This book compares Islamic and Western ideas of human rights in order to ascertain which human rights, if any, can be considered universal. This is a profound topic with a rich history that is highly relevant within global politics and society today. The arguments in this book are formed by bringing William Talbott's Which Rights Should Be Universal? (2005) and Abdulaziz Sachedina's Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (2014) into conversation. By bridging the gap between cultural relativists and moral universalists, this book seeks to offer a new model for the understanding of human rights. It contends that human rights abuses are outcomes of complex systems by design and/or by default. Therefore, it proposes that a rigorous systems-thinking approach will contribute to addressing the challenge of human rights. Engaging with Islamic and Western, historical and contemporary, and relativist and universalist thought, this book is a fresh take on a perennially important issue. As such, it will be a first-rate resource for any scholars working in religious studies, Islamic studies, Middle East studies, ethics, sociology, and law and religion.

The end of the Cold War has ushered a restructuring of the institutions of the European Community, culminating into its enlargement to Eastern Europe, under the aegis of economic integration, democracy and human rights. This book examines the development and the role of human rights in the European Union, from its inception as an economic co-operation project to an organisation of European States with a political agenda that goes beyond its borders. It argues that human rights have become an important component of the foreign policy of the European Union and that this role has grown from the inception of the Union through the Cold War and thereafter onto the process of enlargement of the Union. The book goes on to analyse the EU's policy on minorities, as a particular example of human rights. It considers the level of their protection within the EU and the framework of international law, and compares minority rights in the older Member States including France, Germany and the UK, with newer Eastern European states.

The right to health, having been previously neglected is now being deployed more and more often in litigation, activism and policy-making across the world. International bodies such as the WHO, UNAIDS, World Bank and WTO are increasingly using or being evaluated with reference to health rights, and international NGOs frequently use the language of rights in campaigning and in more concrete litigation. This book brings together an impressive array of internationally renowned scholars in the areas of law, philosophy and health policy to critically interrogate the development of rights based approaches to health. The volume integrates discussion of the right to health at a theoretical level in law and ethics, with the difficult substantive issues where the right is relevant, and with emerging systems of global health governance. The contributions to this volume will add to our theoretical and practical understanding of rights based approaches to health.

Protecting the Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution pursues a rigorous examination of the various ways in which the protection of housing and property rights can contribute to durable solutions to displacement. The focus of most of the international community's recent protection efforts has been on returning displaced persons to their homes following armed conflict. However, this focus on return has come at the expense of considering other possible durable solutions, particularly in cases of protracted displacement. In this book, Anneke Smit chronicles the failure of the international community's attempts to promote widespread return through establishing housing and property restitution mechanisms. Drawing on a variety of displacement situations, and referring throughout to international human rights and refugee law, property law and theory, and sociological and anthropological literature on displacement and the meaning of home', she argues that a housing and property policy which supports integration in the communities where refugees and internally displaced persons find themselves after conflict is likely to represent a more effective and sustainable approach than a singular focus on return. Protecting the Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons is based on extensive academic research, including fieldwork, as well as more than a decade of the author's practical experience working on displacement issues with government, international organisation and NGO actors. It will be of considerable interest to those with academic and policy interests in the rights of refugees and displaced persons.

In present digital times the focus is on globalization and the dynamics and complexities that it creates. However, in spite of being dominated by technology the world remains populated by human beings practising a localized everyday life. This contrast should challenge every researcher who is concerned with business and societal development and how that is contingent upon the institutional and cultural (national) context. In this book, Swedish researchers reflect upon entrepreneurship as a possible mediator between local and global economic and social concerns. Using as a point of departure the tensions between a functional, footloose rationale and a territorial rationale tied to place, the authors provide different aspects on regional development in a globalised world. A shared concern is the importance of recognizing the many appearances of entrepreneurship that brings it beyond being an innovative force in the market. The book thus presents different strategies and tactics for pursuing localized economic development and it also critically reviews adopted public support programmes and measures of the (local) business climate. The conclusive message is that only by bridging the functional and territorial views will it be possible to sustain, and possibly enhance, economic and social life in local places as well as in our shared world. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

This book deals with the forgotten history of the civil rights movement. The American Left played a significant part in the origins of that movement, whose history has traditionally been focused on the later 1940's and early 1950's. This approach needs serious re-thinking in light of what took place in the later 1930's with the organization and activity of groups like the Southern Negro Youth Congress that brought both African-American and white workers and students together in the fight for economic and social justice. Thanks to the post-World War II Red Scare such groups as well as Left African-American leaders like Esther and James Jackson have been overlooked or excised from an exciting, controversial, and important story. With all due credit to the churches which played such a pivotal role in finally winning Blacks their civil rights, the early history involving the Left, workers of both races, and the labor unions must be assimilated into America's memory, for there were important continuities between what they did and the later church-based struggle. This book was published as a special issue of American Communist History.

