 I want to welcome everyone to another one of our brilliant lunchtime seminar series of new voices in global security. Today, we have, you know, well, I just want to actually do, you know, a shout out to the great lineup of speakers that we've had so far that have brought a raise awareness of the multitude of security issues and brought to the for really novel and important perspectives and that's how we look at global security today and of course today is no exception. We're so pleased to welcome Miss Elvina Hoffman to present her work for us today so Miss Elvina Hoffman is a PhD candidate in international relations at King's College London. I'm the co convener of the list DTP funded international political sociology PhD seminar series and a research assistant for the ESR or ERC funded project security flows so Elvina you keep yourself very busy. Within all of this business business of her life she still has managed to recently co author a publication in international political sociology called collective discussion towards critical approaches to intelligence as a social phenomenon so definitely check that out if you have not already. So today Elvina will be presenting some of her doctoral work for us. Her title of her talk is speaking like an expert to UN special rapporteurs as spokespersons of the universal. So the present or the presentation and paper really grapples with the question of how does someone become mandated to speak as an expert on behalf of the universal. And her paper examines the position of the UN special rapporteur described as the eyes and ears of the international human rights architecture. And her paper summarizes the relationship between this independent expert, the security general and states in order to locate special rapporteurs in a broader field of struggle to speak independently. Miss Hoffman explores the UN special rapporteurs as a new type of international civil servant. These are official representatives of international organizations and permanent positions who are entrusted with similar privilege privileges and immunities in their temporary positions. This paper draws upon 15 in depth. Biblia are a biographical interviews with current and former special rapporteurs and a bibliography or a bibliography analysis of over 150 current and former mandate holders. Miss Hoffman's discussant today will be Dr Monique Burley. Monique is a scholar in international relations whose research and teaching interests include international political sociology, global humanitarianism security quantification expertise and international non government organizations, using a range of qualitative methods from including historical ethnography ethnography. Her work explores power dynamics that structure and arise in connection to global practices of protection saving lives in care. Her work has appeared in international political sociology, global governance and international peacekeeping. She is also presently the co editor of political anthropological research on international social science, a new interdisciplinary journal that cuts across disciplines, academic cultures and writing styles. Her current project fighting for humanity is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and in this money contangles competing visions of humanitarianism as a moral and political project within international red cross and the red crescent movement. So again, we are have an amazing lineup of speakers with some pretty fabulous expertise, really happy to be a part of these discussions. As usual, I just ask everyone to mute themselves. Alvina has agreed to talk for 20 minutes and then Monique will be offering some discussant points before we open it up to broader question and answer. If you have a question and answer, you're more than welcome to raise your virtual zoom hand and ask a question live or please put it in the chat box either works. So without further ado, I'm going to hand the floor over to you Alvina. Thank you so much for this very nice and generous introduction Amanda and I just want to thank everyone for coming to see me present this chapter for the first time. And of course, of course a huge thanks to Monique couldn't be a more brilliant discussant to reach this raw material for the first time so I'm really really pleased and happy to have this opportunity. So, I don't have a PowerPoint presentation so I hope you can bear with me just talking to this virtual audience. What I thought of doing is, I'll first talk a little bit about my broader PhD project so you kind of know where this chapter sits in the thesis because in the middle so it would be good to know where it sits, you know, within the narrative before and afterwards. And then we'll dig into the actual chapter, which when you read, and we can discuss that. So, Amanda already gave you a little bit of an insight into what I'm doing and basically what my PhD project is about. And it's about different kinds of spokespersons who proclaim something like an aspirational human rights universalism. And then I explored us through unexpected connections that emerge between different sides of claims making. I'm interested in the questions of what does it mean when someone claims to speak on behalf of someone else. And so here, basically in the context of human rights claims for, for example, a social group, or a global cost such as human rights. How does someone even get into a position from which they can speak in the name of someone and proclaim such a universalism. So kind of theoretically I'm really interested in all these mechanisms of authorization to impose authorized speech and sometimes the speech is not so authorized as I'll show in different chapters of the thesis. Exactly. So I look at the various ways kind of legal political and social mechanisms, through which speech in the name of someone takes place. And examples are for example through very close proximity to someone's people or minority group, where over time, you know, very close relationships are established and then a spokes someone becomes kind of, as they claim a natural right to people. Then there are other roots of authorization, for example, when an organization like the UN gives a mandate to someone you're now mandated to speak on behalf of specific human rights violations or causes. And here this speech and we'll get into this in a couple of minutes is really conceived of as amplifying voices as really serving as a mere intermediary that allows these groups to access new sites new stages. So this is their own kind of self