Cold War, resulted in the re-emergence of unresolved issues between Japan and East Asia in political disputes. The largest problem between Japan and East Asia appears to be Japan’s interpretation of the war. Due to the complex nature of Japan’s fascist military regime and disconnect with the people, the Japanese government has chosen to gloss over Japan’s wartime action in East Asia and emphasize Japan’s victimization by the atomic bomb in their history textbooks. To publicly apologize for wartime atrocities committed during the war, Japan will then also have to change their national historical understanding of the war, which they are not willing to do. In the end, I realized that national identity has nothing to do with Japan’s willingness to apologize, but rather historical understanding of wartime action and the politics surrounding this understanding limits Japan’s willingness to apologize.

With this newfound understanding of Japan and the politics surrounding their apology, I talked to Professor Holmes about what the next step would be for me to take. Since we were both still curious about Dr. Hopf and Dr. Allan’s work on national identity, we decided to continue working on that aspect of my research. Instead of comparing Japan’s national identity, we hoped that we could at least learn to code Japanese national identity using the method Dr. Hopf and Dr. Bentley created.

This brings us to this semester, spring of 2016. Professor Holmes and I were lucky enough to receive a proof of Dr. Allan and Dr. Bentley’s upcoming book on national identity. In the proof, they listed a brief process of coding national identity and a chapter on their analysis of Japanese national identity. Their method of coding does not consist of a list of categories but rather three ways to approach topics: valence, aspirational versus aversive, and significant others. Valence assess whether or not the identity is a good or bad feature. Aspiration versus aversive is a comparative measure in whether or not the feature is something to strive for or avoid. Lastly, significant other is another comparative assessment in who or what they are measuring up with. All three of these topics can be used together to create a national identity category.

This method uses a mix of state documents and speeches, newspapers, popular books and movies, as well as textbooks. Once a list of codes is made, the top twenty are used as a basis of analysis. Although this method is subjective to the individual coder, the final product is largely an averaged understanding of national identity. Using this method of coding, the chapter on Japan addressed twenty-three national identity categories. There were four major topic categories, economic identity, state power, social identity, and other identities. The coder was able to conclude that the Japanese national identity consists of pride and the public prioritizes social issues over economic issues.

From the methods of coding and categorizing national identity in Dr. Hopf and Dr. Allan’s book, Professor Holmes and I agreed to continue looking at how to expand on their findings. I noticed that, despite the fact that the coding material consisted of material from 2010, most of the sources were not popular online media or television shows. As one of the most technologically advanced state, I assumed that there is a wealth of information that can help identify Japanese national identity online. I believe by further investigating online media sources, perhaps there is more to be learned about Japanese national identity. Therefore, I plan on looking into popular blogs and television programs such as anime, drama, and variety shows to expand on the national identity found in Dr. Hopf and Dr. Allan’s book.

In several of the recent Republican debates of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and other candidates bickered mercilessly over a politically charged but often overlooked issue: eminent domain. Basically, the idea of eminent domain is the right of a government to expropriate private property (usually land) for public use.¹ Really gets your heart rate going, doesn’t it?

… Hardly. This issue is really important since it carries implications for human rights, development, and environmentalism, but it doesn’t often incite interesting debates or passionate discussions in our domestic political arena. However, for indigenous groups and embittered peasants shut out of historical homelands in the name of resource extraction for the public good, this is a major issue.^{2 3} It’s an everyday reality, not just an abstract political concept, which inspires protest and sometimes violence. For me, it’s a fascinating topic that entails questions about land and loss, power and marginalization, privilege and ‘otherness’. It’s a topic that thousands are forced to question every day, and the reason I started a research project last year.

I study the evolution of land titling in Peru, and specifically its effect on indigenous peoples and its relationship to social conflict. I started this project a year ago without a specific goal in mind; I just knew I was interested in indigenous peoples and human rights, related political and legal institutions, and related social tension and conflict. I started my project playing with ArcGIS online, comparing map layers with data on poverty, health, and social ascension to the geographic boundaries of Native American territory, and found shocking correlations between these layers. These geographic boundaries made me start to think about land as a way of defining and studying groups of people.

So I had the first major component of my research: land. Specifically, indigenous people’s land. I continued my work by reading Carl Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth, which describes the ways in which land creates or can express law and order. I realized that land is not static or neutral as upon first consideration; land is dynamic. It does not only have to capacity for law-making and enforcing, but it is the most basic form of sovereignty and way of identifying a nation.⁴

My new perspective on land created an interest in studying indigenous land titling. How do indigenous groups defend historical homelands? How do they secure legal recognition for inhabited but informally held places? Systems of granting indigenous land titles vary widely across the world, but one particularly interesting and unique case I soon found was Peru.

