The human rights regime is one of modernity's great civilizing triumphs. From the formal promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to the subsequent embrace of this declaration by the newly independent states of Africa, human rights have emerged as the primary discourse of global politics and as an increasingly prominent category in the international and domestic legal system. But throughout their history, human rights have endured sustained attempts at disenfranchisement. In this provocative study, Linda Hogan defends human rights language while simultaneously reenvisioning its future. Avoiding problematic claims about shared universal values, Hogan draws on the constructivist strand of political philosophy to argue for a three-pronged conception of human rights: as requirements for human flourishing, as necessary standards of human community, and as the basis for emancipatory politics. In the process, she shows that it is theoretically possible and politically necessary for theologians to keep faith with human rights. Indeed, the Christian tradition -- the wellspring of many of the ethical commitments considered central to human rights -- must embrace its vital role in the project.

This book presents a detailed exploration of continuity and change in the British debates and policies relating to ethnic diversity since 9/11, focusing in particular on key policy areas which include the prevention of terrorism and citizenship, forced marriage, and the resentment of the 'white working class'. It offers an original perspective, which assesses the evolution of multiculturalism as a policy guideline in the United Kingdom and suggests that, while the rhetoric of multiculturalism has been toned down by successive governments since 2001, British debates and policies have continued to reflect a specific sensitivity to ethnic diversity.

"The Challenge of Human Rights" traces the history of human rights theory from classical antiquity through the enlightenment to the modern human rights movement, and analyses the significance of human rights in today's increasingly globalized world.
Provides an engaging study of the origin and the philosophical and political development of human rights discourse.
Offers an original defence of human rights.
Explores the significance of human rights in the context of increasing globalisation.
Confronts the major objections to human rights, including the charge of western ethical imperialism and cultural relativism.

Argues that human rights logically culminate in an ethical cosmopolitanism to reflect the moral unity of the human race.

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of crucial issues concerning EU co-operation and European security. At present, Europe is confronted with a number of serious common and global challenges, the most important being the economic crisis, migration issues, geopolitical tensions at its external borders, terrorism, climate change and environmental challenges. These developments have a huge impact on the stability and security of the continent as a whole and on each individual European country. Europe, more particularly the European Union, has to organize its governance and security infrastructure in such a way that it can cope with these global threats. This edited volume collects a number of topics and themes connected to the governance and/or security dimensions of EU co-operation. The book is divided into several parts, which deal respectively with the values and general principles of EU co-operation; institutional aspects of EU co-operation; a number of individual policy domains; areas of European criminal law; the external relations of the EU; and the future functioning of EU co-operation as a whole. The eighteen chapters, written by a team of experts with extensive practical and academic experience, contain insights and information valuable to researchers, students, practitioners and policy makers concerned with EU law and international law.About the editors Jaap de Zwaan is Lector European Integration at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, and Emeritus Professor of the European Union Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He served for nearly twenty years as a member of the Diplomatic Service of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he worked notably in the domain of European integration. He was also the Director of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael in The Hague for almost six years. Martijn Lak is a historian and a Lecturer and Researcher at the Department of European Studies of The Hague University of Applied Sciences. He studied Journalism and History at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, and obtained his Ph.D. in 2011. Martijn Lak specializes in post-war Dutch-German economic and political relations and contemporary German history. Abiola Makinwa is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer in commercial Law with a special focus on Anti-Corruption Law and Policy at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Abiola Makinwa holds a Ph.D. from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. She is a frequent speaker on anti-corruption law and policy and has introduced Anti-Corruption Compliance as an undergraduate course at The Hague University. Piet Willems is a Lecturer in International and European Law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, where he focuses on project-based learning, moot court coaching and competition law. His research activities focus on regulation in the European Union. He obtained both his Master's degree and his LL.M. in European Law from Ghent University. -based learning, moot court coaching and competition law. His research activities focus on regulation in the European Union. He obtained both his Master's degree and his LL.M. in European Law from Ghent University.