understanding of the speech on behalf. Sometimes the speech can be simply usurped and imposed on everyone without any prior mechanisms of authorization. And then my PhD I use the example of the annexation of Crimea, and Crimea's Prime Minister current Prime Minister. This was a person who immediately made sure to quickly present themselves as a natural representative of real Crimean so from, you know, one day to another they have tried to be a politician weren't really elected so they came and just usurped speech and then post themselves as a Prime Minister. So this is just to give you a kind of idea of the different types of spokespersons that I'm dealing with in the thesis. And my thesis more broadly investigates these theoretical questions. For the example of UN Special Rapporteurs which will uncover today, the Sami people and Crimean Tatars. And I chose these sites simply because of the real kind of empirical connections that are uncovered while doing research starting with Crimea. So this is what I meant with kind of unexpected connections emerging and proclaiming proclaiming human rights universalisms. As I said this chapter is right in the middle is chapter three so some stuff happened before some stuff will happen afterwards. And what I did before in the chapter was basically, look at this UN Special Rapporteurs a very kind of awkward actor that sits somewhere within but not really in the UN. So where is the social position how can we locate this independent expert. It's just someone who has a lot of human rights credentials is appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, either for 306 years. And then what they do is they conduct field work or just work more generally on a specific human right. They write thematic reports, they conduct field visits, usually to a year, the issue communications on behalf of victims. So this is how their tasks are kind of officially defined. And what they are is unpaid volunteers and they continue working in their full time jobs and the vast majority of them are university teachers and we all know how stressful that is and I'll combine that with work on you know, communications on torture for example just everything that happens globally on torture you're responsible for that. And you're not unpaid so this is their kind of material background of their position. The interesting thing is the UN describes them as their eyes and ears so so they are in the field they see they are oftentimes the first kind of UN representatives according to the UN who see new emerging human rights issues or violations for example. And so what they can do is they cannot only expose these violations but also propose innovations in the field and my chapter, I'll explain that in a couple of minutes, will show how they do that and how they are able to do that. Chapter two the previous chapter basically looked at the position in the broader UN human rights architecture. And I was really quite interested in a notion of independence this independent actor. So not as a personal trait or proclamation of impartiality of objectivity, but really as a social position. It's much more structural in relation to states or state representatives. UN bodies but also NGOs or the kind of human rights violations they're dealing with so how can we find this awkward institutionally not quite well defined social position of independence in the UN. And quite interesting is they always distance themselves from the UN this is quite important while using the resources and the authority that comes with wearing the UN badge when they conduct the visits. And in that chapter is, I looked at the various forms of capital so social, especially cultural, but also symbolic capital and the transformations over time since this position was created and around 1978 it has a bit of a more complex history to this but the very first one was considered to be created then. Just to summarize is based on the basis of 150 kind of biographical math things that I did. We had a profile of a state lawyer right in the beginning and so people who are quite high up either in the Supreme Court's or become being a diplomat some of them were state ministers. The profile slowly brought in so it didn't get replaced that it brought in into human rights academics as human rights law became a real kind of discipline to a kind of more activist profile of people who headed their own NGOs and it didn't quite have the same allegiance to the states to just general professionals who are experts in a specific right like housing or the right to water that don't necessarily require just pure legal knowledge. All the vast majority are lawyers they need to play the language they need to play the game of international law and we'll see that in a couple of minutes. And so yeah it's quite quite interesting to examine this against the backdrop of a broader proliferation of this position there were only a handful of special reporters so on the right torture extra judicial killings. Disappearances and now they're over 50 so something like the human right to solidarity international solidarity so some of them are really quite vaguely defined. And some of them are more critical than others about this proliferation. So this this is just to give you a background on what happened before and now I'll turn to my chapter. And so in the this chapter that I'm presenting in that unique red. What I'm trying to do is deepen this understanding of special reporters from a more sociological and political theoretical perspective. So what kind of spokesperson is the special reporter and what kind of strategies and practices to special reporters developed to increase their own effectiveness or to use a borders in terms symbolic power. The UN does and they grant them different forms of authority legal authority export authority moral authority. This is how they kind of prescribe them in their different documents. And the chapter instead of reifying these different forms of authority. I try to explore what kind of practices or strategies they can develop from being given these kind of little pockets from where to conduct their work. And they they do that and that allows them to insert themselves into really quite interesting games, which wasn't necessarily conceived up in the beginning. For example at different UN committees which are kind of hidden underneath the layer of the Security Council, like the counterterrorism committee is a really good example that's really effective. And here you really get your policy done and so being able to, you