Unlike many of its South American neighbors, indigenous land holdings in Peru are small and scattered sparsely across millions of acres of jungle and mountain terrain. The map below shows the contrast between Peru’s sparse land reserves and the larger swaths of land reserved for indigenous peoples in Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere. This is not because all of that untitled terrain is uninhabited; it’s because the evolution of land titling in Peru has created a system that does not give priority to indigenous ownership.

http://raisg.socioambiental.org/system/files/ENGLISH-reduzido.jpg

Today, land titling in Peru places an emphasis on individual rather than collective ownership as a result of neoliberal development practices, and in situations where communities do seek titles, the approval of a high percentage of community general assemblies is needed to make claims.^{5 6} Lands that may be traditionally or historically significant to indigenous communities but are not directly inhabited are not up for indigenous titling; they are instead under the agency of the state and may be auctioned off and zoned for resource extraction.⁷

The federal land titling system is harmful to indigenous communities in that it impedes access to not only a place to live and vital resources, but also a source of identity. Historian Ward Stavig wrote: “communal lands were vital to indigenous peoples’ social and biological reproduction, and little, if anything, was more important to them.” ⁸ After a violent historical legacy of taking land away from indigenous peoples in the name of various types of paternalistic, capitalist economics and land systems, the continuity of disrespect for indigenous land traditions today is a radical abuse.

The repercussions of this disastrous treatment of indigenous lands and ignorance of indigenous opinion are very present in Peru today, where protest, violence, and environmental degradation are increasingly prevalent.⁹ This social conflict, which almost always precipitates from opposition to resource extraction, led me to my research question today: How does a government decide how to distribute sovereign territory people? How do people respond to those decisions, and under what conditions do decisions about land lead to conflict?

My goal for this project is to study abroad to conduct research and to then produce a publishable research paper as a senior honors thesis. Designing my research method has proved difficult; how can I generate data as a representation of indigenous sentiment? How do I know that sentiment, and the protests and violence possibly accompanying it, is a response to land titling and not other specific injustices? Additionally, would it be more effective to conduct a small-N analysis with interviews and in-depth case studies to more deeply understand indigenous sentiment, or a large-N analysis with a survey or archival work that gathers basic information from a wider range of time and space?

In the coming weeks I’ll be working on study abroad plans and a concrete research design. Stay tuned for my next blog post, where I’ll address all these questions and share my thoughts and plans regarding methodology!

¹U.S. Constitution. Ann. 14, amend. V.

²Rosette, Diego. 8 November 2014. “Tensions rise in Peru as indigenous groups protest new land concessions.” La Opinión.

³Hill, David. 2 February 2015. “Peru’s indigenous people protest against relicensing of oil concession.” The Guardian.

⁴Schmitt, Carl. 1950. The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum.Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing.

⁵Plant, Roger, and Soren Hvalkof. Land titling and indigenous peoples. Inter-American Development Bank, 2001.

⁶Plant, Roger, and Soren Hvalkof. Land titling and indigenous peoples. Inter-American Development Bank, 2001.

⁷Plant, Roger, and Soren Hvalkof. Land titling and indigenous peoples. Inter-American Development Bank, 2001.

⁸Stavig, Ward. “Ambiguous visions: Nature, law, and culture in indigenous-Spanish land relations in colonial Peru.” Hispanic American Historical Review 80.1 (2000): 77-111.

⁹Hughes, Neil. “Indigenous Protest in Peru: The ‘Orchard Dog’ Bites Back.” Social Movement Studies 9(1) (2010): 85-90.

Our research originated after the Ferguson, Missouri shooting and riots. The footage recorded by both residents and news crews showed the local police of this small town wearing gear, using weaponry, and driving vehicles one would only imagine belonging in a war zone. (Snowiss)

We set out to discover how a local police force, protecting a small town of twenty-one thousand residents could purchase, pay for, and protect military grade weaponry.

Our initial investigations led us closer to home than we expected. We began to study the police forces most often overlooked but central to our lives, campus police. Every college campus of substantial size employs a police force to patrol their campuses and ensure the safety of their students. A college environment can be a dangerous place considering the large influx of young and developing students with newly acquired freedoms, independence, and reduced surveillance.  No doubt the levels of crime that naturally permeate society would also manifest on college campuses, potentially to a higher extent due to the risk of intoxication.

Notwithstanding the crimes at risk of occurring on college campuses, instances of police brutality, although uncommon, are still a concern.  Specifically, a response to an Occupy Wall Street movement on the campus of the University of California-Davis in 2011 indicates why this issue could potentially be concerning in terms of the dangers police forces could pose with high levels of weaponry.  In this case, various eyewitnesses testify that the students were protesting there rather peacefully, albeit some sources admit there were harsh and loud criticisms being shouted in the direction of the police. (Cherkis)  The police responded with pepper spray, after warning the students multiple times to leave; in total nine students and one non-student were arrested, and two police officers involved were placed on administrative leave.

This event is not isolated, and is only one example of a trend of increasing police brutality, even though 2014 showed the lowest civilian crime rate since the 1970’s. (Vibes) It is reasonable to assume that the possession of high levels of military weaponry by local police forces would give campus police the capability to inflict even greater harm if their authority is then used incorrectly or excessively. In relation to our research project, this incident raises the question of whether increased armament on college campuses today would increase the level of risk associated with possible events of police brutality.

