Measuring Human Rights (31): Which Changes in the Spatial Pattern of Human Rights Are Most Likely?

One result of human rights measurement is a spatial pattern of human rights, a pattern that of course changes over time: countries with lower or higher levels of respect for human rights show up on a world map and this world map shows a certain spatial pattern.

The current spatial pattern of human rights is, somewhat simplistically, like this: wealthy and developed “Western” countries, although by no means free from human rights violations, show on average higher levels of respect for human rights than most developing nations. This is no reason to distribute praise or blame: developed countries share responsibility for human rights violations in developing countries, and high levels of respect for certain human rights in developed countries may be partly a matter of luck or perhaps even the direct consequence of the exploitation of developing regions. It’s also the case that rights cost money, hence wealthier countries can be expected to show higher levels of respect for rights.

Just take it as a fact rather than a judgment, admittedly a stylized fact (one can argue that human rights are better protected in Italy than in the US even though the latter is much wealthier; the same is true if you compare Botswana en China). Here’s an example of one human rights index that confirms this spatial pattern:

(source)

Given this current spatial pattern, what’s our best guess about the future? The dynamics of human rights are poorly understood: unfortunately, we don’t really know which actions or events are most likely to change levels of respect for human rights, at least not in the positive sense. We know that war, genocide, authoritarian rule and poverty bring levels down, but we don’t know quite as well how to bring levels up. We assume that different types of forces may play a role:

• bottom-up forces such as popular revolts, changes in cultural practice etc.;
• top-down forces such as coups d’états, government policies, national legislation, international law, international institutions etc.;
• horizontal forces such as peer pressure among states, conditional bilateral development aid, pay-offs, military intervention, naming-and-shaming etc.

Incentives also play a role, and maybe even forces beyond human control such as climate, geography etc. However, the exact result and impact of these forces is unclear and controversial, so we don’t really know what to do and kinda grope in the dark hoping something is successful.

Given the fact that many people and many institutions actually try to do something in order to raise levels of respect for human rights, it’s indeed likely that some actions will be somewhat effective. Hence the spatial pattern of human rights may change in the future. Here are my guesses as to how it may change:

1. Those areas of the world where respect for rights is already relatively high are most likely to see additional improvements. I agree that low hanging fruit is easiest to pick, and that is why we may see spectacular progress in some countries where respect is currently low: the removal of an oppressive regime can, in theory, bring rapid and large improvements in levels of respect, but in practice there are very few cases (often the overthrow of an oppressive regime is followed by civil war or a successor regime that is only slightly better or even worse). Conversely, sometimes high hanging fruit is, paradoxically, easier to pick. Countries with a reasonably high level of respect often have a history of struggle for rights as well as a culture of rights resulting from that struggle. Rights are part of the ethos of the common man. Remaining rights violations will therefore be more jarring, and existing institutions necessary to tackle them are in place. Another reason to believe that improvements in human rights will first take place in those countries that are already relatively good is the dynamic of bilateral aid: aid donors are likely to give more to countries that already have a certain level of respect, not just because donors like aid conditionality but also because of things such as the “bottomless pit syndrome”. Badly governed countries just take the aid and spend it for the rulers’ personal profit. Donors understandably don’t like this and therefore tend to give to countries that are better governed.
2. Those areas of the world adjacent to areas where respect for rights is already relatively high are likely to see additional improvements. Countries tend to see rights violations in neighboring countries as more urgent than rights violations far away. The former violations can have spillover effects: a civil war in the country next door can cause refugee flows into your own country or other types of spillovers, hence you have an incentive to do something about the war. The same is true for other types of rights violations. Rights violations in a country far away don’t create the same incentives to act. Additionally, the EU and other regional organizations insist that candidate member countries – almost always adjacent countries – first respect human rights before they can become members. These candidate countries therefore have a powerful incentive to raise levels of respect, since membership is often profitable. And there are also other, non-spatial types of proximity among adjacent countries: they may share a language – or their languages may belong to the same family – or a religion. This kind of cultural proximity makes bilateral intervention more likely and more acceptable. If one of two adjacent countries has a high level of respect for human rights, it may find it easier to intervene in the other country in order to foster human rights. It may offer effective institutional assistance for instance, assistance that is more effective – because more acceptable and easier – than assistance from a country far away, “far away” both spatially and culturally. Another reason to believe that proximity plays a role: a country that exists in the proximity of other countries that perform better in the field of human rights is in direct competition with those other countries; competition for workers, international investment etc. Both workers and companies will prefer to invest in countries that are free. Hence the underperformers in a certain region will have the incentive to do better.

If these two claims are correct, then we’ll see increasing polarization among two groups of countries. Not the optimal outcome, but perhaps the most likely one. Time will tell.

More posts in this series are here.

Human Rights Maps (173): Migrant Boat Tragedy Off the Coast of Libya

In the early spring of 2011, in the middle of the conflict in Libya, 72 desperate sub-Saharan men, women and children tried to get to Lampedusa. Instead, they were left to die in a small, overcrowded inflatable rubber dinghy as their calls for help went unheeded. When things first started to go wrong and fuel and food supplies were dwindling, a call was made from a satellite phone to Father Zerai, a contact person whose number they had been given in case of an emergency and who subsequently notified the Italian coast guard. By that time, the boat was drifting with little fuel left and taking in water. The phone call enabled the Italian coast guard to establish the boat’s location. A helicopter was sent to drop some drinking water and food.

The boat was now drifting in the middle of the Mediterranean. Rough waters threw some people overboard and currents sent the boat back to Libya. Fishing boats in the vicinity ignored the vessel. On the 5th day at sea, people started dying onboard. A large military vessel also failed to assist. On the 15th day, only 11 people were still alive. On April 10th, the boat stranded on the Libyan coast. The 11 survivors were arrested. One died in custody due to lack of care.

Here’s an animated map depicting the events:

(source)

Those who ignored the boat could possibly be facing judicial action.

More on migration and Libya. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (172): Africa as an Exploding Skull

I don’t know what this is supposed to represent, but it’s probably some form of commentary on Africa’s “exploding” problems:

Fernando Vicente's "Craneo" map of Africa

(source, source)

Here’s another version:

(source, source)

If it’s a denunciation of Africa’s problems, then I have to say it’s a bad case of overacting. As if everywhere in Africa life is horribly miserable, brutal and short. In fact, things are looking up.

This one, by the same artist, is even more offensive:

(source)

More prejudiced maps here, here and here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Human Rights Maps (164): Largest Chinese and Indian Immigrant Communities

More than 60 million Chinese and more than 20 million Indians live abroad. If all of the world’s migrants from all nationalities would form a separate nation, it would be the world’s fifth-largest.