Patrolling the Homeland explores the tension surrounding the militarization of national borders through the perspective of US militia volunteers. Amidst a humanitarian crisis in which more than 7,800 people have lost their lives attempting to cross the border, US militias patrol the deserts along the Mexican border in camouflage, armed with assault rifles and night-vision goggles to "protect" the US. How and why US border militias conduct their activities is paramount to understanding similar movements, ideologies, and rhetoric around the world that oppose the movement of refugees and support the closing or restriction of international and regional borders. Based on extensive and engaging ethnography, Patrolling the Homeland explores not how people strive to be moral but how they maintain their self-perception as already and always moral individuals in spite of evidence to the contrary. This book signifies a creative and unique addition to morality and ethics through an honest and critical examination of a unique social movement indicative of contemporary society. A valuable read for anthropologists, sociologists, criminologists, and individuals interested in morality and ethics, militias, border studies, and policing.

Freedom is commonly recognized as the struggle for basic liberties, societies based upon open dialogue, human rights and democracy. The idea of freedom is central to western ideas of modernity, but this engaging, accessible book argues that if we look back at the history of the idea of freedom, then what we mean by it is far more contested than we might think. To what extent does freedom have a social component, and how is it being reshaped by our dominant consumer society? This book represents a wake-up call to all those who thought our basic ideas of freedom were settled.

Today, the West sees itself as having a crucial role to play in exporting freedom into the far regions of the world but our own freedom seems more under threat than ever. Linking ideas of public and personal freedom, Stevenson explores complaints about big brother, the arrival of the business society and the erosion of democracy to show how our freedoms are far from secure.

Seeking to affirm the importance of freedom, this book provides a compelling argument for linking it to other values such as equality and responsibility. Drawing upon a range of critical thinkers and perspectives, Stevenson asks what freedom will come to mean in the future, in a world that seems increasingly fragile, uncertain and insecure.

This book explores the conditions under which non-state armed groups (NSAGs) participate in post-war security and political governance.

The text offers a comprehensive approach to post-war security transition processes based on five years of participatory research with local experts and representatives of former non-state armed groups. It analyses the successes and limits of peace negotiations, demobilisation, arms management, political or security sector integration, socio-economic reintegration and state reform from the direct point of view of conflict stakeholders who have been central participants in ongoing and past peacebuilding processes.

Challenging common perceptions of ex-combatants as "spoilers" or "passive recipients of aid," the various contributors examine the post-war transitions of these individuals from state challengers to peacebuilding agents. The book concludes on a cross-country comparative analysis of the main research findings and the ways in which they may facilitate a participatory, inclusive and gender-sensitive peacebuilding strategy.

Post-War Security Transitions will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, security governance, war and conflict studies, political violence and IR in general.

The question of to what extent, manifestations of religious beliefs should be permitted in the European public sphere has become a salient and controversial topic in recent years. Despite the increasing interest however, debates have rarely questioned the conventional wisdom that an increase in the range of security measures employed by a government inevitably leads to a decrease in the human rights enjoyed by individuals.

This book analyses the relationship between state security regime changes and the right to religious freedom in the EU. It presents a comparative analysis of the impact these regime changes have had on the politics, policies and protections of religious freedom across the EU member states in the post-2001 environment. The book provides a timely investigation into the role of national legislation, the European Court of Human Rights, and societal trends in the protection of religious freedom, and in so doing demonstrates why the relationship between state security and religious freedom is one of the most socially significant challenges facing policymakers and jurists in Europe at the present time.

