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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > General
This book analyzes human rights and crime prevention challenges from the perspective of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda, in particular its goal 16 on promoting peaceful, inclusive and just societies, the creation and development of which depend on the interplay between various secular and non-secular (f)actors. The book reflects on the implementation of these two legal instruments from a "back to the future" standpoint, that is, drawing on the wisdom of contributors to the 2030 Agenda from the past and present in order to offer a constructive inter-disciplinary and intergenerational approach. The book's intended readership includes academics and educationists, criminal justice practitioners and experts, diplomats, spiritual leaders and non-governmental actors; its goal is to encourage them to pursue a socially and human rights oriented drive for "larger freedom," which is currently jeopardized by adverse political currents.
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist A chilling work of true crime about the midair murder of a human rights activist, set against a riveting political drama in the world's fourth-largest nation On a warm Jakarta night in September 2004, Munir said goodbye to his wife and friends at the airport. He was bound for the Netherlands to pursue a master's degree in human rights. But Munir never reached Amsterdam alive. Before his plane touched down, the thirty-eight-year-old-one of the leading human rights activists of his generation-lay dead in the fourth row. Munir's daring investigation of the killings and abductions that occurred over three decades of authoritarian rule by the former president, Suharto, had earned him powerful enemies. Undeterred, Munir's wife, Suciwati, and his close friend, Usman Hamid, launched their own investigation. They soon uncovered a conspiracy involving spies, a mysterious co-pilot, threats of violence and black magic, and deadly poison. Drawing on interviews, courtroom observation, leaked documents, and police files, this book uncovers the dramatic murder plot and the titanic struggle to bring the perpetrators of Munir's death to justice. Just as Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing did for Northern Ireland, We Have Tired of Violence tells the story of a shocking crime that serves as a window into a captivating land still struggling to shake off a terrible legacy.
The impasse currently affecting human rights as a language used to express struggles for dignity is, to a large extent, a reflection of the epistemological and political exhaustion which blights the global North. Since the global hegemony of human rights as a language for human dignity is nowadays incontrovertible, the question of whether it can be used in a counter-hegemonic sense remains open. Inspired by struggles from all corners of the world that reveal the potential but, above all, the limitations of human rights, this book offers a highly conditional response. The prevailing notion of human rights today, as the hegemonic language of human dignity, can only be resignified on the basis of answers to simple questions: why does so much unjust human suffering exist that is not considered a violation of human rights? Do other languages of human dignity exist in the world? Are these other languages compatible with the language of human rights? Obviously, we can only find satisfactory answers to these questions if we are able to envisage a radical transformation of what is nowadays known as human rights. Herein lies the challenge posed by the Epistemologies of the South: reconciling human rights with the different languages and forms of knowledge born out of struggles for human dignity.
The historical record prior to 1970 clearly shows the failure of the U.S. government to protect Indian interests or to honor its treaty obligations as mandated under the Constitution. In the 1970s, however, a radical reversal in U.S. policy took place. That policy change--and how and why it happened--is the subject of the present study. Focusing on policy-making processes at the national level, Emma Gross examines the various contributing factors and explores several theoretical models as a framework for understanding the federal government's new emphasis on promoting self-determination and protecting Indian rights and resources. The study is based on case analyses of major legislation enacted during the 1970s in areas such as land claims, restoration, health, education, and child welfare. Following an analysis of the failures of earlier American Indian policy, Professor Gross considers the elements that affected the policy shift. She looks at the constitutional mandate and the role of legal protections, and discusses self-determination ideology, which became an operative force in generating support for policies reflecting Indian preferences. The importance of federal spending for domestic programs is considered, together with presidential initiatives, congressional advocacy, and the role of Indian leaders and organizations functioning as a special interest group. In assessing future prospects for the Indian political agenda, Professor Gross stresses the need for Indians as a group to continue pursuing their policy goals and objectives through the mechanisms of democractic participation. The first analysis to clarify the empirical basis of U.S. policy-making in this area, ProfessorGross's book is relevant to a variety of specialities in political science, as well as the fields of ethnic studies, social work, education, American political history, and sociology.
