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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > General
This special issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment revisits Professor Christopher D. Stone's iconic 1972 article, and features an introduction by Professor Philippe Sands QC, a set of elegant and thought-provoking reflections on the original article by Baroness Mary Warnock, Professor Ngaire Naffine and Professor Lorraine Code, and an equally elegant and thought-provoking response to their reflections from Professor Stone himself. This thoughtful collection of essays will be a valuable addition to contemporary debates concerning the crucial search for new relationships between humanity and the living world and between human rights and the environment. The renowned contributors offer rich reflections on questions of legal standing, legal subjectivity and epistemology raised by Stone's article, and which have greater salience than ever as we face the environmental and human challenges of the 21st century. Contributors: L. Code, A. Grear, N. Naffine, P. Sands, C.D. Stone, M. Warnock
Apartheid and its resistance come to life in this memoir making it a vital historical document of its time and for our own. In 1969, while a student in South Africa, John Schlapobersky was arrested for opposing apartheid and tortured, detained and eventually deported. Interrogated through sleep deprivation, he later wrote secretly in solitary confinement about the struggle for survival. Those writings inform this exquisitely written book in which the author reflects on the singing of the condemned prisoners, the poetry, songs and texts that saw him through his ordeal, and its impact. This sense of hope through which he transformed his life guides his continuing work as a psychotherapist and his focus on the rehabilitation of others. "[T]hetale of an ordinary young man swept one day from his life into hell, testimony to the wickedness a political system let loose in its agents and, above all, an intimate account of how a man became a healer."-Jonny Steinberg, Oxford University From the introduction: I was supposed to be a man by the time I turned 21, by anyone's reckoning. By the apartheid regime's reckoning, I was also old enough to be tortured. Looking back, I can recognize the boy I was. The eldest of my grandchildren is now approaching this age, and I would never want to see her or the others - or indeed anyone else - having to face any such ordeal. At the time my home was in Johannesburg, only some thirty miles from Pretoria, where I was thrown into a world that few would believe existed, populated by creatures from the darkest places, creatures of the night, some in uniform. I was there for fifty-five days, and never went home again.
Focusing on children's citizenship, participation and rights, this edited collection draws on the work of a number of leading scholars in the sociology of childhood. The contributors explore a range of themes including: tensions between pragmatism and grand theory; revisiting agency/structure debates in the light of children; the challenging of binary thought prevalent in studies around 'generations' and other aspects of sociology; the manifestation of power in time and space; the application of theories into the 'real' world through NGOs, practitioners, policy makers, politicians and empirical research. The collection will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including childhood studies, sociology, politics and social policy, as well as policy makers and practitioners interested in the citizenship, rights and participation of children.
This volume takes stock of the seminal contribution of Charles Beitz to the so-called "political turn" in the philosophy of human rights, whose origins are in the work of the late Rawls. In his already classic book The Idea of Human Rights (2009), Beitz proposes that human rights are better understood from the vantage point of their practice in the contemporary world. Instead of looking at these rights as legal and political instantiations of fully justified moral rights, Beitz reconstructs the idea of human rights as being part of a global discursive practice that can only be understood in the framework of the international system of states in which we live. In this system of interdependent states, with the consequent dispersion of political authority, human rights constitute an array of internal justifications and criticisms, rather than a blueprint of the ideal society. All the chapters in this volume draw on these fundamental ideas elaborated by Beitz and propose to extend them further in their connection with humanistic accounts of human rights, with the plurality of contexts in which the practice of human rights takes place, and finally, with the interconnections between these rights and global justice or intergenerational justice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
This book explores the extent of parallelism and cross-influence between Catholic Social Teaching and the work of the world's oldest human rights institution, the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Sometimes there is a mutual attraction between seeming opposites who in fact share a common goal. This book is about just such an attraction between a secular organisation born of the political desire for peace and justice, and a metaphysical institution much older founded to bring peace and justice on earth. It examines the principles evident in the teachings of the Catholic Church and in the secular philosophy of the ILO; together with the theological basis of the relevant provisions of Catholic Social Teaching and of the socio-political origins and basis of the ILO. The spectrum of labour rights covered in the book extends from the right to press for rights, i.e., collective bargaining, to rights themselves - conditions in work - and on to post-employment rights in the form of social security and pensions. The extent of the parallelism and cross-influence is reviewed from the issue of the Papal Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum (1891) and from the founding of the ILO in 1919. This book is intended to appeal to lay, professional and academic alike, and will be of interest to researchers and academics working in the areas of international human rights, theology, comparative philosophy, history and social and political studies. On 4 January 2021 it was granted an Imprimatur by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Malcolm P. McMahon O.P., meaning that the Catholic Church is satisfied that the book is free of doctrinal or moral error.
