Electoral participation: Venezuela & United States

(Part 2 of a 4-part series comparing voting in the United States and Venezuela, in light of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Part 1 is here; Part 3 is here; Part 4 is here.)

An unprecedented 80.48% of Venezuela’s over 18 million registered voters participated in the presidential elections that took place on October 7 – elections at which, as I posted yesterday, I served as an international observer.
Fifteen years ago in Venezuela, a country with a population of around 27.1 million, only about 13 million voters were registered and eligible to vote. (Photo Credit: Swiss Delegation, CNE Accompañamiento Internacional de las Elecciones del 7 de octubre, 2012, Estado de Monagas, Venezuela)
Dr. Tibisay Lucena, current President of Venezuela's Consejo Nacional Electoral, the election council known as CNE, has engaged in some analysis of the massive shift in levels of participation in her essay, The Venezuelan Experience. Lucena and other members of the CNE, including Vice President Sandra Oblitas, attribute much of the increased participation to the massive investment of the CNE in electoral inclusion in historically disenfranchised urban and rural communities.

Tibisay Lucena

Earlier in 2012, before the registration process closed in April, Tamara Pearson of Venezuelanalysis.com reported that

Sandra Oblitas Ruzza

'CNE set up 1,300 registration tents around the country and in overseas consulates, and 1,360,598 people registered to vote for the first time, while 4,512,000 changed their voting address, according to CNE director Sandra Oblitas.'

Pearson reported that 89% of the new registrations were among youth aged 18 to 25; other new registrations included individuals who had since been granted Venezuelan nationality, people who were unable to register due to rural isolation or perhaps a disability, and people who chose not to register prior to 2012. Only individuals with Venezuelan nationality could vote in the October presidential elections; residents can vote in the upcoming December 16 regional elections.
Oblitas has stated that the gap between those able to vote and those registered had been reduced to 3.5%, a statistic she interpreted as a great advance and a direct result of a broader policy of participatory inclusion. The CNE employs over 400,000 people to staff the electoral mesas, provide on the ground digital technology support, and directly administer the electoral process, and maintains an independent budget of over Bs 2,273,000,000 (US$ 494 million) to carry out both the October 7 and upcoming December 16 regional electoral processes.
In contrast, consider that the highest participation rate in recent years in the United States was estimated at only 61.6% of registered voters, comprising only 57.47% of the entire U.S. voting-age population. That was in the 2008 presidential elections.
Amid reports of lower registered-voter turnout this year – an estimated 57.5% – the popular image of the United States as a leader in the development of open, participatory, democratic institutions is not exactly in alignment with current realities on the ground.
In fact, according to data compiled by the international Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the United States trails behind 16 Latin American nations in terms of voter turnout, besting only Colombia (45%) and Honduras (53%), two countries that are not well-regarded for any laudable transparency in the electoral process.
The perennial confusion over voter registration in the United States, which may depress registration and participation levels, could be clarified by uniform national standards regarding voter registration. Reforms might take into consideration similar systemic electoral reforms in Latin America.
Along with observations from the Center for Economic and Policy Studies, the National Lawyers Guild International Committee's observations of Venezuelan popular democracy in action – observations in which I took part – stand in marked contrast with media depictions of Venezuela’s government as autocratic.

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.

On the Job! Legal Adviser, Sarajevo

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

From my former student Christopher Engels, who, I'm delighted to announce, is the new Head of Judicial and Legal Reform Section of the Organisation for Co-Operation and Security Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, comes word of this great job opportunity in that Section:
The OSCE Mission to BiH is seeking applications for the position of Legal Adviser, War Crimes and Transitional Justice, to be stationed in Sarajevo. The successful applicant will begin work this June 4.
Applicants should possess inter alia a minimum of 6 years' relevant professional experience in criminal justice, international legal procedure, and courtroom proceedings. Specified is the requirement of "[s]ound knowledge of legal issues related to war crime trials and the Bosnia and Herzegovina justice system."
The notice states in part:

'[T]he Legal Adviser, War Crimes and Transitional Justice is responsible for defining the range of issues and advocacy opportunities upon which the Human Dimension Department can engage effectively to promote reform, and ensure that concepts such as outreach and transparency develop within the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BaH) criminal justice system. Within the scope of the war crimes trials and processes that impact on transitional justice in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the incumbent will work closely with the Judicial and Legal Reform Section (JLRS) Legal Advisers to assess where reform is needed and how existing reform processes can be aided and expanded to better care for the needs of victims, witnesses and the general public. The incumbent will also work closely with the Senior Human Dimension Officers and the field staff to collect contextual information about the importance of individual war crimes cases to the local communities.'