Crimes in Archival Form explores the many ways in which human rights "facts" are produced rather than found. Using Myanmar as his case study, Ken MacLean examines the fact-finding practices of a human rights group, two cross-border humanitarian agencies, an international law clinic, and a global NGO-led campaign. Foregrounding fact-finding, in critical yet constructive ways, prompts long overdue conversations about the possibilities and limits of human rights documentation as a mode of truth-seeking. Such conversations are particularly urgent in an era when the perpetrators of large-scale human rights violations exploit misinformation, weaponize disinformation, and employ outright falsehoods, including deepfakes, to undermine the credibility of those who document abuses and demand accountability in the court of public opinion and in courts of law. MacLean compels practitioners and scholars alike to be more transparent about how human rights "fact" production works, why it is important, and when its use should prompt concern.
From the streets of Calais to the borders of Melilla, Evros and the United States, the slogan 'No borders!' is a thread connecting a multitude of different struggles for the freedom to move and to stay. But what does it mean to make this slogan a reality? Drawing on the author's extensive research in Greece and Calais, as well as a decade campaigning for migrant rights, Natasha King explores the different forms of activism that have emerged in the struggle against border controls, and the dilemmas these activists face in translating their principles into practice. Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, No Borders constitutes vital reading for anyone interested in how we make radical alternatives to the state a genuine possibility for our times, and raises crucial questions on the nature of resistance.
This study examines the role of religion in American politics. It begins with the assumption that there exist multiple democratic theories, and that religion has a different role to play in each. It compares consensus theories of American political culture, and dualistic theories of political mobilization, and accounts, which emphasize the diversity of the American citizenry. The question of how religious leaders view their political roles is of the work's focus. The major part of the study consists of interviews with nearly thirty Protestant ministers and Roman Catholic clergy concerning their conceptions of the relationship between the sacred and the political. These conceptions are then related to the various theories of democratic political culture, with the conclusion that each of three traditions (Roman Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, and Evangelical Protestantism) embodies to some extent one of the models of democratic politics. This work will be of interest to scholars and students of American politics, government, and religion.
Written some fifty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this book shows that the struggle for a fuller realization of these rights is far from over. It maps out the international human rights agenda as it stands at the end of the 20th century, focusing on four interrelated themes. The first concerns the conceptual development of human rights, the second looks at human rights in the Asia Pacific region, the third considers human rights in a post-Cold-War environment and the fourth assesses the protection and monitoring of human rights.
In this powerful book, William F. Felice argues that a new range of human rights duties for individuals, nation-states, and global institutions has emerged in our modern interconnected era. He investigates the compelling ideas of ethical interdependence and new global human rights duties in four case studies: mass incarceration in the United States, LGBT rights in Africa, women's rights in Saudi Arabia, and environmental rights in China. Felice argues that in all four cases a "human rights threshold" has been surpassed, and urgent action is needed to address unacceptable levels of human suffering. Beginning with a primer on how the international community through the United Nations has codified international human rights law, Felice explores the conflicts between rights, problems of compliance, and the difficulties that emerge when cultural and religious rights are privileged over the rights of individuals and groups. He shows that a robust normative framework of global governance and global citizenship is central to the actualization of human rights protection for all.
Faded Dreams paints a new picture of why racial inequality changes in America - one that challenges existing explanations by putting politics at center stage. The author argues that blacks began to catch up economically with whites mainly when government policy makers, under political pressure by blacks and backed by an important segment of the white community, pushed for greater economic equality. Similarly, the greatest obstacles to black gains in other periods have been government policies. Policy makers usually assumed away the race problem or used it against blacks and whites for political purposes, legitimating existing inequality and often making it worse. Through a systematic analysis of fifty years of data on income, education, and the kinds of jobs blacks and whites hold, Faded Dreams makes a powerful case that it takes active government to undo wage and job discrimination and to improve the education and living conditions of disadvantaged black youth.
