Showing papers on "Human rights published in 2010"

The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History

Abstract: Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today's idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal's troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post - World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity's moral history, "The Last Utopia" shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.

International human rights treaty to change social patterns: The convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women

Abstract: This paper analyzes empirically whether the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), advocating the multiple dimensions of women’s rights, affects the level of women’s rights in a country. Measuring commitments to the CEDAW based on reservations by member states, I test whether the Convention enhances women’s rights; in particular, (i) whether the effects are stronger if a member country has a higher level of democracy; and (ii) whether the effects are most pronounced in the dimension of women’s social rights, a special focus of the Convention. Using panel data for 126 countries during 1981-2007, I do not find statistically significant effects of the CEDAW alone on any dimension of women’s rights. However, I do find a positive impact of the CEDAW on women’s social rights if combined with a higher degree of democracy. These findings are robust to the choice of control variables and the method of estimation. In particular, taking into account the potential reverse causality does not alter the main conclusions.

The Private Regulation of Global Corporate Conduct: Achievements and Limitations

Abstract: The article assesses the achievements and limitations of the private regulation of global corporate conduct. Private regulation occurs through voluntary, private, nonstate industry and cross-industry codes that address labor practices, environmental performance, and human rights policies. The author argues that while private regulation has resulted in some substantive improvements in corporate behavior, it cannot be regarded as a substitute for the more effective exercise of state authority at both the national and international levels. Ultimately, private regulation must be integrated with and reinforced by more effective state-based and enforced regulatory policies at both the national and international levels.

The Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project

Abstract: The CIRI Human Rights Data Project provides information about government respect for a broad array of human rights in nearly every country in the world. Covering twenty-six years, fifteen separate human rights practices, and 195 countries, it is one of the largest human rights data sets in the world. This essay provides an overview of the CIRI project and our response to some critiques of the CIRI physical integrity rights index. Compared to the Political Terror Scale (PTS), the CIRI physical integrity rights index is focused on government human rights practices , can be disaggregated, is more transparent in its construction, and is more replicable because of the transparency of our coding rules. Furthermore, unlike the PTS, the unidimensionality of the CIRI index has been demonstrated empirically. For these reasons, the CIRI index is a more valid index of physical integrity rights.

The politics of sport-for-development: Limited focus programmes and broad gauge problems?

Abstract: This article explores the almost evangelical policy rhetoric of the sports-for-development ‘movement’ and the wide diversity of programmes and organizations included under this vague and weakly theorized banner. It is suggested that, although the rhetoric of sport as a human right has provided some rhetorical and symbolic legitimation for sport-for-development initiatives, the recent dramatic increase in interest reflects broader changes in the aid paradigm, reflecting perceived failures of top-down economic aid and an increased concern with issues of human and social capital, as well as the strengthening of civil society organizations. In this context the presumed ability of sport to offer an economy of solutions to a wide range of development problems led the United Nations, with the encouragement of a vociferous sport-for-development lobby, to turn to the world of sport in an effort to achieve its Millennium Development Goals. While there is a certain theoretical logic to some of the policy assertions ...

Democracy across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi

Abstract: Today democracy is both exalted as the "best means to realize human rights" and seen as weakened because of globalization and delegation of authority beyond the nation-state. In this provocative book, James Bohman argues that democracies face a period of renewal and transformation and that democracy itself needs redefinition according to a new transnational ideal. Democracy, he writes, should be rethought in the plural; it should no longer be understood as rule by the people (dmos), singular, with a specific territorial identification and connotation, but as rule by peoples (dmoi), across national boundaries. Bohman shows that this new conception of transnational democracy requires reexamination of such fundamental ideas as the people, the public, citizenship, human rights, and federalism, and he argues that it offers a feasible approach to realizing democracy in a globalized world.In his account, Bohman establishes the conceptual foundations of transnational democracy by examining in detail current theories of democracy beyond the nation-state (including those proposed by Rawls, Habermas, Held, and Dryzek) and offers a deliberative alternative. He considers the importance of communicative freedom in the transnational public sphere (including networked communication over the Internet), human rights as the normative basis of transnational democracy, and the European Union as a transnational polity. Finally, he examines the relationship between peace and democracy, concluding that peace requires democratization on interacting state and suprastate levels.

