Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction. A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living.

Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture―and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks―Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.

Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life―trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study―to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past―making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

Most advanced industrial democracies have been successful in controlling ethnic political conflicts peacefully. This book examines ethnoregional conflicts in seven ethnoregions-in Scotland, Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels, Quebec, Northern Ireland, and the Basque region of Spain-to explain what mactors determine electoral support for ethnoregional parties, why in some cases electoral conflict has co-existed with ethnic violence, and why there appears to be an inverse relationship between electoral success and policy success among many ethnoregional parties. As ethnic conflicts-peaceful and violent-continue to rage around the world, this important new study merits the attention of scholars and students in comparative politics and ethnic studies.

This compilation of interdisciplinary and community voices addresses issues of globalization, democracy, human rights, and how universities can act to promote steps towards greater social justice. As a relational concept, definitions of social justice reflect beliefs, values and priorities - which are neither consensually shared in modern societies, nor among social scientists who study it.

This book addresses the issue of corruption as a socio-economic rights concern at a national level. Zimbabwe's widespread corruption inhibited its development in all aspects. It weakened institutions, especially those called upon to arbitrate political and economic contests, leading to potential human rights violations. However, Zimbabwe saw a change of government in November 2017. Due to this, there seemed to be an opening to work towards reform in relation to the anti-corruption architecture. Specifically, the new era provides an opportunity to review how accountability mechanisms (including but not limited to amnesties, truth commissions, institutional reforms and prosecutions) can address corruption as a socio-economic rights violation. As the new government still tries to address competing priorities, many moving parts and various matrixes, this volume in the International Criminal Justice Series provides a timely frame for revisiting the debate and developing the strategic thinking regarding transitional justice options in Zimbabwe. It will be of great interest to practitioners, policy makers, scholars and students in the fields of anti-corruption, socio-economic and human rights, and transitional justice. Prosper Maguchu is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The concept of positive obligations is familiar to various legal systems which seek to protect fundamental rights. This concept means that states are required to take active measures to protect fundamental rights, such as, for example, adopting a general legal framework to regulate same-sex relationships in order to ensure protection of the right to private life. In Europe, positive obligations have, in particular, been developed in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from the 1970s onwards. The ECtHR has explained that positive obligations are necessary to ensure that fundamental rights are of practical value and effective for everyone.The ECtHR is not the only supranational court in Europe that protects fundamental rights. The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) also protects fundamental rights within the scope of EU law. So far, no concept of positive obligations has been developed by this Court, and the question has been asked whether such a development can indeed occur under EU law. After all, the EU is a rather special international organisation which has specific, mainly economic, interests to protect. It is also unclear whether the EU has competence to undertake regulatory action to actively protect fundamental rights. Based on the insights obtained from the development of positive obligations by the ECtHR, this volume analyses whether and how positive obligations could be incorporated into EU law. The relevant provisions laid down in the EU Treaties and the EU Charter, the case-law of the ECJ and the specificities of the EU system are studied to find out where there is scope for recognition of the concept of positive obligations under EU law, and what limitations would apply to this.

In entries such as Jane Addams and the Settlement House Movement, Booker T. Washington and Black Self-Help, and Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women, this dictionary provides in-depth examination of major American reformers and the movements they defined. With coverage extending from the early republic to today, the book considers abolitionism, women's rights, temperance, the social gospel, birth control, pacifism, civil rights, environmentalism, consumerism, and other controversial movements. Each entry combines biography with historical analysis to show the historical context and character of the movement and person. Individually, the entries provide modern, interpretive treatments of their subjects. Collectively, they reveal the direction and dynamics of American reform over two centuries. Emphasizing social reform over civic reform, the book gives special attention to reformers and reforms that have significantly altered the social order. Written by prominent scholars, the entries show the importance of personality and historical context in reform movements and the relationship between particular reforms and the temperament of an age. With full-bodied biographies of the reformers and their movements, a time-line on American reform, up-to-date interpretations and bibliographies, and a wide range of subjects, this book provides the most comprehensive and cogent view of American reform and reformers anywhere. It also provides the fullest treatment to date of post-World War II reform activity and personalities.