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.
The United Nations has established a right to the truth to be enjoyed by victims of gross violations of human rights. The origins of the right stem from the need to provide victims and relatives of the missing with a right to know what happened. It encompasses the verification and full public disclosure of the facts associated with the crimes from which they or their relatives suffered. The importance of the right to the truth is based on the belief that, by disclosing the truth, the suffering of victims is alleviated. This book analyses the emergence of this right, as a response to an understanding of the needs of victims, through to its development and application in two particular legal contexts: international human rights law and international criminal justice. The book examines in detail the application of the right through the case law and jurisprudence of international tribunals in the human rights and also the criminal justice context, as well as looking at its place in transitional justice. The theoretical foundations of the right to the truth are considered as well as the various objectives appropriate for different truth-seeking mechanisms. The book then goes on to discuss to what extent it can be understood, constructed and applied as a hard, legally enforceable right with correlating duties on various people and institutions including state agencies, prosecutors and judges.
The question of how genetic resources ought to be owned and controlled has become a controversial international political issue. The authors examine this issue from a normative perspective, discussing the four principles that govern the debate over genetic resource control. These four principles are proprietarian intellectual property rights (the dominant principle, reflecting Western influences); communitarian intellectual property rights (a principle bound up with the rights of indigenous peoples); national sovereignty (the principle at the heart of international law); and common heritage of mankind (the most recent principle reflecting Third World demands).
This book describes the nature of trafficking in persons in West Africa, focusing on labor and sexual exploitation in the region, and recommends tailor-made solutions established by the Catholic Church in light of governmental authorities' failure to effectively combat this scourge of humanity. While states' efforts to fulfill their international obligations in developing anti-trafficking legislations are recognized, their failure to carry out prosecutions of offenders and ensure protection of the victims reveals that law alone is not a sufficient instrument for realizing human rights and improving people's lives. Faced with the sobering background of less than successful efforts by governmental entities to end the trade in humans, this research study recommends adopting essential elements of Catholic social teaching, which rests on the inherent dignity of human beings allowing the development of political, socio-cultural, and religious reforms that will increase the effectiveness of existing legislation designed to combat trafficking. This faith-based approach highlights the role that religion may play in fulfilling the discretionary provisions of the Palermo Protocol by promoting the welfare and protecting the life and dignity of the victims. Additionally, religion is composed of sound moral ethics that determine people's behavior to refrain from the sinful conduct of trafficking. It also creates a sense of ethical responsibility that promotes supply chain transparency and ethical purchasing as well as advocating social reforms and anti-trafficking legislations initiatives. In fact, the author's approach, may be a model for other regions in the world and will be of interest to scholars, law and policy makers, human rights advocates and law enforcement agents working in the field of trafficking in persons.
The Internet has created a formidable challenge for human rights law and practice worldwide. International scholarly and policy-oriented communities have so far established a consensus regarding only one main aspect - human rights in the internet are the same as offline. There are emerging and ongoing debates regarding not only the standards and methods to be used for achieving the "sameness" of rights online, but also whether "classical" human rights as we know them are contested by the online environment. The internet itself, in view of its cross-border nature and its ability to affect various areas of law, requires adopting an internationally oriented approach and a perspective strongly focused on social sciences. In particular, the rise of the internet, enhanced also by the influence of new technologies such as algorithms and intelligent artificial systems, has influenced individuals' civil, political and social rights not only in the digital world, but also in the atomic realm. As the coming of the internet calls into question well-established legal categories, a broader perspective than the domestic one is necessary to investigate this phenomenon. This book explores the main fundamental issues and practical dimensions related to the safeguarding of human rights in the internet, which are at the focus of current academic debates. It provides a comprehensive analysis with a forward-looking perspective of bringing order into the somewhat chaotic online dimension of human rights. It addresses the matter of private digital censorship, the apparent inefficiency of existing judicial systems to react to human rights violations online, the uncertainty of liability for online human rights violations, whether the concern with personal data protection overshadows multiple other human rights issues online and will be of value to those interested in human rights law and legal regulation of the internet.