know, meet people and become part of that can really mean, you know, you can bring the language of human rights back into these closed and policymaking spaces. But also during the state visits so a is to access specific states go to China go to, I don't know Brazil and so on, but also when you're in states to really have your own terms of reference and get access to wherever you want to go, whether that's a rebel held area or a prison, or you know, so, so just be able to kind of stretch this this the scope of their mandate. And then in the kind of advocacy work with NGOs, and something that's also very effective is especially legal proceedings. And then, for example, national regional courts. So they file, for example, amicus briefs and really use their expert authority and really construct their uniqueness of having access to specific material to leverage certain court decisions. So the chapter begins with a few interview interviews and material from those interviews where special reporters kind of go between this discourse of endless opportunities and possibilities that's afforded to them because of their independence that they're really mandated by anyone and it's literally just them to a real pessimism and the kind of uselessness of the word you can't do anything it feels more like a fig leaf it's ridiculous we have a backlog of 500 cases every day. So, I really found this kind of dialectic back and forth between this hopefulness and pessimism quite interesting to uncover. Okay, so how do you actually get something done and so on so. And this happens basically against the backdrop of the lack of material support, not only are they not paid but also they just have one human rights officer and their offices in Geneva, which they hardly ever spend any time in. And so, how do you then multiply your own body and create a team and where do you get the resources from beyond just you know, doing all this important human rights work. And so some of them say it was the best job they ever had and the Monday was the honor of a lifetime. And so yeah what what can they actually do and how can they formulate a new human rights universalism and for me what is quite interesting is it's it's all about from the interviews and from what I got about multiplying the voices of who can actually formulate this human rights universalism. So it's not just imposing their own understandings of torture but it's really building alliances across the field and across different institutional spaces with people that wouldn't normally talk to each other. So the chapter has kind of two separate parts. And the first part I look at legal authority. So the kind of immunities and privileges that they are granted, kind of like diplomats almost or international civil servants, even though they're not officially representing them. And, yeah, so what what allows them to speak completely independently without being sued by anyone else. And there were two very interesting and ICJ International Court of Justice advisory opinions issued on this. And then the second part really looks at the practices and strategies so which games are they playing and do they consider worth playing. And which practices contribute to and then I use this really nice phrase by Roger and creating universal access to the conditions of access to the universal. So not just kind of proclaiming a universalism that's already given. But how do we get you kind of democratize the space from which to proclaim a universalism so reverse this logic. And to what extent they're actually able to do that, or not. So I'll briefly tell you about the two advisory opinions, which are, which are quite interesting, because they really get to the core of some very central IR questions. For example, is there a higher authority above states you know we learned that all in our first year, and what is the relationship between citizens and the states, but also what is the relationship between the UN General Secretary, international courts, states when they all disagree in a certain thing. And this is where Special Rapporteurs is this awkward actor really really got to the core of international relations problems. Let me drink some water. So in the first case, the both cases were only about five years apart from each other in the 90s, which is quite interesting. When we started to see a proliferation of this position was special up with her mother and he was mandated to write a report on human rights and youth, and he was a Romanian national, and he decided to do that from his home in Romania. He was supposed to show up and present as a report, he was nowhere to be seen. And so they were wondering what was he, the Romanian authority said he was really sick. And after a couple of years finally they managed to hear from him and he said well he didn't get, he didn't get a travel permit he couldn't leave Romania so the authorities weren't quite happy with him. And so, here really what was at stake is whether or not a country can can kind of, or sorry, whether Special Rapporteurs can claim immunities and privileges against their own country, and can the ICJ, can the UN actually intervene here. And what was also interesting about this case is that for the first time they needed to really get a systematic understanding of what Special Rapporteurs have actually been doing in the UN, because you kind of appoint them they do what they want and goodbye in a sense. But here you had a general secretary, the legal counsel of the UN, also a lot of states and compile a big dossier and opinions and this was all submitted to the court to kind of get a sense of you know what is the Special Rapporteurs are they becoming you know something that they brought it in just themselves. And, yeah, in the end the court basically ruled that experts on mission. This is the kind of legal term have these immunities, even against their own state because mission doesn't mean you have to travel abroad but it means a specific task. So, they clarified, you know, their legal position they clarified that these immunities basically do apply even against your own state. And one case a couple of years later was pushed us even a little bit higher or it like in a different direction it wasn't just the repetition of the previous case. It was really about the secretary general and their relationship or his because it's only man relationship with with states and courts and can the secretary general actually decide retrospectively whether a special rapporteur has spoken in their capacity in their official capacity