̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - human rights

Cambridge awarded €1.9m to stop AI undermining ‘core human values’

fpjl2 — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 08:52:03 +0000

Artificial intelligence is transforming society as algorithms increasingly dictate access to jobs and insurance, justice, medical treatments, as well as our daily interactions with friends and family.

As these technologies race ahead, we are starting to see unintended social consequences: algorithms that promote everything from racial bias in healthcare to the misinformation eroding faith in democracies.

Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) have now been awarded nearly two million Euros to build a better understanding of how AI can undermine “core human values”.

̽��ֱ��grant will allow LCFI and its partners to work with the AI industry to develop anti-discriminatory design principles that put ethics at the heart of technological progress.

̽��ֱ��LCFI team will create toolkits and training for AI developers to prevent existing structural inequalities – from gender to class and race – from becoming embedded into emerging technology, and sending such social injustices into hyperdrive.

̽��ֱ��donation, from German philanthropic foundation Stiftung Mercator, is part of a package of close to €4 million that will see the Cambridge team – including social scientists and philosophers as well as technology designers – working with the ̽��ֱ�� of Bonn.

̽��ֱ��new research project, “Desirable Digitalisation: Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures”, comes as the European Commission negotiates its Artificial Intelligence Act, which has ambitions to ensure AI becomes more “trustworthy” and “human-centric”. ̽��ֱ��Act will require AI systems to be assessed for their impact on fundamental rights and values.

“There is a huge knowledge gap,” said Dr Stephen Cave, Director of LCFI. “No one currently knows what the impact of these new systems will be on core values, from democratic rights to the rights of minorities, or what measures will help address such threats.”

“Understanding the potential impact of algorithms on human dignity will mean going beyond the code and drawing on lessons from history and political science,” Cave said.

LCFI made the headlines last year when it launched the world’s only Masters programme dedicated to teaching AI ethics to industry professionals. This grant will allow it to develop new research strands, such as investigations of human dignity in the “digital age”. “AI technologies are leaving the door open for dangerous and long-discredited pseudoscience,” said Cave.

He points to facial recognition software that claims to identify “criminal faces”, arguing such assertions are akin to Victorian ideas of phrenology – that a person’s character could be detected by skull shape – and associated scientific racism.

Dr Kanta Dihal, who will co-lead the project, is to investigate whose voices actually shape society’s visions of a future with AI. “Currently our ideas of AI around the world are conjured by Hollywood and a small rich elite,” she said.

̽��ֱ��LCFI team will include Cambridge researchers Dr Kerry Mackereth and Dr Eleanor Drage, co-hosts of the podcast “ ̽��ֱ��Good Robot”, which explores whether or not we can have ‘good’ technology and why feminism matters in the tech space.

Mackereth will be working on a project that explores the relationship between anti-Asian racism and AI, while Drage will be looking at the use of AI for recruitment and workforce management.

"AI tools are going to revolutionize hiring and shape the future of work in the 21st century. Now that millions of workers are exposed to these tools, we need to make sure that they do justice to each candidate, and don’t perpetuate the racist pseudoscience of 19th century hiring practices,” says Drage.

“It’s great that governments are now taking action to ensure AI is developed responsibly,” said Cave. “But legislation won’t mean much unless we really understand how these technologies are impacting on fundamental human rights and values.”

Work at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence will aim to prevent the embedding of existing inequalities – from gender to class and race – in emerging technologies.

AI technologies are leaving the door open for dangerous and long-discredited pseudoscience

Stephen Cave

Getty images

Artificial intelligence

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Yes

Postgraduate Pioneers 2017 #4

ta385 — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 11:07:45 +0000

Fourth in the series is Yesim Yaprak Yildiz, a sociologist exploring the relationship between political violence, truth and reconciliation with a focus on Turkey.

My research sets out to

My passion is to understand the relationship between truth and justice, more specifically whether revelation of truth about an atrocity would lead to justice. I set out to answer this question by examining the social and political effects of public confessions of state officials on past atrocities against civilians. I focus on Turkey and state violence against the Kurds in the 1990s.

My motivation

I have been working on human rights violations in Turkey, particularly on torture and impunity, for over ten years. Turkey’s failure to account for the collective political violence in its history has been one of the main reasons which motivated me to pursue a PhD on this topic. Questioning approaches that establish a linear link between confession, truth and justice, I have sought to understand the workings of power in the confessional form of truth telling.

Day-to-day

I am currently in the final year of my PhD so I spend most of my time either at the library or at home writing my thesis. When I visit the department to meet my supervisor and fellow PhD students, I usually study at the ‘Attic’, the study space provided for PhD students in the department. It provides quite an appealing atmosphere thanks to student initiatives including writing groups and coffee breaks. Due to my part-time job at the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study at ̽��ֱ�� of London, I also commute between London and Cambridge.