This book documents and analyzes the experiences of the United Nation's first Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. It highlights the conceptual advances in the legal understanding of the right to food in international human rights law, and analyzes key practical challenges through experiences in 11 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Courts regularly rely on process-based fundamental rights review. This means that they examine the diligence, fairness, and quality of legislative, administrative, and judicial procedures to determine whether fundamental rights have been violated. However, despite the frequent application of such review in practice, important questions about the meaning and value of procedural reasoning arise. Do courts provide sufficient protection of substantive rights when taking a procedural approach? Can they safeguard values of deliberative democracy and the rule of law through procedural reasoning? And can they rely on process-based review to avoid morally sensitive issues and cases concerning hard policy choices? This book engages with such questions with the aim of uncovering the potential and limitations of procedural reasoning in fundamental rights cases. To this end, it first discusses a number of concrete examples of application of this review by various courts. It then develops a context-independent definition of process-based fundamental rights review, which acknowledges the various uses of this type of review. On this basis, the book finally discusses the wide-ranging theoretical debates concerning procedural reasoning and identifies underlying explanations for the different views on the topic. The resulting in-depth and nuanced understanding of process-based fundamental rights review will support courts in developing well-balanced procedural approaches, and will assist scholars in studying procedural reasoning more systematically.

This volume of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law explores the many faces of populism, and the different manifestations of the relationship between populism and international law. Rather than taking the so-called populist backlash against globalisation, international law and governance at face value, this volume aims to dig deeper and wonders 'What backlash are we talking about, really?'. While populism is contextual and contingent on the society in which it arises and its relationship with international law and institutions thus has differed likewise, this volume assists in our examination of what we find so dangerous about populism and problematic in its relationship with international law. The Netherlands Yearbook of International Law was first published in 1970. It offers a forum for the publication of scholarly articles in a varying thematic area of public international law.

Human Rights in the International Public Sphere has an interdisciplinary focus and can be used as a text in communication studies, cultural studies, political science, current events, discourse analysis, area and international studies, and other courses in the social sciences and humanities.

From the squares of Spain to indigenous land in Canada, protest camps are a tactic used around the world. Since 2011 they have gained prominence in recent waves of contentious politics, deployed by movements with wide-ranging demands for social change. Through a series of international and interdisciplinary case studies from five continents, this topical collection is the first to focus on protest camps as unique organisational forms that transcend particular social movements' contexts. Whether erected in a park in Istanbul or a street in Mexico City, the significance of political encampments rests in their position as distinctive spaces where people come together to imagine alternative worlds and articulate contentious politics, often in confrontation with the state. Written by a wide range of experts in the field the book offers a critical understanding of current protest events and will help better understanding of new global forms of democracy in action.

Millions of people around the Asia-Pacific region are suffering from the twin effects of globalization and exclusionary nationality laws. Some are migrant workers without rights in host countries; some are indigenous peoples who are not accorded their full rights in their own countries. Yet others are refugees escaping from regimes that have no respect for human rights. This collection of essays discusses the ways in which citizenship laws in the region might be made consistent with human dignity. It considers the connectedness of national belonging and citizenship in East and Southeast Asian and Pacific states including Australia; the impact of mass migration, cultural homogenization and other effects of globalization on notions of citizenship; and possibilities of commitment to a transnational democratic citizenship that respects cultural difference.

Many years before the U.S. military had to deal with the repercussions of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the U.S. armed forces were vigorously engaged in helping their Latin American counterparts to recognize the strategic imperatives of respecting human rights on the battlefield. Before Iraqi accusations of massacre at Haditha forced the U.S. military to again scramble to defend its honor and reputation, U.S. forces in Latin America were more than a decade into repairing their image after taking the blame for numerous human rights crises. Indeed, U.S. military relations with Latin America are at the center of numerous academic and policy debates, particularly regarding U.S. military assistance and its impact on human rights and broader democratic development. Until now, however, no book has focused on determining whether the U.S. military could serve as a primary source of human rights promotion. Meanwhile, U.S. military human rights promotion efforts in Latin America have become central to the Department of Defense Strategic Engagement Plan since the end of the Cold War. The significant role of the U.S. military in promoting human rights around Latin America is unmatched by U.S. military efforts anywhere in the world. This book documents an approach to human rights that could become a model for Department of Defense strategy and behavior around the world. Perhaps the most important finding of this book is that the true heroes on the human rights front are not civilians, but U.S. military officials, a conclusion that is too often ignored by activists, missed by scholars, and would have been unthinkable only a decade ago.