rather than the private capacity. So what happened is Special Rapporteur Kumar as well me and Malaysian citizen, he was appointed as a special rapporteur on the independence of the judiciary. And he issued very critical opinions about his own home state Malaysia and the court system there in a kind of UK based publication. The courts didn't like it at all and for lawsuits were filed against him for the famatory speech. And so the secretary general intervened and said, this was issued on the basis of his official position not as a private person you cannot sue him. They tried anyways and then the ICJ again intervened and again confirmed this and what was quite interesting in this case they also confirmed that the secretary general is the highest authority over the UN and over anyone who's employed under the UN but at the same time it left open for national courts to basically say we disagree. So, again, quite quite interesting questions that were not really quite settled in terms of this. So this describes their legal authority and gives them space or the opportunity to do lawmaking exercises, but there's more to that of course and the second part looks at basically the practices and strategies and so what I was trying to do is to kind of theorize them on the basis of the kind of spokespersons that they are. And I have practices that contribute to a kind of embodiment of voices and viewpoints when they meet with experts with local kind of NGOs and so on. When they negotiate access to sites and try to stretch the scope of their mandate, and when they construct and circulate legal knowledge. So I'll just very briefly wrap up by mentioning a few examples of these practices. For example, embodiment. This refers back to something I kind of opened up when I problematized the spokesperson in the first chapter, where basically no nutshell to summarize 10,000 words. This comes into being when when they kind of try to embody a social group and this kind of spiral relationship and then at some point when they speak they claim to speak for all and kind of their speeches to speak the speech of all of these individuals. In the first chapter turns this imagery doesn't quite apply and it's more imagery of alliances and connections through the kind of experts they assemble, or when they try to build teams and multiply their body and send them out to represent themselves when they get together with states and in some surprising meetings as many of them told me I would be very surprised to know who they're able to meet. So there's a more of an imagery of alliances, but they still are able to kind of articulate many different views at the same time. And then access as I said previously, it's specifically about getting into institutional spaces legal spaces, but also within states really far away places and basically it's a way to stretch the mandate what can I do how far can I go and I'm not just negotiating. Yeah, what what they can do, basically on the basis of this. And, finally, and something that's really exciting I think is the knowledge part where they really understand themselves as globalizing universalizing and making visible specific human rights so really becoming this kind of spokesperson of a universalism through these practices I just mentioned. And for them knowledge is really a form of empowerment of local actors of reform minded civil servants and states, but also form of playing the game of international law through the resources of the UN. So really these legal formulations words clarifications and this back and forth it's a real kind of legal diplomacy which they are not at all taught by the UN and they kind of need to develop on the job. And then the pandemic was briefs at various courts and so on. And finally, what's also quite exciting sometimes their own reports their kind of country reports also cited in court proceedings for example European Court of Human Rights had a case in which they relied on the report by the working group and disappearances to issue their statement basically so there's a quite an interesting legal resource that is built up here and others review draft like legislations is what they do. So, yeah, this is basically it. You know this chapter is quite long and I have much more detailed examples that I really look forward to what Monique has to say and what everyone else has to say thanks so much. You're muted Monique. There we go there so I just jump in directly then Amanda yeah okay. All right. Thank you Alvina for the wonderful presentation. Thank you for the fascinating paper. I've always found. I'm going to call them UN SP is to be short. UN SP is to be a very kind of ominous figure and yet you know mysterious and so you do an excellent job of kind of well showing to us and explaining this ambiguity. In terms of comments I won't summarize as you've. You've done a good job yourself of going over the main points of the paper but I just, you know wanted to point out the fact that at least in my reading of this chapter there are kind of multiple stories that that are coming through. So on the one hand we kind of as you said see this this hardship of being a UN SP and their almost vulnerability in the system which I found to be kind of paradoxical because on the one hand we could see them as a type of international elite who has a privileged position in a sense to be exactly in this role of the spokesperson and yet they're under resourced. They question the effectiveness of their of their own work and in that sense, the work comes across as kind of less glamorous than we might imagine at least seeing these actors circulate and do the work on the international arena. Your paper also speaks to different forms of authority mobilized by UN SP's, whether that be legal rational authority or more than the expert and moral. It speaks to how they participate in the making of international human rights which is where I think that you make quite a significant or that this thesis will make quite a significant contribution to the literature is really first off debunking this idea that it's only international courts that have authority to interpret international law which I don't know if that's something that you develop more in terms of how you position yourself with the state of the art. But I think that you could put more emphasis on your kind of originality and your contribution on that point. So really their, their role in the making or the interpretation let's say of international human rights which you argue is not just as solo actors. Although in