My best days

Cambridge is a unique place not only to indulge in solitary intellectual work but also to socialize with fellow academics in a wide range of events. As one of the conveners of the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network, a research group at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, I also organise seminars on performance and performativity related themes. One of the seminars I recently organised featured Professor Leigh Payne from the ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford. It was a particularly special occasion for me as I decided to study confessions after I heard her talk at a workshop in Denmark.

I hope my work will lead to

I want to contribute to the academic literature on political violence, truth and reconciliation, and thereby inform decision makers, scholars and broader public on some specific aspects of achieving and keeping peace by addressing the need for justice. More importantly, I hope my research will make people reflect on the roots of denial not only caused by forms of silencing but also by certain forms of speech.

While I am planning to pursue an academic career, I would like to continue working in grassroots movements and NGOs on human rights violations. My future projects will involve both elements of research and art. Through interactive and creative projects, I aim to reflect upon alternative ways of working through the past.

It had to be Cambridge because

̽��ֱ��best part of studying at Cambridge has been its fulfilling and vibrant intellectual environment. In addition to the wide-ranging academic events featuring renowned scholars and research methods courses, I also had the chance to attend a short film making course which enhanced my digital story-telling skills. I have been very lucky to have an inspiring environment in the department thanks to the encouragement and support of my supervisor, Professor Patrick Baert.

With our Postgraduate Open Day fast-approaching (3 November), we introduce five PhD students who are already making waves at Cambridge.

I'm planning to pursue an academic career while continuing to work in grassroots movements and NGOs on human rights violations.

Yesim Yaprak Yildiz

Postgraduate Open Day

For more information about the ̽��ֱ��'s Postgraduate Open Day on 3rd November 2017 and to book to attend, please click here.

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Yes

Human rights of people with autism not being met, leading expert tells United Nations

cjb250 — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 14:30:16 +0000

In his keynote speech, Professor Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, argued that even with the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities having been adopted in 2006, people with autism still do not enjoy human rights to the same extent as everyone else.

At least 1% of the world’s population is on the autism spectrum, which equates to some 70 million people with autism on the planet. Autism is a spectrum of neurological disabilities involving difficulties with social relationships, communication, adjusting to unexpected change, dealing with ambiguity, and entailing sensory hypersensitivity and anxiety. Autism also leads to a different perceptual and learning style, so that the person has a preference for detail, and develops unusually narrow interests, and an unusually strong preference for facts, patterns, repetition and routine.

“People with autism account for a significant minority of the population worldwide, yet we are failing them in so many respects,” he said. “This creates barriers to their participation in society and to their autonomy that must be addressed. We have had a UN Convention to support people with disabilities for over 10 years now and yet we still are not fulfilling their basic human rights.”

In his speech, Professor Baron-Cohen reminded the UN that in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, people with intellectual disability were killed in their thousands, under the compulsory euthanasia laws. Many of these individuals likely had autism, even before we had a name for it, as the first report of autism by Dr Leo Kanner was published during the Second World War.

However, historical violations of the human rights of people with autism go back further than that: in the US, in the 1920s, many States passed laws to compulsorily sterilize people with intellectual disability, including those whom today we would recognize had autism, in the name of eugenics.

Professor Baron-Cohen highlighted six examples where he believes the human rights of people with autism are not being met.

First, the right to dignity: According to the National Autistic Society in the UK, half of adults with autism report they have been abused by someone they thought was a friend. Half of adults with autism report they stay home because of fear of being abused in some way. Individuals with intellectual disability, including those with autism, are three times more likely to be victims of abuse or neglect, robbery, or assault.

Second, the right to education: one in five children with autism have been excluded from school. Whatever the reason for being excluded, they are being deprived of the right to education. And of the other 80% of children with autism who have stayed in school, half report having been bullied, which is a risk factor for depression.

Third, the right to equal access to public services: one in three adults with autism experiences severe mental ill health because of lack of support. In Professor Baron-Cohen’s clinic for adults with Asperger Syndrome, a subgroup of autism, two thirds have felt suicidal and one third have felt so bad that they have attempted suicide. Research from the Universities of Cambridge and Coventry in the UK found that among those who have died by suicide, approximately 12% had definite or probable autism. Professor Baron-Cohen called for a minute’s silence to remember those people with autism who have died by suicide.

Finding such a high rate of autism in people who have died by suicide is not surprising when you consider how many of these individuals did not have the benefit of early diagnosis, explained Professor Baron-Cohen. Early diagnosis is possible in childhood – there are screening measures that can detect autism in young toddlers, but most countries do not screen for autism.

He drew attention to the fact that in the UK, in many areas, the waiting time for a diagnosis can be up to a year or longer, and that in high- and middle-income countries, people with autism may receive a formal diagnosis, but in low-income countries, the majority of people with autism may remain undiagnosed, either because of stigma, ignorance, or lack of basic services.