Deadline for applications is April 9, 2012; details on application process, specific duties, and required qualifications here.

Guest Blogger: Alli Jernow

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Alli Jernow (left) as today's guest blogger.
Alli is a senior legal advisor at the International Commission of Jurists, based in Geneva, Switzerland, where she runs the Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Project.
She is the editor of the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Justice: A Comparative Law Casebook (2011). Published by the International Commission of Jurists, the book presents more than a hundred judicial decisions from all over the world, that address legal issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. In her guest post below, Alli outlines the analysis in an article she published this year in the Amsterdam Law Forum, "Morality Tales in Comparative Jurisprudence: What the Law Says About Sex." (Her guest post, which turns on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), appears within days of notice that the plaintiff in that landmark suit, John G. Lawrence, died in November at age 68.)
Before joining the International Commission of Jurists, Alli was a federal prosecutor in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She has also worked for the U.S. Department of State and for the Committee to Protect Journalists. She has served as a legal consultant on hate crimes, victims’ rights, and human trafficking for the International Labour Organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and other international groups.
Alli received a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard College, a juris doctor degree from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Snow Scholar, and a master's degree in international affairs from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Heartfelt welcome!

On November 21

On this day in ...
... 1990 (20 years ago today), at the same summit (left) discussed in a few days ago in this post, global leaders adopted the Charter of Paris for a New Europe. The charter redirected OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, to correspond to a new geopolitics. (photo credit) As WikiPedia explains:

In effect, the Paris Summit was the peace conference of the Cold War: Perestroika had ultimately put an end to the ideological and political division of the Iron Curtain. Pluralist democracy and market economy were together with international law and multilateralism seen as the victors, and as the common values and principles of national and international conduct that now ruled from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

(Prior November 21 posts are here, here, and here.)

On the Job! Bosnia internship

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

The Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to Bosnia and Herzegovina is seeking interns for its Judicial and Legal Reform Section.

This Section conducts a countrywide trial-monitoring program for criminal cases, extending from the investigation stage through to the execution of criminal sanctions. Points of particular focus, on which interns (based in the Mission's main office in Sarajevo) will contribute research and analysis:

► Justice sector monitoring and advocacy;

► Accountability for war crimes; and

► Vulnerable individuals -- such as victims of trafficking, domestic violence, hate crimes, and juveniles --who face the justice system.

The findings of the Section's monitoring efforts are used by the OSCE Mission to promote judicial and legal reforms and to provide assistance and advice on human rights conventions and obligations.

Sought are interns with:

► University qualification in law;

► Fluent English; and

► Demonstrated commitment to human rights and rule of law work.

Applications for unpaid Section internships, which last 6 months, are accepted on a rolling basis. To apply, send a cover letter and a completed version of this application form to jobs.ba@osce.org.

On July 8

On this day in ...
… 1992, The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (logo at right) created the office of High Commissioner on National Minorities. According to the OSCE website,

The post of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities was established in 1992 to identify and seek early resolution of ethnic tensions that might endanger peace, stability or friendly relations between OSCE participating States.

High Commissioner Knut Vollebaek, former Norwegian ambassador to the United States, began a 3-year term in 2007.
… 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixon (below left) delivered a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official U.S. policy. Previously, it had been the stated policy objective of the federal government eventually to terminate the trusteeship relation between the federal government and tribal nations. (photo credit) In his address, "Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Recommendations for Indian Policy," Nixon contended that such termination policies did not work, and called instead for broad-sweeping self-determination legislation. Five years later, Congress would pass the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.

(Prior July 8 posts are here and here.)

Who Should Engage in Post-Conflict Reconstruction -- Civilians or Military?