Water, Power and Citizenship investigates the interrelationship between water politics and institutions and the development of citizenship rights from a historical-sociological perspective. The evolution of water's manifold social character and values, as a source of power, as a public good, as a commodity, or as a universal right is examined in the light of ever changing and mutually binding social and ecological processes. The Basin of Mexico's rich water history becomes the vantage point to cast light on one of the most crucial challenges facing the international community - that of eliminating water inequality and injustice.

The tremendous cultural diversity and distinct ways of life of many Southeast and East Asian peoples are in serious jeopardy today because of varying combinations of economic, political, and environmental threats, often linked to severe human rights violations. "Endangered Peoples of Southeast and East Asia" introduces 14 endangered cultures, from the Kubu of Central Sumatra in Indonesia, to the Ainu of Japan. The most pressing issues of these marginalized groups--such as the impact of tourism, prohibition against whaling, or dislocation due to nuclear testing--are brought to light by anthropologists based on their own extensive field work. The cultural and historical information provided here is not available in any other printed source.

Endangered peoples of Southeast and East Asia struggle with inadequate understanding, protection, and enforcement of human rights by state governments and the international community. The volume introduction discusses the diversity, identity, ecology, spirituality, colonial status, conflicts and wars, and finally, hope for the future of people in this region. Subsequent chapters are devoted to fourteen specific cultures, including an overview of their history, housing, subsistence strategies, social and political organization, religion and world view, threats to their survival, and their response to these threats. A section entitled Food for Thought poses questions that encourage a personal engagement with the experience of these peoples, and a resource guide suggests further reading and lists pertinent organizations and web sites. As the curriculum expands to include Asian history, this unique volume will be valuable to students and teachers alike.

This examination of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) traces the American origins of the belief that the citizens of a democracy have a natural right to know about the workings of their government. The issue began in the colonies and came to a head in the 1950s when escalating government secrecy led the press to demand open government. Declaring that the public business is the public's business, a series of crusading newspaper editors aroused public support for the Freedom of Information Act which was passed in 1966.

The book features in-depth interviews with the architects of the FOIA, the FOIA staff in the major federal agencies, and the most prominent FOIA users throughout the country. The concluding chapter examines current impediments to the full realization of the people's right to know.

The tragedy of poverty is that it happens in a wealthy world. Despite global prosperity unrivalled in human history, a new wave of dramatic crises at the turn of the millennium is evident in armed conflict, civil unrest, ethnic violence, disease and economic jeopardy. Hardest hit are developing regions like sub-Saharan Africa, which are the focus of this book. This edited volume deals with conflict and the safety of entire communities in Africa as a whole, and Kenya in particular. The authors spell out the meaning and nuances of human security in today's global economy and discuss policy options and alternative approaches to enhance the well-being and protection of communities affected by conflict.

Like most discussions within the tradition of rights-talk, this study is motivated by the desire to promote the idea that rights are moral assets that people should acquire in the course of their membership within social and political frameworks. However, while most participants in rights-talk concentrate on the safety and protection constraints required for a successful exercising of rights, the present study inquires into the circumstances under which people's rights lose their validity. The author believes that if we want to prevent the erosion of the role of rights within society and to encourage their obligatory status, we should prevent their misuse, or their unjustified or excessive use. Those who have interests in rights, and are concerned about their withdrawal or denial, will find a unique and inventive way of dealing both with the use, as well as the abuse of rights.

This edited volume is divided into four sections. Part I summarizes much of the relevant twentieth century history of black political participation. Part II examines aspects of contemporary black political participation, such as black political behavior in the 1984 elections, a profile of black political activities, and various facets of black mass and elite political activity. Part III discusses the impact of Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign, on both southern blacks and whites. The concluding section examines on-going issues and/or barriers related to black political participation, such as the impact of single-member districts, and the changes in the party system due to black political activity. Due to its comprehensive coverage and its impressive list of contributors, Blacks in Southern Politics will interest academics and politicians involved in southern politics, civil rights, minority politics, and state and local government.

"There is hardly a reason to circumcise a little boy for medical reasons because those medical reasons don't exist," said Dr. Michael Wilks, Head of Ethics at the British Medical Association, who admitted that doctors have circumcised boys for "no good reason."

In the United States, parts of Africa, the Middle East, and in the Muslim world, 13.3 million infant boys and 2 million girls have part or all of their external sex organs cut off for reasons that defy logic and violate basic human rights. Doctors, parents, and politicians have been misled into thinking that circumcision is beneficial, necessary, and harmless.

