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.

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.

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."""

"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.

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.

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.

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.

The urban rebellions that rocked Miami in 1980, and other large cities in the United States during the 1960s, can be looked at as contributory components of the Black freedom movement. This new study argues that they are, on one level, a tactical response to contemporary forms of White domination and, on another level, an act in which key core values of the African American experience are sustained. The book provides an overview of racial violence in America, from the slaveocracy of the 18th and 19th centuries, to the urban rebellions of the late 20th century. It shows that in Black-White intergroup relations, Whites have used violence and the threat of violence to repress and intimidate Blacks. Blacks have used violence as a way of resisting White domination. The form that violence has taken has been shaped by prevailing societal conditions.

Importantly, the book concentrates on the essence of Black-White intergroup relations. In doing so, the thematic and cultural propensities that pattern the reality of those relations are clearer. Foremost is the practice of White domination and the Black response of resistance, which seeks to end that domination and encourage freedom and justice. The book ends by going beyond current thinking and looks to African American core values as key referents to examine Black violence.

Richard America here redefines the complex problems of racial economic injustice, poverty, inequality, and lagging competitiveness and productivity in the United States. In a sure-to-be-controversial analysis, the author argues that there is a true debt owed by White America to Black America, that this debt is significant, and that it has now come due. He estimates the size of Whites' debt to Blacks, shows how that debt came to be, and suggests creative ways of paying it back. This book argues persuasively that the social and racial problems in the United States cannot be solved until we acknowledge that the "haves" truly and literally owe money to the "have nots."

Breastfeeding Rights in the United States shows that the right to breastfeed in this country exists only in a negative sense: you can do it unless someone takes you to court. Kedrowski and Lipscomb catalog and analyze all the laws, policies, judicial opinions, cultural mores, and public attitudes that bear on breastfeeding in America. They then explore the classic double bind: social norms promulgated by the medical and public health establishment say "breast is best"; but social practices in the workplace and in public spaces make breastfeeding difficult. Aggravating the double bind is the prominence of the breast in American culture as a sexual object. The double bind creates coercively structured choices that are incompatible with the meaningful exercise of rights. The authors conclude that the solution to this problem requires new theory and new strategy. They posit a new democratic, feminist theory of the breastfeeding right that is predicated on the following distinctions: DT It is not a right to breastfeed, but a right to choose to breastfeed. DT It is a woman's right to choose, not a baby's right to be breastfeed. DT It is a right, not a duty. The authors predict that framing the breastfeeding right in this way provides the basis for a new strategic coalition between breastfeeding advocates and liberal feminists, who have historically been wary of one another's rhetoric. Breastfeeding Rights in the United States represents an important advance toward policy change.

This work examines how vast amounts of personal information are finding their way into corporate hands. It argues that once there, this data can be combined and used to develope electronic profiles of individuals and groups that are potentially more detailed and intrusive.

This book presents the Turkish position regarding the Armenian claims of genocide during World War I and the continuing debate over this issue. The author illustrates that although genocide is a useful concept to describe such evil events as the Jewish Holocaust in World War II and Rwanda in the 1990s, the term has also been overused, misused, and therefore trivialized by many different groups seeking to demonize their antagonists and win sympathetic approbation for them. This book includes the Armenians in this category because, although as many as 600,000 of them died during World War I, it was neither a premeditated policy perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government nor an event unilaterally implemented without cause. Of course, in no way does this excuse the horrible excesses that were committed. To illustrate this point, this book uses the recent work of the noted French scholar Jacques Semelin, and such long-suppressed Armenian personalities as Hovhannes Katchaznouni (the first prime minister of Armenia after WWI) and K.S. Papazian (an historian), among others. This book also illustrates how today Armenians have sought to politicize and legislate their version of history in parliamentary and other governmental bodies around the world, damning their opponents as genocide deniers and perpetrators of hate speech. The case of the renowned scholar Bernard Lewis is a prime example of this Armenian misuse and distortion of their politicized version of history. This book also analyzes the hypermobilized Armenian lobbying tactics that have achieved considerable success in politicizing their version of history. Among many other issues, this book also analyzes the recent "soccer diplomacy" between Turkey and Armenia, which has led to their signing treaties that will establish diplomatic relations between them and an historical commission to analyze their different versions of history

By critically addressing the tension between nationalism and human rights that is presumed in much of the existing literature, the essays in this volume confront the question of how we should construe human rights: as a normative challenge to the excesses of modernity, particularly those associated with the modern nation-state, or as an adjunct of globalization, with its attendant goal of constructing a universal civilization based on neoliberal economic principles and individual liberty.