Converging revolutionary changes in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and in southern Africa radically transformed the international political environment in which Third World countries had formulated and implemented their policies toward South Africa. These changes also focused attention on the need for democratic reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the Third World. By removing apartheid's legal underpinning, the South African government made a major and largely unanticipated step toward creating a relatively egalitarian and nonracial society. Dismantling the more intractable social and economic components of a legal system of racial domination, into which South Africans have been socialized, is clearly a more herculean endeavor. Payne analyzes Third World relations with South Africa: the common and divergent interests among the countries that opposed apartheid, conflict and cooperation between the Third World and South Africa, and the implications of changes in South Africa for the Third World in general and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. He brings into sharper focus contradictions between the declaratory policies against apartheid expressed by Third World states and their actual practices. Payne examines how national interests, leaders' personalities, policymaking processes, and problems within specific countries influence Third World foreign policies in general and toward South Africa specifically. As such, the work will be invaluable to students and scholars involved with African studies, Third World politics, and international relations.

Reports of sexual violence in armed conflict frequently appear in political discussions and news media, presenting a stark contrast to a long history of silence and nonrecognition. Conflict-related sexual violence has transitioned rapidly from a neglected human rights issue to an unambiguous security concern on the agendas of powerful states and the United Nations Security Council. Through interviews and primary-source evidence, Kerry F. Crawford investigates the reasons for this dramatic change and the implications of the securitization of sexual violence. Views about wartime sexual violence began changing in the 1990s as a result of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and then accelerated in the 2000s. Three case studies-the United States' response to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1820 in 2008, and the development of the United Kingdom's Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative-illustrate that use of the weapon of war frame does not represent pure co-optation by the security sector. Rather, well-placed advocates have used this frame to advance the antisexual violence agenda while simultaneously working to move beyond the frame's constraints. This book is a groundbreaking account of the transformation of international efforts to end wartime sexual violence.

Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) provides that the EU will accede to the system of human rights protection of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Protocol No 9 in the Treaty of Lisbon opens the way for accession. This represents a major change in the relationship between two organisations that have co-operated closely in the past, though the ECHR has hitherto exercised only an indirect constitutional control over the EU legal order through scrutiny of EU Member States. The accession of the EU to the ECHR is expected to put an end to the informal dialogue, and allegedly also competition between the two regimes in Europe and to establish formal (both normative and institutional) hierarchies. In this new era, some old problems will be solved and new ones will appear. Questions of autonomy and independence, of attribution and allocation of responsibility, of co-operation, and legal pluralism will all arise, with consequences for the protection of human rights in Europe. This book seeks to understand how relations between the two organisations are likely to evolve after accession, and whether this new model will bring more coherence in European human rights protection. The book analyses from several different, yet interconnected, points of view and relevant practice the draft Accession Agreement, shedding light on future developments in the ECHR and beyond. Contributions in the book span classic public international law, EU law and the law of the ECHR, and are written by a mix of legal and non-legal experts from academia and practice.

This book explores situations in which public opinion presents itself as an obstacle to the protection and promotion of human rights. Taking an international law perspective, it primarily deals with two questions: first, whether international law requires States to take an independent stance on human rights issues; second, whether international law encourages States to inform and mobilise public opinion with regard to core human rights standards. The discussion is mainly organised within the framework of the UN system. The work is particularly relevant to situations in which public opinion appears as discriminatory attitudes based on race, gender, age, health, sexual orientation and other factors. It is also pertinent to circumstances in which public opinion is responsible for the existence of certain harmful customs and practices such as female genital mutilation and capital punishment. Noting that the death penalty is increasingly recognised as an infringement of human rights, this study further challenges States' argument that capital punishment cannot be abolished because of public opinion. The book also discusses the role that education bears under international law in moulding favourable attitudes towards human rights. Finally, the book challenges States' acceptance that public opinion cannot be confronted in this respect.

The capacity to abuse, or in general affect the enjoyment of human, labour and environmental rights has risen with the increased social and economic power that multinational companies wield in the global economy. At the same time, it appears that it is difficult to regulate the activities of multinational companies in such a way that they conform to international human, labour and environmental rights standards. This has partially to do with the organization of companies into groups of separate legal persons, incorporated in different states, as well as with the complexity of the corporate supply chain. Absent a business and human rights treaty, a more coherent legal and policy approach is required. Faced with the challenge of how to effectively access the right to remedy in the European Union for human rights abuses committed by EU companies in non-EU states, a diverse research consortium of academic and legal institutions was formed. The consortium, coordinated by the Globernance Institute for Democratic Governance, became the recipient of a 2013 Civil Justice Action Grant from the European Commission Directorate General for Justice. A mandate was thus issued for research, training and dissemination so as to bring visibility to the challenge posed and moreover, to provide some solutions for the removal of barriers to judicial and non-judicial remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states. The project commenced in September 2014 and over the course of two years the consortium conducted research along four specific lines in parallel with various training sessions across EU Member States. The research conducted focused primarily on judicial remedies, both jurisdictional barriers and applicable law barriers; non-judicial remedies, both to company-based grievance. The results of this research endeavour make up the content of this report whose aim is to provide a scholarly foundation for policy proposals by identifying specific challenges relevant to access to justice in the European Union and to provide recommendations on how to remove legal and practical barriers so as to provide access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states.