The Deportation Regime

Abstract: This important collection examines deportation as an increasingly global mechanism of state control. Anthropologists, historians, legal scholars, and sociologists consider not only the physical expulsion of noncitizens but also the social discipline and labor subordination resulting from deportability, the threat of forced removal. They explore practices and experiences of deportation in regional and national settings from the U.S.-Mexico border to Israel, and from Somalia to Switzerland. They also address broader questions, including the ontological significance of freedom of movement; the historical antecedents of deportation, such as banishment and exile; and the development, entrenchment, and consequences of organizing sovereign power and framing individual rights by territory. Whether investigating the power that individual and corporate sponsors have over the fate of foreign laborers in Bahrain, the implications of Germany’s temporary suspension of deportation orders for pregnant and ill migrants, or the significance of the detention camp, the contributors reveal how deportation reflects and reproduces notions about public health, racial purity, and class privilege. They also provide insight into how deportation and deportability are experienced by individuals, including Arabs, South Asians, and Muslims in the United States. One contributor looks at asylum claims in light of an unusual anti-deportation campaign mounted by Algerian refugees in Montreal; others analyze the European Union as an entity specifically dedicated to governing mobility inside and across its official borders. The Deportation Regime addresses urgent issues related to human rights, international migration, and the extensive security measures implemented by nation-states since September 11, 2001. Contributors : Rutvica Andrijasevic, Aashti Bhartia, Heide Castaneda , Galina Cornelisse , Susan Bibler Coutin, Nicholas De Genova, Andrew M. Gardner, Josiah Heyman, Serhat Karakayali, Sunaina Marr Maira, Guillermina Gina Nunez, Peter Nyers, Nathalie Peutz, Enrica Rigo, Victor Talavera, William Walters, Hans-Rudolf Wicker, Sarah S. Willen

The Political Terror Scale (PTS): A Re-introduction and a Comparison to CIRI

Abstract: Despite the frequency with which scholars have utilized the Political Terror Scale (PTS), a surprising number of questions remain regarding the origins of the scale, the coding scheme it employs, and its conceptualization of "state terror." This research note attempts to clarify these issues. We also take this opportunity to compare the PTS with the Cingranelli and Richards Human Rights Data Project (CIRI). Although the PTS and CIRI are coded from the same source material and capture the same class of human rights violations, we observe some important differences between the two that we believe may be of interest to scholars in the quantitative human rights community. First, we believe that the CIRI claims a level of precision that is not possible given the source data from which both datasets are coded. We believe that the PTS offers a transparent coding system that recognizes the inherent limitations in measuring abuses of physical integrity rights. Second, we argue that the CIRI's method of summing across abuse types leads to some inappropriate categorizations. For instance, the absence of one type of abuse prevents a state from being coded into a more repressive overall category regardless of the levels of other types of abuse. Lastly, the PTS accounts for the "range" of violence committed by the state—in short, what segments of the population are targeted. We believe that range is an important dimension to consider in measuring human rights and one to which CIRI does not attend.

UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific And Cultural Organization

Abstract: UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) was founded on the initiative of the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education, set up during World War II. UNESCO's purpose is tto contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction of race, sex, language or religion by the Charter of the United Nationst. The organs of UNESCO are: the General Conference, the Executive Board and the Secretariat headed by a Director-General. UNESCO's field of work is extremely broad; its tasks became more and more complex and are supposed to cover the major problems ranging from the articulation of the global dependencies and through solution proposals to abolish them, to the strengthening of international solidarity to secure the survival of human-kind. Keywords: General Conference; UNESCO

Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective

Abstract: Introduction Part I. The Rise and Costs of Human Trafficking: 1. Why has human trafficking flourished? 2. The diverse consequences of human trafficking Part II. The Financial Side of Human Trafficking: 3. Human trafficking as transnational organized crime 4. The business of human trafficking Part III. Regional Perspectives: 5. Asian trafficking 6. Human trafficking in Eurasia and Eastern Europe 7. Trafficking in Europe 8. Trafficking in the United States 9. Human trafficking in Latin America and Africa Conclusion.

Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions for Transitional Countries

Abstract: Human rights prosecutions have been the major policy innovation of the late twentieth century designed to address human rights violations. The main justification for such prosecutions is that sanctions are necessary to deter future violations. In this article, we use our new data set on domestic and international human rights prosecutions in 100 transitional countries to explore whether prosecuting human rights violations can decrease repression. We find that human rights prosecutions after transition lead to improvements in human rights protection, and that human rights prosecutions have a deterrence impact beyond the confines of the single country. We also explore the mechanisms through which prosecutions lead to improvements in human rights. We argue that impact of prosecutions is the result of both normative pressures and material punishment and provide support for this argument with a comparison of the impact of prosecutions and truth commissions, which do not involve material punishment.

‘Stop Stealing Our Stories’: The Ethics of Research with Vulnerable Groups

Abstract: The article discusses the challenges and opportunities faced when integrating participatory methods into human rights-based research. It describes the development of a participatory action research approach designed to fulfil the aim of undertaking advocacy-focused research grounded in human rights and community participation. It reflects the principles of anti-oppressive social work and the ethics of undertaking research with vulnerable populations. In line with other contributions to this special issue, the article explores questions such as: ‘Where does knowledge about the story come from and how is it passed on?’; ‘What spurs ethical thinking at an individual and organizational level?’; and ‘How can ethical sensitivity and strategic effectiveness be combined?’

The Vulnerable Subject and the Responsive State

Abstract: Since there is also no U.S. constitutional guarantee to basic social goods, such as housing, education, or health care, the anti-discrimination, sameness-of-treatment approach to equality prevalent in the United States is particularly problematic. The discourse of human rights that supports claims to such goods in European and other countries does not exist in America. We have not ratified many of the international agreements, including those associated with economic rights, as well as CEDAW and CRC. The courts are little help. In fact, attempts to apply human rights ideals internally - to American practices and laws - have been met with resistance, if not outright rejection. Several Justices of the Supreme Court decried references to human rights principles used to bolster arguments about constitutionality under American precedent to be the application of "foreign fads" when (superior) American constitutional provisions should prevail.My development of the concept of vulnerability and the idea of a vulnerable subject began as a stealthily disguised human rights discourse, fashioned for an American audience. The concept has evolved from those early articulations, and I now think it has some significant differences as an approach, particularly in that a focus on vulnerability is decidedly focused on exploring the nature of the human part, rather than the rights part, of the human rights trope. Importantly, consideration of vulnerability brings societal institutions, in addition to the state and individual, into the discussion and under scrutiny. Vulnerability is posited as the characteristic that positions us in relation to each other as human beings and also suggests a relationship of responsibility between state and individual. The nature of human vulnerability forms the basis for a claim that the state must be more responsive to that vulnerability and do better at ensuring the "All-American" promise of equality of opportunity.

Engaged Anthropology: Diversity and Dilemmas

Abstract: As a discipline, anthropology has increased its public visibility in recent years with its growing focus on engagement. Although the call for engagement has elicited responses in all subfields and around the world, this special issue focuses on engaged anthropology and the dilemmas it raises in U.S. cultural and practicing anthropology. Within this field, the authors distinguish a number of forms of engagement: (1) sharing and support, (2) teaching and public education, (3) social critique, (4) collaboration, (5) advocacy, and (6) activism. They show that engagement takes place during fieldwork; through applied practice; in institutions such as Cultural Survival, the Institute for Community Research, and the Hispanic Health Council; and as individual activists work in the context of war, terrorism, environmental injustice, human rights, and violence. A close examination of the history of engaged anthropology in the United States also reveals an enduring set of dilemmas, many of which persist in contempora...

Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights

Abstract: Introduction: The Politics of Decolonization and the Evolution of the International Human Rights Project 1. Human Rights and the Birth of the Third World: The Bandung Conference 2. "Transforming the End into the Means": The Third World and the Right to Self-Determination 3. Putting the Stamps Back On: Apartheid, Anticolonialism, and the Accidental Birth of a Universal Right to Petition 4. "It Is Very Fitting": Celebrating Freedom in the Shah's Iran, the First World Conference on Human Rights,Tehran 1968 5. "According to Their Own Norms of Civilization": The Rise of Cultural Relativism and the Decline of Human Rights Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities

Abstract: This book sets out a philosophical and practical account of contemporary global politics from a cosmopolitan point of view. The volume begins by developing a theory of cosmopolitanism, explicating its core principles and justifications. The role many of these principles have had in global politics is then explored; they have been important in framing the human rights regime and several aspects of international law and politics. The book then examines how legal and institutional developments at the global level fall short of cosmopolitan ideals. The argument is that this deficit is not inevitable, and can be overcome over time through an ambitious and yet practical agenda of reform. In the second half of the book, chapters are devoted to some of the most pressing issues of our time - financial market crises, climate change, and the fallout from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In each of these areas, the author argues that realist politics is exhausted, and that cosmopolitanism is the new realism. In short, the book offers a novel approach to thinking about global politics and case studies of its application by one of the best known authors in the field.

Estimating the Effects of Human Rights Treaties on State Behavior

Abstract: Though research suggests that international regimes that coordinate economic and security policy can alter state behavior, research examining the effect of human rights treaties on state behavior has found that these agreements do little to curb repressive practices. However, those studies neglect to account for the fact that several of the state-level characteristics which are known to affect repressive practices also influence the likelihood of a state making a formal commitment to the human rights regime. States that commit and states that do not are likely to have different domestic institutional features. Systematic heterogeneity across ratifiers and nonratifiers makes it difficult to infer the level of repression that would have been observed in a state had it not committed to the treaty in question. This paper employs matching techniques that address this problem and allow for more valid inferences about the effects of human rights treaties on repressive practices. The impact of human rights treati...

The concept of human dignity and the realistic utopia of human rights

Abstract: Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those “dignities” that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, “human dignity” still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status – in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody.

The Company You Keep: International Socialization and the Diffusion of Human Rights Norms

Abstract: Does membership in Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) affect states’ human rights behavior? One might expect IGOs with a specific human rights mandate, like the International Labour Organization or the Council of Europe, to have a positive effect on the human rights practices of their member states. But what about other sorts of IGOs, particularly those with no direct connection to human rights issues? This study employs cross-national data on abuses of “physical integrity rights” for 137 countries over the period 1982–2000 to test the hypothesis that IGOs can promote the diffusion of human rights norms by providing venues for interstate socialization. Recent empirical work on IGOs has suggested that this sort of socialization effect can play an important role in promoting democracy and can also lead to a more general convergence among states’ interests. The results presented here suggest that IGOs can have a surprisingly powerful influence on states’ human rights practices as a result of this process.

Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking

Abstract: * Acknowledgements * Acronyms * Introduction * 1. White slavery and trafficking as political myth * 2. The construction of innocence and the spectre of chaos * 3. Metaphorical innocence: white slavery in America * 4. 'Prevent, protect, and punish' * 5. Now you see her, now you don't: consent, sex workers and the Human Rights Caucus * 6. Towards a reinscription of myth * Primary sources

Why Respecting Physical Integrity Rights Reduces Terrorism

Abstract: Does respect for human rights check or promote terrorism? This question is hotly debated within policy circles. Some hold that restricting human rights is a necessary if unfortunate cost of preventing terrorism. Others conclude that such abuses aggravate political grievances that contribute to terror. The authors demonstrate that theory and data support the latter position. They hypothesize that abuse of the subset of rights known as physical integrity rights fuels terrorism by making it more difficult for government authorities to collect intelligence on terrorists and by undermining domestic and international support for their counterterrorism efforts. They test this hypothesis using a data set that includes measures of both domestic and transnational terrorist attacks and find that respect for physical integrity rights is consistently associated with fewer terrorist attacks. This suggests that those interested in curtailing terrorism should press governments to more carefully respect physical integrity rights.