In Circumcision and human rights, internationally respected experts in the fields of medicine, science, politics, law, ethics, sociology, anthropology, history, and religion present the latest research on this tragedy, as a part of the worldwide campaign to end sexual mutilation. They outline steps for eradicating this abusive practice to enable males and females the dignity of living out their lives with all the body parts with which they were born.

Language and the Right to Fair Hearing in International Criminal Trials explores the influence of the dynamic factor of language on trial fairness in international criminal proceedings. By means of empirical research and jurisprudential analysis, this book explores the implications that conducting a trial in more than one language can have for the right to fair trial. It reveals that the language debate is as old as international criminal justice, but due to misrepresentation of the status of language fair trial rights in international law, the debate has not yielded concrete reforms.
Language is the core foundation for justice. It is the means through which the rights of the accused are secured and exercised. Linguistic complexities such as misunderstandings, translation errors and cultural distanceamong participants in international criminal trials affect courtroom communication, the presentation and the perception of the evidence, hence jeopardizing the foundations of a fair trial.
The author concludes that language fair trial rights are priority rights situated in the minimum guarantees of fair criminal trial; the obligation of the court to ensure fair trial or accord the accused person a fair hearing also includes the duty to ensure they can understand and be understood."""

Cultured Violence explores contemporary South African culture as a test case for the achievement of democracy by constitutional means in the wake of prolonged and violent conflict.\ The book addresses key ethical issues, normally addressed from within the discourses of law, the social sciences, and health sciences, through narrative analysis. The book draws from and juxtaposes narratives of profoundly different kinds to make its point: fictional narratives, such as the work of Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee; public testimony, such as that of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Jacob Zuma's (the former Deputy President's) 2006 trial on charges of rape; and personal testimony, drawn from interviews undertaken by the author over the past ten years in South Africa.\ These narratives are analysed in order to demonstrate the different ways in which they illuminate the cultural "state of the nation": ways that elude descriptions of South African subjects undertaken from within discourses that have a historical tendency to ignore cultural dimensions of lived experience and their material particularity. The implications of these lived experiences of culture are underlined by the book's focus on the violation of human rights as comprising practices that are simultaneously discursive and material. Cases of such violations, all drawn from the South African context, include humans' use of non-human animals as instruments of violence against other humans; the constructed marginalization and vulnerability of women and children; and the practice of stigma in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

This is a study of the Ford Foundation's support and of funding of human rights projects and NGOs, illuminating its extraordinary role in helping undermine and destroy major repressive authoritarian and totalitarian regimes during the latter part of the twentieth century.

Faced with injustice, what can a concerned citizen do? In 1933, when Hitler blamed Communists for setting the Reichstag on fire, European and American lawyers responded by staging a countertrial, which proved them innocent and eventually led to their release, launching a new unofficial way of advancing human rights. This book is the first full account of citizens' tribunals. It tells the history of such tribunals from this first success to the mixed record of subsequent efforts: the Moscow show trials, the American war in Vietnam, Japanese sexual slavery, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the excesses of “global capitalism.”

This book, a collaborative effort by Port-Harcourt University, Nigeria, and the University of Denver, deals with important theoretical considerations about human rights in Africa. The African contribution to the political economic approach to human rights has been especially significant and will continue to grow. This edited collection addressses both theoretical issues and actual case studies of human rights violations in the African context. Shepherd, a pioneer in African studies, provides a pathbreaking overview of the political economy of African human rights. The volume itself is divided into two sections: theory and issues and violations. In the first section, the contributors consider such theoretical questions as the problems and prospects of creating an equitable world order based on the global right to distributive justice; three generations of African people's rights; the relationship between underdevelopment and human rights violations in Africa; theological perspectives on human rights; and the African experience in human rights issues and violations. The second section addresses specific human rights issues and violations of those rights. Among the situations explored are the impact of revolutionary violence on development, equality, and justice in South Africa, and the effects of militarization, migrants, and refugees on African human rights. Also examined are the African context of human rights development and the impact of Ghanaian black feminism. A comprehensive bibliography completes the volume. The unique perspective provided by African scholars, along with European and American scholars of black Africa, makes this book an important addition to the literature ofhuman rights and African studies.