Largest Chinese and Indian immigrant communities

(source)

Another version, only for China:

(interactive version here)

Within the US, this is the distribution of the Chinese population:

Percent Chinese population by US county

(source, the same map for the Indian population is here)

Also interesting, but without information about the origin of the migrants:

(source)

Amsterdam	Netherlands
Auckland	New Zealand
Brussels	Belgium
Dubai	United Arab Emirates
Frankfurt	Germany
Hong Kong	China
Jerusalem	Israel
Jiddah	Saudi Arabia
London	United Kingdom
Los Angeles	USA
Medina	Saudi Arabia
Melbourne	Australia
Miami	USA
Muscat	Oman
New York	USA
Perth	Australia
Riyadh	Saudi Arabia
San Francisco	USA
San Jose	USA
Singapore	Singapore
Sydney	Australia
Tbilisi	Georgia
Tel Aviv	Israel
Toronto	Canada
Vancouver	Canada

If you’re wondering in what sense immigration is a human rights issue, go here, here and here. More maps on immigration are here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Human Rights Maps (158): Women with Unmet Need for Family Planning

The map below shows the percentage of fertile women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years) who are married or in a consensual union, who are not using contraception, and who report that they do not want children or want their next child with a delay of two years or more:

(source)

Women who have unwanted children may not be able to fully enjoy several of their human rights: they may have to abandon their education or quit their job, and they may be forced to marry someone. Education, work and marriage are all human rights.

More human rights maps here.

Human Rights Maps (149): Freedom of the Internet

Lots of authoritarian regimes impose restrictions on the types of information their citizens can access or publish on the internet. Some countries systematically limit the available websites, and others only do so when their citizens use the internet to organize protest actions (as was recently the case in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt).

China is often criticized for its large-scale and systematic filtering (dubbed the Great Firewall of China), but the phenomenon is relatively widespread. Here are some maps showing the extent of internet censorship:

internet filtering of social content

internet filtering of security content

internet filtering of political content

(source, where you can also find more detailed information)

And this is the index of Reporters Without Borders:

reporters without borders map of internet censorship

And the 2011 version:

map of internet censorship

(source)

More data on this are here and here. More on free speech and the internet is here. Something about the related topic of internet access rights is here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Related Articles

• In Egypt: Access denied – Washington Post (news.google.com)
• Online Censorship Grows in 2010, Showing Power of Netizens (pbs.org)
• Is Internet access a human right? (technolog.msnbc.msn.com)

Human Rights Maps (146): Income Inequality

(source)

Well, it’s not really a map, or not really a real map, but I found it telling. And this is what the “map” looks like when we use some actual figures about U.S. corporate profits and compensation (but a similar pattern occurs in other developed countries):

(source)

Corporate profits are doing just fine, and are even better than before the recession. Workers’ compensation, on the other hand, has at best been stagnant:

(source)

Add to that the unemployment figures, and you have a nice downward slope. The “map” hints at “going under water”, and that’s about right for many of us.

More serious and more informative maps about income inequality are here, here, here and here. More on the link between income inequality and human rights is here. More data on income inequality are here. Something in the recession is here, and here are more human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Inequality, A Collection of Images (2) (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Human Rights Facts (211): U.S. Public Opinion on Income Inequality (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• The Causes of Wealth Inequality (12): Immigration (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Income inequality in Toronto (ekonometrics.blogspot.com)
• Would income inequality result in higher mortality rates for the poor? (ekonometrics.blogspot.com)

Human Rights Maps (144): The “Criminal Immigrant” Stereotype

I’ve argued many times before that the link between immigration and crime is a particularly nasty piece of political cynicism and populism, completely fact-free but unfortunately not devoid of harmful consequences. Three different groups suffer these consequences:

• potential migrants who have beneficial opportunities taken away from them
• existing migrants who are unfairly targeted by law enforcement
• and the native populations who also can’t benefit from increased immigration.

Here’s one sickening cartoon in map form, claiming that Mexico, following the example of Colombia, is drowning in blood, and that the blood is spilling across the border, when in fact immigration reduces crime rates:

(source)

More maps on migration are here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Human Rights Maps (143): Hiroshima Bomb Damage

Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day. Of the people who died on the day of the explosion, 60% died from flash or flame burns, 30% from falling debris and 10% from other causes. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians.

In Hiroshima, the radius of total destruction was about one mile (1.6 km), with resulting fires across 4.4 square miles (11 square km). The residents of Hiroshima were given no notice of the atomic bomb.

Map of the damage inflicted by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima

(source)

Let’s focus on the area near ground zero, the hypocenter of the explosion, which is this part of the map above (the green lines are the rivers):

Below are a few 3D maps/maquettes of this area – which obviously suffered the most destruction – taken from an exhibition in the Hiroshima museum. They show the area before and after the explosion. In each one, you can see the famous dome structure which has become iconic for the event (I marked it on the images).

the red mark on the left is the impact spot

From another viewpoint:

(source, source)

More on Hiroshima here, and on nuclear weapons here and here. More maps here.

Human Rights Maps (141): The American Indian Wars

19th century depiction of representatives of native American tribes

In remembrance of Custer’s Last Stand, which earlier this week was 135 years ago to the day, a few words and maps about the Indian wars. This is the name for the series of violent conflicts between the native peoples of North America and the colonial settlers assisted by the federal U.S. government, lasting roughly from the beginning of the 17th century till the end of the 19th. The European settlers wanted to open land for westward settlement, land that was often occupied by native Americans. Although initial contacts were normally friendly and peaceful, increased settlement and westward expansion provoked resistance on the part of the natives, who saw their lands and other resources taken away from them. This resistance was also caused by cultural differences as well as mutual feelings of superiority.

Cultural differences–the failure of each side to understand the assumptions of the other–led to frequent misunderstandings that in turn led to warfare. One of the most elementary forms of misunderstanding, for example, was the anger felt by the Indians over the colonists’ allowing their cattle and hogs to roam in unfenced freedom. The consequence was often the destruction of the Indians’ corn, which led to the Indians’ killing the offending animals, which led to retaliation by the settlers upon the Indians who had killed the animals, and so on. And too often those retaliating failed to discriminate between the Indians who were responsible for the “offense” and those who were not. (source)

Another example of cultural differences leading to conflicts:

[T]he northern Europeans made only limited use of Indian labor. Rather, they wanted land; if it had not been acquired through war or simple occupation, they sought to purchase it. But often the Indians assumed they were conferring on Europeans only the right to use the land without losing their own right to continue to use it for hunting, fishing, or gathering food. (source)

These cultural differences, together with other factors such as railroad expansion, new mining ventures, the destruction of the buffalo, the deliberate slaughter of Indian horses and the often barbaric attacks on both parts led to bad faith and escalations in hostilities. The settlers and the government regularly engaged in scorched-earth policies, the destruction of entire villages and the murder of women and children.

A turning point in the history of the Indian wars was the American Revolutionary War. Most native Americans perceived the colonial pioneers as a greater threat than the British government, and hence sided with the latter, a decision for which they would pay dearly after the war’s end.

For the American rebels the American Revolutionary War was essentially two parallel wars: while the war in the East was a struggle against British rule, the war in the West was an “Indian War”. The newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for control of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. The colonial interest in westward colonization, as opposed to the British policy of maintaining peace, was one cause of the war. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the war to reduce settlement and expansion onto their land. The Revolutionary War was “the most extensive and destructive” Indian war in United States history. … When the British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), they ceded a vast amount of Native American territory (without the consent of the indigenous peoples) to the United States. The United States treated the Native Americans who had fought with the British as a conquered people who had lost their land. (source)

Other Indian wars soon followed (there a list here) and lasted until the end of the 19th century. The French, Russians and Spanish also fought Indian wars, but obviously not to the same extent as the Settlers and the U.S. government.