This book investigates how the intersection between gendered violence and human rights is depicted and engaged with in Africana literature and films. The rich and multifarious range of film and literature emanating from Africa and the diaspora provides a fascinating lens through which we can understand the complex consequences of gendered violence on the lives of women, children and minorities. Contributors to this volume examine the many ways in which gendered violence mirrors, expresses, projects and articulates the larger phenomenon of human rights violations in Africa and the African diaspora and how, in turn, the discourse of human rights informs the ways in which we articulate, interrogate, conceptualise and interpret gendered violence in literature and film. The book also shines a light on the linguistic contradictions and ambiguities in the articulation of gendered violence in private spaces and war. This book will be essential reading for scholars, critics, feminists, teachers and students seeking solid grounding in exploring gendered violence and human rights in theory and practice.
This book explores developments in international law regarding the relationship between human rights law and international humanitarian law and their coapplicability in armed conflict situations. The work examines the jurisprudence of the international human rights courts and looks at the Inter-American and European Courts of Human Rights case law in dealing with new emergencies in armed conflicts. It argues that a new interpretation and application of the law is required to deal with current needs while remaining faithful to moral commitments made in the international arena. In this way, the book deals with recent cases and their rationale to build a new understanding of law and international policy that complies with the globalization process and progress towards an enhancement of the international community's legal framework. Combining the emergencies in armed conflicts with the mutual enforcement of human rights law and humanitarian law, this book holistically develops concepts and theories to present a pragmatic solution to moral quandaries over the targeting of civilians during armed conflict situations. The book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers in the areas of international human rights and international humanitarian law.
The Law of War and Peace offers a cutting-edge analysis of the relationship between law, armed conflict, gender and peace. This book, which is the first of two volumes, focuses on the interplay between international law and gendered experiences of armed conflict. It provides an in-depth analysis of the key debates on collective security, unilateral force, the laws governing conflict, terrorism and international criminal law. While much of the current scholarship has centered on the UN Security Council's Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, this two-volume work seeks to move understandings beyond the framework established by WPS. It does this through providing a critical and intersectional approach to gender and conflict which is mindful of transnational feminist and queer perspectives.
This peer-reviewed book features essays on the Armenian massacres of 1915-1916. It aims to cast light upon the various questions of international law raised by the matter. The answers may help improve international relations in the region. In 1915-1916, roughly a million and a half Armenians were murdered in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, which had been home to them for centuries. Ever since, a dispute between Armenians and Turkey has been ongoing over the qualification of the massacres. The contributors to this volume examine the legal nature and consequences of this event. Their investigation strives to be completely neutral and technical. The essays also look at the broader issue of denial. For instance, in Turkey, public speech on the matter can still trigger criminal prosecution whereas in other European States denial of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is criminalized. However, the European Court of Human Rights views criminal prosecution of denial of the Armenian massacres as unlawful. In addition, one essay considers a state's obligation to remember by looking at lessons learnt from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Another contributor looks at a collective right to remember and some ideas to move forward towards a solution. Moreover, the book explores the way the Armenian massacres have affected the relationship between Turkey and the European Union.
The political, economic and social transformations that have taken place in China over the last half-century have had a major impact upon the formal methods, institutions and mechanisms used to deal with alleged criminal infractions. This path-breaking book, based upon the largest and most systematic empirical inquiry ever undertaken in China, analyzes the extent to which changes to the formal legal structure have resulted in changes to the law in practice. With unprecedented access to prosecution case files, observation of live trials and interviews with judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers, the book paints a uniquely detailed picture of China's criminal justice system as it operates in everyday cases. Among the major themes explored are: bail; detention; torture; confessions; the role of police, prosecutors and judges; the work of defence lawyers; pre-trial and trial practice; and sentencing practices, including the death penalty. The book shows, through volumes of quantitative data and the voices of judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers, how the party-state continues to influence and control both the process and outcome of criminal trials through an elaborate system of audit and sanction, the result of which is a system of aggregate rather than individual justice. With a wealth of original empirical data, this book will be of significant interest to academics and postgraduate students in the general area of Chinese Studies, human rights, criminal justice and comparative criminal justice. Policy makers, politicians and development agencies will also find it invaluable. With contributions from: Satnam Choongh, Pinky Choy Dick Wan, Eric Chui Wing Hong, Ian Dobinson and Carol Jones
This book focuses on anti-discrimination law in order to identify commonalities and best practices across nations. Almost every nation in the world embraces the principle of equality and non-discrimination, in theory if not in practice. As the authors' expert contributions establish, the sources of the principle vary considerably, from international treaties to religious law, traditions and more. There are many approaches to methods of enforcement and other variables, but the principle is nearly universal. What does a comparison of the laws and approaches across different lands reveal? Readers may explore the enforcement and effectiveness of anti-discrimination law from 25 nations, across six continents. Esteemed authors examine national, regional and international systems looking for common and best practices, identifying innovative approaches to long-standing problems. The many ways that anti-discrimination law is enforced are brought to light, from criminal or civil prosecution through to community resolution processes, amongst others. Through comparing the approaches of different lands, the authors consider which methods of enforcement are effective. These enriching national and international perspectives highlight the need for more creative, concrete and coordinated means of enforcement to ensure the effectiveness of anti-discrimination law, regardless of the legal tradition concerned, but in light of these traditions. Readers will find each nation remarkable, and learn something new and interesting from each report.