This book addresses the politics of global health and social justice issues around birth, focusing on dynamic communities that have chosen to speak truth to power by reforming dysfunctional health care systems or creating new ones outside the box. The chapters present models of childbirth at extreme ends of a spectrum-from the conflict zones and disaster areas of Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, and Indonesia, to high-risk tertiary care settings in China, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. Debunking notions about best care, the volume illustrates how human rights in health care are on a collision course with global capitalism and offers a number of specific solutions to this ever-increasing problem. This volume will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in anthropology, sociology, health, and midwifery, as well as for practitioners, policy makers, and organizations focused on birth or on social activism in any arena.
This book examines the relationship between inequalities and identities in the context of an unprecedented state advocacy of human rights with a distinct emphasis on (ethnic) group rights in post-civil war Ethiopia. The analysis is set against the background of a dramatic state remaking by a rebellion movement (the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front - EPRDF) that seized control of the Ethiopian state in 1991, after a decisive battlefield victory over an unpopular regime. The new government of former rebels pledged to institute a new system of ethnic self-government that celebrated ethnic diversity with a firm pledge to guarantee basic human rights. After nearly three decades in office, however, the Ethiopian government is challenged by the resilience of identity-based inequalities it ostensibly sought to end, and by protests against its own policies and practices that intensified inequality. The events in Ethiopia, reverberating throughout the Horn of Africa, have inspired heated and often polarized debates between academics, policy experts, political activists, and the media. Data D. Barata contributes to this debate through a nuanced ethnographic analysis of why identities with distinct notions of inequality persist, even after relentless interventions and ideological repudiations. The contestations and struggles over political representation, local governance, cultural identities, land and religion that the book examines are shaped, one way or another, by the global human rights discourse that has inspired millions of Africans to confront entrenched structures of power. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, African studies, political science, sociology and cultural studies.
This book examines John Locke as a theorist of migration, immigration, and the movement of peoples. It outlines the contours of the public discourse surrounding migration in the seventeenth century and situates Locke’s in-depth involvement in these debates. The volume presents a variety of undercurrents in Locke’s writing — his ideas on populationism, naturalization, colonization and the right to withdrawal, the plight of refugees, and territorial rights — which have great import in present-day debates about migration. Departing from the popular extant literature that sees Locke advocating for a strong right to exclude foreigners, the author proposes a Lockean theory of immigration that recognizes the fundamental right to emigrate, thus catering to an age wrought with terrorism, xenophobia and economic inequality. A unique and compelling contribution, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political theory, political philosophy, history of international politics, international relations, international political economy, public policy, seventeenth century English history, migration and citizenship studies, and moral philosophy.
Freedom of religion is an issue of universal interest and scope. However, in the last two centuries at least, the philosophical, religious and legal terms of the question have been largely defined in the West. In an increasingly global world, widening our knowledge of this right's roots in different cultural and legal systems becomes a priority. This Handbook seeks to attain this goal through a better understanding of the historical roots and expressions of the right to freedom of religion on the one hand and, on the other, of its theological background in different religious traditions. History and theology provide the setting for the analysis of the politics of freedom of religion, that is, how this right is used in the context of the dialogue/confrontation between countries placed in different cultural regions of the world, and of the legal strategies and tools that have been developed and are employed to protect and foster the right to freedom of religion. Behind these legal and political strategies, there is an ongoing debate about the nature of this right, whose main features are explored in the final section. Global, historical and interdisciplinary in approach, this book studies the new relevance of freedom of religion worldwide and develops suitable categories to analyze and understand the role that freedom of religion can play in managing religious and cultural diversity in our societies. Authored by experts, through the contributions collected in these chapters, scholars and students will be able to broaden and deepen their knowledge of the right to freedom of religion and to develop the ability to go beyond the borders of the different cultural environments in which this right took shape and developed.