The wars resulted invariably in the conquest of native Americans, their assimilation or forced relocation to Indian reservations, and ultimately in the near-destruction of the indigenous peoples. There’s disagreement about the claim that the settlement of North America was a genocidal assault by more powerful intruders upon weaker, more “primitive” peoples. Conservative estimates put the total population of native Americans at about 8 million before the arrival of the Europeans. Although infectious diseases brought over by the Europeans were the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives, many of the latter, probably tens of thousands, died a violent death during the Indian wars or the forced resettlement. The fact is that by the end of the Indian wars, at the end of the 19th century, only around 200.000 native Americans remained. Some say that the destruction of the tribes was largely involuntary because it resulted from the imported diseases for which the Indians had no immunity. Others point to widespread murder, the destruction of the Indian economy, and the forced removals. Also, if the Europeans brought diseases, they could have done something to protect the natives. They didn’t. Some even claim that there have been cases of groups of Indians being purposefully infected.

Here’ a map depicting some of the battles in the Indian wars:

A map of the Western United States showing the general location of tribes and the location of some army posts and battles.

(source, click image to enlarge)

Here’s an interesting artistic rendering of these events, in quasi-map form:

This painting shows "Manifest Destiny" (the religious belief that the United States should expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in the name of God). In 1872 artist John Gast painted a popular scene of people moving west that captured the view of Americans at the time. Called "Spirit of the Frontier" and widely distributed as an engraving portrayed settlers moving west, guided and protected by Columbia, a goddess-like figure and aided by technology (railways, telegraphs), driving Native Americans, wild animals and bison into obscurity. Columbia leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she travels; she holds a school book. It is also important to note that she is bringing the "light" as witnessed on the eastern side of the painting as she travels towards the "darkened" west.

(source)

See also this map about imperialism in North America. Other human rights maps are here.

Human Rights Maps (140): Poverty in the U.S.

Here’s a map of the number of people in the U.S. below the poverty line (year 2009):

(source, where you can view an interactive version of this map)

(source)

In total, around 14% of the population was considered poor in 2009. (Around 13% in 2008).

And these are the numbers for 2010:

(source)

Here’s another version:

(source)

Data for 2011:

(source)

Read more here about the way in which the poverty line in the U.S. is set and about some of the problems with the system. More maps about poverty in the U.S. are here, here and here. More data are here.

More human rights maps are here.

Human Rights Maps (139): Casualties in the War in Iraq, 2004-2009

The Wikileaks Iraq war logs have made it possible to map the occurrence of violent death during the Iraq war:

Wikileaks, mapping of Iraq war deaths

(source, where you can zoom in on the map)

This follows more or less closely the population density of Iraq, meaning that the war has been equally horrible for everyone, with the exception of some parts of the north of the country where violent death has been somewhat less common:

Iraq population density map

(source)

Some key figures:

• The Wikileaks database records 109,032 deaths in total, 66,081 civilians, 23,984 insurgents and 15,196 Iraqi security forces. Baghdad alone saw 45,497 casualties. Colation forces lost 3,771 soldiers in the period covered.
• There were 65,439 IED explosions (improvised explosive devices), resulting in 31,780 deaths. Another 44,620 IEDs were found and cleared.
• Here’s how some of these numbers evolved over time:

(source)

(source)

These numbers are probably low estimates because not every event is recorded.

Let’s focus on Baghdad for an instant, the epicenter of violence. December 2006 was the worst month. Below are the details of one of the city’s deadliest days, Dec. 20. There were 114 separate episodes of violence that day, resulting in the deaths of about 160 Iraqi citizens and police officers (an interactive version of the map is here).

(source, click image to enlarge)

More maps on Iraq here and here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Related Articles

• Iraq War logs released by Wikileaks shed new light (flowingdata.com)
• “Wikileaks Iraq War Logs – Part Two” and related posts (googlemapsmania.blogspot.com)

Human Rights Maps (138): Pornography Laws

Pornography is often framed as a free speech issue. This map shows where adult consumption of pornography is legal or not:

(source, click image to enlarge)

More on pornography and free speech here and here, more on obscenity and free speech here. More maps here.

Human Rights Maps (136): The Gulag Archipelago

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag – or GulAG – was the government agency that administered the Soviet system of penal labor camps. The Gulag camps, although they housed also petty criminals, were in fact the major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, likened the scattered camps to “a chain of islands”, hence the Gulag Archipelago, and described the Gulag as a system where people worked to death.

More than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953. Harsh treatment resulted in the death of more than a million of them. The total population of the camp system at any one moment varied between 500.000 and 1,5 million. The number of camps was roughly 500. Some of today’s major cities in Russia were originally camps.

A significant proportion of the camp population were political prisoners. Many of the inmates never had a trial. Some had a show trial. Although the camp system was dramatically scaled down in the 1960s, the USSR continued to imprison political opponents until the very end of the regime.

The Gulag, together with the purges, the terror famine and the deportation and exile to remote areas of the USSR of 6 to 7 million people, constitutes the major crime of Stalin’s totalitarian rule in the USSR.

Gulag map

(source, click image to enlarge)

Gulag prisoner stats, 1934-1953

(source)

More on communism, Stalin, Russia, and totalitarianism. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (135): The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and Child Soldiers

The Lord’s Resistance Army is a religious and military group formed in 1987 and headed by Joseph Kony, who claims to be the “spokesperson” of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the Holy Spirit. The inspiration is mainly Christian. The LRA first engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government, but later moved its activities to parts of Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo. It’s infamous for widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, sexual enslavement of women and children, and forcing children to participate in hostilities.

(source)

(source)

More on child soldiers is here and here. More maps about child soldiers are here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Human Rights Maps (134): Gerrymandering

Original cartoon of "The Gerry-Mander", the political cartoon that led to the coining of the term Gerrymander. The district depicted in the cartoon was created by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the incumbent candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists in 1812. Combining the salamander form and the name of the Governor gives "gerrymander".

Democracy is a human right. This is of course an excessively vague statement, and so we should define democracy. There are many ways to do that (and we have a whole blog series about it), some good and some less good, but for better or worse we usually define democracy as a representative system in which people cast votes for candidate-politicians, and the candidates who collect a majority – sometimes a plurality – of those votes go on to become the representatives of the people. Those representatives govern, again usually by way of majority or plurality votes amongst each other, and this government is considered a good proxy of government by the people (demo-cracy). It’s considered a good proxy because of many reasons:

• Representatives have an incentive to govern in accordance with the wishes of the people, since they supposedly want to be re-elected in the future.
• The people can influence their representatives through free speech, organized political activity and the threat of dismissal.
• The people can verify the coherence between their views and the actions of politicians because of freedom of the press, government accountability rules, freedom of information rules etc.

The argument that we need a proxy for direct government by the people is itself contentious but let’s temporarily bow to standard opinion for the sake of argument.

One problem with this model of democracy is that it can be gamed. For practical purposes, the “people” in this model are usually partitioned into different sections – districts, states, provinces, constituencies etc. Each section of the people then gets to vote, and the majority – or plurality – within each section then appoints a representative to be seated in a national parliament. It’s clear that the way in which the boundaries between these sections or districts are drawn determines to some extent the outcome of the vote, and that decisions to redraw – “redistrict” – can alter the outcome substantially.