this paper we kind of get more that perspective we see more their, even if it is drawing connections between different actors we see them as the sort of creative entrepreneurs who are orchestrating all of that. So it also speaks to all the controversies right around whether or not UN SP speak independently or not, which I think is something I'll get to a bit later but could be more conceptually entangled in terms of how ambiguity actually works as a kind of resource or as a, as a condition that that almost enhances their power to act and there maybe the work of like Jacqueline best on bureaucratic ambiguity. As a resource for IOs and she looks at IOs but here you could maybe apply that to this specific category of international actor. So it talks about the social life of reports written by UN SPs how they might act as types of evidence how they might inform then or be used to argue for different types of international legislation as well as these kind of struggles between international and national forms of authority. So you just kind of position yourself with the literature I read this chapter notably as a critique of the eye or not I are norms literature on human rights that is, I mean, that really focus more on the, or they assume the universality of human rights without assessing the role that different actors might play for example. Interpreting those rights, as well as in a way critiquing this this clear binary between the national and the international so by through these actors and the struggles that they're involved in. You give a kind of more complex nuance to view. Maybe some questions and comments that I have regarding the content structure and also picking up a bit on some of the points that you presented more in your presentation when situating the overall thesis that did already address some of the questions that I had but I'd like to hear you speak on one or two points a bit further in detail. So the first is maybe a more conceptual point about how you conceive of authority. And so in the paper, you, you do, you know you use these different terminologies you impact notably legal authority on the one hand, and then expert and moral authority on the other which I found that you give a little bit less attention to how these interconnect are differentiated from one another but I'll assume that perhaps there's there's someplace else in the thesis where, where you do that. But it's what is unclear to me is whether you conceive of a third authority as an attribute that is given to an individual, in this case by an institution being the United Nations and it's through that allocation of a nomination title, that these individuals take on, you know, the role of the of the expert on mission or of the UN SP. And so therefore authority is attributive, or whether it's, it's more relational because given the kinds of social theory that you're working with, there is an assumption that of course that, you know, there are power relations involved in the recognition of that authority and so forth so there's an interactive dynamic. But I find that there's a bit like attention and the kind of language that you use to speak about authority so if you could maybe provide some clarifications on that point. So on a more conceptual front. So I mean, and this is something that of course I, I understand, like they're on a very personal level and I struggled with my struggles myself with is when applying certain concepts from social theory and notably from from the work of Vodou to a kind of international setting to an IR to set the IR sets of questions. And I guess where I think that for the most part, the conceptual framing of the chapter works really well and and and is coherent and makes sense. The only place where I had a little bit of pause was maybe actually with this language of social position. And I wonder if I mean because for me you're not talking about a social position it's this adjective social that is that I that I find somewhat disconnected right so I mean when he talks about social position I mean first off he's trying to look in a framework of a society, which granted is, you know, somewhat bound to a certain extent. And in which we are trying to understand hierarchies between let's say the dominance and the dominated. And then of course analyzing different types of cattle of capitals and subjective position makings that then inform the configuration of that space, right. One of the difficulties is that when we're working with a really complex institutional setting, which we could describe here like the human rights. I don't know the international space of human rights institutions and actors. The terminology of social position seems somewhat disconnected from what it is that you're that you're actually describing and that you're that you're actually showing us so I wonder if that has been something or maybe a challenge for you and kind of trying to translate Gordia's theory to this to this case. And perhaps then if a slight I mean because it's still important to talk about position right and the positioning of these actors. I think that maybe it would be more fruitful given the kind of, at least that come across in this chapter the kind of dynamics that you're explaining it might be to talk about. But it's hard also because it's not exactly institutional positioning. And that's what's also fascinating about about these actors but we could maybe just talk about positions of power. For example might be because it's that's what you're kind of interested in how these actors are exerting different types of power through forms of authority that they wield that are both given to them but also expanded upon. So maybe, yeah, they're the literature on like transnational power elites and how they conceptualize that might be more fruitful so, or, or you could talk also maybe about like discretionary power and their position of discretionary power within this larger larger framework. Yes. I had also I mean again I, I think that they're what I found really interesting in this paper again is this, this tension and this ambiguity between on the one hand, being directly mandated by the United Nations. The fact that they carried UN in their title. There's that some point in the paper where you talk about I think it's one of the UN SP UN SP is talks about the UN badge as a material object that they use to access hard to access sites be those prisons or prison centers so in a way, of course, you know the symbolic kind of authority of the United Nations as it as an institution is