Last week, President Barack Obama announced that although he hoped to send 300 civilians to Afghanistan, he was unable to find the economists, lawyers, and political scientists he had hoped to send. Therefore, he announced, he would instead engage soldiers and the military to do the post-conflict reconstruction programmatic work.

Post-conflict reconstruction is a relatively new field, if it can even be said to be a field, in which internationals and locals work to normalize and build sustainable institutions and infrastructure following war. Aspects of post-conflict reconstruction can include legal drafting, democratization, human rights institution building, gender mainstreaming (often sorely missing, as I have written in my article Lessons from Arizona Market: the Impact of Neoliberlism and the Free Market Mindset on Women in the Post Conflict Reconstruction Process).
The entire enterprise is highly susceptible to critique for a mulitude of reasons, many of which I have written in my article Deconstructing the Reconstruction: Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Post War Bosnia and Herzegovina. The enterprise smacks of colonialism, in particular when internationals are put in positions akin to governors of a colonial outpost, as was arguably the case in Kosovo and, for some of the postwar period, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This engenders fears of western imperialism, particularly when programs which work in the United States or Europe are imposed or superimposed onto other legal, cultural, political, and economic systems. It is particularly sensitive to the often whimsical and fleeting interests of donors (at the nation-state, organizational, and private level) that would often prefer to see their money used on "sexier" issues than those that have been carefully assessed to be real priorities.

The possibility, then, that military personnel would become the de facto internationals to engage in these operations still in a nascent phase of normative development, and already fraught with legitimate critiques from virtually every scholarly disclipline, is frightening. This is not to say that military personnel are not inherently capable -- or also are, in fact, economists, lawyers, and political scientists, although most are not. But military are on the ground to maintain and foster security, which is a different objective than having the skill and priority of creating sustainable rights regimes.

When I heard that President Obama was planning to send military personnel to do post-conflict reconstruction work because he could not find 300 U.S. civilians to do the job, I wanted to tell him that, in fact, although not well publicized, there are many divisions within federal agencies and private organizations that have produced thousands of U.S. civilian professionals and scholars who have already engaged in post conflict reconstruction work. For instance:

► A division within the Department of State sent hundreds of American lawyers to Bosnia and Herzegovina to assist with the first and second round of elections, and then seconded several hundred to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe as experts in human rights, elections, governance, democratization, media, education and gender.

► A different division of the Department of State has sent hundreds of American lawyers as Junior Professional Officers to the United Nations.

► The American Bar Association's CEELI program regularly sends lawyers and judges abroad to work in developing legal systems.

► A multitude of agencies of the United Nations employs Americans on a contract basis at any give time.

It is high time that the United States developed databases of expert Americans with international experiences and kept these people at the ready as potential surge teams. We exist in the thousands at any given time. Rather than turn these crucial tasks over to the military, already stretched to and beyond its capacity, the United States must begin to recognize its existing -- albeit informal -- core of civilians trained in aspects of post-conflict reconstruction. And it must find a way to make it feasible to call up and send these civilians, rather than to engage the military to become responsible for post-conflict reconstruction work.

Heartfelt welcome to our newest IntLawGrrl, Dina Francesca Haynes

It's our great pleasure today to welcome a new IntLawGrrl, Dina Francesca Haynes (left).
Dina's an Associate Professor of Law at the New England School of Law, where she teaches courses related to immigration, international law and ethics. She has also taught at Georgetown University Law Center, American University’s Washington College of Law, and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
Prior to teaching law, she spent a decade practicing international law, including such positions as Director General of the Human Rights Department for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and as Human Rights Advisor to the OSCE in Serbia and Montenegro. She has also worked for the United Nations, serving as a Protection Officer in Croatia with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and in various position in Rwanda and Afghanistan for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She also was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in what was then known as the Immigration & Naturalization Service, and she clerked on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Dina earned her B.A. degree at the University of Denver, her J.D. at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and her LL.M. at Georgetown University Law Center. She's the author of Deconstructing the Reconstruction: Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (Ashgate 2008). Ethical issues related to the international civil serviceis the subject of her 1st post, below. Other areas of research and writing include immigration law, human rights law, human trafficking, public international law, international organizations, U.N. law, post-conflict reconstruction, humanitarian law, and migration.
She's chosen to dedicate her IntLawGrrls posts to Joan Fitzpatrick (1950-2003), at the time of her passing a leading human rights scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dina writes of Fitzpatrick (below left):

