Many view civil wars as violent contests between armed combatants. But history shows that community groups, businesses, NGOs, local governments, and even armed groups can respond to war by engaging in civil action. Characterized by a reluctance to resort to violence and a willingness to show enough respect to engage with others, civil action can slow, delay, or prevent violent escalations. This volume explores how people in conflict environments engage in civil action, and the ways such action has affected violence dynamics in Syria, Peru, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Spain, and Colombia. These cases highlight the critical and often neglected role that civil action plays in conflicts around the world.

This timely book by internationally regarded scholar of ethics and social/political philosophy Michael Boylan focuses on the history, application, and significance of human rights in the West and in China. Boylan engages the key current philosophical debates prevalent in human rights discourse today and draws them together to argue for the existence of natural, universal human rights. Arguing against the grain of mainstream philosophical beliefs, Boylan asserts that there is continuity between human rights and natural law and that human beings require basic, essential goods for minimum action. These include food, clean water and sanitation, clothing, shelter, and protection from bodily harm, including basic healthcare. The achievement of this goal, Boylan demonstrates, will require significant resource allocation and creative methods of implementation involving public and private institutions. Using the classroom-tested dynamic approach of combining technical argument with four fictional narratives about human rights, the book invites readers to engage with the most important aspects of the discipline.

"This moving account of a key figure in American history contributes greatly to our understanding of the past. It also informs our vision of the servant leader needed to guide the 1990s movement."
--"Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund"

"First-rate intellectual and political history, this study explores the relations between the practical objectives of SNCC and its moral and cultural goals."
--"Irwin Unger, Author of These United States and Postwar America"

"Robert Moses emerges from these pages as that rare modern hero, the man whose life enacts his principles, the rebel who steadfastly refuses to be victim or executioner and who mistrusts even his own leadership out of commitment to cultivating the strength, self-reliance, and solidarity of those with and for whom he is working. Eric Burner's engrossing account of Robert Moses's legendary career brings alive the everyday realities of the Civil Rights Movement, especially the gruelling campaign for voter registration and political organization in Mississippi."
--"Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities, Emory University, author of Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South"

Next to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, Bob Moses was arguably one of the most influential and respected leaders of the civil rights movement. Quiet and intensely private, Moses quickly became legendary as a man whose conduct exemplified leadership by example. He once resigned as head of the Council of Federated Organizations because "my position there was too strong, too central." Despite his centrality to the most important social movement in modern American history, Moses' life and the philosophy on which it is based have only been given cursory treatment and have never been the subject of a book-length biography.

Biography is, by its very nature, a complicated act of recovery, even more so when the life under scrutiny deliberately avoids such attention. Eric Burner therefore sets out here not to reveal the "secret" Bob Moses, but to examine his moral philosophy and his political and ideological evolution, to provide a picture of the public person. In essence, his book provides a primer on a figure who spoke by silence and led through example.

Moses spent almost three years in Mississippi trying to awaken the state's black citizens to their moral and legal rights before the fateful summer of 1964 would thrust him and the Freedom Summer movement into the national spotlight. We follow him through the civil rights years -- his intensive, fearless tradition of community organizing, his involvements with SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and his negotiations with the Department of Justice --as Burner chronicles both Moses' political activity and his intellectual development, revealing the strong influence of French philosopher Albert Camus on his life and work.

Moses' life is marked by the conflict between morality and politics, between purity and pragmatism, which ultimately left him disillusioned with a traditional Left that could talk only of coalitions and leaders from the top. Pursued by the Vietnam draft board for a war which he opposed, Moses fled to Canada in 1966 before departing for Africa in 1969 to spend the next decade teaching in Tanzania. Returning in 1977 under President Carter's amnesty program, he was awarded a five-year MacArthur genius grant in 1982 to establish and develop an innovative program to teach math to Boston's inner-city youth called the Algebra Project. The success of the program, which Moses has referred to as our version of Civil Rights 1992, has landed him on the cover of The New York Times Magazineemphasizing the new, central dimension that math and computer literacy lends to the pursuit of equal rights.

And Gently He Shall Lead Them is the story of a remarkable man, an elusive hero of the civil rights movement whose flight from adulation has only served to increase his reputation as an intellectual and moral leader, a man whom nobody ever sees, but whose work is always in evidence.

From his role as one of the architects of the civil rights movement thirty years ago to his ongoing work with inner city children, Robert Moses remains one of America's most courageous, energetic, and influential leaders. Wary of the cults of celebrity he saw surrounding Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and fueled by a philosophy that shunned leadership, Moses has always labored behind the scenes. This first biography, a primer in the life of a unique American, sheds significant light on the intellectual and philosophical worldview of a man who is rarely seen but whose work is always in evidence.