absolutely key to their work and yet they are always kind of trying to separate themselves so I just wonder if you could speak up to the way that you, you see the interconnectivity right between this, or how you could conceptualize further this in this dual positioning this multi positioning of institutional proximity and institutional separation, which seems really contradictory at the same time it seems to be at the core of how their, of how their work operates and is really counterintuitive to a lot of the ways that we think about delegation, for example, I mean so here if you wanted to do a side paper on international organizations and delegation, which has this very linear, an organization or a state delegate to an international organization and then an international international organization delegates directly to, let's say international civil servants but you give us like a very less direct linear and kind of this in between positions so I think that that is, again, a sort of contribution of this paper or an area where the paper is quite rich. Perhaps just one last comment on structure so I actually I mean you've explained a little bit the overall structure of the thesis but I think that this chapter is in fact two chapters. The first part is, to me, is asking very different questions, which speak to these higher order IR questions about, you know, the difference between national versus international authority. What's really interesting too about your case is that you show that it is, it's kind of through defining the role of the UNSP that there's also a constitution of the international. So there's this interconnect like a broader, a broader set of dynamics that are at play and I at least have the feeling in reading the paper and reading the chapter that because there's a lot of material to go through and you have really rich. You've done some rich fieldwork so much document analysis that it comes across as kind of rushed. And so you don't get to go deep into those questions and it's almost as though there are sometimes we are assumed to understand what the higher order questions are and you go through them really quickly so again I don't want to disrupt like the overall structure of the thesis, but I wonder if you do mention that in the previous chapter you talk about independence. So in a way, these two legal cases that you present which are really fascinating cases. They speak exactly to how this is dealt with, and the kind of making of a UNSP, whereas the second part of the paper really speaks to how the UNSP participate in the making of, you know, international human rights and its and its meanings. And so, I don't know. I, my kind of feeling was that these two things, of course they're interconnected. But in a way it's the first set of legal rational authority questions that are kind of on a different level, then these more everyday professional practices of these agents, which through their everyday practices then kind of constitute what it means to do human rights or this kind of human work, which is, which is really rich. And I think that would allow you to also go like deeper into the vignettes that you present even the introduction I felt that in a way we get like thrown in this tunnel. And, and there's like a lot going on in there and we're trying to absorb it all at the same time and I personally actually would almost resituate some of these initial vignettes that you that you open up with within the text. And I would start with an intro that is a bit maybe more, you know, straightforward and that talks about the international making and so forth. And I don't know if there's time I would love to hear a little bit more on access to the field that you are studying so why, why these UNSP is what are some access constraints that you that you encountered I imagine that it's quite difficult to get in touch with these people. How satisfied are you with the people that you were able to get in touch with with the interviews. And also, just on anonymity, I'm curious for the final manuscript are you going to be able to cite these individuals. On the one hand it seems like they are like, or some of them are open to being public critical like figures that can be critiqued. But what are some of the stakes of doing that and I'll stop there thank you for a great paper Alvina. Well thank you for a great discussant to this is Fab I'm learning so much just through this conversation so Alvina now the the agency is with you. So we've Sarah Pratt also has a question to so it's up to you if you want to respond right now to Monique's, or do you want to collect, you know, see what Sarah's question is and, and then respond to all of them at that point which Thank you Monique this is really amazing I mean I have so many answers and questions with a nose answers but maybe we can take Sarah that I can address them all together and kind of hopefully link them transversely in a way. Perfect that sounds good great Sarah you're up. Hello everyone, and thank you for this really interesting presentation I mean I learned a lot. I have to admit as well. Actually my question is quite related to what some money just raised at her last comments regarding your field work. I was actually a bit curious about your interactions with those experts during the interviews you you conducted. And how you had to present yourself and, and how you, you felt they, they were positioning themselves with you, especially in their position of being high skills experts. Did they try to emphasize some of their dispositions in the Bodhisattva sense in front of you to prove maybe their legitimacy to speak as an expert. And also did you feel any asymmetric power relations in those interaction during the interview so I would like to, to listen to you more about these aspects of your field work. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe I should start with the field work question then, because we've had two of them. So, sadly my last round of field work was canceled so you know we all have to deal with that so really most of them were conducted already over the course of the year over skype that old technology no one seems to be using anymore. To be honest, most of them are academics, and it just felt like, because I'm a PhD researcher in their academics there was this solidarity, and they were really curious just to see that someone is asking these questions and tries to make sense of them. I never really felt like, you know I interviewed some retired diplomat for example where the dynamics are different but again not really power relations I think people were just curious you know like it never really came through in the way. I don't know what that you felt kind of less inclined to ask questions and so on but I can I can talk about that and at some point with you in more detail. In terms of access be persistent email them keep emailing them. You know what once you get one person they're able to kind of forward you on and then you select a bunch of names. Like it was really, you know, just be persistent and the way I try to do this is on the basis of my empirical cases. I interviewed the specialist reporters and working groups that went to Ukraine never managed to go to Crimea, but these were the main actors who basically went there the main actors who went to Norway to do research. And the Sami which is my other kind of size. So, these were my kind of course special operators, and then just basically those who are kind of related to the ones that I interviewed either through joint communications, or just general communications that the issue there's a kind of quick thing that you do and quickly you know condemn you know the lack of freedom of speech and Crimea or something like that. There's then another way and then just special operators who just kept coming up in the news, and then it's really just a matter whether or not they respond to me. And then, and then you know I had a second and third round of interviewing when I still had open questions and then I managed to find a retired one who's, you know, in this 80s and it was very happy to talk to me as well. So it was really kind of yeah first round is always quite awkward of interviews you're really figuring out what it is you're doing you get a sense of this mysterious actor is when it was saying, and then you kind of establish more and more questions, and kind of link them them thematically but also practically to your question, or they mentioned someone like this is the best pressure up with her that was ever appointed. Great I'm going to interview that one. I managed to so it yet you just have to start somewhere and then I think there's a logic of research that emerges through the interviews through the names they mentioned and through the material that they put out about themselves. Great, let me go through Monique's questions quickly unless anyone else has some questions. So we had a lot about authority and yeah I agree it's basically it's it's the it's the word or the term used by the UN and it's a term used by this literature you know only a cobscending and so on they quite like working on international authority. But it's never really been a word they use themselves. In a sense, you know they, I don't I don't remember them saying oh I'm an authority on human rights. It's more like I'm an expert or I have a lot of field experience or I know this from the field so I knew how to get into that it was always more a much more practical logic than relying on them being a moral voice although with the retired person that was much more about morality and this kind of international civil service and what it means and so that language I feel like was more used in the 70s maybe when when human rights was really quite coupled to this real moral language now it's much more judicialized I feel. So I guess that's why I didn't quite develop it in this chapter because I was struggling with it myself, because I felt like the authority we're dealing with on this practical level is not really the one discussed in the literature. And, and basically, and in the interviews it's more like, or in the documents they are given this and so what they do is they just claim it, oh I have this authority because the document tells me, I can then do whatever I want to do what I want to say. But yeah, I will I will have to think about that and I think the relational aspect is really quite important, because it's always a form of negotiation, I don't know if you don't use that term unique, but it's really about how you negotiate where you stand in the space and in the secretary general states and so on. So yeah I'll try, yeah I need to, I guess, highlight that more. And I quite like the discussion about social position because in the previous chapter what I'm trying to do and I should spend much more time doing that is disrupt kind of bureaucratic understandings you know where where is this best rapporteur or in the Human Rights Council what is the function of the Human Rights Council, and you just miss like everything basically because nothing for them takes place in the Human Rights Council. They go and present the report it's a kind of theatrics you know so much torture or we're upset now next next fresh rapporteur. So it's, that's not really where stuff happens. What I try to do with, you know, using the language of social position is to get away from a geographical you know Geneva versus New York institutional Human Rights Council is not quite important, but maybe strategic position could be better. How they know whenever it's good for them they could position themselves as part of you know Geneva, it's not good they're just getting out to something, something that captures more. It's a specific space that allows them to do to do specific things. Let me see. Yeah, an ambiguity. Yeah, I just need to sit more with it it's it's it's exactly what it is their ambiguous position and independence and delegation. That's kind of disrupted. Let me see. Yeah, I think yeah but these are really amazing questions and especially about how to put together this material on a special reporters I kind of switched it around and maybe I need to put it back into the other so it used to be part of the of the other chapter and then I was like, well maybe I'm talking about authority but you're right like the legal authority the rational is very different from their logics of practice and it really becomes obvious in the interviews that you know they're not really it's just there but it's really about the legal practices that they can do. I think wow there are lots of questions. Yeah, you have a few more questions and I think they're both like speaking to your concept of authority to buy the sounds of it for the first are the sounds of it so you have one from a joint one from Beth and did a who say the presentation indicates a profound tension between the vertical so SP representing the UN is a superior regime and horizontal SP as cajoling states into better practices by benchmarking. How do those work in terms of authority. So that's the first question. And