Fourth, the right to work and employment: Professor Baron-Cohen said that only 15% of adults with autism are in full time employment, despite many having good intelligence and talents. ̽��ֱ��right to work should extend to everyone, whatever support they might need. Unemployment is another well-known risk factor for depression.

He commended some enlightened employers, like the German company Auticon, the Danish company Specialisterne, and the German company SAP, for setting an example of how to help people with autism into employment and how employers can make reasonable adjustments for people with autism.

Fifth, the right to protection from discrimination, and the right to a cultural life, and to rest and leisure: He described how many people with autism have been asked to leave a supermarket or a cinema, because of their different behaviour. He said this is discrimination and again would never be tolerated for other kinds of disabilities.

In addition, half of adults with autism report feeling lonely, a third of them do not leave the house most days, and two thirds of them feel depressed because of loneliness. One in four adults with autism have no friends at all.

Finally, the right to protection of the law, and the right to a fair, impartial trial: one in five young people with autism have been stopped and questioned by the police, and 5% have been arrested. Two-thirds of police officers report they have received no training in how to interview a person with autism. Many legal cases involving someone with autism result in imprisonment for crimes the person with autism may not have committed, or for crimes others committed, but the person with autism became tangled up in, because of their social naivete. Some of these crimes are the result of the person with autism becoming obsessed with a particular topic, a product of their disability, and yet the courts often ignore autism as a mitigating factor.

Professor Baron-Cohen ended his address with a call to action. “We must take action. I want to see an investigation into the violation of human rights in people with autism. I want to see increased surveillance of their needs, in every country. And I want us to be continuously asking people with autism what their lives are like, and what they need, so that they are fully involved in shaping their future. Only this way can we ensure their human rights are met.”

̽��ֱ��basic human rights of autistic people are not being met, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, a world expert on autism, told the United Nations in New York today, to mark Autism Awareness Week.

People with autism account for a significant minority of the population worldwide, yet we are failing them in so many respects

Simon Baron-Cohen

Lance Neilson

Coloring

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Yes

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Attribution

̽��ֱ��Whistle: verifying digital evidence of human rights violations

lw355 — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 11:01:53 +0000

̽��ֱ��footage is shaky but the sounds of gunfire and “Allahu Akbar!” are unmistakable as the boy darts along the dusty road towards the burnt-out car. Puffs of smoke erupt around him. He falls to his knees. Has he been shot? It’s hard to tell, but a moment later he is up again, running for the shelter of the abandoned car. Yet it’s not over. He emerges holding the hand of an even younger girl dressed in pink. They run, hesitantly at first, then desperately. ̽��ֱ��fear on their faces is palpable.

This is the ‘Syrian Hero Boy’. ̽��ֱ��footage appeared on 10 November 2014 on YouTube and it quickly went viral as millions of viewers watched, astonished at the boy’s bravery and shocked at a world that could place children in such danger.

But further shock was to come. ̽��ֱ��film was fake. It was filmed in Malta on the set of Gladiator by Norwegian film-maker Lars Klevberg.

Klevberg’s intention was to spur debate about children and war. By pretending the film was real, he believed that “people would share it and react with hope.”

It also drew attention to an increasingly common scenario: fake footage appearing on social media. “By publishing a clip that could appear to be authentic, we hoped to take advantage of a tool that’s often used in war; make a video that claims to be real,” he said.

In our digitally enabled world, a legion of ‘civilian witnesses’ has sprung up: individuals “in the wrong place at the wrong time” who capture an event and then publish the scrap of footage or the incriminating photograph on social media. But amid the fog of propaganda, hoaxes and digital manipulation, how can we tell what’s real and what’s fake?

Cambridge researchers are developing an automated tool, ‘the Whistle’, to help verify the authenticity of digital evidence.

Behind the Whistle is sociologist Dr Ella McPherson: “There is much excitement about the speed with which news can be captured by bystanders and disseminated on social media. In the field of human rights, it allows fact-finders for NGOs to get digital reports of violations from hard-to-reach places.

“In a country such as Syria, which is largely closed to outside observers, YouTube videos are a crucial source of information for people within and without its borders and contribute to an information environment incomparable to the past.”

She mentions footage that appeared on social media in 2013 which Syrian opposition activists claimed as being evidence of a chemical weapons attack. An expert told the BBC that the footage was consistent with such an attack, although he cautioned that it was difficult to verify the film owing to the absence of metadata. Meanwhile the state-run news agency Sana said the claims were “baseless” and an attempt to distract United Nations weapons inspectors.

“This example shows the nature of the terrain we are now in: news is disseminated fast but verification is slow and often contested,” says McPherson. “For human rights NGOs, credibility can be lost in a moment if the evidence they are using for advocacy or in courts is later found to be false. No matter how devastating the documented violations, they cannot act on them unless they can verify them first.”