Individual demands for equality and civil rights are central themes in U.S. history and American Indian people are no exception. They have had to deal with white racism and its expression in local and national political institutions while trying to define the rights of individual Indians vis-á-vis their own tribal governments. The struggle has made their civil rights movement unique. This encyclopedia, designed to meet the curriculum needs of high school and college students, provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of American Indian civil rights issues. More than 600 entries cover a variety of perspectives, issues, individuals, incidents, and court cases central to an understanding of the history of civil rights among American Indian peoples. The issue is a complicated one, expanding over a period of more than a century. The history of American Indian civil rights can be traced not only in the courts and the federal legislation, but on the battlefield where a number of civil rights protests have been fought. This encyclopedia clarifies the complicated history of individual rights, water rights, land rights, and other issues in American Indian civil rights. It is thoroughly cross-referenced for ease of use in tracing any particular issue or incident. Each entry is followed by a list of works for further reading on the topic. An appendix of entries on landmark court cases is organized by issue. A selection of photos complements the text. This work is a one-stop source for up-to-date information on all aspects of American Indian civil rights and is essential for high school, public, and university libraries.

In the past two decades, '"civil society" has become a central organizing concept in the social sciences. Occupying the middle ground between the state and private life, the civil sphere encompasses everything from associations to protests to church groups to nongovernmental organizations. Interest in the topic exploded with the decline of statism in the 1980s and 1990s, and many of our current debates about politics and social policy are informed by the renewed focus on civil society. Michael Edwards, author of the most authoritative single-authored book on civil society, serves as the editor for The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society. Broadly speaking, the book views the topic through three prisms: as a part of society (voluntary associations), as a kind of society (marked out by certain social norms), and as a space for citizen action and engagement (the public square or sphere). It does not focus solely on the West (a failing of much of the literature to date), but looks at civil society in both the developed and developing worlds. Throughout, it merges theory, practice, and empirical research. In sum, The Oxford Handbook on Civil Society will be the definitive work on the topic.

This booklet contains the texts of the Theo van Boven Lectures held in 2014 and 2015. They deal with the subject of defending human dignity by looking at the different roles the human rights defender, the scholar and the human rights NGO can play in achieving this goal. Hina Jilani looks at the opportunities and limitations of human rights defenders in their fight to stand up for the protection of human dignity. Jean Allain discusses the role of the legal scholar in studying contemporary forms of slavery. Finally Aidan McQuade denounces practices of slavery from the perspective of a human rights NGO. The Theo van Boven Lecture Series are organised annually by the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights as a tribute to Theo van Boven, emeritus Professor of International Law at Maastricht University, and formerly Director of the UN Division of Human Rights, member of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. The themes covered by the lectures reflect the wide range of interests of Theo van Boven. This publication is interesting for human rights practitioners, scholars and students.

The history of deliverance politics in Anglo-American history contains remarkable moments of achievement, but this is not a story of triumphal progress. Exodus was hotly contested, used by the powerful as well as the weak, and mobilized to support a host of rival causes. By writing themselves into the Protestant history of liberty, African Americans undercut complacent narratives of progress, injecting a powerful sense of unease into the tradition. The argument over who owns the biblical narrative has continued into the twenty-first century. If Barack Obama saw himself as an inheritor of Exodus politics, so too did George W. Bush. Many Christians - and many non-Christians too - remain understandably suspicious of those who read Israel's history as political paradigm, especially when it underpins religious nationalism. This story is riddled with moral ironies. The Books of Moses could be used to justify anti-black racism and the dispossession of Native peoples as well as freedom from slavery. In the name of liberation, Protestants have justified war, revolt, and imperialism. High-minded missions have often had dismal consequences. In excavating the history of deliverance politics, Coffey relies on sources buried in many generic strata. As a study of political rhetoric, the core materials are sermons and speeches, the published versions of oral performances. Deliverance discourse found its way into almost every kind of genre, just as it left its mark on virtually every kind of Hebrew literature. It is present in an array of literary texts, including pamphlets, treatises, biblical commentaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers, periodicals, constitutional documents, and even children's literature. Most strikingly, the gospel of liberation was depicted in visual sources, such as paintings, illustrated Bibles, official seals, commemorative coins and medals, mastheads and banners. Finally, deliverance politics proved easy to sing. Its strains are heard in Puritan psalms, Evangelical hymns, African-American spirituals and the Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement. These sources form a documentary record, testifying to the powerful political appeal of the Exodus, the Jubilee and the biblical language of liberty.