then the second question. First of all, thank you. Thank you for your presentation. But this question is again about authority in terms of the Arctic so I spoke persons of the samee. They are represented in a certain degree by three different samee parliaments in three different nations, while their legal status as a minority, let alone in indigenous people in Russia remains highly questionable. They have marginal status as a permanent participants in the Arctic Council so their national and international positions of power is very limited. As it comes to light during the truth and reconciliation hearings both in Norway and Finland. I haven't read the Swedish report on that yet. The authority and the ability to represent of these parliaments is highly questionable within those groups. Are you taking this into account and if so how. Yeah, to something I didn't present great and I'll, I'll take the first question first, the DNL Smith. I don't think you're my screen but thank you so much. Yeah, maybe maybe I again the whole authority thing, maybe throws me more off guard tidy day thanks for turning on the camera much nicer to speak to you like that. In terms of the better practices and what they do with states I think it's really about creating lasting social relations which they are unable to do because they can't you know they need to choose where they're going. So they have one field trip, and then they get out and then they have the report. And so what some of them have been able to do is use their time spent in a state for example an academic visit to have an unofficial visit where they don't visit as a UN person and their kind of personal capacity but on the basis of a previous visit to tell states, you know I'm here to help I'm here not to just name and shame you. So this is what some have been trying to do to improve the to, you know get them into better human rights practices and then here to these things but I think because of the way in which the whole system is set up. Like, maybe one or two have been able to do that. Everyone says they would like to be able to do that, but I don't know if that answers the question. You think so there was a trap, maybe you want to come in did you you're muted. Maybe it was too too cursive. One of the point is that what are their objectives and how they feel because they may have a position in which they want to reinforce the UN authority as UN as superior to national state. So they don't consider that and they consider that what they can do is to create a benchmarking between the different states and to shame one state in comparison to the others. There are two different strategies with two different forms of relation, depending on their capital. So, I would like you to, to be more precise about how, how is the organized this kind of a double agents game. Do they do simultaneously the two or not. It's less about their travel. Okay, now I understand. Yeah, some of them have a strategy of kind of, you know, not just the worst practices but also the best practices and to to kind of, yeah, to have this comparison, you know, or some states have been able to be so nice, you know, look at how they treated terrorism victims, for example, one of them said, or some of them collect like global best practices on the environment and then they share it with each state look look at what you guys are already doing for example. So, so it's much less about this is what the UN framework says, but it's more about what you are doing, and then having this little competition between states, not just this naming and shaming because they can't live up to the UN standards, I guess. But it's, it's much less about the UN, I think, then, then really about human rights legislation, I think, for some of them, when they are intervening in national legislations, for example, or when they are intervening in regional court cases, draft legislations that have a kind of human rights side to them, regional court cases. It's, it's not about you need to apply to the UN, but they see themselves as legal experts that can help, you know, within a specific national framework. Great. So we're running out of time but I'm wondering if you wanted to respond to and really detailed and complicated like well her question raises some serious complications right so I wonder if you want to respond to that. Well, it's not really related to my current chapter but I can say is I've interviewed someone who is part of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It's, you know, people have different views about it, about the effectiveness and so on. So my thesis, I'm not like there's no space for me to do all four countries I tried to do that and it's just impossible because it's just so different. I'm really just focusing on Norway and the role of the UN in the making of, you know, Sami rights as indigenous individuals, human rights and how this kind of object informs Crimean Tatars kind of rights claims practices against the Russian annexation. So it's really yeah it's it's a bit marginal from what I'm doing just because I'm really interested in international human rights rather than institutional humans. Just to jump in there. I was just wondering about when you're saying that you're talking about universalisms and universals, how you're taking into account that those spokespersons are not necessarily able to speak on the behalf of the entire group of people they are supposedly speaking for. Of course I'm taking that into account it's more about how they are able to get a position to proclaim it it's not it's it's not taking for granted but it's it's that they are able to go to Norway and be respected as human rights experts to kind of, you know, check what's going on on the ground and no one even questions their ability to write a report about the Sami people, like they like them a lot. So it's really about how how is this so taken for granted that that they can just do that whereas others you know would get challenged on this so this is this is what I'm trying to do. Alvina we're at a time unfortunately because I have so many questions but I'll ask you another time. Yeah I will yeah mine are more particular to do with gender but also around the shifting positionalities but we'll pick that up at another time. Anyway, I want to sincerely thank you and money for coming to present your fascinating field work and money for giving such a thoughtful and engaged reading and and critique of the work learned so much from both of you and for everyone's for their really great questions.