Obligations: New Trajectories in Law provides a critical analysis of the role of obligations in contemporary legal and social practices. As rights have become the preeminent feature of modern political and legal discourse, the work of obligations has been overshadowed. Questioning and correcting this dominant image of our time, this book brings obligations back into view in a way that fits better with the realities of contemporary social life. Following a historical account of the changing place and priorities of obligations in modernity, the book analyses how obligations and practices of obedience are core to understanding how law sustains conditions of inequality. But it also explores the enduring role obligations play in furthering individual and collective well-being, highlighting their significance in practices that prioritize human and environmental needs, common goods, and solidarity. In doing so, it also offers an alternative and cogent assessment of the force, and the potential, of obligations in contemporary societies. This original jurisprudential contribution will appeal to an academic and student readership in law, politics, and the social sciences.
This book assesses the extent to which an emphasis on national security and prioritization of state interests has dominated governance policy-making in Northeast and Southeast Asia, at the expense of human security, human development, and human rights. The findings are that in many cases, there are embedded structural obstacles to achieving human-centered governance objectives in the region. These relate to the role of the military, historical authoritarian legacies, and new authoritarian trends. Contributors examine not only the most obvious instances of military domination of governance in the region (North Korea with its "Military First" philosophy, Thailand since the 2014 coup, and Myanmar with its long history of military rule), but also less well known examples of the influence of conflict legacies upon governance in Cambodia, Timor-Leste, and Laos, as well as the emergence of new reservoirs of power and resources for the forces of authoritarianism.
What is a right? What, if anything, makes rights different from other features of the normative world, such as duties, standards, rules, or principles? Do all rights serve some ultimate purpose? In addition to raising these questions, philosophers and jurists have long been aware that different senses of 'a right' abound. To help make sense of this diversity, and to address the above questions, they developed two types of accounts of rights: models and theories. This book explicates rights modelling and theorising and scrutinises their methodological underpinnings. It then challenges this framework by showing why the theories ought to be abandoned. In addition to exploring structural concerns, the book also addresses the various ways that rights can be used. It clarifies important differences between rights exercise, enforcement, remedying, and vindication, and identifies forms of legal rights-claiming and rights-invoking outside of institutional contexts.
This book traces the evolution of organisational activism among Muslim women in India. It deconstructs the 'Muslim woman' as the monolith based on tropes like purdah, polygamy, and tin talaq and compels the reader to revisit the question of Muslim women's individual and collective agency. The book argues that the political field, along with religion, moulds the nature and scope of Muslim women's activism in India. It looks at the objectives of four Muslim women's organisations: the Bazm-e-Niswan, the Awaaz-e-Niswaan, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan and the India International Women's Alliance (IIWA), in close interaction with the political landscape of Mumbai. The book explores the emergence of gender-inclusive interpretation of Muslim women's rights by Muslim women activists and challenges the dominant and reductionist stereotypes on Muslim women, community, and absolutist ideas of Islam. It argues that Muslim women are not passive victims of their culture and religion, rather they can develop a critique of their marginality and subjugation from within the community. Revisiting Muslim Women's Activism traces the evolution of a community-centric approach in women's activism and records a fragmented view on women's rights from within the community and religious leadership. It also delineates the distinctiveness of this activism that considers religion and culture as resources for empowerment and as sites of contestations. Moreover, the book documents the narratives of Muslim women's struggle and resistance from their location and lived experiences. It will be of interest to students and researchers of women's studies, gender studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, and Islamic studies.