By offering critical perspectives of normative developments within international law, this volume of essays unites academics from various disciplines to address concerns regarding the interpretation and application of international law in context. The authors present common challenges within international criminal law, human rights, environmental law and trade law, and point to unintended risks and consequences, in particular for vulnerable interests such as women and the environment. Omissions within normative or institutional frameworks are highlighted and the importance of addressing accountability of state and non-state actors for violations or regressions of minimum protection guarantees is underscored. Overall, it advocates harmonisation over fragmentation, pursuant to the aspiration of asserting the interests of our collective humanity without necessarily advocating an international constitutional order.

This book brings a new focus to the ongoing debate on holding perpetrators of massive humanitarian and human rights violations accountable in countries in transition. It provides a clear-cut and comprehensive legal analysis of the content and nature of a state's obligations to investigate and prosecute as enshrined in the most important humanitarian and human rights treaties; it disentangles the common fallacy that these procedural obligations are naturally rooted and clearly spelled out in the general human rights treaties; and it explains the flaws in an absolutist interpretation. This analysis serves to understand whether such procedural obligations, if narrowly construed, act as impediments to countries emerging from periods of conflict or systematic repression in the face of contingent circumstances and the formidable dilemmas raised by a univocal understanding of justice as retribution. Exploring the latest instances of interpretation and application via an analysis of state practice, the jurisprudence of treaty bodies, international courts and tribunals, soft law instruments, and doctrinal contributions, the book also addresses the complex issue of amnesty, and other transitional justice mechanisms designed to restore peace and facilitate transition traditionally included in national reconciliation programs, and criticizes the contention that amnesty is always prohibited by international law. It also considers these problems from the viewpoint of the International Criminal Court, focusing on the cases of Uganda and Colombia after the 2016 peace agreement. Lastly, the volume offers a detailed analysis of techniques that may neutralize relevant obligations under international law, such as denunciation, derogation, limitation, and the public international law defenses of force majeure and necessity. Drawing attention to the importance of a multidisciplinary and practical approach to these unsettling questions, and endorsing a pluralistic notion of accountability, the book will appeal to legal scholars and transitional justice experts as well as practitioners, human rights advocates, and government officials. Dr Jacopo Roberti di Sarsina is an International Law Expert at the Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna School of Law, and a dual-qualified lawyer (Italy and New York). He completed a PhD in public international law, label Doctor Europaeus, at the School of International Studies, University of Trento, holds an LLM from NYU School of Law, and read law at the University of Bologna.

This book puts forward proposals for solutions to the current gaps between the Mexican legal order and the norms and principles of international criminal law. Adequate legislative measures are suggested for compliance with international obligations. The author approaches the book's subject matter by tracing all norms related to the prosecution of core crimes and contextualizing each of the findings with a brief historical and political account. Additionally, state practice is analyzed, identifying patterns and inconsistencies. This approach is new in offering a wide perspective on international criminal law in Mexico. Relevant legal documents are analyzed and annexed in the book, providing the reader with a useful guide to the topics analyzed. Issues including the following are examined: the incorporation of core crimes in the Mexican legal order, military jurisdiction, the war crimes definition under Mexican law, unaddressed atrocities, state practice and future challenges to combat impunity. The book will be of relevance to legal scholars, students, practitioners of law and human rights advocates. It also offers interesting insights to political scientists, historians and journalists. Tania Ixchel Atilano has a Dr. Iur. from the Humboldt Universitat Berlin, an LLM in German Law from the Ludwig Maximilian Universitat, Munich, and attained her law degree at the ITAM in Mexico City.

This book critically analyses how the law has facilitated, or hindered, the recognition of same-sex family formations in Ireland, and how it might be reformed to provide greater parental rights for same-sex couples. The book covers four key issues facing same-sex couples: - Civil partnerships: the first chapter analyses the pragmatic and symbolic effects of registered civil partnership, and compares Ireland's decision to discontinue this alternative form of relationship recognition with the UK's recent move towards extending civil partnership laws. - Cohabitation: chapter 2 assesses whether the cohabitation model introduced in Ireland might be effective in other jurisdictions where there are calls for cohabitation law reform. - Marriage equality: chapter 3 explores the initial move to prohibit marriage equality in Ireland, and critiques the subsequent route towards the 2015 referendum, with comparison to the more recent move towards marriage equality in Australia. - Parental rights: the fourth chapter focuses on the legal position of same-sex couples who are parenting children born via Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ARTs), such as donor-assisted human reproduction and surrogacy. In particular, it explores shortcomings in the existing legislation and proposes a viable method of regulating these ARTs via future legislation, partly based on models in operation elsewhere. The book concludes by assessing the impact, or lack thereof, of the European Convention on Human Rights on same-sex relationship recognition, same-sex parenting, and marriage equality, in order to determine whether it could promote increased legal recognition for same-sex families in Ireland.