This book investigates one of the most pervasive forms of modern slavery: bonded labour, whereby labour is linked with a credit agreement, leaving a debtor bound to repay their debt through long-term servitude. Drawing on cases from Nepal and India, the author adopts a human rights-based approach, interpreting slavery as a violation of human rights, and focusing on the empowerment of slaves as rights holders. Ultimately the book aims to explore the links between rights, power inequality and oppression, and to uncover ways to achieve the full liberation of bonded labourers. Identifying the factors and forces that contribute to and reinforce the situation of bonded labour in South Asia, the book demonstrates how systems of bonded labour are connected to long-term processes of colonisation, dispossession, migration, nationalisation of natural resources, and the introduction of private land ownership. Despite the fact that the United Nations has reported debt bondage as the most prevalent form of forced labour worldwide, there it is still little known about the real practical impacts of this approach to the lives of marginalised people. Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book will be a useful guide to students and scholars of modern slavery, international development, and South Asian studies.
This book argues that the international community has a moral duty to intervene on behalf of a population affected by a natural hazard when their government is either unable or unwilling to provide basic, life-saving assistance. The work draws on law, international relations theory, and political philosophy to articulate that non-response to a natural hazard is unethical. In providing policy suggestions the author articulates what should happen based on an ethical analysis. Readers will thus gain an ethical lens with which to view intervention in the aftermath of a natural hazard. The book encourages readers to consider the nuances of arguments from various disciplines about whether or not intervention is appropriate. Whilst arguing throughout that an intervention policy in response to natural hazards should be developed by the international community, the study also accounts for why intervention should only be used in very limited situations. This interdisciplinary approach makes the book essential reading for researchers, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of international law, humanitarian studies, human rights, international relations and political science.
Liberty: Ancient Ideas and Modern Perspectives is the first study of the ancient notions of liberty in the interconnected societies of the Ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium and how they relate to modern political theory. This volume gathers the work of historians of antiquity, whose specialisms are geographically and temporally diverse, together with political theorists and legal and political philosophers interested in conceptions of liberty. Together they discuss the rival understandings of liberty in antiquity and the potential offerings of these ancient societies to our contemporary intellectual world. This book aims to broaden our understanding of the conceptual articulations of liberty in the ancient world, from beyond the Graeco-Roman world to other ancient societies to which this world was connected; and to shed light on rival understandings of liberty in antiquity and the role these might play in the current thinking about this concept. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, History of European Ideas.
This book studies human rights discourse across a variety of graphic novels, both fiction and non-fiction, originating in different parts of the world, from India to South Africa, Sarajevo to Vietnam, with texts on the Holocaust, the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, the Rwandan and Sarajevan genocides, the Vietnam War, comfort women in World War II and the Civil Rights movement in the USA, to mention a few. The book demonstrates the emergence of the 'universal' subject of human rights, despite the variations in contexts. It shows how war, rape, genocide, abuse, social iniquity, caste and race erode personhood in multiple ways in the graphic novel, which portrays the construction of vulnerable subjects, the cultural trauma of collectives, the crisis and necessity of witnessing, and resilience-resistance through specific representational and aesthetic strategies. It covers a large number of authors and artists: Joe Sacco, Joe Kubert, Matt Johnson-Walter Pleece, Guy Delisle, Appupen, Thi Bui, Olivier Kugler and others. Through a study of these vastly different authors and styles, the book proposes that the graphic novel as a form is perfectly suited to the 'culture' and the lingua franca of human rights due to its amenability to experimentation and the sheer range within the form. The book will appeal to scholars in comics studies, human rights studies, visual culture studies and to the general reader with an interest in these fields. |
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