But how far does campus police power currently extend? And furthermore, what does the inflation of small police forces in largely controlled settings have to say about our culture at large? These among others are questions we will explore in our research.

Cherkis, Jason. The Huffington Post. 2011. “UC Davis Police Pepper-Spray Seated Students In Occupy Dispute.” Nov. 20: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/19/uc-davis-police-pepper-spray-students_n_1102728.html

Snowiss, Mark. “Ferguson Riots Underscore Police Militarization in US.”VOA. Voice of America, 15 Aug. 2014. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

Vibes, John. “FBI Report: Americans Less Violent than Ever, Except for Police.” The Free Though Project. N.p., 12 Nov. 2014. Web.

In a world that continues to become more integrated and connected through the internet and globalization, how does one maintain privacy? On the individual level, that is a much easier question to address than on the state and global level. The European Union approached this topic with the 1995 Data Protection Directive and, very recently, the General Data Protection Directive (GDPR). They both discusses topics such as the exportation of citizens’ data outside the EU and the right to be forgotten, which enables citizens to wipe links and information from the internet about themselves that meet certain qualifications dictated within the legislation.

Press release and comparison of GDPR and the 1995 Data Protection Directive:

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/brussels-regulatory-brief-february-2016-30511/

The EU’s massive privacy legislation has sparked the growth of privacy legislation throughout the world, serving as a model for this new wave. It has increasingly become a globalized topic, leading to a more homogenous privacy approach throughout the globe. However, the United States, especially since 9/11, has strongly protested against such privacy legislation, writing legislation such as the Patriot Act. In order to avoid the EU influence, the United States created the Safe Harbor agreement with the EU. The private sector has also rebelled. Google limited the power of the right to be forgotten beyond the borders of the EU in a 2015 court case, citing its right to free speech, the jurisdiction of the EU legislation, and the potential major economic impacts of dealing with the right to be forgotten. This stance has created a divide in the privacy world between the EU and US regimes.

I am researching whether or not it is possible for this divide to be overcome. If this divide were to be overcome, the EU would most likely be the victor with the amount of existing dominance it has in such matters. I want to study the potential implications of the creation of an international privacy law based on EU policy. Going further, I want to explore how that policy would potentially impact legal and economical relationships between states. I would be interested to determine whether EU privacy law could truly become the globalized privacy regime, which was once led by the United States.

http://blogs.microsoft.com/cybertrust/2014/05/22/protecting-data-and-privacy-in-the-cloud-part-1/

As a member of the generation that has grown up with social media and the internet, I have lived in a world that appears to have little privacy and even idealizes openness.

The Millennial Generation and Online Privacy:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2014/07/24/why-online-privacy-should-be-the-defining-cause-of-the-millennial-generation/#6671c2cb5919

The idea of being able to remove information that myself and/or others post from the internet forever is quite intriguing to me. We are constantly being reminded that every post can be seen for eternity, even after it has been removed. I am fascinated with the potential of the right to be forgotten, especially within the United States. I was raised in a NSA and CIA household, so the idea and importance of privacy is something regularly discussed. This includes privacy law; however, it has always had the bias of the US perspective. Growing up in Europe, exposed me to different cultures that value different things. In the US, citizens are willing to compromise privacy for security and freedom of speech, while, in Europe, citizens are much more concerned with maintaining privacy, which is also true for other countries and regions in the world, such as Canada and Latin America whose policies closely mimic those of the EU. My experiences sparked the idea of studying the global privacy regime, leading me to see if I could determine whether one regime could truly become the dominate one in a world with competing priorities.

But one may ask: why is this important? Why does it matter if the EU regime becomes the dominant privacy regime? The effects of such legislation would be colossal. First of all, there are major economic implications. It would dramatically affect the functioning and structure for search engines, especially major ones such as Google.

Latest in the Google versus EU case on the “right to be forgotten”:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/technology/google-will-further-block-some-european-search-results.html?_r=0

New departments would need to be created in order to process and deal with just the right to be forgotten requests, access to certain information and activities of citizens would be restricted, and the sharing of data within search engines would change. Additionally, it would impact databases as citizens could remove their data whenever they desire. Governments, especially the United States, would have to restructure major parts of the government. The key US agencies affected would include NSA, CIA, Homeland Security, FBI, and any others that deal with the intelligence community. It would also realign the priorities that exist within the United States, thereby revolutionizing the post-9/11 era that has been governed by fears of security threats. The United States would pivot into an entirely different direction in intelligence, security, economics, and state-to-state relations throughout the globe, but, most of all, it would completely change the culture.

Furthermore, it would affect how much and which data is shared between states. Currently, the EU only shares information of its citizens with states that meet their security standards, which the United States does not. The only reason the United States has had access to EU citizens’ information is because of the Safe Harbor agreement, which expired this past year. A universal privacy regime would dramatically change the data sharing relationships between states as it would increase the emphasis on security and restricted access. A globalized policy regime would create ease and greater security, but there would also be difficulty in adapting it: economically, bureaucratically, and culturally.