The Stonewall Riot in New York in 1969 marked the birth of the sexual minority rights movement worldwide. In the subsequent four decades, equality and related rights on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity have been enshrined in many African, Asian, Australasian, European and North American countries, thanks to better informed discourses of the natures of sexual orientation, gender identity, equality and rights that systematic scientific and socio-legal research has generated. Discrimination, harassment and persecution on grounds of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity, however, continue to pervade the laws and social norms in all developed and developing countries. In tribute to the courage of those who participated in the Stonewall Riot, this book examines the progress and stalemate in various countries on five continents, as well as in the development of international law, concerning the rights of persons belonging to sexual minorities. This book covers issues including homophobic bullying and gay-straight alliances in schools; the merits and problems that legislation prohibiting hate speech on grounds of sexual orientation presents; criminal justice systems in relation to male rape victims and to criminalisation of HIV exposure and transmission; the development of sexual minority rights, from historical and socio-legal perspectives, in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Zimbabwe; the lives of transgender persons in Asian countries; the evolution, operation and impact of international and domestic refugee laws on sexual orientation and gender identity as grounds for refugee status and asylum; and the conflicts between law, religion and sexual minority equality rights that inhere in the same-sex marriage debate in Ireland. This book was previously published as a special double issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

The suffragette movement shattered the domestic tranquillity of Edwardian England. This book is an original and searching study of the formidable organization which led this campaign: the Women's Social and Political Union. With the use of previously unpublished correspondence of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, her colleagues and such political leaders as Asquith, Balfour and Lloyd George, the author views the development of ever more extreme and violent forms of militancy not as a series of amusing exploits and incidents but as the carefully calculated political strategy the suffragettes intended it to be. He examines the reasons for the remarkable effectiveness of militant tactics in making women's enfranchisement a political issue of central importance, and shows why militancy failed to secure this right prior to the outbreak of war in August 1914. He assesses, too, the influence of the vast social and political changes wrought by the war on the ultimate success of the campaign in 1918.

Among several contesting views about the purpose of development and how progress should be evaluated, human rights and capabilities (or human development) stand out as two approaches that are concerned first and foremost with the well-being of individuals, their freedom, dignity and empowerment. These two approaches contrast sharply with the dominant development frameworks that emphasize economic growth as the essential objective. Though human rights and capabilities share these common commitment to human priorities, they are distinct concepts and fields that have developed separately. The aim of this volume is to explore the relationship between them in order to enhance the understanding of both as theoretical paradigms, as public policy frameworks and as approaches to development.

The book includes contributions from some of the leading scholars in the two fields of capabilities approach and human rights. It covers the essential aspects of this relationship: addressing the complementarities between human rights and capabilities as theoretical concepts; how the concept of capabilities can contribute to resolving some key theoretical issues in human rights; how the social science analysis and methods of the capabilities approach can clarify human rights concepts and strengthen human rights advocacy; and how human rights norms can strengthen public policy and mobilize collective action to demand greater accountability in placing human priorities first in public policy. Human Rights and the Capabilities Approach raises many questions for further inter-disciplinary conversation and further research.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and has been expanded with two additional articles from this journal and a new foreword by Professor Amartya Sen.

First published in 1987 this book considers the practical implications of increasing public access to official information in Britain, both from the perspective of increasing Freedom of Information and reforming Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act. It draws attention to the practical problems such changes would pose for both politicians and civil servants working in an adversarial system of government. It examines the effects of proposed changes on the conventions which are a fundamental feature of the British constitution. It also considers the political significance of reforms, both to demands for increased public participation in policy-making and to actual policies. Local and international perspectives on open government are included in order to provide an informed insight into an important issue of contemporary concern.

Cultural citizenship is a recently developed concept in discussions on multicultural society, the media society, consumerism, and political theory. It addresses the various ways in which citizenship is becoming mixed up with culture, either through globalisation processes (involving new cultural identities, immigrations, culture industries) or by increasingly life-style oriented types of action. In the face of these challenges, the good old notion of citizenship seems in need of some assistance. This book takes a fresh look at cultural citizenship by exploring it from political-philosophical angles. It seeks to develop explicitly normative perspectives on the present debates around culture. What do the novel national and global constellations mean with respect to inclusion and exclusion, participation and marginalisation, political rights and 'mere' cultural practices? Moreover, this volume's authors aim to develop notions of cultural citizenship beyond the liberal political paradigm that associates it with 'cultural rights', 'cultural capital' or the 'consumer-citizen'. They engage the concept to re-think politics in both its meanings of citizenship practices and governance practices vis-a-vis citizens. The authors address a range of pertinent issues, exploring historical as well as present-day understandings, and theoretical as well as policy applications of the notion of cultural citizenship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