This knowledge has led politicians to exert influence on the way in which the boundaries are drawn, so as to favor their electoral prospects. For example, a white upper-class politician can manipulate district lines in such a way that the voters in the district are mainly white upper-class. Her opponent, who happens to be from a poor black community, will likely do less well with the given electorate. If the district boundaries cut across class and race, the two candidates will have a more equal contest.

It can also happen that a particular group of constituents manipulates the district boundaries, perhaps with the help of politicians or officials, for example because of racist motives: attributing black communities to other districts makes it unlikely that black politicians will have influence over racially biased white populations.

These kinds of district manipulation are called gerrymandering, and it includes both a spatial and a quantitative aspect:

• the spatial dimension of borders is manipulated – e.g. poor black neighborhoods are excluded from the district and attributed to another one
• and/or the size of the electorate is manipulated – e.g. boundaries are fixed in such a way that a relatively small pocket of voters is grouped into one district and therefore gets it’s own representative (also called malapportionment).

Needless to say, it’s usually incumbents who engage in this kind of manipulation, since it’s they who often have the authority and power to modify district boundaries.

[I]n no fewer than 44 of America’s 50 states, it is state legislatures, composed as they are of party politicians, who decide where the lines should be drawn for seats in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The potential for abuse is so obvious that it is a kind of miracle that the system has survived as long as it has. (source)

As the saying goes, in gerrymandered election districts, the voters don’t choose their politicians – the politicians choose their voters.

The stylized example below shows the possibly dramatic effects of gerrymandering, limited to the manipulation of the borders, not the size of the districts. It’s a fictional country containing 15 citizens. There are three districts, every district gets to vote and the majority in each district decides on one of the three national representatives. The three districts are of equal size and the gerrymandering won’t modify the size of the districts, only the borders. There are two political parties, the Orange Democrats (round shapes) and the Purple Republicans (square shapes). 9 of the 15 citizens systematically vote Purple, 6 Orange, and they keep their residence fixed.

(source)

The original district lines, A, gives 1 district to Orange and 2 to Purple, roughly equivalent to the total voting pattern of 6:9. Now, as a result of this more or less correct districting, Purple becomes the majority in government, and therefore able to engage in some redistricting, which gives us situation B. Given districting B, the next election guarantees a 3 district win for Purple, a result that’s disproportional considering the nation-wide 9:6 Purple majority. Orange is no longer represented at all. However, for some mysterious and irrelevant reason, some further redistricting occurs, which gives situation C. At the next election, Orange ensures a 2-1 win notwithstanding its nation-wide minority position of 6:9.

Gerrymandering can have different motives:

• It can be used to give a certain political party a disproportionate share of national power (especially when district systems are combined with first-past-the-post elections in which the one candidate with the most votes – majority or plurality – wins the seat reserved for that district; in political systems that give seats in parliament in proportion to the total national votes, it makes no sense to gerrymander).
• It can be used to favor a certain political class (e.g. when wealthy people are systematically attributed to smaller districts).
• An individual candidate can use it to impose an electoral disadvantage on a particular opponent.
• Groups of citizens can use it to maintain supremacy and to exclude others from political participation. This exclusion can take many forms:
  • groups may be included in another, very large district in which their voice will be drowned
  • a group may be scattered over many districts so that they can’t unite in a coherent voting block
  • or they may be attributed to a district in which their group will win anyway, in which case their votes are wasted.
• etc.

This means that it can also be used in a positive way, e.g. to give disadvantaged groups a larger weight in elections. However, the word gerrymandering usually has negative connotations, and rightly so.

Sometimes it’s difficult to prove that gerrymandering took place, but a highly irregular geographical shape of a district, or big differences between the sizes of the populations of districts are good indications. Ideally, districts boundaries should be drawn randomly on the basis of census data, and should therefore not result in highly irregular and contorted shapes.

Some examples of such irregular shapes from the US:

California's 11th congressional district drawn to favor its then-Republican incumbent

(source)

The earmuff shape of Illinois's 4th congressional district packs two Hispanic areas while remaining contiguous by narrowly tracing Interstate 294

(source)

Utah's 2nd congressional district was redrawn after the election of Democrat Jim Matheson in 2000 to favor future Republican majorities. The predominantly Democratic city of Salt Lake was connected to predominantly Republican eastern and southern Utah through a thin sliver of land running through Utah County. This particular redistricting did not have the desired effect, as Matheson is still in office.

(source)

U.S. congressional districts covering Travis County, Texas (outlined in red) in 2002, left, and 2004, right. In 2003, the majority of Republicans in the Texas legislature redistricted the state, diluting the voting power of the heavily Democratic county by parceling its residents out to more Republican districts.

(source)

More maps about democracy are here. More human rights maps in general here.

Related Articles

• “Gerrymandering” carves out a dull argument (reuters.com)
• Jeff Reichert: What Is Prison-Based Gerrymandering? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Electoral boundaries in America: Time to bury Governor Gerry (economist.com)
• Redistricting: Gerrymandering as a Competitive Sport | Dissident Voice (wilderside.wordpress.com)
• Florida Supreme Court Rules Against Attempts to Stop Redistricting Reform Ballot Measures (elections.firedoglake.com)

Human Rights Maps (133): Stalin’s Terror Famine in Ukraine (Holodomor)

The Holodomor (a Ukrainian word for  “death by hunger”) was a famine in the Ukraine from 1932–1933, during which millions of inhabitants died of starvation (estimates range from 2.6 million to 10 million).

Scholars disagree about the causes of the famine: natural factors, bad economic policies and deliberately engineered measures are possible factors. Some have argued that the famine may have been provoked as an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, and therefore that it falls under the legal definition of genocide. Hence the expression “terror-famine”. Others blame unwise policies of industrialization and collectivization of farming.

These are the countries that do recognize it as a genocide:

Countries which officially recognize the Holodomor as genocide

(source)

This map shows the population decline during the famine:

rate of population decline during the Holodomor Famine map

(source, source; click image to enlarge)

More on famine. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• YES: Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide? Naimark… (pajamasmedia.com)
• Who’s Afraid of Ukrainian History? (nybooks.com)

Human Rights Maps (132): Democracy, the Difference Between Self-Identification and Reality

First, if you doubt that democracy is a human rights issue, go here. The following map shows the countries of the world that self-identify as a democracy in green, and the tiny minority that doesn’t in red (Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Fiji, Tonga and Brunei):

countries that self-identify as democracies (green) or not (red)

(source, click image to enlarge)

Now, compare this to the latest Freedom House scores, which helpfully but completely coincidentally have the same color codes:

Freedom House scores for 2001 and 2009

(source)

This raises two related questions: why is there a difference between self-identification and reality, and why do countries think it is important to claim that they are democracies, even when the facts clearly belie this claim and the governments making the claim probably know better? Self-delusion can’t be excluded. Some governments probably have an excessively optimistic view of their country’s institutions and achievements. Some may have an excessively minimalistic view of democracy (but then again, Freedom House makes the same mistake…). Some may believe to have the support of the people and think that this is a sufficient condition. Some may hope that claiming the support of the people will allow them to get away with more on the international scene, or to get some beneficial treatment from other countries. And some may hope for a self-fulfilling prophecy effect.