The right to land plays a key role in the realisation of a plethora of human rights, including the right to food, water, housing, employment, a clean and healthy environment, an adequate standard of living, social status and the power to make decisions. Property rights over land can take many forms, from mere access rights to ownership. Due to a growing world population and various global crises and developments such as agrarian reform, land is becoming scarce. The result is that land prices increase and the poorest sectors of society are deprived of access to land whilst State authorities and foreign investors practise land grabbing to make way for palm oil, animal feed and biofuel plantations, tourist resorts, or as speculative investment. In addition, arable land is not only claimed for residential purposes, but also by industries that in turn pollute the soil and water. Many groups in society, especially in developing States, need access to land for their subsistence. It is these smallholders, landless farmers, rural youths, indigenous peoples and women who often suffer the worst consequences of land reform schemes and land grabbing practices. They are not well protected by the existing forms of land tenure and State authorities often fail to live up to their human rights obligations to respect and protect the land rights of people in all sectors of their society.Legal Aspects of Land Rights is the result of the cooperation of scholars from five Indonesian faculties of law, the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights, and the Maastricht European Transnational Research Institute (METRO), together known as the Land Rights Consortium.

The prohibition of abuse of rights in Article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR or Convention) embodies one of the Convention's main principles: its commitment to democracy and democratic values. The provision aims to prevent groups and individuals from successfully invoking fundamental rights and freedoms to justify anti-democratic activities. At the same time it is also one of the Convention's most controversial provisions. There exists a certain tension between human rights protection and the concept of abuse of rights. While human rights essentially aim to promote freedom by affirming the basic rights and freedoms citizens enjoy vis--vis state authorities, the abuse clause primarily aims to protect the democratic organisation of the state against groups and individuals invoking these rights with the aim of undermining it. Furthermore, an analysis of the growing body of case law on this topic shows that the interpretation and application of Article 17 ECHR are far from unequivocal. While according to Article 17 ECHR anti-democratic activities may be excluded from the protection of the Convention, clear criteria for determining which activities fit this description are lacking. In addition, the case law covers different methods of application of the abuse clause that seem to be used rather arbitrarily. This has resulted in a rather obscure and inconsistent case-by-case approach. This study seeks to shed light on the prohibition of abuse of rights in Article 17 ECHR in order to contribute to a more coherent interpretation of this provision. To that aim it studies the abuse clause from different perspectives. First, it looks at the historical background of the provision to examine what motivated the drafters to include this prohibition. Then it moves on to the case law of the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights and to legal doctrine, revealing the difficulties and inconsistencies in the current interpretation of the abuse clause. Next, it analyses the interpretation of prohibitions of abuse in other human rights documents to see whether parallels can be drawn with the interpretation of Article 17 ECHR. Subsequently, it addresses the concepts of 'abuse of rights' and 'militant democracy' and examines the extent to which they offer a framework for understanding the abuse clause. Based on the insights obtained from these different perspectives, this study puts forward a proposal as to how Article 17 ECHR can best be applied in the future.

This unique volume unpacks the concept and practice of naming and shaming by examining how governments, NGOs and international organisations attempt to change the behaviour of targeted actors through public exposure of violations of normative standards and legal commitments.

During times of grave injustice, some individuals, groups, and organizations courageously resist maltreatment of all people, regardless of their backgrounds. Courageous resisters have assisted others in such locales as Nazi-controlled Europe throughout the 1930s and 40s, Argentina during the "Dirty War" of the 1970s, Rwanda in the 1990s genocide and Iraqi prisons in recent years. Using these and other case studies, this book introduces readers to the broad spectrum of courageous resistance and provides a framework for analyzing the factors that motivate and sustain opposition to human rights violations.

