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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > General
This comprehensive book offers both an introduction and a critical analysis of enduring themes and issues in the contemporary theory and practice of human rights. Providing a multi-disciplinary analysis, it engages with philosophical, political and social approaches to the subject of human rights. Andrew Fagan argues that the moral authority and practical efficacy of human rights are adversely affected by a range of myths and misunderstandings - from claims regarding the moral status of human rights as a fully comprehensive moral doctrine to the view that the possession of rights is antithetical to recognising the importance of moral duties. The author also examines the claim made by some that human rights ultimately only exists as legal phenomena and that nation-states are inherently hostile to the spirit of human rights. This book will challenge people to reconsider their understanding of human rights as a global moral outlook. This monograph will become essential reading for both postgraduate and undergraduate students interested in the field of human rights. It will also be invaluable to academics, researchers and human rights practitioners involved in the human rights debate.
This edited volume examines how opportunities to realise children's rights and the experience of childhood itself have been changed by the pandemic. It brings together the voices of leading scholars, policy advisors, psychologists, charities engaged in empowering children, and children and young people themselves. By exposing children's own perspectives and ideas for change, the book aims to suggest ways in which children could be better supported during this crisis. Chapters connect the experiences of under-represented groups, including children with disabilities and housing-distressed children. Authors illuminate ways to see and hear children more clearly and enable children's participation during and beyond COVID-19. This book is part of a mini-series that explores the effects of COVID-19 on children's education, rights and participation. These books will expose and connect the struggles faced by particularly vulnerable children, including children with disabilities, housing-distressed children, and refugee and displaced children. They will explore how best to listen to and support children in diverse situations, in order to enable them to realise their rights more effectively.
According to some sources there are around 5,000 national minority groups living in the contemporary world, and about 3,000 linguistic groups. However, this is probably a discretionary assessment as it seems that there are no exact figures with respect to the number and size of minority groups. The existing estimates are usually based on different and sometimes not very clear criteria and mostly take into account those groups and numbers which are the result of the individual choice of a person and are not based exclusively on the objective differences. Notwithstanding this, a brief calculation would indicate that in Western Europe 14. 7% of the total population belongs to minority groups, and the same percentage exists in the Central and Eastern European region - 14. 7%, whereas in the countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States this percentage is slightly higher - at 18. 9%. Throughout the history of the European continent minorities have had a significant impact on political stability and security. Currently, most of the situations of internal tension as well as conflicts, whether internal or international, involve inter-ethnic relations. Thus the international community at large and - for the European minorities more importantly - the European institutions have placed minority issues high on their 'agenda.
It is, in some circles, called "No-Touch Torture." Yet it brings pain and damage that can last a lifetime. Psychological torture techniques - which have a history of use by U.S. forces globally trailing far into the past beyond Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - include a variety of methods from mock executions, severe humiliation, and mind-altering drugs, to forced self-induced pain, sensory disorientation including loud music and light control, and exploitation of personal or cultural phobias. It is no accident, for example, that Private Lynndie England was seen in Abu Ghraib pictures, which shocked the world, with Arab prisoners forced naked into a pile or led like dogs by leash. Arabs have strong spiritual beliefs about the humiliation of public nudity, and also have a strong cultural fear of dogs. These techniques are neither surprising nor particular to England if one has fair knowledge of the U.S. history of sanctioned psychological torture techniques, say the experts behind this book. Having reached a joint crescendo of intolerance and horror, scholars from across the nation met in 2006 for a conference on psychological torture and what can be done to stop the practice. They agree with Alberto Mora, the U.S. Navy's general counsel, who fought to stop the Pentagon-sanctioned psychological torture at Guantanamo. "Cruelty disfigures our national character. Where cruelty exists, law does not," Mora said. This book is the joint effort of those scholars, from the University of California Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, to Harvard Medical School, to paint a clear picture of psychological torture, its longterm affects, and spur action to stop the practice. "The distinctlyAmerican form of psychological torture" has four characteristics that make it attractive to the CIA and other supporters, say the authors. It is elusive - lacks the clear signs of physical abuse so eludes detection and complicates investigation, prosecution, or attempts at prohibition. It is shrouded - in scientific patina that makes it appeal to policy makers and avoids the obvious physical brutality unpalatable to the general public. It is adaptable - as shown by searing innovations by the CIA across 40 years. And it is destructive - can cause psychosis and other psychological disorders or, in more severe cases, death. While, in public, U.S. officials spotlight and support legislation that has banned physical torture, far more clandestine political, military, and CIA activities are refining and increasing the use of psychological torture. This book includes a brief history of sanctioned psychological experiments and actions to torture, as well as CIA research outsourced to leading U.S. universities that produced what the authors call "key findings that led to the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in centuries." Historical information here includes a summary of a decade of mind-control research by the CIA that in 1963 resulted in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual. This volume represents a striking collaboration of distinguished psychologists, psychiatrists, neurobiologists, lawyers, historians, and a semanticist. The book closes with case studies of the psychological torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks, and of Salim Hamdan, the alleged driver of Osama bin Laden. This work will be absorbing to any readerinterested in human rights, covert politics now and across history, military science, psychology, or psychiatry.
