Paradoxically, many governments that persistently violate human rights have also ratified international human rights treaties that empower their citizens to file grievances against them at the United Nations. Therefore, citizens in rights-repressing regimes find themselves with the potentially invaluable opportunity to challenge their government's abuses. Why would rights-violating governments ratify these treaties and thus afford their citizens this right? Can the mechanisms provided in these treaties actually help promote positive changes in human rights? "Insincere Commitments" uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the factors contributing to commitment and compliance among post-Soviet states such as Slovakia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Heather Smith-Cannoy argues that governments ratify these treaties insincerely in response to domestic economic pressures. Signing the treaties is a way to at least temporarily keep critics of their human rights record at bay while they secure international economic assistance or more favorable trade terms. However, she finds that through the specific protocols in the treaties that grant individuals the right to petition the UN, even the most insincere state commitments to human rights can give previously powerless individuals - and the nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations that partner with them - an important opportunity that they would otherwise not have to challenge patterns of government repression on the global stage. This insightful book will be of interest to human rights scholars, students, and practitioners, as well as anyone interested in the UN, international relations, treaties, and governance.

Case studies explore how women's rights shape state responses to sex trafficking and show how politically empowering women can help prevent and combat human trafficking Human trafficking for the sex trade is a form of modern-day slavery that ensnares thousands of victims each year, disproportionately affecting women and girls. While the international community has developed an impressive edifice of human rights law, these laws are not equally recognized or enforced by all countries. Sex Trafficking and Human Rights demonstrates that state responsiveness to human trafficking is shaped by the political, social, cultural, and economic rights afforded to women in that state. While combatting human trafficking is a multiscalar problem with a host of conflating variables, this book shows that a common theme in the effectiveness of state response is the degree to which women and girls are perceived as, and actually are, full citizens. By analyzing human trafficking cases in India, Thailand, Russia, Nigeria, and Brazil, they shed light on the factors that make some women and girls more susceptible to traffickers than others. This important book is both a call to understanding and a call to action: if the international community and state governments are to responsibly and effectively combat human trafficking, they must center the equality of women in national policy.

Case studies explore how women's rights shape state responses to sex trafficking and show how politically empowering women can help prevent and combat human trafficking Human trafficking for the sex trade is a form of modern-day slavery that ensnares thousands of victims each year, disproportionately affecting women and girls. While the international community has developed an impressive edifice of human rights law, these laws are not equally recognized or enforced by all countries. Sex Trafficking and Human Rights demonstrates that state responsiveness to human trafficking is shaped by the political, social, cultural, and economic rights afforded to women in that state. While combatting human trafficking is a multiscalar problem with a host of conflating variables, this book shows that a common theme in the effectiveness of state response is the degree to which women and girls are perceived as, and actually are, full citizens. By analyzing human trafficking cases in India, Thailand, Russia, Nigeria, and Brazil, they shed light on the factors that make some women and girls more susceptible to traffickers than others. This important book is both a call to understanding and a call to action: if the international community and state governments are to responsibly and effectively combat human trafficking, they must center the equality of women in national policy.

This book grapples with the challenges inherent in an uncertain period for global human rights and explores the future of international human rights law and practice. Many Western scholars are increasingly pessimistic about the future of international human rights law. However, the contributions to this volume demonstrate that far from collapsing in the face of duress, the concept of human rights has endured despite contractions and the spectre of co-option and manipulation by the powerful. In addition, law is a malleable tool that is deployed in novel ways to promote human rights. The book illustrates that the power of human rights lies not in their essentialized transcendence of time, culture, and context but in their enduring promise that a more just world can emerge from sustained and creative struggle through, against, and at the margins of states, law, and institutions. The key questions to emerge are not whether human rights law and practice will survive, but rather what are the forces that sustain, revitalize, and transform them? And what are human rights in the process of becoming? This book will be of immense interest to those studying and researching across Politics, Human Rights, Gender and Law. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights.

As widespread environmental degradation threatens the basic human rights of a large proportion of the world's population, we are also confronting the worst migration crisis in the modern era. Emerging Threats to Human Rights searches among the interrelated causes of these overlapping crises. The editor and contributors to this timely anthology assess how environmental resources, state violence, and the deprivation of nationality/citizenship are linked to gain a better understanding of how human rights abuses intersect with patterns of migration. As some refugees flee violence at home, they arrive in an asylum country only to experience violence at the hands of the native population. Likewise, those denied citizenship rights in their country become vulnerable to human traffickers and other rights violations when they flee. Bringing together scholars of resource dilemmas, violence, and citizenship as well as lawyers and human rights practitioners, Emerging Threats to Human Rights begins by identifying the core causes of human rights violations confronting our world today. Chapters also consider whether and to what extent these emerging threats to human rights serve as drivers of displacement.