DOI: 10.5064/f630e3ut
title: Data for: The Power of Human Rights Frames in Urban Security: Lessons from Bogotá

description: &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;This is an &lt;a href="https://qdr.syr.edu/ati"&gt;Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI)&lt;/a&gt; data project. &lt;/b&gt; &lt;h3&gt;The annotated article can be viewed &lt;a href="https://qdr.syr.edu/atipaper/power-of-human-rights-frames#annotations:group:2Nopp9mx" &gt;here on the QDR website&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;h3/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Project Summary&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Governments throughout the world invoke human rights ideas to motivate policy reforms. What impact do rights-based frames have on the policy process? I argue that rights-based frames can generate new resources and institutional opportunities that restructure battles over public policy. These resources and opportunities can both initially legitimate state interventions that violate rights, while also creating openings for opponents to hold governments accountable for abuses committed by the state in the name of human rights. I develop this argument by analyzing a militarized security intervention in Bogotá, Colombia, which the government framed as necessary to stop the commercial sexual exploitation of children—yet which yielded new rights violations. This paper reveals the material consequences of human rights discourses in battles over policing and urban planning.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Data Generation&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This paper draws on a range of qualitative data sources to trace the emergence of a human rights discourse to justify the security intervention in the Bronx of Bogotá, and the impact of this rights frame on the policy process This paper draws on two main forms of data: textual sources and semi-structured interviews.&lt;/p&gt; 

&lt;p&gt;Textual sources include: a news archive that I constructed with my research team, transcripts from Congressional hearings, policy documents, and responses to freedom-of-information requests. The Bronx News Archive includes all news stories between January 2003-December 2017 that mentioned the Bronx of Bogotá in the three top periodicals in Colombia: the newspapers, El Tiempo and El Espectador, and the news magazine, Semana, yielding a total of 629 news articles. This paper also draws on a range of other documents, including: policy documents; a transcript from Congressional hearing about the May 2016 intervention; press releases and social media posts related to the Bronx from state actors; and responses to freedom-of-information requests made by my research team, and by the Bogotá City Council, to national and Bogotá state agencies. These responses came from the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (the national child protection agency), the Metropolitan Police of Bogotá (a branch of the National Police), the Secretaría Distrital de Integración Social (the Secretariat of Social Integration for the District of Bogotá, which is responsible for policies towards homelessness), and the Secretaría Distrital de Seguridad (the Secretariat of Security for the District of Bogotá, which coordinated the intervention), Secretaría de la Mujer (Secretariat of Women), Secretaría de Salud (Secretariat of Health), Secretaría de Hábitat (Secretariat of Housing), and Bogotá’s Instituto para la Protección de la Niñez y la Juventud (IDIPRON—Institute for the Protection of Children and Youth). &lt;/p&gt; 

&lt;p&gt;In June 2017 and June 2018, I conducted 42 semi-structured interviews during field research in Bogotá, and via Skype. Interview respondents included public officials from Bogotá district agencies and national agencies that participated in the 2016 intervention in the Bronx, legislators from City Council and Congress, NGOs, think-tanks, and private-sector groups. All respondents agreed to have their interviews recorded and transcribed, though a number of respondents requested that I pause the tape at key moments so they could explain sensitive material off the record.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I attempted to obtain public opinion data to assess changes over time in public support for policies related to homelessness and sexual exploitation of children; views of different policing and models of urban revitalization; views of the Bronx and other drug-consumption zones in the city center; and views of the intervention in the Bronx and/or previous security interventions in the city center. I was told that this information had not been collected by numerous sources within the government, state agencies, and think-tanks. &lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h3&gt;Data Analysis&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I analyzed textual sources to capture the language used by state agencies to justify the need for an intervention and to identify the goals of the intervention. In particular, content analysis of the Bronx News Archive was central in this study, serving three purposes. First, the news archive provided basic background information about the social and economic structure of life in the Bronx, as well as overviews of security and social policy interventions in the Bronx. Second, I utilize these news articles to identify broad shifts in media and state discourses employed when discussing the Bronx. To do so, we coded the news articles to capture the emergence of discussions about children, and in particular the sexual exploitation of children; homelessness; and language around rights in media coverage of the Bronx. Third, I identified illustrative and representative quotes from politicians and other public officials that capture the shift from a crime frame or a public space frame, to a human-rights frame in the Bronx. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I analyzed the transcripts of semi-structured interviews to understand better the process of planning the May 2016 intervention, and how key actors frame the successes and limitations of the intervention two years later. Some of these interviews also provided a greater understanding of the structure of Colombia’s system of child protection and anti-sexual exploitation policies. &lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h3&gt;Logic of Annotation&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Annotation served a number of purposes. I used annotation to provide additional context and evidence to deepen the reader’s understanding of what life in the Bronx had been like, the nature of the 2016 intervention, and the ways that the 2016 intervention was framed. Many of these annotations provided links to primary sources, or source excerpts and translations, to back claims and citations. I often used annotations to link to sources that are not otherwise available but are not restricted by copyright—for example, responses to freedom-of-information requests, or a transcript of the June 2016 Congressional hearing on the Bronx intervention. I did not provide access to the many news articles referenced in this paper due to copyright restrictions. Moreover, I used annotations to include media that typically would not be included in a political science paper, such as tweets. Annotations allowed me to both include sources or excerpts of sources in the original Spanish, as well as English translations. &lt;/p&gt;
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