Selective spotlights: Shaming targets in the United Nations Special Procedures
PS7-1
Presented by: Christoph Valentin Steinert
While it is well-established that inter-state human rights shaming in the United Nations (UN) is highly politicized, the UN Special Procedures aim for impartial human rights evaluations through regionally balanced independent expert groups. I argue that despite applying equal standards to all states, the global distribution of accusations does not correspond to actual levels of human rights abuse. The propensity that individual cases of human rights abuse are addressed by the Special Procedures is a function of its information availability that differs systematically both across states and between individuals. I hypothesize that cross-country differences in shaming intensity are shaped by restrictions of domestic civil society organizations that impede the capacities of the Special Procedures to verify information. I also suggest that the Special Procedures are more likely to pick up cases of high-profile individuals such as journalists or professors compared to less salient individuals that suffer from similar human rights abuses. I investigate the theoretical arguments with newly collected empirical data from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UN WGAD). I show a substantial mismatch between country-based indices of political imprisonment and the global distribution of accusations of arbitrary detentions. Drawing on zero-inflated negative binomial models, I empirically analyze determinants of cross-country variation in shaming intensity. I model the selection process of the individuals covered by the UN WGAD by matching them with political prisoner lists from NGOs. I probe the external validity of the results with data from other Special Procedures and the preliminary evidence supports my arguments.