This volume examines the origins and development of the pressure group, INQUEST, and its struggle for penal reform, against the backdrop of the intense political and social upheaval that characterized the late 1970s and 1980s.
This book analyses the current legal situation and protection of vulnerable groups in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. In recent decades, national legislation in many European states has especially focused on vulnerable groups with the aim of securing their enhanced protection and social inclusion. This trend is also noticeable in North-Eastern Europe, where the legal frameworks are constantly being revised to address the needs of vulnerable parts of society, including women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and minorities, as well as prisoners and victims of crime. But despite these positive changes, many challenges persist. In this book, the authors provide a comprehensive, comparative analysis of legal regulations and practices intended to protect vulnerable groups in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland, and in the process, share insights into the current situation and trends in this often-overlooked region. Part I introduces readers to the topic by defining the concept of vulnerable groups and elaborating on its understanding in the European and national contexts. Part II analyses the legal protection of groups characterised by inherent and/or circumstantial vulnerability, while Part III addresses specific crime-related vulnerability issues in the target region. In closing, Part IV puts the spotlight on three specific vulnerable groups in the discussed countries.
USE THIS FIRST PARAGRAPH ONLY FOR GENERAL CATALOGS... The First
Amendment right of free speech is a fragile one. Its fragility is
found no less in legal opinions than in other, less specialized
forms of public discourse. Both its fragility and its sometimes
surprising resiliency are reflected in this book. It provides an
examination of how the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt with the
problem of restrictions on media coverage of the criminal justice
system, as well as how lower courts have interpreted the law
created by the Supreme Court. The author explores the degree to
which the Court has created a coherent body of law that protects
free expression values while permitting reasonable government
regulation, and examines the Supreme Court's jurisprudence
concerning prior restraints, post-publication sanctions on the
press, and their right of access to criminal proceedings.
The Charter of the United Nations was signed in 1945 by 51 countries representing all continents, paving the way for the creation of the United Nations on 24 October 1945. The Statute of the International Court of Justice forms part of the Charter. The aim of the Charter is to save humanity from war; to reaffirm human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person; to proclaim the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small; and to promote the prosperity of all humankind. The Charter is the foundation of international peace and security.
The book "Non-discrimination in Turkey" focuses on issue areas within the broader non-discrimination framework in Turkey. It looks domestic change in Turkey regarding non-discrimination across time. The book unpacks the principle of non-discrimination and provides analysis in many issue areas like LGBTI rights, disability rights or age discrimination that rely under the framework of non-discrimination. Adopting a comprehensive approach including many areas within non-discrimination, the book will be useful for the students, scholars and researchers of international relations, political science, Middle East and Turkish studies and those interested in human rights.
"Suffrage Days" is an account of the British suffrage movement from its inception until its victory in 1918. It is based around the experiences of seven individuals whose participation in the British suffrage movement is little-known: Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, Jessie Craigen, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Hannah Mitchell, Mary Gawthorpe, Laurence Housman, and Alice Clark. Through their stories and perceptions Sandra Stanley Holton addresses issues such as: a previously unacknowledged Radical-Liberal current in the nineteenth century movemen; the transatlantic links between Radical suffragists; the national and international significance of the Women's Franchise League; some nineteenth century origins of suffrage militancy; the relationship between emergent new masculine identities and suffrage politics; and the complex relationship between militant and constitutional suffragists. In a final chapter Holton examines the historiography of the suffrage movement.