Many guidelines, handbooks and tools now exist to help the verification process. ̽��ֱ��‘witness’ can be checked through their digital footprint – their organisational affiliations or a social media profile, for instance. ̽��ֱ��image itself can be corroborated through comparison with landmarks and weather data, or checked using tools that ‘reverse image search’ for previous publication.

However, all of this takes precious time, which may introduce bias – those who are easier to verify may be more likely to be heard than those who have few resources and a minimal digital footprint.

Through her research interests in how social media can be used by human rights NGOs for generating governmental accountability, McPherson became increasingly aware that fact-finders were struggling with the torrent of information. Time spent verifying was in danger of crippling this most powerful means of communication. For Syria, fact-finders have described the number of videos and photos as becoming a ‘Big Data’ problem.

̽��ֱ��Whistle is a digital platform that speeds up the whole process. Being developed for mobile and web, the app eases the process of reporting for the witness, and prompts them to furnish the information needed by the fact-finder for verification – the “who, what, why, where, when” metadata. A ‘dashboard’ then aggregates the information and automates the cross-checking process of comparing the civilian witness report to the many databases that are used to corroborate reliability.

“We knew from fact-finders that civilian witnesses do not necessarily know what metadata is or that they should include it with their information – even something as simple as panning the horizon for landmarks or turning on geolocation features. ̽��ֱ��Whistle prompts them for the information at the time of upload, so the fact-finders don’t have to piece it together later. It also provides individuals with information literacy – helps them understand what characteristics their information should ideally have in order to do things for them.”

Initially funded by Cambridge’s Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Account, the Whistle is now funded by the European Union as part of ‘ChainReact’, a multi-partner programme to support whistle-blowing in business. ̽��ֱ��team has grown to six members and plans to start using the demo of the Whistle to gain feedback from NGOs and civilian witnesses.

McPherson sees the Whistle as a tool for NGOs to use in the field, rather than as a global repository of information, since the latter would create security risks for the whistle-blowers: “Security challenges vary a lot according to context, and we don’t see ourselves as ever being able to anticipate all the security challenges of a local context – it depends on the threat model. So we always want to partner with local organisations.” Although civilians may never have heard of the Whistle, they are likely to be aware of the support of a local NGO, who would then direct them towards the tool as a means to submit information. “It would then be up to the NGO to decide what to do with the data,” she explains.

McPherson is reflective when she considers the implications of a digital world that requires tools such as the Whistle to verify trustworthiness. “Reporting violations and fact-finding are communicative acts of ‘bearing witness’ – inherently human activities that involve solidarity, support and rapport. Technological innovations mean that we may increasingly have to replace this with reporting to a machine – how do you balance that opportunity with safeguards around traumatisation? This is something we don’t yet have answers for.”

Nevertheless, she and her team are aware that an increase in digital information on human rights violations only translates into evidence once it is validated. “Tools like the Whistle are desperately needed by fact-finders to reduce the labour time in sifting the wheat from the chaff, and to make it easier for them to evaluate more digital information for evidence.

“We hope that our platform will increase the possibility that those who report violations receive attention, and particularly that those who most need access to human rights mechanisms are heard.”

̽��ֱ��team behind the Whistle include Dr Ella McPherson, Rebekah Larsen, Giles Barton-Owen, Isabel Guenette Thornton, Matt Mahmoudi, Sarah Villeneuve, Dr Richard Mills and Scott Limbrick.

Smartphones and social media have made it easy for accidental witnesses “in the wrong place at the wrong time” to capture and share violations and crimes. But how can we tell what’s real and what’s fake?

For human rights NGOs, credibility can be lost in a moment if the evidence they are using for advocacy or in courts is later found to be false

Ella McPherson

Petter Onstad Løkke

'Syrian Hero Boy'

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Yes

Human Rights in the United Kingdom: Where Now?

fpjl2 — Fri, 22 May 2015 15:59:09 +0000

First, what lies behind the desire of some politicians to secure the Human Rights Act’s repeal? Second, how might a British Bill of Rights differ from the present legislation? And, third, what constitutional obstacles might lie in the way of the implementation of these reforms?

In relation to the last of those three issues, the argument is developed that although the UK Parliament has the legal power to legislate for the proposed changes, the increasingly multi-layered nature of the British constitution limits Parliament’s capacity to exploit its sovereign legislative authority. In particular, the constraining effects of international law - in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights - and the devolved nature of the modern British constitution are likely to limit the UK Government’s room for manoeuvre. As a result, it is likely to be difficult to deliver upon the manifesto commitments that were made in a legally coherent and constitutionally legitimate manner.

Dr Mark Elliott is a Reader in Public Law at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. His main research interests are in the fields of constitutional and administrative law. Dr Elliott's recent publications include Elliott and Thomas, Public Law (2nd ed OUP 2014); Elliott, Beatson, Matthews and Elliott's Administrative Law: Text and Materials (OUP 2011, 4th edition); and Forsyth, Elliott, Jhaveri, Scully-Hill and Ramsden (eds), Effective Judicial Review: A Cornerstone of Good Governance (OUP 2010). Dr Elliott was the 2011 Legal Research Foundation Visiting Scholar at ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Auckland, New Zealand. In 2010, he was awarded a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for excellence in ̽��ֱ�� teaching. He writes a blog which includes information for people applying, or thinking of applying, to study Law at university.

For more information about Dr Elliott, you can also refer to his Faculty profile.

Law in Focus is a series of short videos featuring academics from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty. Law in Focus is available on YouTube, or to subscribe to in iTunes U.

Prior to the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party undertook in its manifesto to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and to enact a British Bill of Rights. In this video, Mark Elliott addresses three key questions raised by these proposals.

Human Rights in the United Kingdom: Where Now?

Catching light

Human Rights Day

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Yes

‘Para Ingles ver’ (for the English to see): the other side of the World Cup

amb206 — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 08:00:00 +0000

England’s team may have returned home, but eyes remain on Brazil. As the World Cup enters its fourth week, tensions mount in the stadiums but more so in the streets outside, with protests accompanying most matches.

̽��ֱ��World Cup is a bitter topic for many Brazilians, already angry at an undemocratic and regressive use of public funds. Football in Brazil owes much of its fame and vibrancy to the most vulnerable social groups. Megastars Romário, Pelé, Ronaldo and Jairzinho all grew up in favelas.

It is these very groups who are being evicted, priced out, repressed and shot at for the sake of FIFA’s mega-event. During the Chile-Spain match in Rio de Janeiro, 25-year-old Afonso Maurício Linhares was shot and killed by the police as he was refereeing a local football match in the Manguinhos favela just 6km from the stadium. In Belo Horizonte, an unfinished overpass constructed for the World Cup collapsed only yesterday, killing two people on a bus while others were trapped inside.

In June 2013, more than two million people took to the streets of Brazilian cities in what came to be known as the ‘Vinegar Revolt’ or ‘Brazilian Autumn’. Sparked by rising bus fares, these protests became a much larger movement against inequality, corruption, privatisation and the everyday brutality of the military police.

In Rio, as in other host cities, simmering discontent continued as World Cup construction projects resulted in unbearable levels of traffic congestion through the city’s hottest summer for 30 years. This popular anger has now re-erupted as the world focuses its attention on a country where an economic boom has done little for the majority of the population.

There is an increasing trend for city governments to use international mega-events to raise their international profile, attract investment, and provide impetus for urban development projects.

̽��ֱ��widespread resistance to the World Cup in Brazil places an onus on social scientists, activists and policy makers to ask whether the hosting of mega-events is actually ever ‘good for’ a city, and if so, for whom exactly? ̽��ֱ��neglected stadiums in Cape Town and Athens loom as a warning for the legacy of Brazil’s World Cup as well as for Rio’s 2016 Olympic Games.

Mega-events have a direct bearing on city planning. They result in programmes that prioritise flashy, short-term initiatives targeted at tourists and TV audiences rather than residents.

Last year I supervised the undergraduate dissertation of Land Economy student Annabel Cooke, who chose to write about the links between the World Cup and the ‘pacification’ projects in Rio’s favelas. These are essentially military invasions of favelas in which a specially created police force wrests control from drug trafficking gangs.

Annabel’s research shows that these programmes are provoked and sustained by Rio’s hosting of the World Cup. ̽��ֱ��focus of pacification is largely on favelas closest to the stadiums, which leads gangs to relocate to other, poorer favelas, while indiscriminate police violence under the pretext of protecting tourists is increasing across the city.

Image-based or ‘city branding’ policies are nothing new. Brazil has long had to fabricate an image of success and stability to attract investors (from states whose own wealth was generated by resource theft from Brazil and other colonies). There is even a Brazilian saying, ‘para ingles ver’, or ‘for the English to see’. This phrase dates back to a treaty signed in 1826 between Britain and Brazil supposedly ending the slave trade, which actually continued for another six decades.

Many songs written in Rio, particularly in the genre known as ‘funk consciente’, have lyrics that tell a story of two worlds. Tourists hang out in the south zone, drinking coconut water on Copacabana beach while, in the song-writers’ worlds of the favelas and north zone, thousands of people struggle with the most basic needs of security, food and clean water.

What is the outcome of strategies that are ‘para ingles ver’? If the hosting of mega-events provides the scope and impetus for contemporary urban development, who loses out behind the glossy images, and how are people responding?

