Abstract
An éminence grise of human rights – the principle of accountability – has been continuously advancing its normative presence in international law and rights discourses in the last couple of decades. Its transformative promises, on the other side, are hindered by the conceptual dubiety rooted, inter alia, in the non-translatability of the concept to many world languages. The current article attempts to examine how universal aspirations about the principle are appropriated in local contexts of the Central Asian region. In the outset, the research scrutinizes theoretical perplexities around the term and argues for the (obscured) role of law in these discussions. Then, drawing on doctrinal and empirical research in Central Asia, it converses the ways accountability is translated, engaged, and valued as the idea. Findings reveal the heterogeneity of approaches to accountability, and the reiterative relations between the word and the concept, informed by the region’s historical past, political regimes, one’s language and education. The article exposes often omitted pitfalls of the existing multilingual setting of international law and its institutions, which undermine the communicative value of local languages in the region.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 351-374 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | Review of Central and East European Law |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 3-4 |
| Early online date | 21 Dec 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Natalia ZaKHaRCHEnKo, 2023.
Funding
The author considered the doctrinal appropriation of accountability in different languages in five countries in Central Asia manifested in their constitutions and how it was interwoven in each country’s operationalization of the term. Additionally, the doctrinal scrutiny of three Soviet Constitutions was added to the analysis. Furthermore, ten interviews were conducted with human rights experts in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in February 2022 – August 2023 (both in-person and on Zoom). The selection was done through the researcher’s personal network and supplemented with snowball recommendations during interviews. Turkmenistan has been purposefully omitted in the empirical methodology of the research due to the country’s political regime and safety consideration of the (limited) human rights community. The study was supported by the extensive literature review on accountability in international discourse and academia, conducted by the researcher for her PhD dissertation.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 956909 |
Keywords
- accountability
- Central Asia
- international law
- languages