What we can take away from this is that the idea of democracy seems to be very powerful. I just wish it was more than merely the idea that is powerful.

More maps about democracy are here. More about democracy measurement is here. More human rights maps are here.

Human Rights Maps (131): 9-11 and Ground Zero

Here are a few maps depicting the events of 9-11-2001. The first one shows the flight paths of the hijacked planes:

(source)

This next one shows the impact location in the two towers of the WTC, as well as the trajectory of some of the debris of the planes (the north tower, WTC 1 was hit first, 20 minutes before the second plane hit WTC 2):

(source, click image to enlarge)

This map shows which buildings were damaged or destroyed:

(source)

The following infographic explains why the buildings collapsed:

(source, click image to enlarge)

And this map shows the locations of human remains found on or around ground zero (never mind the indication of the “mosque“; some people believe that this is somehow relevant):

(source)

More on 9-11, the war on terror, al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. More maps on terrorism. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (130): The Trail of Tears, the Story of Indian Removal

Indian removal, also called the Trail of Tears, was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river. The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 26, 1830.

America’s policy had always been to allow Native Americans to remain east of the Mississippi as long as they remained “civilized” or assimilated themselves. Part of the expected assimilation was the abandonment of a hunting lifestyle in favor of an agricultural one. The latter didn’t require a lot of land and the loss of land would be compensated by the possibility of trade of agricultural goods with the white population. Needless to say, the land that would come available through this mechanism could be used by those of European descent.

In the words of Jefferson:

Thomas Jefferson

exchange [of] lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want.

This policy of assimilation was accompanied by policies of land purchase – usually by treaty and sometimes under coercion – and land exchange: Native Americans would relinquish land in the east in exchange for equal or comparable land west of the Mississippi River.

In 1830, some of the “Five Civilized Tribes” — the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee — were still living east of the Mississippi and their lands were desired by whites, for economic reasons but also because of fears that the Natives would anew engage in wars. Governments of the various U.S. states wanted that all tribal lands within their boundaries be placed under state jurisdiction. The federal government assisted them by passing the Removal Act, which provided for the government to negotiate removal treaties with the various tribes. As a result, the five tribes were resettled in the new Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma and parts of Kansas. Some of them resisted, leading to new wars between the Natives and the settlers. Others suffered or died en route to their destinations, because of exposure, disease and starvation. An estimated 4,000 died. By 1837, 46,000 Native Americans from these southeastern states had been removed from their homelands thereby opening 25 million acres for settlement.

(source, click image to enlarge)

(source)

(source)

More on indigenous rights. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• For and Against: Two Sides of the 1830s Indian Removal (prweb.com)
• Before the Tears: The Cherokees’ Proud Past (online.wsj.com)

Human Rights Maps (127): Civilian Casualties Following the Extension of the War in Afghanistan to Pakistan

(source, click image to enlarge)

A similar map about Afghanistan is here. More human rights maps are here.

Human Rights Maps (126): Layout of Execution Rooms

This post isn’t about maps in the geographical sense, as is normally the case in this blog series about human rights maps. Still, I think it’s interesting to have a look at the topography of the death penalty, given that few among us actually know a lot about the actual practice of an execution (it’s not done in public anymore, at least not in most parts of the world).

Some are reconsidering the death penalty because of the costs involved, but not California. Here’s an image from Ari Kohen’s blog:

(source)

How nice of them to separate the two families. Let’s just hope that they won’t think that having a bigger room means having to use it more often.

An interesting setup is this one from Japan:

(source, source)

This is the execution room in the Tokyo Detention House. Notice the three buttons in the second picture, placed on the wall in a room adjacent to the actual execution room. The setup is designed in such a way that the executioner doesn’t have to come face-to-face with the convict. Moreover, the three buttons have to be pressed simultaneously by three officers, but only one button actually opens the trapdoor (red square on the floor, below the hook in the ceiling). None of the officers is told which button is the live one that will cause the prisoner’s death.

The red square on the white floor marks the spot in the windowless room where convicts stand with the noose around their neck, before a trapdoor opens below them and they plunge to their deaths. The noose is hung from the hook in the ceiling just above the trapdoor. I suppose the rings in the wall and floor are for restraining the prisoner temporarily.

Below is a floor plan of the execution room in the prison at Terre Haute, Indiana:

(source, source)

If you look carefully, you’ll notice that the viewing rooms have toilet facilities. I’m sure there’s a good reason for that.

Below is the hanging room in the Washington State Penitentiary (also called the Walla Walla State Penitentiary):

(source)

The curious thing here is that the viewing area seems to be positioned at a height that makes it possible to see the face of the convict after the drop. That’s not something I understand, or want to understand.

Between 1991 and 1998, Lucinda Devlin photographed in different penitentiaries in the U.S. She called the resulting series The Omega Suites, alluding to the final letter of the Greek alphabet as a metaphor for the finality of execution. The series includes numerous photographs of execution chambers. Here are a few:

Electric Chair, Greenhaven Correctional Facility, Greenhaven, New York, 1991

Notice the air filter just above the chair. I imagine the rubber on the floor is there to protect the executioners. The same room viewed from the executioner’s booth (notice the large switch):

Executioner's Room, Greenhaven Correctional Facility, Greenhaven, New York, 1991

(source)

Some more from the same series:

gallows at the Smyrna, Delaware prison

gas chamber in Baltimore, Maryland

(source)

There’s also this innovative approach in China.

More about capital punishment is here. More maps about capital punishment are here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Related Articles

• Japan opens up death chamber to media for first time (alternet.org)
• Human Rights Maps (116): Life Without Parole For U.S. Teenagers (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)

Human Rights Maps (125): The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million.

The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.

(source, click image to enlarge)

(source, click image to enlarge)

More about genocide. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (124): The Great Migration

The Great Migration was the movement of 2 million African Americans out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West from approximately 1910 to 1930. The cause of this massive population flow was racism and racist violence, combined with a lack of employment opportunities. The industrial cities of the Northeast and the Midwest looked much more appealing, although blacks encountered racism there as well, primarily from unskilled whites fearing labor competition. The Second Great Migration took place from 1940 to 1970 and involved roughly 5 million people. By the end of the Second Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population. Only half of African Americans remained in the Southern states. Before the 1860s, less than eight percent of the African American population lived in the Northeastern or Midwestern United States.

(source, click image to enlarge)

It appears that there’s now a Great Migration in Reverse going on.

More on racism. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (123): Lynchings in the U.S.

(source)

map of lynchings by state and county in the US 1900-1930

(source; the legend is not very clear but the main message is; what is a lynching according to this map? “There must be legal evidence that a person was killed. That person must have met death illegally. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race or tradition.”)

More data on lynchings are here. More textual information on lynchings and racism here and here respectively. More human rights maps here.

Human Rights Maps (122): Indicators of Gendercide

The human sex ratio is approximately 1:1. In many countries, however, and especially in China and India, there are a lot more men than women. The most important cause of this are social and cultural pressures in favor of boys. It’s estimated that there are about 100 million fewer women and girls than there should be. The term “gendercide” has been coined to explain these “missing women”. Sex selective abortions, maternal mortality resulting from substandard healthcare systems, violence against women and girls and other forms of gender discrimination combine to create this gendercide.