Joan Fitzpatrick was a brilliant teacher, an internationally renowned scholar and an admired human rights activist who dedicated her life to improving human rights around the world. She was also one of the few female international human rights lawyers practicing when I was a law student, and the only woman I could find then to look up to and emulate. When I took a position as a summer associate with Paul Hoffman at the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles, and I learned that she was working with him on the case to which I’d been assigned, ­Alvarez-Machain (later Sosa), I was thrilled. Her contributions to human rights law, the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers, and to forging a path for IntlLawGrrls everywhere were considerable and meaningful, and I am thankful for her work and legacy.

Today Fitzpatrick joins other transnational foremothers in the list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

On August 1

On this day in ...
... 1975, more than 3 dozen states, including all of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, signed the Helsinki Final Act. The document, which included "a list of agreements concerning political freedom, mutual cooperation, and human rights; it can be considered the major achievement of détente," the name given to the Cold War thawing process. Part of the process included establishment of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, later renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a body whose 56 member states hail from Europe, Central Asia, and North America. (credit for photo of signing by, from left, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, East German leader Erich Honecker, and U.S. President Gerald Ford)
... 1291, the Old Swiss Confederation was founded as an alliance for peace and free trade among various communities in Europe's Alps. Today remains a national holiday in Switzerland. (map credit)

Secession & ethnicity in Kosovo

Following on my post last week about the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence, readers interested in this subject might want to take a look at these views of the legality debate from our colleagues at Opinio Juris. And to balance those relatively secession-friendly outlooks, consider this skeptical assessment of the legality of unilateral secession, written in the context of the Quebec Secession case.
In considering these questions, I am troubled by the history of deliberate manipulation of ethnic populations in Kosovo in light of the role that Kosovo's current ethnic composition plays in assessments of its independence claim. Of course, the Serbian attempt at ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population from Kosovo was one of the reasons for NATO’s intervention and UN administration of the province. But under the UN administration, other efforts at manipulation have continued. On the one hand, periodic riots and attacks on Serbian enclaves by Albanians have pushed out most of the few Serbs who stayed after 1999. On the other hand, Serbia has provided considerable support to the Serbian enclaves to persuade the Serbs there to remain within Kosovo. When a claim to self-determination depends on an ethnic group's claim to be a people in possession of a territory, there are strong and dangerous incentives for all concerned to try to shape the ethnic composition of that territory, and certainly those have been at work here.

(credit for 2005 map of Kosovo ethnic makeup, based on data from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe)

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.

Parallel courts continue in Kosovo

An important development yesterday concerning the proposal for Kosovo’s independence (discussed in my previous post): the OSCE issued a report finding that Serbian parallel structures continue to exist in Kosovo and “have a direct impact on the rights of individuals and the rule of law.” What are parallel structures and why do they matter? One of the crucial questions for Kosovo’s success as an independent state is whether it can adequately protect and integrate its Serb minority (as well as other minority populations). In 2002, the UN Special Representative in Kosovo established a “Standards Before Status” policy that set out benchmarks for Kosovo to meet in the areas of democracy and rule of law, among others, before its political status could be addressed. These standards have not been met in many areas, and while the UN envoy’s report acknowledges this only indirectly, the details of the proposal for independence calling for further institution-building and EU supervision are tacit acknowledgement of that fact. One of the unmet standards is the integration of Serbs and other minorities into Kosovo’s government and the end of what are called “parallel structures” – Serbian courts, schools, hospitals, and other facilities that the Serbian government has maintained within the Serb enclaves in Kosovo for the Serb population there. The OSCE report attributes the continued existence of these parallel structures to a combination of lack of physical security, trust, and political certainty. Yet the UN envoy's proposal calls for the integration of Serbs into Kosovo institutions, without so much as mentioning the existence of these parallel structures. As I’ve discussed at length elsewhere, the parallel courts (and other parallel administrative structures) both represent and perpetuate the social and political divisions that have proven so intractable in Kosovo. At a minimum, to be successfully accommodated, they must first be openly acknowledged.