The idea of human rights is powerful. Deriving in its modern form from the Enlightenment, this doctrine has come to denote individual rights against government oppression, including the right to freedom of thought, religion, speech, assembly, and to a fair system of criminal justice. But even in this basic political sense "human rights" means different things in different historical and cultural contexts and advocacy of such rights has frequently been challenged as subjective. In "Justifying Ethics "Jan Gorecki offers a thoroughgoing critique of the most common attempts to formulate objective standards through appeals to human nature, religion, and reason. Gorecki opens his inquiry by considering the role of norm-making concepts in the history of ethical thought, how standards of rights were claimed to conform with human nature and reason or have been stipulated by an external authoritative source such as God or social contract. He then shows how such justifications may be discounted on analytical or practical grounds using such instances as divine will, Kantian reason, and the truth value of moral judgments. With respect to empirically grounded appeals to human nature, Gorecki argues against the notion that the innate plasticity of human behavior and potential for social diversity is sufficient grounds for human rights activity without objective justification. Whatever its difficulties, the search for justification remains essential in enhancing the persuasiveness of ethical action that aims at the moral "contagion" of the people by the human rights experience and the transition from moral acceptance to legal implementation. Broad in intellectual scope, "Justifying Ethics "draws upon moral and political philosophy, social policy, psychology, history, jurisprudence, and international law to clarify the prerequisites for the success of human rights activity. The book will be of special interest to political theorists, philosophers, sociologists, and human rights activists.
The authors take a scalpel to South Africa's system of criminal justice during the Apartheid era. They focus on the case of the Sharpeville Six to analyse how criminal justice was used to make convictions easy to secure. Analysing the technicalities of the criminal law, as well as the quality of evidence and judicial reasoning in the case against the Six, Parker and Mokhesi-Parker also convey vividly through letters from death row, the sense these people made of their impending executions and how an international campaign to save their lives succeeded with only 18 hours to spare.
This book demonstrates how human rights obligations of the EU foreign constitution can be operationalized in the realm of international economic regulation. The content is divided into three major parts. The first outlines the legal foundations needed for the EU to become a shaper of international investment law, which include the general principles and objectives of EU external policies, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, international human rights and the international investment competences of the EU. The second part demonstrates the current international investment regime's incompatibility with human rights interests, while the third analyzes two mechanisms stemming from trade Law - ex-ante human rights impact assessments and civil society monitoring bodies - and explores whether they could mitigate the current inequalities in the protection of rights. The potential of these mechanisms, the book argues, lies in their capacity to ensure a comprehensive assessment of all interests at stake, and to empower traditionally marginalized rights-holders to make, shape and contest the international investment regime.
The book is a call for change in the present world-order which is dominated by free market consumer culture, military industrial interests and control and manipulation of freedom of people by using media and modern technology. It explains the history of development of democracy and its crisis in the framework of the present global-order, and takes a penetrating look into the issues of human rights which are being distorted by the economic interests of monopoly capitalism, or the authoritarian rulers. The book describes how we may replace the present system, which has been shaped mostly by the actions, will and freedom nurtured by the instinct-bound man, by an enlightened order, which would project the higher realm of consciousness of the human mind. Instead of building a society, which inspires man to grab, compete, dominate and exploit the weaker fellow beings by using the existing economic and military disparities in the world, it dreams about creating an enlightened-society where human beings may find meaning of life in sharing ones knowledge, innovation and creative abilities for the benefit of the mankind as a whole. It wishes to inspire the readers to pave the path of fulfilling the meaning of human existence as the bearer of a great cosmic mind and envisions a world of loving and compassionate human beings, who wish to empower, guide and teach the fellow human beings suffering around them. Without sinking in the belief that what are happening in the world today represent the true nature of the human behaviour, the book seeks to bring the changes in the "reality of history" by empowering, guiding and teaching the fellow human beings about the "higher-nature" of man which resides in us all.