The Ambivalence of Good examines the genesis and evolution of international human rights politics since the 1940s. Focusing on key developments such as the shaping of the UN human rights system, decolonization, the rise of Amnesty International, the campaigns against the Pinochet dictatorship, the moral politics of Western governments, or dissidence in Eastern Europe, the book traces how human rights profoundly, if subtly, transformed global affairs. Moving beyond monocausal explanations and narratives prioritizing one particular decade, such as the 1940s or the 1970s, The Ambivalence of Good argues that we need a complex and nuanced interpretation if we want to understand the truly global reach of human rights, and account for the hopes, conflicts, and interventions to which this idea gave rise. Thus, it portrays the story of human rights as polycentric, demonstrating how actors in various locales imbued them with widely different meanings, arguing that the political field evolved in a fitful and discontinuous process. This process was shaped by consequential shifts that emerged from the search for a new world order during the Second World War, decolonization, the desire to introduce a new political morality into world affairs during the 1970s, and the visions of a peaceful international order after the end of the Cold War. Finally, the book stresses that the projects pursued in the name of human rights nonetheless proved highly ambivalent. Self-interest was as strong a driving force as was the desire to help people in need, and while international campaigns often improved the fate of the persecuted, they were equally likely to have counterproductive effects. The Ambivalence of Good provides the first research-based synopsis of the topic and one of the first synthetic studies of a transnational political field (such as population, health, or the environment) during the twentieth century. Based on archival research in six countries, it breaks new empirical ground concerning the history of human rights in the United Nations, of human rights NGOs, of far-flung mobilizations, and of the uses of human rights in state foreign policy.

After having ignored victims, only recently both domestic and international law have begun to pay attention to them. As a consequence, different international norms related to victims have progressively been introduced. These are norms generally characterized by a certain concept from the perspective of victims, as well as by the enumeration of a list of rights to which they are entitle to; rights upon which the international statute of victims is built. In reverse, these catalogues of rights are the states' obligations. Most of these rights are already existent in the international law of human rights. Consequently, they are not new but consolidated rights. Others are strictly linked to victims, concerning the following categories: victims of crime, victims of abuse of power, victims of gross violations of international human rights law, victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law, victims of enforced disappearance, victims of violations of international criminal law and victims of terrorism.
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Kurt Mills investigates how the concept of sovereignty is changing as a result of normative, empirical, and institutional developments. From a normative political theory perspective he argues that respect for human rights, popular sovereignty, and self-determination are inherent in the social purpose of the state and thus must be considered when evaluating claims to sovereignty and non-intervention. Human Rights in the Emerging Global Order examines how recent international practice in the areas of human rights, self-determination, refugees and human migration and humanitarian intervention are challenging traditional conceptions of sovereignty in important, yet ambiguous, ways. Finally, it provides policy prescriptions to deal with these continuing humanitarian problems.

Indigenous rights to heritage have only recently become the subject of academic scholarship. This collection aims to fill that gap by offering the fruits of a unique conference on this topic organised by the University of Lapland with the help of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The conference made clear that important information on Indigenous cultural heritage has remained unexplored or has not been adequately linked with specific actors (such as WIPO) or specific issues (such as free, prior and informed consent). Indigenous leaders explained the impact that disrespect of their cultural heritage has had on their identity, well-being and development. Experts in social sciences explained the intricacies of indigenous cultural heritage. Human rights scholars talked about the inability of current international law to fully address the injustices towards indigenous communities. Representatives of International organisations discussed new positive developments. This wealth of experiences, materials, ideas and knowledge is contained in this important volume.

The safeguarding of human rights remains highly problematic, despite the proliferation of human rights instruments and the many actions taken by a variety of actors, such as governmental and non-governmental organisations, (individual) states and the international community over the past decades. Human rights violations do still occur on a large scale and injustice remains rampant. Central to this problem appears to be that social, economic, cultural and political structures in societies provide denialist defence mechanisms. Such deeply embedded denialism causes and/or facilitates human rights violations, because the true nature of the problems involved remains fully or partly unacknowledged and as a result appropriate action remains absent. In order to safeguard the effectuation of human rights it is thus pertinent to acknowledge and address this problem of denialism and develop strategies to move beyond it. To address the above-mentioned problem, an international conference was organised on the theme of Denialism and Human Rights by the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights in 2015, which brought together scholars, practitioners and students from various disciplines and fields to unearth and address denialism in the context of their own particular area of research.The present volume contains a unique collection of papers that were presented during the conference. The content of the papers ranges from more general reflections on the theme of denialism and human rights to more specific areas of research that are relevant in terms of denialism such as genocide, children's rights, the role of (inter)national organisations, penology, and social, economic and cultural rights.