There is a growing tendency in all of the developing countries to see the right to employment, education, and other basic rights as adjuncts to basic political rights. Also, in many African countries there have been movements for expansive rights that should include children's rights and women's rights in addition to the basic civil and political rights. Most current sources have selectively taken into consideration the work of politically oriented groups. This volume includes the status and work of human rights groups in Africa currently working to uphold both the basic as well as the expansive rights.

One possible way of resolving the conflict between relativism and universalism is to project commonalities of norms and values through examinations of many advocacy groups in Africa that highlight the plight of refugees, women, and children as well as civil and political rights. This dictionary lists the current advocacy groups working in Africa to uphold and protect both the basic political rights and the expansive rights of previously unacknowledged segments of the population from governmental infringements. Advocacy groups are listed A to Z with additional resource information following each entry. This book will be a useful reference to students and scholars of African history, Third World Studies, International Human Rights, and Political Science, and Academic libraries.

South Africa's 1994 election was widely hailed around the world as miraculous. In this book, Anthony Butler examines South African experiences to cast doubt on this celebratory attitude to democracy. Contemporary political analysis highlights the benefits that democracy can sometimes bring. Butler, by contrast, argues that democracy can be malign. He attacks the myth that democracy ended apartheid, and shows that democratic practices themselves contributed to its evils. The author also explores weaknesses in political science as a discipline. This book will be essential reading for specialists in South Africa, and will appeal to political theorists, students of comparative politics, and historians.

A Matter of Black and White is the personal story of an Oklahoma woman whose fight to gain an education formed a crucial episode in the civil rights movement. Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, of parents only one generation removed from slavery, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher became the plaintiff in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that laid the foundation for the eventual desegregation of schools (and much else) in America.

A Matter of Black and White resounds with almost universal human themes-childhood, school, friends, colleagues, community, and a love that lasted a lifetime.

The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights is the first book of its kind. Not only does it tell the history of the political struggle for Aboriginal rights in all parts of Australia; it does so almost entirely through a selection of historical documents created by the Aboriginal campaigners themselves, many of which have never been published. It presents Aboriginal perspectives of their dispossession and their long and continuing fight to overcome this. In charting the story of Aboriginal political activity from its beginnings on Flinders Island in the 1830s to the fight over native title today, this book aims to help Australians better understand both the continuities and the changes in Aboriginal politics over the last 150 years: in the leadership of the Aboriginal political struggle, the objectives of these campaigners for rights for Aborigines, their aspirations, the sources of their programmes for change, their methods of protest, and the outcomes of their protest. Through the words of Aboriginal activists, across 150 years, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights charts the relationship between political involvement and Aboriginal identity.

The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 caused the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights to be granted binding effect. This raised a host of intriguing questions. Would this transform the EU's commitment to fundamental rights? Should it transform that commitment? How, if at all, can we balance competing rights and principles? (The interaction of the social and the economic spheres offers a particular challenge). How deeply does the EU conception of fundamental rights reach into and bind national law and practice? How deeply does it affect private parties? How much flexibility has been left to the Court in making these interpretative choices? What is the likely effect of another of the reforms achieved by the Lisbon Treaty, the commitment of the EU to accede to the ECHR? This book addresses all of these questions in the light of five years of practice under the Charter as a binding instrument.

Asia's rising power and wealth offer its many oppressed ethnic minorities hope for greater political freedom and an end to violence. But the reality of this hope is cast into doubt by acute separatist conflict. This book provides fresh and factual assessments of separatist struggles and prospects for conflict resolution in eight countries of Asia.

"The Student Voice" was the magazine of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the organization that was on the cutting edge of the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s. This facsimile reproduction of the papers includes an introduction by Dr. Carson as well as a comprehensive index.

This book examines the impact of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on national and international jurisprudence, since its adoption in 1989. It offers state of the art knowledge on the functions, challenges and limitations of the CRC in domestic, regional and international children's rights litigation. Litigating the Rights of the Child provides insight in the role of the CRC in domestic jurisprudence in ten countries from different parts of the world, with civil law, common law and Islamic law systems. In addition, it offers analyses of the jurisprudence of regional courts, in Europe and the Americas, and of human rights treaty bodies, including the Human Rights Committee, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. This book presents a global and comparative picture on the use of the CRC in litigation and identifies emerging trends. This book serves as an important source of reference and inspiration for academics, students, legal professionals, including judges and lawyers, and (inter)national organisations working in the area of children's rights.