Sex selective abortions in some of the richer states of Northern India are creating ratios of just 300 girls for every 1000 boys. This phenomenon is most common among richer families, who can afford to find out the sex of their fetus and pay for an abortion. In poorer families, the problem tends to be neglect of girls and sometimes infanticide. It’s against the law in India to tell expectant parents the sex of their fetus, but the law is poorly enforced.

In China, the one-child policy is aggravating the effect.

Here are a few maps showing skewed sex ratios (the current world wide sex ratio is 107 boys to 100 girls):

(source)

(source)

(source)

(source)

More on gender discrimination is here. More maps on gender discrimination are here. More human rights maps in general are here.

Human Rights Maps (121): Residential Segregation in the U.S.

Segregation comes in many forms: there can be segregation in schools, at work, in the places people live, in restaurants etc. In U.S. history, it has often been racial segregation, but there is also something like gender segregation, wealth segregation etc., and often these types overlap. Segregation can be the forced and legal separation of “different kinds of humans” into different groups and the illegality of interaction or contact. Jim Crow laws, laws regarding interracial marriage etc. have in the past enforced segregation. But even when it’s illegal it can be maintained by way of prejudice, discrimination, selective rental behavior or employment decisions, vigilante violence (e.g. lynching), intimidation, ghettoization etc. Below I focus on non-legally enforced residential segregation in present-day U.S.

Over the 20th century, the residential patterns of US households became increasingly divided by race. From 1940 to 2000, the share of the metropolitan white population who lived in the suburban ring increased from 38% to 74%, whereas, even by 2000, over 60% of the black metropolitan population remained in central cities. (source)

In the hundred largest metropolitan areas, where most whites and blacks live,

the exposure of the average white person to black people has risen by two percentage points, from 5.5 percent in 1980 to 7.6 percent today. 

The decline of isolation among African-Americans since 1980 has been overwhelmingly due to the growth of Latino populations in black neighborhoods. The presence of Latinos in black neighborhoods has doubled since 1980, from 8.2 to 16.4 percent. Similarly, the declining homogeneity of white neighborhoods does not reflect the long-sought residential integration of whites and blacks, but instead the influx of Latinos into white neighborhoods. In 1980 Latinos were 5.5 percent of residents in majority-white neighborhoods. Today they are 11.2 percent. (source)

These two maps show current residential segregation in New York and Chicago respectively:

residential segregation in New York

(source/source/source/source, one dot equals 25 people and is color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green)

residential segregation in Chicago

(source/source/source/source, one dot equals 25 people and is color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green)

Another approach to residential segregation is in the map below:

(source, read the source for the methodology)

Where people decide to live is obviously their free choice and I don’t think anybody seriously defends forced relocation as a solution to residential segregation. However, if residential segregation is the result, not of free choice but of racial poverty, conscious or unconscious discrimination by landlords or employers or any other type of racial bias, then it is a problem. However, rather than trying to solve this problem directly, one should look at the underlying causes of residential segregation and do something about those.

More on segregation. More on how segregation is measured. More maps on discrimination. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Check Out The Extreme Racial Segregation In America’s Biggest Cities (businessinsider.com)
• How White Is Your Neighborhood? [Urban Anthropology] (gawker.com)
• Segregation and Exploitation in the Old South (blogs.forbes.com)
• “Mapping Race and Ethnicity” and related posts (rustwire.com)

Human Rights Maps (120): Spending on Health Care and Number of Doctors Per Capita

how much each country spends on healthcare per head of the population

(source, click image to enlarge)

doctors per 100,000 people

doctors per 100,000 people

(source)

More on the right to healthcare is here. More data on health are here. More human rights maps are here.

Human Rights Maps (119): Civilian Casualties and IED Attacks in Afghanistan

Afghanistan civilian casualties

Afghanistan civilian casualties by type of perpetrator

Afghanistan civilian casualties by type of perpetrator and by method

(source)

Let’s just have a look at Improvised Explosive Devices, the favorite tool of the insurgents. From the Wikileaks Afghanistan war logs, there’s this overview of every roadside bomb and IED attack between 2004 and 2009 (this includes attacks on soldiers and civilians, and only covers roadside bombs, not person- or vehicle-borne suicide bombs) (you can click on some of the images to enlarge):

Afghanistan IED attacks

(source)

If we select only the IED attacks on civilians, we get this:

(source)

More on Afghanistan. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Civilian casualties in Afghanistan rise by a third (ft.com)
• Insurgents now causing most of Afghan civilian casualties (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Sharp Rise in Afghan Civilian Casualties, U.N. Says (nytimes.com)
• An unlikely consensus on civilian casualties | Erica Gaston (guardian.co.uk)
• Wikileaks Afghanistan: suggestions US tried to cover up civilian casualties (telegraph.co.uk)

Human Rights Maps (118): World Giving Index, a Map of Charity

(source, this is the version of 2010, click image to enlarge)

The World Giving Index offers a view of charitable behavior worldwide reflecting the fact that being charitable is about more than simply giving money. (In case you’re wondering about the link between charity and human rights, go here).

The Index is based on three types of charitable behavior – giving money to an organization, volunteering time to an organization and helping a stranger. The map above reflects the way the world looks based upon the charitable behavior of each country’s population and shows their ranking in the Index. The size of the circle reflects the World Giving Index percentage score and the number is its ranking on the World Giving Index.

The top 21 most generous countries, in order, are:

1. Australia
1. New Zealand
3. Ireland
3. Canada
5. Switzerland
5. United States
7. Netherlands
8. Britain
8. Sri Lanka
10 Austria
11. Lao People’s Democratic Republic
11. Sierra Leone
13. Malta
14. Iceland
14. Turkmenistan
16. Guyana
16. Qatar
18. Hong Kong
18. Germany
18. Denmark
18. Guinea

The incidence of giving money to charity ranges from as low as 4% in Lithuania to as high as 83% in Malta. Incidence of volunteering lies in a range from 2% in Cambodia to 61% in Turkmenistan. Each country has its own way to give. In Liberia, less than one tenth (8%) of the population give money to charity every month. Yet over three-quarters (76%) of Liberians help a stranger every month, more than any other country in the world. Overall, 20% of the world’s population had volunteered time in the month prior to interview, 30% of the world’s population had given money to charity, and 45% of the world’s population had helped a stranger.

Giving money to charity increases with age, largely explained by changes in disposable income. Women are generally more likely to give than men, but only just barely – 30 percent versus 29 percent. Religious affiliation is correlated with higher levels of giving. And within countries, those with higher wealth tend to give relatively less than those with lower wealth, paradoxically.

More on charity and poverty. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Canada ranked second most charitable in the world (theglobeandmail.com)
• Ireland comes third in World Giving Index (politics.ie)
• The Most Generous Countries on Earth (economix.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Australia, NZ top ‘giving’ index (bbc.co.uk)
• ‘World Giving Index’ measures charity in 153 nations (theglobeandmail.com)
• “US Fifth Most Giving Country in the World, China 147th” and related posts (tonic.com)

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (34): The Narcissism of Small Differences

What I want to criticize in this installment of our series on lies and statistics, is the ordinal ranking of relatively similar entities in a way that creates the illusion of substantial disparity. You often see it combined with color schemes: one entity that’s just below a threshold value gets one color, and the next one which is just above gets another color, and then it’s like they differ substantially. It’s rather common in maps, of which there’s an example here:

HDI by states of the US

(source, more information on the Human Development Index is here; note: the criticism offered in this post is not directed against the HDI itself)

Louisiana has a score of .801, West Virginia .800, and Mississippi at .799, and that makes Mississippi stand out although it’s really not different from the other two.