The Sacred Men's Club examines the global struggle of religious conservatism against women's rights, and the ways in which a rise in the power of organised religions in western countries in the last two decades affects the lives of women. Institutionalised religion is, as feminist theorist Mary Daly points out, a sacred men's club'. The rise of religious ideals and movements in world politics can be understood as representing a movement focusing on men's rights and power. Contrary to this lies the marginalisation of women in religion and religious power structure. The book explores and provides: * a feminist critique of the politics of religion * a view that the contemporary rise of religion endangers the rights of women in two ways: on the world stage through the United Nations, and in western democracies through multifaithism and desecularisation. * concrete examples of the ways in which the rise of religion affects women's status by looking at polygamy and dress practices. Following on from The Industrial Vagina, Sheila Jeffrey's incisive and often controversial views provide a polemical and radical re-envisioning of some of the most important issues in the fields of religion, politics and gender studies.

Theories of citizenship from the West pre-eminently those by T.H. Marshall provide only a limited insight into East Asian political history.

The Marshallian trajectory juridical, political and social rights was not repeated in Asia and the late nineteenth-century debate about liberalism and citizenship among intellectuals in Japan and China was eventually stifled by war, colonialism and authoritarian governments (both nationalist and communist). Subsequent attempts to import western-style democratic values and citizenship were to a large extent failures. Social rights have rarely been systematically incorporated into the political ideology and administrative framework of ruling governments. In reality, the predominant concern of both the state elite and the ordinary citizens was economic development and a modicum of material well-being rather than civil liberties. The developmental state and its politics take precedence in the everyday political process of most East Asian societies.

These essays provide a systematic and comparative account of the tensions between rapid economic growth and citizenship, and the ways in which those tensions are played out in civil society.

The book begins with an agenda-setting introduction which will provide an overview of the central question being addressed, such as the circumstances associated with the move towards a political settlement, the parameters of this settlement and the factors that have assisted in bringing it about. The remaining contributions will focus on a range of cases selected for their diversity and their capacity to highlight the full gamut of political approaches to conflict resolution. The cases vary in: the intensity of the conflict (from Belgium, where it is potential rather than actual, to Sri Lanka, where it has come to a recent violent conclusion); in the geopolitical relationship between the competing groups (from Cyprus, where they are sharply segregated geographically, to Northern Ireland, where they are intermingled); in the extent to which a stable constitutional accommodation has been reached (ranging from the Basque Country, with a large range of unresolved problems, to South Africa, which has achieved a significant level of institutional stability). This book ranges over the world's major geopolitical zones, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe and will be of interest to practitioners in the field of international security. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

This book provides a conceptual framework for understanding war rape and its impact, through empirical examination of the case of Bosnia. Providing a contextual understanding of sexual violence in war, and situating Bosnian war rape in relation to subsequent conflicts, the book offers a methodological outline of how sexual violence in war can be studied from a political-psychological perspective. It presents empirical findings from the field that show what war rape can entail in the aftermath of armed conflict for victims and their communities. Through its comprehensive approach to Bosnian experiences, the volume expands the conceptualization of victimhood and challenges the assumption that sexual violence is a particularly difficult theme to study because of victim silence. Rather, the author demonstrates there are many voices that can provide insight and understandings of war rape and its impact without having to compromise the safety and privacy of individual victims. Finally, the book shows the ways in which individual experiences of war rape are shaped by national and international discourses on gender, sexuality and politics. This book will be of interest to students of political psychology, war and conflict studies, European politics, ethnic conflict, politics and IR in general.

The UN Human Rights Council provides a detailed insight into this important organization. The UN was founded in the hope that lasting peace would be built on the foundations of human rights and economic and social progress. In 2006 the Commission on Human Rights was replaced by the Human Rights Council as the principal UN body concerned with human rights. It is even possible that the council might eventually become a principal organ of the world organization.

The Human Rights Council is already the subject of major public interest and controversy. The Council has been criticized for having dropped some of the protection strategies of the former commission and this book aims to present a balanced view of the council, outlining its current role, acknowledging where it has made positive contributions, highlighting the deficiencies, and identifying options for improving the body 's future work.

This book is destined to become the leading text on the Human Rights Council and will be essential reading for all those concerned with the future of international relations international organizations and human rights.

