On the Job! OSCE gender adviser, Kyrgyzstan

(On the Job! pays occasional notice to interesting intlaw job notices)

The Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Centre in Bishkek seeks applications for the position of Gender Adviser.
This "International seconded" vacancy is for 12 months, with the possibility of extension if funds permit.
Qualifications sought include: 6 years' relevant professional experience; university education in political sciences, international relations, public policy, law, international human rights law or other human rights related fields, and advanced degree in relevant field; experience working with human rights, minority or gender issues; experience in drafting reports and possession of organizational, analytical, communication and interpersonal skills. Previous experience working in Central Asia is desirable.
For details on required qualifications, job duties, and how to apply, see here. Deadline is very soon: May 9, 2012.

In progress, a human rights text for Central Asia

Greetings from Kyrgyzstan!
I am serving here in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capital, as Deputy Director of the Tian Shan Policy Center and Law Professor at the American University of Central Asia.
I would so appreciate the sage comments of IntLawGrrls readers on this Table of Contents, for the international law cases/materials book I'm helping law faculty here in Kyrgyzstan put together. The book (cover below) is 500+ pages, so I'm not sending that along.
When the book is published, it will be available for free to supplement teaching by faculty and student legal education in Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian countries, where they have no such resources and almost no books.
The Table of Contents gives you a sense of the excerpts of cases/materials we are including by topic – some picked for their relevance to the region.
We could only include International Court of Justice and international tribunal documents, United Nations materials, and a few articles, because copyright from some publishers is just too expensive.
We would welcome anyone to take a look and let us know, at michelletleighton@yahoo.com, if you think any thing is glaringly missing, we'd all be very grateful. If you have articles you've written that we can excerpt, as well, please let me know and we'd be happy to include.
Warm regards to all!

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

MODERATOR 1: Okay. Which designers do you prefer?
SECRETARY CLINTON: What designers of clothes?
MODERATOR 1: Yes.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Would you ever ask a man that question? (Laughter.) (Applause.)
MODERATOR 1: Probably not. Probably not. (Applause.)

-- Interview with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday, at KTR Studio (above) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Full transcript and photo credit here.

On this day

On February 23, ...
... 1898 (110 years ago today), following a 2-week trial, a court in Paris convicted renowned author Émile Zola of libel for J'Accuse (I Accuse) (right), the 4,000-word commentary, styled as an open letter to the President of France, in which he'd described as a "crime of high treason against humanity" the 1897 conviction by court-martial of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a result linked to anti-Semitism.
... 1944, Soviets acting on orders of leader Joseph Stalin began a 2-day operation in which "nearly half a million Chechens and Ingush were systematically gathered together ... and transported in freight trains" east to Siberia and to 2 Soviet Socialist Republics that today are the independent states of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. As a result of the cold, hunger, and disease they suffered, an estimated 50% of these peoples, whose homelands had been in the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union, perished within a year of this forced deportation.

Sovereign Democracy?

In a couple of earlier posts (here and here), "Grace O'Malley" [IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann] and I discussed the fact that “democracy” has many meanings. Judy Dempsey writes in the Herald Tribune that Russia is now openly advocating a repressive political philosophy it calls “sovereign democracy”: subordinating democratic values to national interests. According to this “philosophy”, the foreign supervision Russia is subject to as a member of the Council of Europe (COE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is nothing more than foreign meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. Thus, Russia is currently blocking reforms at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) (at right), the court established in Strasbourg, France to hear human rights claims from individuals living in the 47 COE member states. Judges at the Court are seeking reforms to help deal with the 89,000-case backlog (while 90% of ECHR claims are dismissed as inadmissible, they still must be examined individually). Russia joined the court in 1996 and implemented the European Human Rights Convention in 1998. Since then, over 48,790 complaints have been filed against Russia – more than against any other country. Of those, 10,569 were lodged in 2006 alone, when the ECHR found 96 violations. As COE chair last year, Russia suggested the Council shift priorities away from human rights to education, culture, illegal migration, human trafficking and combating terrorism. Russia is also trying to curb election-monitoring activities undertaken by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Vienna. A division of the OSCE founded in 1976, the Office monitored elections in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine in which Russian-backed regimes were toppled by pro-democracy revolutions (below). Despite its criticisms of these organizations, however, Russia is not renouncing membership. Instead, it created the Collective Security Treaty Organization in 2003, which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Political cooperation and collective security are the main purposes; interference in member states' internal affairs is strictly forbidden. Russia is also supporting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. which was founded in 2001 to fight terrorism and cross-border crime and, again, includes Russia and several Central Asian countries. This organization also directly competes with the Office for Democratic Institutions in observing elections. As Dempsey points out, this is a sad turn-around “for a rich and self-confident country that during the 1990s had fought hard to be accepted into Europe's human rights organizations”. While I cannot help but agree, I also cannot help but note that “Guantánamo”: from the camp itself to the Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping, CIA renditions and secret detention camps, abuse and disappearance of Muslim prisoners within the US, and withdrawing from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to avoid scrutiny of our application of the death penalty to foreign citizens are all signs of a return to sovereign democracy here at home.

Backing in to Women’s History Month?

The new free Paris daily Matin Plus reports that female Turkish students demonstrated in Istanbul on Feb. 28 to protest the ban on wearing headscarves in institutions of higher learning and called for sanctions against those who deposed the Islamist government 10 years ago. Meanwhile, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Justice has proposed to cancel criminal liability for polygamy (see here). Despite attempts over a number of years by the UN/CEDAW committee (see, for example, here and here) and other NGOs to help the Kyrgyz overcome traditional attitudes that maintain male dominance and allow rampant female violence (see the HRW report here), a return to “tradition” is seen as necessary to redress the imbalance of the sexes due to a mass exodus of men seeking work. Better, perhaps, to place an order with the Japanese, who have developed a robot that can serve tea…and wash the teacups!

For more on religion and women’s rights, read Madhavi Sunder’s 2003 article, "Piercing the Veil."