Something to keep in mind when looking at all the maps I post on this blog, or any ordinal ranking for that matter.

More about lies and statistics here.

Related Articles

• Lies, Damn Lies and World Cup Statistics (broadstuff.com)
• Lies, Damned Lies and Cat Statistics (idle.slashdot.org)
• How To Lie With Statistics (seobook.com)
• Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (slideshare.net)

Human Rights Maps (117): Gun Rights in the U.S. and the World

(source, click image to enlarge)

The Supreme Court ruled in July 2010 that state and city governments must respect the individual right to bear arms that is guaranteed by Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This ruling does not necessarily invalidate all gun control laws, but it will likely mean the demise of outright bans and restrict significantly the ability of states and cities to impose other kinds of controls.

(source, click image to enlarge)

Here’s a map on gun rights in other parts of the world:

(source, click image to enlarge)

More on gun rights here. A related map is here. More human rights maps are here.

Related Articles

• Supreme Court ruling protects gun rights, reasonable restriction (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Supreme Court extends gun rights (news.bbc.co.uk)
• After tragedy, Ariz. lawmakers eye more gun rights (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Human Rights Maps (116): Life Without Parole For U.S. Teenagers

(source)

Currently, over 2,500 prisoners sit behind bars in the US without the possibility of parole for crimes committed while they were children.

In May 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the 8th Amendment‘s ban on cruel and unusual punishment means juvenile offenders who haven’t been convicted of murder shouldn’t be sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole.

A few years ago, the Court already banned the death penalty for juvenile offenders. See also here.

(source, click image to enlarge)

More on the death penalty, and on juvenile incarceration. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Judges Weigh Fairnes of Juvenile Life Without Parole (blogs.wsj.com)
• Florida Drags its Heels on Juvenile Lifers (criminaljustice.change.org)

Human Rights Maps (115): Legalization of Euthanasia

This is the status dd. 2009:

(source, click image to enlarge)

I guess “passive euthanasia” here means stopping life support and possibly other ways of letting people die without active intervention that makes them die. If you have more up-to-date information, let me know.

More on euthanasia and assisted suicide. More on self-determination, self-ownership and autonomy. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Most Quebecers back legal euthanasia: poll (cbc.ca)
• Dead girl’s dad ‘asked about euthanasia’ (news.theage.com.au)
• Euthanasia wins 75% support (theage.com.au)

Human Rights Maps (113): Slavery in the U.S.

Between the 15th century and the end of the 19th, the transatlantic slave trade – also called the Middle Passage – moved millions of slaves from West Africa, West Central Africa, and Eastern Africa to the European colonies in the New World. Most contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12 million Africans arrived in the New World, although the actual number of people taken from their homes is considerably higher (an estimated 15% of the Africans died at sea, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships). The main traders were the Portuguese and the British. Below are some maps showing numbers and flows:

Slave trade from Africa to the Americas, 1650-1860:

(source, click image to enlarge; more on the so-called Middle Passage is here)

Here’s another version:

(source, click image to enlarge)

(source, click image to enlarge)

Origins of slaves:

(source, click image to enlarge)

Number of slaves in the US in 1860:

(source)

Another version of this map, showing some of the differences between regions across slave states, is here.

And in 1820:

(source)

This is an animation showing when United States territories and states forbade or allowed slavery, 1789–1861:

(source, click the image to start animation)

More on slavery is here. Other human rights maps are here.

Related Articles

• Ron Soodalter: Slavery is Alive and Well in the US: In Support of California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (huffingtonpost.com)
• Why would a slave love slavery? (beliefnet.com)
• You: Firms oppose California bill to disclose policing of labor practices (latimes.com)
• Disunion: Visualizing Slavery (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• NYT: Visualizing Slavery (theroot.com)
• States’ Rights, but to What? (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)

Human Rights Maps (108): The World’s Ten Most Dangerous Countries For Children

(source, where you can find something about the methodology of this ranking)

More on children’s rights is here. More human rights maps here.

Human Rights Maps (107): Income Inequality in New York

Not a map in the usual sense of the word:

(source, click image to enlarge)

A similar approach is this: income levels and income differences along NY’s subway lines. An example:

income inequality in NY

If you’re wondering why I believe income inequality is a human rights issue, go here. More on income inequality is here (some data here). More human rights maps are here.

Related Articles

• Income Inequality and Financial Crises (nytimes.com)
• Income Inequality: Who’s Really to Blame? (time.com)
• The Spirit Level: how ‘ideas wreckers’ turned book into political punchbag (guardian.co.uk)
• Un-Level Ground (online.wsj.com)

Human Rights Maps (106): Countries That Have Ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture

(source)

There’s an optional protocol to the CAP, which provides for the establishment of “a system of regular visits undertaken by independent international and national bodies to places where people are deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The following countries have signed or ratified this protocol:

(source)

If it’s generally true that countries sign treaties because they believe in them, then we can claim that the first map shows the extent of the universal acceptance of the immorality of torture, not of course the extent of actual torture. It corroborates what I wrote before on the legal and moral universality of human rights. For a more pessimistic view of legal universality, go here.

More about the CAT is here; more on torture here; other maps on international support for human rights are here; other human rights maps are here.

Related Articles

• U.N. urges Iraq to ratify convention against torture (cnn.com)
• NGOs, CSOs task FG on criminalising torture (vanguardngr.com)
• MI5 Agents ‘At Risk’ Over Torture Guidelines (news.sky.com)

Human Rights Maps (105): Human Rights Violations Because of Overpopulation?

Personally, I don’t believe overpopulation is a concept that has a lot of explanatory value, but many people believe that rights violations such as poverty, famine and war are caused primarily if not exclusively by overpopulation. And not just regional overpopulation in certain pockets of the earth where water and food are scarce, but overpopulation as a planetary problem. There are supposed to be too many people in the world for peaceful coexistence and sustainable food production, perhaps even for the survival of humanity. The areas of the world which are inhabitable and usable for agriculture are said to be too small compared to the number of people living in them.

I won’t repeat my arguments against these claims (if you want you can read them here). I’ll just use the occasion to post a few maps showing the world’s population. I know, this is no proof for or against overpopulation theories, but the maps are simply too beautiful to miss. For those who think we’re running out of space:

(source, click image to enlarge)

The same message can be conveyed by the following maps:

Obviously, not all the non-dotted areas are inhabitable, but still, the open space is vast. Another way to present this:

(source)

The following map shows areas in the world where there are at least 15 people per square kilometer:

(source)

These may also be interesting:

(source)

More human rights maps are here (most of those are more intimately connected to human rights than the ones above).

Related Articles

• Top 10: the world’s most overpopulated countries (newstatesman.com)
• John Lennon: Overpopulation is a Myth (cherylcline.wordpress.com)
• “Man obsessed with overpopulation terrorizes Discovery Channel” and related posts (americanfreethought.com)

Human Rights Maps (104): Human Development Index, Migration and Borders

If you’re not familiar with the Human Development Index, go here first. In essence, the HDI combines measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for countries or regions.