As part of my PhD, I am exploring the impact of mega-events on street vendors in Rio. ̽��ֱ��vendors I interviewed have some important insights into these questions, which are pertinent not just for Brazil but for host cities of international mega-events across the world. My interviewees spoke at length about their feelings of betrayal, invisibility and indignation at the World Cup, but also their involvement in emerging political struggles.

Street vendors are one of the most vulnerable and neglected groups of workers in the city. They suffer from police extortion during the day, assaults on public transport, and pervasive violence back home in the favelas where they live.

I work as a volunteer for a small non-profit workers rights’ organisation called CAMTRA (Casa da Mulher Trabalhadora). Based in the centre of Rio, CAMTRA is doing an extensive survey of female vendors’ impressions and experiences of the Cup.

̽��ֱ��first phase of the study showed that many vendors fear that the World Cup would lead to a decrease in living standards due to increased police regulation of vending. ̽��ֱ��‘General Cup Law’ passed last year stipulates that only registered established traders can sell within a certain radius of each stadium, meaning that as one vendor asserted: “With the World Cup, only those who already have money will earn.”

For the past year, vendors have faced vastly increased commutes to work, as most live in the North Zone where infrastructure projects by the airport have led to extreme congestion on the roads. In my interviews, vendors made a clear connection between poor services and the huge sums of money being spent on the World Cup. One woman working at a clothes stall exclaimed: ‘This government spending all this money on the world cup! It needs to prioritise, there are people dying in the street here.”

Some vendors had been left homeless as a result of World Cup construction projects, and in CAMTRA’s survey of more than vendors, all those who lived in favelas felt that the police ‘pacification’ projects were directed at tourists rather than residents.

All 30 of the vendors I spoke with in depth were in favour of the street protests, arguing that the unrest was a signal that Brazilians had ‘woken up’ and might achieve some real change. Some of my interviewees recalled the massive protest movement that swept the corrupt President Fernando Collor de Mello out of power in 1992. Many predicted an increase in protests during the World Cup and in the run up to the Olympics. “People are going to come back to the streets, I promise,” an orange juice seller told me, “And in larger numbers than ever before.”

There is some indication that the Brazilian government is responding to the popular mobilisations. Just before the start of the World Cup, President Dilma Rousseff committed to maintain the increase in social spending that her presidency has seen, as part of an agreement made in response to the June 2013 protests.

She has also pledged to ring-fence the hoped-for returns from the ‘Lula’ oil field (a potential gold mine of pre-salt layer oil discovered 250km off the coast of Rio de Janeiro) claiming that in the next 35 years the government would be able to invest R$1 trillion in education and health.

̽��ֱ��World Cup and Olympic committees strive to maintain a glossy image of Brazil for corporate investors. Yet an unintended outcome of their mega-events strategy is the international attention seized by critical groups, who will hold the government to account on these public spending promises.

As well as working with CAMTRA, I volunteer as a translator for Rio on Watch, a community journalism website that is seeing high levels of traffic at the moment. As a result of reports and images that shame the government and FIFA, another picture of Brazil has emerged. Protests, state violence and political repression are now widely associated with the country, alongside football, samba and cachaça.

“ ̽��ֱ��favelas cannot be silenced,” insists Ana Paula Gomes de Oliveira, mother of 19-year-old Jonathan de Oliveira Lima who was recently killed by the police in Complexo de Alemao.

More and more people are aware of the blood, sweat and tears behind the stadiums, and political reports are creeping into the sports sections of online news sources. Brazilian protesters are not actually calling on us to boycott the World Cup matches. ̽��ֱ��popular slogan and hashtag used across Brazil, ‘Nao vai ter copa’ – there will not be a world cup – is not really a threat or campaign to prevent the World Cup from happening. Rather, it is to assert that the World Cup should not be as the governors of the host cities intended – an uncontroversial, investment-garnering, glossing over of the city scapes ‘para ingles ver’. Instead, the slogan ‘Our Cup is in the Streets’ refers to the subversion of the event into another kind of ‘cup’.

This is a ‘cup of strikes’, as the striking public sector workers in Rio claimed, a cup where the eyes of Amnesty International are monitoring human rights abuses on the streets, and where competitions between national football teams are changed into comparisons between national policies. In the photo above, the banner contrasts Brazil and Uruguay. ̽��ֱ��text reads ‘Uruguay 3, Brazil 0: legalisation of abortion, equal marriage and legalisation of marijuana.’

We do need to look carefully for this ‘other cup’. It’s not going to be publicised along the edges of the stadiums with McDonalds and Hyundai. As the street vendors assert, it is the way in which the dynamics on the streets play that determine what mega-events mean to a country. And for those attending the games, one small way to support the ‘cup of the streets’ is to buy from street vendors rather than from the FIFA-endorsed chains. Just take a short walk from the stadium, and they will be there waiting for you with an ice cold beer.