This book deals with the implementation of the rights of the child as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 21 countries from Europe, Asia, Australia, and the USA. It gives an overview of the legal status of children regarding their most salient rights, such as the implementation of the best interest principle, the right of the child to know about of his/her origin, the right to be heard, to give medical consent, the right of the child in the field of employment, religious education of children, prohibition of physical punishment, protection of the child through deprivation of parental rights and in the case of inter-country adoption. In the last 25 years since the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted, many States Parties to the Convention have made great efforts to pass legislation regulating the rights of the child, in their commitment to the improvement of the legal status of the child. However, is that enough for any child to live better, safer, and healthier? What are the practical effects of this international as well as many national instruments in the everyday life of children? Have there been any outcomes in terms of improvement of their status around the world, and improvement of the conditions under which they live, since the Convention entered into force? In tackling these questions, this work presents a comparative overview of the implementation of the Convention, and evaluates the results achieved.
With contributions from a diverse array of international scholars, this edited volume offers a renewed understanding of gender-based violence (GBV) by examining its social and political dimensions in migration contexts. This book engages micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis by foregrounding a conceptualization of GBV that addresses both its interpersonal and structural causes. Chapters explore how GBV frameworks and migration management intersect, bringing to the forefront the specific inequalities these intersections produce for migrant women. Drawing upon several disciplines, the authors engage in co-writing a critical engagement which proposes an original understanding of how the concepts of intersectionality, vulnerability and precarity speak to each other from a feminist perspective. This volume will be of interest to scholars/researchers and policymakers in Gender Studies, Migration and Refugee Studies, Sociology, Political Science, Trauma Studies, Human Rights and Socio-Legal Studies.
This book analyzes three major issues related to refugees: repatriation and its accompanying concerns - peace and security. Since the late 1980s, repatriation has been considered the most appropriate solution for refugees. This applies if the home country is peaceful, but often repatriation takes places in conflict situations, which can lead to national and human insecurity problems. Rwanda is one of the countries where the question of repatriation has become highly controversial since the 1990s. The United Nations maintains that Rwanda has changed significantly since the 1994 genocide, and today enjoys an essential level of peace and security. This explains why the UN has promoted repatriation and recommended the cessation of Rwandan refugee status, yet the vast majority of refugees have refused to return to the country. Providing insights from researchers, former UN staff members, journalists, and, most importantly, former Rwandan refugees themselves into both the theory and practice of refugees' repatriation as well as the security and peace issues, this book appeals to postgraduate students, academics, policymakers, and practitioners working for international organizations and NGOs.
What role does law play in post-communist societies? This book examines the law as a social institution in Eurasia, exploring how it is shaped in everyday interactions between state and society, organisations and individuals, and between law enforcement and other government entities. It bridges the gap between theoretically rich work on law-in-action and the empirical reality of Eurasia. The contributions in this volume include research on policing, the legal profession, public attitudes towards law, regime support and oppositional mobilisation, crime policy, and property rights, among others. The studies shift away from the common perception that, in Eurasia, the law exists only as a tool for the state to enforce order and suppress dissent. Instead, they show, through empirical analyses, that citizens evade, use, reinterpret and shape the law even in authoritarian contexts-sometimes containing state violence and challenging the regime, and other times reinforcing state capture from below. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Europe-Asia Studies.
This volume explores agricultural commercialization from a gender equality and right to food perspective. Agricultural commercialization, involving not only the shift to selling crops and buying inputs but also the commodification of land and labour, has always been controversial. Strategies for commercialization have often reinforced and exacerbated inequalities, been blind to gender differences and given rise to violations of the human rights to food, land, work and social security. While there is a body of evidence to trace these developments globally, impacts vary considerably in local contexts. This book systematically considers these dynamics in two countries, Cambodia and Ghana. Profoundly different in terms of their history and location, they provide the basis for fruitful comparisons because they both transitioned to democracy in the early 1990s, made agricultural development a priority, and adopted orthodox policies of commercialization to develop the sector. Chapters illustrate how commercialization processes are gendered, highlighting distinctive gender, ethnic and class dynamics in rural Ghana and Cambodia and the different outcomes these generate. They also show the ways in which food cultures are changing and the often-problematic impact of these changes on the safety and quality of food. Specific policies and legal norms are examined, with chapters addressing the development and implementation of frameworks on the right to food and land administration. Overall, the volume brings into relief multiple dimensions shaping the outcomes of processes of commercialization, including gender orders, food cultures, policy translation, national and sub-national policies, corporate investments and programmes, and formal and informal legal norms. In doing so, it offers insight not only on our case countries, but also provides proposals to advance rights-based research on food security. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of food security, agricultural development and economics, gender, human rights and sustainable development.