When checking differences in HDI scores between countries or between regions of a country, you can clearly correlate those differences with migration patterns. The purpose of a lot of migration is to leave a low HDI region for a high HDI region. Take a look at these two beautiful maps:

(source, the border locality in the US with the lowest HDI still has a higher HDI than the Mexican border locality with the highest HDI)

(source)

Obviously, there can also be a reverse causation taking place: poor migrants move to richer places, but these places can – in part – be richer because of the activities of migrants.

Also, one wouldn’t want to imply that economic opportunities explain all the reasons why people migrate, but they obviously do explain a lot.

More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (103): Democracy in Africa

The Economist Intelligence Unit Index of Democracy measures five general categories:

• free and fair election process
• civil liberties
• functioning of government
• political participation
• political culture

(see also Wikipedia)

Countries are ranked on a scale between 0 and 10, with 10 being the most democratic one. In the 2007 ranking, Sweden was the most democratic with a score of 9.88). Here’s the 2010 EIU ranking of countries in Africa:

(source)

Update: here’s the 2011 version, and you can clearly see some progress:

(source)

Democracy south of the Sahara may be sloppy and haphazard, but electoral contests and term limits are increasingly accepted as fixed rules, to be flouted at a would-be ruler’s peril, rather than distant ideals. Today only one African state, Eritrea, holds no elections. (source)

More on the reasons why we call democracy a human right is here. More human rights maps are here. More maps specifically on democracy are here.

Related Articles

• Why Western-style democracy is not suitable for Africa (cnn.com)

Human Rights Maps (101): Governance in Africa

The Ibrahim Index provides a comprehensive ranking of African countries according to governance quality. It measures the delivery of public goods and services to citizens by government and non-state actors and uses indicators across four main pillars: safety and rule of law (murder rate, corruption etc.); participation and human rights; sustainable economic opportunity (fiscal policy, free markets and inflation); and human development (education and health care). Together those constitute a proxy for the quality of the processes and outcomes of governance. The following map shows the scores for 2007/2008 (dark blue for low scores to dark red for countries that are better governed):

(there’s an interactive version here and here)

Here’s the ranking for 2010:

(source)

Careful with the data before 2006; there are some methodological problems with those. Also, don’t forget that these are country aggregates and that there may be huge regional differences within countries (a country that scores very badly overall may have regions that do relatively well, and vice versa).

More maps on issues related to governance are here (other posts about governance are here). More maps about human rights in general are here.

Related Articles

• 2010 Ibrahim Index shows a ‘mixed picture’ of African governance (one.org)
• African progress threatened by ‘democratic recession’ (theglobeandmail.com)
• Africa rights advances ‘reversed’ (bbc.co.uk)
• An index of African governance: A rum old mix (economist.com)

Human Rights Maps (100): Crime Rates in San Francisco

Usually, maps about violations of people’s security rights or property rights are like this or this: informative but rather boring as well. Here’s a novel approach to statistical maps:

(source)

More on prostitution here and here. More on private property rights and on the war on drugs. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (99): Economic Freedom

First, why is economic freedom a human rights issue? The most important reason perhaps is that there is a correlation between economic freedom and GDP growth, and GDP growth or economic growth in turn is a prerequisite for the fight against poverty. (If you’re wondering why poverty is a human rights issue, go here). Secondly, international economic freedom, or free trade, also helps to alleviate poverty. And, finally, there is a link between economic freedom and freedom more generally: economic freedom goes hand in hand with property rights, the rule of law and democratic transparency which are all human rights issues.

There’s an interactive map here with an index of economic freedom by country (methodological information is here). This is a screenshot:

(source, click image to enlarge)

More human rights maps here.

Related Articles

• Recession drove down economic freedom: study (ctv.ca)
• Recession caused global decrease in economic freedom: Report (canada.com)
• Ontario’s growth slowed by low economic freedom, think-tank says (canada.com)

Human Rights Maps (98): Poverty in Late 19th Century London, and the Link to Crime

London poverty map, late 19th century

(source, source, click image to enlarge, more about these maps here, here and here)

What’s interesting about these maps is not that it tells us a lot about poverty (except perhaps that there is less wealth segregation than is normally expected), but that at the time, poverty was explicitly linked to crime (the lowest classes are “semi-criminal”). And that link is something we regularly discuss on this blog (see here, here and here for instance). We think that things aren’t as clear cut as many, including the authors of this map, want us to believe.

More maps on poverty are here. More maps about human rights in general are here.

Human Rights Maps (97): Duration of Unemployment Benefits in the U.S.

First, if you’re wondering why unemployment benefits are a human rights issue, go here. In a previous post, we discussed the relative stinginess of unemployment benefits in the U.S., compared to other developed countries, both in terms of duration, amount and eligibility (the majority of Americans out of work do not qualify for unemployment insurance, and the average weekly payment is 36 percent of the individual’s average weekly wage).

Unemployment insurance in the U.S. is a complicated affair involving both the federal government and the states. The total number of weeks of benefits available in any particular state depends on the unemployment rate and unemployment insurance laws in the state where the person worked. In case of a recession, the duration of benefits is extended.

(source)

Something about the pros and cons of extended unemployment benefits is here. More about human rights and the recession is here. More human rights maps here.

Related Articles

• Unemployment Duration (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Ruth Marcus: Is Congress subsidizing slackers? (commercialappeal.com)
• Extending Unemployment Benefits (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)

Human Rights Maps (95): Asylum Seekers

(source, source, source)

These data are for 2008. Maps on refugees are here. All asylum seekers are refugees but not all refugees are asylum seekers. An asylum-seeker is an individual who has sought international protection from persecution and whose claim for refugee status has not yet been determined. Some refugees who flee persecution may decide not to seek official asylum status. A person is a refugee from the moment he or she fulfills the criteria set out the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The formal recognition of someone, for instance through individual refugee status determination (RSD), does not establish refugee status, but confirms it.

If you want the numbers of asylum seekers or refugees, rather than their origin or destination, go here and here respectively.

More textual information on refugees and asylum is here and here respectively. More human rights maps in general are here.

Human Rights Maps (91): Imperialism in North America, 1750 to 2008

Or, as the author of the map puts it: “non-native American nations territorial claims over NAFTA countries”. It’s animated, so take a few minutes to watch it (if the animation doesn’t start automatically, click on the image):

(source)

More on imperialism and colonialism. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (90): Race and Poverty in the U.S.

Here are two maps, one showing the percentage of white people per county in the U.S., the other one the percentage of poor people per county. And when you compare these two maps, it’s quite striking that the less white a county, the more poor it is. In many cases, such as South Dakota, Montana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, the resemblance between the maps is almost perfect:

(source)

It’s not that there aren’t any white poor in the U.S. – obviously there are – but poverty is mainly a colored problem. More precise statistics on poverty and race in the U.S. are here and here. Something about poverty as a human rights issue is here. More human rights maps are here.

Human Rights Maps (89): Income Inequality

(source, click on the image to enlarge)

Other maps and some statistics on income inequality. More on the Gini-coefficient (the little triangular graphs in this map). More here on the reason why income inequality is a human rights issue. More human rights maps.