Current political discourse emphasizes the globalized nature of security threats, and focusing on Latin America, this book identifies local complexities of Human Security. From Human to Post Human Security in Latin America provides a fresh look to some acute problems regarding human security in Latin America: human rights and dignity, water, food and health insecurities. These problems are persistent and constitute human security threats in the near future. In this book, each chapter studies a critical social problem in Latin America and analyzes it from the human security perspective, providing examples that illustrate the critical state in which Latin America is found regarding environmental security and providing a comparative perspective to give a wider view of these issues. Now security threats are truly global; given the limits of the international community and the nation state to solve these issues, it is necessary to revisit the most acute problems that the planet faces from a more comprehensive perspective. This is essential reading for professionals in the field of policy making, practitioners with a need of a conceptual support, and those interested in human security in Latin America from a Latin American perspective.

In a thoroughly revised second edition that incorporates the major changes made in the procedures and practice of the Inter-American Court since the original publication of this book, Jo M. Pasqualucci provides a comprehensive critique that is at once scholarly yet practical. She analyzes all aspects of the Court's advisory jurisdiction, contentious jurisdiction, and provisional measures orders through 2011. She also compares the practice and procedure of the Inter-American Court with that of the European Court of Human Rights, the Permanent Court of Justice, and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. She evaluates changes in the Rules of Procedure of the Inter-American Court that entered into force on January 1, 2010, and which substantially change the role of the Inter-American Commission in contentious cases before the Court. She also evaluates the challenges and means of State compliance with the Court's innovative reparations orders. Featuring revisions to every chapter to address the numerous new judgments, provisional measures, and orders adopted by the Court, this book will provide an important and updated resource for scholars, practitioners, and students of international human rights law.

This book challenges the received scholarship on the origins of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The author applies economic and social theory to understanding the African Commission's dynamic treaty interpretation, and the Commission's strategic manipulation of the Rules of Procedure to strengthen the African human rights system.

Violence, deception, fraud and abuse have always been commonplace occurrences for migrants, not only in their final country of destination but also in their countries of origin and countries of transit. In today's world, the link between mobility and security issues is ever-increasing. Acknowledging this, how can we work to protect and improve migrants' rights? Is the protection for migrants offered by the EU sufficient as-is, or is a more integrated approach that requires greater cooperation from migrants' country of origin called for? What role can the private sector play in all of this? In this book, Borraccetti brings together contributions that analyse how migrant exploitation can be combatted. All essays focus on the protection and promotion of human rights and pay particular attention to the rights of children and other vulnerable people.

Human rights in peace and development are accepted throughout the Global South as established, normative, and beyond debate. Only in the powerful elite sectors of the Global North have these rights been resisted and refuted. The policies and interests of these global forces are antithetical to advancing human rights, ending global poverty, and respecting the sovereign integrity of States and governments throughout the Global South. The link between poverty, war, and environmental degradation has become evident over the last 60 years, further augmenting international consciousness of these issues as interconnected with the rest of the human rights corpus. This book examines the history of this struggle and outlines practical means to implement these rights through a global framework of constitutional protections. Within this emerging framework, it argues that States will be increasingly obligated to formulate policies and programs to achieve peace and development throughout the global society.

This book offers a materialist critique of mainstream human rights discourse in the period following 9/11, examining literary works, critical histories, international declarations, government statutes, NGO manifestos, and a documentary film. The author points out some of the contradictions that emerge in contemporary rights language when material relations are not sufficiently perceived or acknowledged, and he directs attention to the role of some rights talk in maintaining and managing the accelerated global project of capital accumulation. Even as rights discourse points to injustices-for example, injustices related to labor, gender, the citizen's relationship to the state, or the movement of refugees-it can simultaneously maintain systems of oppression. By constructing subjects who are aligned to the interests of capital, by emphasizing individual "empowerment," and/or by containing social disenchantment, it reinforces the process of wealth accumulation, supports neoliberal ideologies, and diminishes the possibility of real transformation through collective struggle.