Inset images: protest poster reads "the parties in the stadiums are not worth the tears in the favelas" (credit: Rio on Watch); bikini seller and tourist (credit: eGuide Travel); caipirinha seller (credit: Keetr); Uruguay versus Brazil banner compares the two countries over recent years (credit: Renato Cinco).

Brazilians are famous for their love of football but millions of ordinary people are angry at the huge sums spent on the World Cup. Lucy McMahon, a PhD candidate in Development Studies, is working as a volunteer for two human rights organisations in Rio de Janiero. She reports on her research among some of the poorest groups.

Mega-events have a direct bearing on city planning. They result in programmes that prioritise flashy, short-term initiatives targeted at tourists and TV audiences rather than residents.

Lucy McMahon

Rio on Watch

Names of people killed by the police are stencilled on to football shirts

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Yes

Ethical dilemmas and global health

lw355 — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:00:52 +0000

Ever since a popular theory arose in the early-1970s (known as a theory of ‘epidemiologic transition’), we have become used to thinking that a country’s burden of disease shifts from acute infectious diseases to long-term chronic conditions as it develops.

Over the past few decades, however, this theory has been countered by the occurrence of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in developed countries and the growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lung diseases and diabetes) in developing and developed countries alike, as well as by the rapid acceleration in the movement of diseases and their causes across borders. While much global attention has been given to the rapid spread of infectious diseases, less attention has been given to the rising burden of chronic non-communicable diseases around the world.

To address the oversight of chronic diseases in the world’s development programmes, in September 2011 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly held a rare, special session on the prevention and control of NCDs. Such a high-level session on a health issue was held only once before, on HIV/AIDS in 2001. Partly motivated by the arguments that HIV/AIDS was not just a health crisis but also a threat to national security, 189 countries signed up to the Declaration of Commitment on HIV and AIDS. That event proved a turning point in the global response to HIV/AIDS epidemic. ̽��ֱ��High-Level Meeting (HLM) on NCDs aimed to create a similar turning point by galvanising an increased and coordinated global response to NCDs.

There are wide-ranging arguments for why governments and their leaders should care about the prevention and control of NCDs both within and outside their borders. ̽��ֱ��main case for action includes the identification of the health burden of NCDs; NCDs as threats to economic and social development; the cost-effectiveness and -savings produced by NCD interventions; and the recognition that addressing NCDs requires leadership and coordinated, multi-sectoral policies domestically and across countries.

However, as anyone familiar with making health policy or with high-level UN conferences will tell you, there are politics involved. In the case of a UN conference, by signing up to a declaration, governments make a global public commitment to what is stated in the declaration. And so, understandably, months of preparatory work is done developing a final conference document which hopefully has a coherent vision, reasoning, and action plan. ̽��ֱ��few final months before the NCD conference involved difficult negotiations between various representatives of governments and some non-governmental organisations regarding what concrete commitments were being asked of different governments and non-state actors as well as what will be, and importantly, will not be included in the final conference document.

In an article published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, we reviewed the regional declarations leading up to the HLM in September to identify areas of intersection and divergence. Our analysis identifies four ‘ethical dilemmas’ facing Europe and the global community. We frame them as ethical dilemmas, in contrast to ‘concerns’ or ‘questions’, because underneath the politics and practical deliberations on what language to include and exclude in the final declaration and indeed, global response, lie different conflicting ethical principles. We are driven by the notion that politics, especially global health politics, can be richer than the pursuit of self-interest of different actors through greater reflection on the ethical issues at stake. These ethical dilemmas are not exhaustive or mutually exclusive. Without one general ethical theory that would organise and guide consistent reasoning through all of them, we identify them separately.

̽��ֱ��four dilemmas we identified included:

Dilemma 1. Human rights approaches

Effective action on non-communicable diseases involves addressing multiple human rights, such as the right to information to make informed choices about diet and activity (e.g. food labels that people can understand), the right to bodily integrity (e.g. freedom from exposure to second-hand smoke), and the right to health (including access to essential medicines). These human rights may conflict with corporate rights such as the right of pharmaceutical companies to exploit patents or express freedom of speech (through marketing).

Dilemma 2. Social determinants or healthcare

̽��ֱ��World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health showed how an individual’s health is influenced by the circumstances in which they grow, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness. ̽��ֱ��Commission also highlighted how health and longevity in both rich, middle-income and poor countries follow the socioeconomic gradient, and how inequalities in health within and across countries are increasing. Political leaders face difficult decisions about where to invest resources along the causal chain of disease. They must care for those already ill but also tackle the underlying causes of the diseases.

Dilemma 3. Resource allocation between domestic and global needs

Governments must balance the needs of their own citizens with their obligations to provide aid to other countries. There is a glaring global inequality in the burden of NCDs and in the domestic resources available to address them. This raises the basic question of the obligations of rich countries to help poor countries to deal with these diseases.

