The Recognition Gap: Why Labels Matter in Human Rights Protection
- Stacy Kosko Assistant Research Professor & Associate Director, Minor in International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland
As a part of the Global Policy Studies Speaker Series, this talk proposes a form of human rights protection gap as yet unarticulated in the literature. Kosko argues that the formal categorizing of different types of ethnocultural minorities affects how international human rights law can protect them. Governments’ ability—and willingness—to label groups on their territory has created a legal typology of such populations, whose status varies from state to state. This has profound consequences for how certain specialized international legal protections apply to vulnerable groups. The talk addresses the origin and impact of this human rights “recognition gap” on the groups that international human rights law aims to protect.
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Co-sponsored by the LBJ School of Public Affairs, the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies