The only way is ethics: accountability in human rights investigations

Richard Carver writes:

Last week Cathrine Brun questioned whether the ethical signposts that guide modern humanitarianism are adequate for many of the new challenges faced. This week, I return to the topic of ethics, but at a much more elementary level. For non-practitioners it is probably baffling that human rights work has no agreed ethical code to guide those who are working in the sector. Of course, it could be argued that the whole body of human rights is itself an ethical code, but that argument seems dangerous. The fact that human rights practitioners claim to uphold human rights – they would, wouldn’t they? – does not exempt them from independent ethical scrutiny and accountability.

When I first started working as a human rights researcher in the 1980s, I was surprised that there was apparently no agreed code of conduct for people doing my job. My employer, Amnesty International, had very clear rules on one or two issues, such as confidentiality of information collected in the course of our work, but little beyond that. I had previously worked as a journalist and, as a member of the National Union of Journalists, I had committed to be bound by the union’s code of conduct. As a human rights investigator, I suppose I continued to follow the same precepts but nothing was clearly spelt out.

This large gap was drawn to my attention once again last year, when I conducted a training workshop for national human rights institutions (NHRIs) on how to conduct investigations. Participants asked what ethical standards should guide their work and I had to give the honest answer that there was no single agreed code for human rights investigators (and indeed that most NHRIs had no code of conduct at all). An interesting discussion followed and I concluded that future training sessions needed to consider the main ethical principles guiding human rights research.

A year later I found myself in a yurt, half way up a mountain in Kazakhstan, delivering another training session on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme, to investigators from Central Asian national human rights institutions. This time I was better prepared. In the absence of any coherent template of a code of conduct, I looked at a number of other professions that are guided by codes of conduct and where there might be overlaps with the issues posed in human rights investigations.

The first and obvious port of call was the legal profession. Many NHRI investigators – perhaps a majority – are lawyers. They will be regulated by national accreditation bodies that usually require, among other things:

·       Adherence to the principle of legality and the obligation of lawyers to uphold the rule of law at all times;

·       Protection of the best interests of the client (as far as consistent with the principle of legality);

·       Protection of lawyer-client confidentiality.

Medical practitioners are another group with well-known ethical obligations. Physicians swear the Hippocratic Oath, but this is probably of little relevance, except when the human rights investigator is herself a medical practitioner. However, another principle of medical ethics, “Do No Harm,” may be highly relevant. This is not, as is often supposed, part of the Hippocratic Oath, but is nevertheless a fundamental ethical requirement. Doctors may not embark on reckless treatment that may harm a patient. This is a principle that has been adopted by humanitarian practitioners, since Mary Anderson’s 1999 book of the same name. Perhaps human rights researchers also need to consider its relevance.

Academic researchers have constructed a rather complex edifice of ethical rules. The underlying principles here are autonomy, beneficence, and justice. These refer respectively to voluntary participation in research, the obligation to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits for research participants, and fairness in the selection of participants. Of these, voluntary participation may be of particular relevance for human rights investigators. In academic research this is underpinned by the notion of informed consent – that a research subject voluntarily agrees to take part in research, in full knowledge of what this entails, and with the capacity and competence to make such a judgment.

The next set of ethical codes that I consulted took me back to the beginning of my own career in human rights. Journalism is not usually considered as particularly relevant in this context, but the declaration of principles of the International Federation of Journalists contains several useful pointers:

·       Respect for truth and the right of the public to truth;

·       Only report facts where the origin is known;

·       No suppression of information or falsification;

·       Use fair methods to obtain information;

·       Protect confidential sources.

Finally, another group that is not often considered in relation to human rights investigations: police officers. In fact, the process of accumulating evidence and reconstructing past events can be very similar and statutory human rights bodies may even have some of the same powers as police. As an example, the England and Wales College of Policing has an ethical code that contains a number of relevant provisions for human rights investigators, including, once again, protection of confidential information and non-discrimination and respect for equality.

For the purposes of my training event, I compiled a highly provisional nine-point list of principles that could constitute the basis for a code of conduct for human rights investigators:

      ·       Independence and impartiality;

·       Do no harm;

·       Protect safety and security of those affected by the investigation;

·       Informed consent to participation in the investigation (although this will not apply where an NHRI uses legal powers to compel the production of evidence);

·       Confidentiality;

·       Data protection;

·       Compliance with human rights standards;

·       Reliance on objective and verifiable facts;

·       Refusal to be influenced by threats or inducements.

What do readers think? Feedback would be very welcome, either in the form of a comment on this blog post or a direct communication (rcarver@brookes.ac.uk). I would particularly like to hear from NHRIs anywhere in the world that have experience of addressing these issues.