In this story of the impact of slave trade on an insular African society, Larson explores how the people of highland Madagascar reshaped their social identity and their cultural practices. As Larson argues, the modern Merina ethnic identity and some of its key cultural traditions were fashioned and refashioned through localized experiences of enslavement and mercantile capitalism and by a tension-filled political dialogue among common highland Malagasy and their rulers. Larson's analysis expands traditional definitions of the African diaspora to include forcible exile of African slaves within the African continent as well as areas external to it. By locating Merina history within wider narratives of merchant capitalism, African history, African diaspora, and Indian Ocean history, Larson has produced a book that both recognizes the diversity of historical experience and highlights the structural connections of intercontinentally joined systems of forced labor. In this story of the impact of the slave trade on an insular African society, Larson explores how members of the Merina Kingdom of highland Madagascar reshaped their social identity and their cultural practices. With great skill and insight, Larson places Merina history within two scholarly traditions: that on the Atlantic slave trade and that on ethnicity and the making of ethnic identities in Africa. Using a broad range of indigenous traditions and well-informed European sources, Larson gains access to an inner history that eludes most scholars working on the slave trade in other parts of Africa. By locating Merina history within wider narratives of merchant capitalism, African history, African diaspora, and Indian Ocean history, Larson has produced a book that both recognizes the diversity of historical experience and highlights the structural connections of systems of forced labor in various parts of the world.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is a treaty for all girls and women in this world. After 30 years it is still valid and necessary both in developed and in developing States. This image is clearly conveyed by the authors of this book, who represent a wide variety of national and cultural backgrounds, and who have put the implementation of the provisions in the Convention to the test both in modern and in traditional societies. In addition, some chapters pay attention to issues that are not contained in the treaty itself but that greatly impact the realization of women's human rights, such as gender mainstreaming, gender-based violence, and corruption. The strengths and weaknesses, and the future potential of the Convention as well as the work of its monitoring body are critically analyzed and compared to other human rights treaties and organs. It becomes clear that, irrespective of the existing flaws, the Convention is the best option for achieving women's equality. With contributions by Margreet de Boer, Martine Boersma, Marjolein van den Brink, Fons Coomans, Tilly Draaisma, Cees Flinterman, Gerard-Rene de Groot, Sille Jansen, Menno T. Kamminga, Jasper Krommendijk, Pauline Kruiniger, Fleur van Leeuwen, Phyllis Livaha, Zoe Luca, Nishara Mendis, Jule Mulder, Rolanda Oostland, Kate Rose-Sender, Samira Sakhi, Dagmar Schiek, Jennifer Sellin, Laura Visser, Lisa Waddington, Antonia Waltermann, Ingrid Westendorp, Anja Wiesbrock, Marjan Wijers.
This volume deals with challenges to the maintenance of minority (or community) languages in this era of globalization and increasing transnational movements of people. The contributors, experts in language policy, language maintenance and multilingualism offer complementary perspectives drawn from Australia and Europe on the maintenance of linguistic diversity.
This edited volume analyzes participatory practices in art and cultural heritage in order to determine what can be learned through and from collaboration across disciplinary borders. Following recent developments in museology, museum policies and practices have tended to prioritize community engagement over a traditional focus on collecting and preserving museal objects. At many museal institutions, a shift from a focus on objects to a focus on audiences has taken place. Artistic practices in the visual arts, music, and theater are also increasingly taking on participatory forms. The world of cultural heritage has seen an upsurge in participatory governance models favoring the expertise of local communities over that of trained professionals. While museal institutions, artists, and policy makers consider participation as a tool for implementing diversity policy, a solution to social disjunction, and a form of cultural activism, such participation has also sparked a debate on definitions, and on issues concerning the distribution of authority, power, expertise, agency, and representation. While new forms of audience and community engagement and corresponding models for "co-creation" are flourishing, fundamental but paralyzing critique abounds and the formulation of ethical frameworks and practical guidelines, not to mention theoretical reflection and critical assessment of practices, are lagging. This book offers a space for critically reflecting on participatory practices with the aim of asking and answering the question: How can we learn to better participate? To do so, it focuses on the emergence of new norms and forms of collaboration as participation, and on actual lessons learned from participatory practices. If collaboration is the interdependent formulation of problems and entails the common definition of a shared problem space, how can we best learn to collaborate across disciplinary borders and what exactly can be learned from such collaboration?
This second volume covers the relationship between socialist currents and the national liberation movement from the 1940s through decades of increasing repression and illegality, culminating in the transition to armed struggle in the early 1960s. |
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