Can harsh interrogation techniques and torture ever be morally justified for a nation at war or under the threat of imminent attack? In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, the United States and other liberal democracies were forced to grapple once again with the issue of balancing national security concerns against the protection of individual civil and political rights. This question was particularly poignant when US forces took prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq who arguably had information about additional attacks. In this volume, ethicist Paul Lauritzen takes on ethical debates about counterterrorism techniques that are increasingly central to US foreign policy and discusses the ramifications for the future of interrogation. Lauritzen examines how doctors, lawyers, psychologists, military officers, and other professionals addressed the issue of the appropriate limits in interrogating detainees. In the case of each of these professions, a vigorous debate ensued about whether the interrogation policy developed by the Bush administration violated codes of ethics governing professional practice. These codes are critical, according to Lauritzen, because they provide resources for democracies and professionals seeking to balance concerns about safety with civil liberties, while also shaping the character of those within these professional guilds. This volume argues that some of the techniques used at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere were morally impermissible; nevertheless, the healthy debates that raged among professionals provide hope that we may safeguard human rights and the rule of law more effectively in the future.
Using an innovative history of the constitutional right to privacy, and inspired by Emersonian Justices like Brandeis and Douglas, this book rescues the meaning of privacy from prevalent liberal thinking by proposing a general theory of rights based on a spiritual-ecological jurisprudence tradition at the heart of American law. The right to privacy is a powerful, yet often overlooked tradition, whose main representatives are Justice Brandeis and Justice Douglas, both of whom translated into concretely legal and political ideas the philosophy of American thinkers like Emerson and Thoreau. In light of this historical understanding, the major constitutional cases relating to privacy, such as Griswold or Roe v. Wade, are given new interpretations. Through a radical reinterpretation of Mill's philosophy of liberty, and a comparison of that reinterpretation with the one of Brandeis, this book proposes a new general theory of rights, based on the valuation of privacy as a transformative context in which self-knowledge can emerge, giving birth to ethical and communal responsibility.
R. M. Hare, one of the most widely discussed of today's moral philosophers, presents a selection of essays in which he brings ethical theory lucidly to bear on moral problems arising in politics. He examines our obligation to obey the law; the limits of legitimate lawbreaking, civil violence, and war; rights of various sorts and their supposed conflict with utility; justice, distributive and retributive; and care of the environment. His arguments are amply illustrated by specific examples. The volume substantiates the author's claim that help with such problems can be found in philosophy, and particularly in his own ethical theory, which draws together the best insights of Kant and utilitarians.
Palestine for the Third Time is a book of reportage originally published in Poland in 1933 by Ksawery Pruszynski, a young reporter working for a Polish newspaper, who went to Mandate Palestine to see for himself whether the Zionist dream of returning to Eretz Yisrael had a chance of turning into reality. Travelling widely and talking to people he happened to meet on his way-Jews, Arabs, committed dreamers and the disaffected-he was trying to explain to his readers what he was seeing. This book is a unique firsthand account of the early stages in formation of the state and nation of Israel. But it's not just a nostalgic vignette. It resonates powerfully today, linking Tony Judt, Edward Said, and Amos Oz, illuminating the hotly debated questions of modern Israel.
In the last 20 years, the related phenomena of honour-based violence and forced marriages have received increasing attention at the international and European level. Punitive responses towards this type of violence have been adopted, including ad hoc criminalisation and legislation containing direct references to the concepts of honour, culture, and tradition. However, criminal law-based responses present several shortcomings and have often disregarded the specific needs that victims of such crimes might encounter. This book examines the possibility of using alternative programmes to address cases of honour-based violence and forced marriages. After reviewing previous existing literature, it presents new empirical data. Introducing a case study from the United Kingdom, the book recalls the debate on Sharia Councils and the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, but examines instead other community-based secular programmes. By comparison, a study from Norway on the work of the National Mediation Agency and the so-called Cross-Cultural Transformative Mediation model is investigated as part of a larger multi-agency approach. Ultimately, in an attempt to reconcile pluralism and the rule of law, the book proposes effective ways to tackle honour crimes based on cooperation and individualisation of the proceedings, and capable of improving women's access to justice and reducing secondary victimisation. The book will be essential reading for researchers and academics in Law, Criminology, Sociology, and Anthropology and for policy-makers and practitioners working with honour-based violence cases. |
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