This book examines the dynamic process of political transition and indigenous (adat) revival in newly decentralized Indonesia. The political transition in May 1998 set the stage for the passing of Indonesia's framework decentralization laws. These laws include both political and technocratic efforts to devolve authority from the centre (Jakarta) to the peripheries. Contrary to expectations, enhanced public participation often takes the form of adat revivalism - a deliberate, highly contested and contingent process linked to intensified political struggles throughout the Indonesian archipelago. The author argues adat is aligned with struggles for recognition and remedial rights, including the right to autonomous governance and land. It cannot be understood in isolation, nor can it be separated from the wider world. Based on original fieldwork and using case studies from Sulawesi to illustrate the key arguments, this book provides an overview of the key analytical concepts and a concise review of relevant stages in Indonesian history. It considers struggles for rights and recognition, focusing on regulatory processes and institutional control. Finally, Tyson examines land disputes and resource conflicts. Regional and local conflicts often coalesce around forms of ethnic representation, which are constantly being renegotiated, along with resource allocations and entitlements, and efforts to preserve or reinvent cultural identities. This will be valuable reading for students and researchers in Political Studies, Development Studies, Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies and Politics.

This book: * Looks at non-violent resistances in South Asia, Middle East, Europe and Americas. * will be a must-read for scholars and researchers of politics, governance and public policy, gender, and human rights

This book rethinks the body in global politics and the particular roles bodies play in our international system, foregrounding processes and practices involved in the continually contested (re/dis)embodiment of both human bodies and collective bodies politic. Purnell provides a new, innovative, and detailed theory of bodily (re)making and un-making that shows how bodies are simultaneously (re)made and moved and (re)make and move other bodies and things. Presented in the form of reflective/reflexive and theoretically innovative essays, the book explores: bodies in general and their precarious, excessive, ontologically insecure, and emotional facets; the fleshing out of contemporary necro(body)politics; and the visual-emotional politics embodied through the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical analyses feed into contemporary IR debates on British and American politics and international relations and the Global War on Terror, while also speaking to broader and interdisciplinary, theoretical literature on bodies/embodiment, visual politics, biopolitics, necropolitics, and affect/emotion, and feelings.

Panoramic and provocative in its scope, this handbook is the definitive guide to contemporary issues associated with male sex work and a must read for those who study masculinities, male sexuality, sexual health, and sexual cultures. This groundbreaking volume will have a powerful impact on our understanding of this challenging, elusive subject. While the internet has brought the previously hidden worlds of male sex work more starkly into public view, academic research has often remained locked into descriptions of male sex workers and their clients as perverse. Drawing from a variety of regions, the chapters provide insights into the historical, popular cultural, social, and economic aspects of sex work, as well as demographic patterns, health outcomes, and policy issues. This approach shifts thought on male sex work from a hidden "social problem" to a publicly acknowledged "social phenomenon." The book challenges myths and reconceptualizes male sex work as a discrete field. Importantly, it provides a vehicle for the voices of male sex workers and new and established scholars. This richly detailed, humane, and innovative collection retrieves male sex work from silence and invisibility on the one hand and its association with scandal and stigma on the other. The findings within have profound implications for how governments approach public health and regulation of the sex industry and for how society can make sense of the complexities of human sexualities. A compelling scholarly read and a major contribution to a commercial sector that is often neglected in policy debates on sex work, this handbook will be of great interest to scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, and cultural studies and all those interested in male sex work.

Memory of the Argentina Disappearances examines the history of the production, public circulation, and the interpretations and reinterpretations of the Nunca Mas report issued by Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP). It was established in 1983 by constitutional president Raul Alfonsin to investigate the fate of thousands of people who had been disappeared by the state during the seventies. Upon publication in 1984, Nunca Mas became a bestseller, was translated into several languages and won greater public importance when the military juntas were brought to trial and the court accepted the report as key evidence. The report's importance was further enhanced with the adoption of CONADEP and Nunca Mas as models for truth commissions established in Latin America, and when it was postulated as a means for conveying an awareness of this past to Argentina's younger generations. This book contributes to understanding the political processes that led to Nunca Mas becoming the way in which Argentines remembered the disappearances and the country's political violence, and how its meaning is modified by new interpretations. Given the canonical nature of Nunca Mas, the book sheds light on the most substantial changes and the continuities in Argentina's social memory of its recent past.