In this book I argue for an approach that conceives human rights as both moral and legal rights. The merit of such an approach is its capacity to understand human rights more in terms of the kind of world free and reasonable beings would like to live in rather than simply in terms of what each individual is legally entitled to. While I acknowledge that every human being has the moral entitlement to be granted living conditions that are conducive to a dignified life, I maintain, at the same time, that the moral and legal aspects of human rights are complementary and should be given equal weight. The legal aspect compensates for the limitations of moral human rights the observance of which depends on the conscience of the individual, and the moral aspect tempers the mechanical and inhumane application of the law. Unlike the traditional or orthodox approach, which conceives human rights as rights that individuals have by virtue of their humanity, and the political or practical approach, which understands human rights as legal rights that are meant to limit the sovereignty of the state, the moral-legal approach reconciles law and morality in human rights discourse and underlines the importance of a legal framework that compensates for the deficiencies in the implementation of moral human rights. It not only challenges the exclusively negative approach to fundamental liberties but also emphasizes the necessity of an enforcement mechanism that helps those who are not morally motivated to refrain from violating the rights of others. Without the legal mechanism of enforcement, the understanding of human rights would be reduced to simply framing moral claims against injustices. From the moral-legal approach, the protection of human rights is understood as a common and shared responsibility. Such a responsibility goes beyond the boundaries of nation-states and requires the establishment of a cosmopolitan human rights regime based on the conviction that all human beings are members of a community of fate and that they share common values which transcend the limits of their individual states. In a cosmopolitan human rights regime, people are protected as persons and not as citizens of a particular state.

This book discusses the multilayered legal structures concerning the regulation of crimes under international law. It covers both core crimes and other types of crime under international law, and examines relevant substantive and procedural rules alike. Pursuing such a comprehensive approach is essential to understanding the basic frameworks of international criminal law, since the varied perspectives on international crimes are connected to different systems of enforcement. Being aware of this interrelatedness is conducive to an in-depth examination of individual topics in both substantive and procedural aspects. On the basis of such an inquiry, this book concisely provides a systematic overview of international criminal law.

New York Times Bestseller How far are Americans willing to go to force each other to fall in line? According to the establishment media, the intelligentsia, and our political chattering class, the greatest threat to American freedom lies in right-wing authoritarianism. We've heard that some 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump represent the rise of American fascism; that conservatives have allowed authoritarianism to bloom in their midst, creating a grave danger for the republic. But what if the true authoritarian threat to America doesn't come from the political right, but from the supposedly anti-fascist left? There are certainly totalitarians on the political right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional clout. The authoritarian left, meanwhile, is ascendant in nearly every area of American life. A small number of leftists-college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising-have not just taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities, our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have used their newfound power to silence their opposition. The authoritarian Left is aggressively insistent that everyone must conform to its values, demanding submission and conformity. The dogmatic Left is obsessed with putting people in categories and changing human nature. Everyone who opposes it must be destroyed. Ben Shapiro looks at everything from pop culture to the Frankfurt school, social media to the Founding Fathers, to explain the origins of our turn to tyranny, and why so many seem blind to it. More than a catalog of bad actors and intemperate acts, The Authoritarian Moment lays bare the intolerance and rigidity creeping into all American ideology - and prescribes the solution to ending the authoritarianism that threatens our future.

This book examines the practice of transitional justice in the Solomon Islands from the period of the 'The Tensions' to the present. In late 1998, the Solomon Islands were plunged into a period of violent civil conflict precipitated by a complex web of grievances, injustices, ethnic tensions, and economic insecurities. This conflict dragged on until the middle of 2003, leaving an estimated 200 people dead and more than 20 000 displaced from their homes. In the time that has elapsed since the end of The Tensions, numerous-at times incompatible-approaches to transitional justice have been implemented in the Solomon Islands. The contributors to this volume examine how key global trends and debates about transitional justice were played out in the Solomon Islands, how its key mechanisms were adapted to meet the specific demands of post-conflict justice in this local context, and how well its practices and processes fulfilled their perceived functions.

This book examines the global campaign to end hunger and malnutrition. Focus is placed on the work of the United Nations which has led international efforts to improve food security in the world's poorest countries. The book first reviews the long-term project to establish access to safe, sufficient, and nutritious food as a universally recognized human right. This is followed by separate chapters that examine the nature and central causes of food insecurity in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. These chapters also review the contemporary work of three United Nations agencies - the World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Fund for Agricultural Development - in providing both food aid and food assistance to each region of the developing world. This includes the provision of emergency food aid in response to natural disaster and civil conflict, as well as longer-term food assistance to promote agricultural productivity, advance rural development, and preserve natural environments. The concluding chapter considers ways to strengthen food aid and assistance in the years to come, with many of the recommendations advanced reflecting lessons learned from the actual experience of food aid and assistance described in this book.