Dilemma 4. Setting priorities on NCDs

All governments must set priorities for action, such as whether to focus on interventions for those people in most need, those who would benefit most or on actions that would benefit the most people. ̽��ֱ��HLM initially prioritised four diseases (cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lung diseases and diabetes) with high mortality burdens and four risk factors (tobacco use, poor diet, harmful use of alcohol and physical inactivity). ̽��ֱ��case for focusing on these four NCDs is that they have common causes, and there are knock-on benefits of interventions into these specifics for the prevention of other NCDs. However, such a justification does not seem to be fully satisfactory in relation to individuals suffering from mental illnesses. ̽��ֱ��full extent of mental illnesses worldwide, and particularly in developing countries, is grossly under-recognised, requiring distinct interventions that do not completely come under the secondary benefits of addressing the four identified NCDs.

̽��ֱ��final declaration signed at the HLM contains mixed messages regarding these four dilemmas. This is partly due to the need for achieving a consensus and pressure to achieve an outcome. However, the dilemmas still remain, and much greater deliberation, both at the national and global level is necessary in order for there to be an effective and enduring global response to the rising burden of NCDs within and across societies.

Dr Sridhar Venkatapuram is an affiliated lecturer at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Department of Sociology and holds a Wellcome Trust fellowship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Dr David Stuckler is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology and an honorary research fellow at LSHTM.

For further information, please refer to the authors’ article published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization March 1 (2012); 90(3): 241–242.

Sociologists David Stuckler and Sridhar Venkatapuram discuss how tensions within society are slowing down the process of combating disease worldwide.

We are driven by the notion that politics, especially global health politics, can be richer than the pursuit of self-interest of different actors through greater reflection on the ethical issues at stake.

David Stuckler (left) and Sridhar Venkatapuram (right)

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Yes

Children’s evidence cross-examined

bjb42 — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:29:09 +0000

̽��ֱ��complex question of how children should give evidence to court – particularly when it could be critical to convicting someone of child abuse – will be the subject of a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge conference next month.

̽��ֱ��one-day conference, hosted by the ̽��ֱ��'s Law Faculty, will bring together experts from various legal systems around the world, including some where mechanisms are already in place to prevent young children from having to go through the distressing experience of giving their evidence to full court during a trial.

At the moment, English law demands that even tiny children come to court for a live cross-examination if there is to be any chance of convicting a person who has abused them.

Perhaps the highest profile case in recent times was that of Stephen Barker - one of three individuals convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child in the case of Baby P. In 2009, Barker was jailed for life in a separate case, for raping a two-year-old girl. His conviction hinged, however, on the appearance of the child at the trial, aged just four, to describe how she had been abused. ̽��ֱ��girl in question became the youngest witness to give evidence in a criminal trial in this country.

Critics argue that demanding a child's evidence in this way has a number of disadvantages. ̽��ֱ��child is forced to relive a terrible, distressing incident in very stressful circumstances, and after lengthy delays that may have altered his or her memory. ̽��ֱ��defence may get little from the child and struggle to conduct a meaningful cross-examination. And, given the fact that the child may not remember what happened and struggle to communicate, even well-founded cases of this nature often have to be abandoned.

In 1989 an official committee - the Pigot Committee - proposed a mechanism designed to avoid these difficulties. Under its proposal, the whole of a young child's evidence, including the cross-examination, would take place out of court in advance. While this system, or something like it, has been implemented elsewhere, in England and Wales it was never accepted.

In fact, children's evidence being used in full court may soon become more, rather than less common. In March 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that an existing presumption that children should not be called to give evidence in family proceedings was no longer appropriate, because it could not be reconciled with the rights of everyone concerned according to articles in the European Convention on Human Rights.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge conference will bring together speakers from various parts of the world where the Pigot recommendation, or similar, is in operation. It will include experts on the legal systems of New Zealand, Western Australia, Austria and Norway, as well as that of England and Wales.

̽��ֱ��aim is to establish exactly how far a measure such as that recommended by the Committee 12 years ago really would resolve the problem of cross-examining young children, were it to be introduced in England and Wales.

̽��ֱ��conference has been organised by J R Spencer, a Professor in the Cambridge Law Faculty who has written extensively on the subject of children's evidence, and by Professor Michael Lamb from the ̽��ֱ��'s Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, who has worked extensively on issues related to the questioning of children in legal contexts.

It will be held from 10am to 5pm on 14 April in the Law Faculty, 10, West Road, Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��event is open by registration only, and requests for registration should be sent to Ms felicity Eves, School of Law, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, or by Emailing: fre20@cam.ac.uk

Should young children be exposed to the traumatic experience of giving evidence in open court, or does the justice system need to change its approach?

At the moment, English law demands that even tiny children come to court for a live cross-examination if there is to be any chance of convicting a person who has abused them.

Dan4th from Flickr

Justice sends mixed messages

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Yes