This study adds to the small but growing literature on Black health history--the rise of hospital care and hospital services provided to Blacks from the antebellum era to the integration era, a period of some 150 years. The work examines the political, policy, legal, and philanthropic forces that helped to define the rise, development, and decline of Black hospitals in the United States. Particular discussion is given to the federal Hill-Burton Act of 1946 and the extent to which the legislation impacted Black hospital development. The roles of the Freedman's Bureau, National Medical Association, National Hospital Association, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the development of Black hospitals is highlighted.

This book explores the human right to housing, presenting the findings of a global discourse analysis to analyse the right to housing from the perspective of theories on land policy and social citizenship. The book concludes that planners and policy makers will not be able to completely fulfil the human right to housing. For that reason, the book presents a theory of de-commodification of land use that highlights the meaning of land use rights for people affected by inadequate housing. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including social policy, global social policy, human rights law, discourse theory, and sociology will find this study of interest.

This book takes a distinctive and innovative approach to a relatively under-explored question, namely: Why do we have human rights? Much political discourse simply proceeds from the idea that humans have rights because they are human without seriously interrogating this notion. Egalitarian Rights Recognition offers an account of how human rights are created and how they may be seen to be legitimate: rights are created through social recognition. By combining readings of 19th Century English philosopher T.H. Green with 20th Century political theorist Hannah Arendt, the author constructs a new theory of the social recognition of rights. He challenges both the standard 'natural rights' approach and also the main accounts of the social recognition of rights which tend to portray social recognition as settled norms or established ways of acting. In contrast, Hann puts forward a 10-point account of the dynamic and contingent social recognition of human rights, which emphasises the importance of meaningful socio-economic equality.

Historians generally portray the 1950s as a conservative era when anticommunism and the Cold War subverted domestic reform, crushed political dissent, and ended liberal dreams of social democracy. These years, historians tell us, represented a turn to the right, a negation of New Deal liberalism, an end to reform. Jennifer A. Delton argues that, far from subverting the New Deal state, anticommunism and the Cold War enabled, fulfilled, and even surpassed the New Deal's reform agenda. Anticommunism solidified liberal political power and the Cold War justified liberal goals such as jobs creation, corporate regulation, economic redevelopment, and civil rights. She shows how despite President Eisenhower's professed conservativism, he maintained the highest tax rates in US history, expanded New Deal programs, and supported major civil rights reforms.

This open access book theorises and concretises the idea of 'absolute rights' in human rights law with a focus on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It unpacks how we might understand what an 'absolute right' in human rights law is and draws out how such a right's delimitation may remain faithful to its absolute character. From these starting points, it considers how, as a matter of principle, the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment enshrined in Article 3 ECHR is, and ought, to be substantively delimited by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Focusing on the wrongs at issue, this analysis touches both on the core of the right and on what some might consider to lie at the right's 'fringes': from the aggravated wrong of torture to the severity assessment delineating inhumanity and degradation; the justified use of force and its implications for absoluteness; the delimitation of positive obligations to protect from ill-treatment; and the duty not to expel persons to places where they face a real risk of torture, inhumanity or degradation. Few legal standards carry the simultaneous significance and contestation surrounding this right. This book seeks to contribute fruitfully to efforts to counter a proliferation of attempts to dispute, circumvent or dilute the absolute character of the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and to offer the groundwork for transparently and coherently (re)interpreting the right's contours in line with its absolute character. Winner of the 2022 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Birmingham.

This book deals with the phenomenon of conflict-related reproductive violence and explores the international legal framework's capacity to respond to it. The international discourse on gender-based violence in conflicts tends to focus on sexualized crimes, which leads to incomplete narratives of the gendered dimensions of armed conflicts. In particular, international law has often remained silent on conflict-related violence affecting or aimed at the victim's reproductive system. The author conceptualizes reproductive violence as a distinct manifestation of gender-based violence and a violation of reproductive autonomy. The analysis explores the historical approaches to reproductive violence and evaluates the current potentials of international criminal law for its prosecution as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In this regard, it also develops proposals for a gender-sensitive interpretation of the existing legal framework as well as possible amendments to it. The book is aimed at researchers and practitioners in the fields of international criminal justice and international human rights law with an interest in gender perspectives on international law, sexualized and gender-based violence, and the discourse on reproductive human rights. Tanja Altunjan is a former researcher at Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin where she obtained her doctoral degree in criminal law.