Desistance from Sex Offending: Alternatives to Throwing Away the Keys

Abstract: Part I: General Issues. Introduction. Part II: The Criminological Perspective. Defining and Measuring Desistance. The Age-Crime Curve: A Brief Overview. Major Theories of Desistance. Factors Influencing Desistance. Two Major Theories of Desistance. Part III: The Forensic Psychological Perspective. Do Sex Offenders Desist? Sex Offender Treatment and Desistance. Part IV: Reentry and Reintegration. Barriers to Reentry and Reintegration. Overcoming Barriers to Reentry and Reintegration. Part V: Recruitment. The Unknown Sex Offenders: Bringing Them in from the Cold. Blending Theory and Practice: A Crimininological Perspective. Part VI: Desistance-Focused Intervention. The Good Lives Model of Offender Rehabilitation: Basic Assumptions, Etiological Commitments, and Practice Implications. The Good Lives Model and Desistance Theory and Research: Points of Convergence. The Good Lives-Desistance Model: Assessment and Treatment. Part VII:Where to from Here? Dignity, Punishment, and Human Rights: The Ethics of Desistance. Moral Strangers or One of Us?: Concluding Thoughts.

Localizing transitional justice : interventions and priorities after mass violence

Abstract: Through war crimes prosecutions, truth commissions, purges of perpetrators, reparations, and memorials, transitional justice practices work under the assumptions that truth telling leads to reconciliation, prosecutions bring closure, and justice prevents the recurrence of violence. But when local responses to transitional justice destabilize these assumptions, the result can be a troubling disconnection between international norms and survivors' priorities. Localizing Transitional Justice traces how ordinary people respond to-and sometimes transform-transitional justice mechanisms, laying a foundation for more locally responsive approaches to social reconstruction after mass violence and egregious human rights violations. Recasting understandings of culture and locality prevalent in international justice, this vital book explores the complex, unpredictable, and unequal encounter among international legal norms, transitional justice mechanisms, national agendas, and local priorities and practices.

Human Rights Council

Abstract: After 60 years the Commission on Human Rights, established by ECOSOC resolution E/RES/5 (I) of 16 February 1946 as a subsidiary organ of ECOSOC for the promotion and protection of human rights, was abolished with effect on 16 June 2006 by ECOSOC resolution E/RES/2006/2 of 22 March 2006 at the request of the General Assembly in resolution A/RES/60/251 of 15 March 2006. With the same resolution the General Assembly decided to establish the Human Rights Council (HRC), based in Geneva, in replacement of the Commission on Human Rights, as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly. The HRC resolution contained all the details about the universal periodic review (UPR), the special procedures, the complaint procedure, the establishment of the HRC Advisory Committee, the agenda and the rules of procedure of the Council. Keywords: Commission on Human Rights; ECOSOC; HRC Advisory Committee; Human Rights Council (HRC); UN

Human development : definitions, critiques, and related concepts

Abstract: The purpose of this background paper is i) to synthesize the discussions regarding the concept of human development, so as to inform the 2010 Report’s definition, and ii) drawing on the extensive policy and academic literatures, to propose relationships between the concept of human development and four related concepts: the Millennium Development Goals, Human Rights, Human Security, and Happiness. Inequality, the duration of outcomes across time, and environmental sustainability are also prominent due to their fundamental importance.

The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights

Abstract: Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those “dignities” that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, “human dignity” still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status – in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody.

Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies: The Impact on Human Rights and Democracy

Abstract: Despite the increasing frequency of truth commissions, there has been little agreement as to their long-term impact on a state's political and social development. This book uses a multi-method approach to examine the impact of truth commissions on subsequent human rights protection and democratic practice. Providing the first cross-national analysis of the impact of truth commissions and presenting detailed analytical case studies on South Africa, El Salvador, Chile, and Uganda, author Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm examines how truth commission investigations and their final reports have shaped the respective societies. The author demonstrates that in the longer term, truth commissions have often had appreciable effects on human rights, but more limited impact in terms of democratic development. The book concludes by considering how future research can build upon these findings to provide policymakers with strong recommendations on whether and how a truth commission is likely to help fragile post-conflict societies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Transition Justice, Human Rights, Peace and Conflict Studies, Democratization Studies, International Law and International Relations.

'Whether you like it or not people with mental problems are going to go to them': a qualitative exploration into the widespread use of traditional and faith healers in the provision of mental health care in Ghana.

Abstract: Limited research has been conducted to explore the factors that support or obstruct collaboration between traditional healers and public sector mental health services. The first aim of this study was to explore the reasons underpinning the widespread appeal of traditional/faith healers in Ghana. This formed a backdrop for the second objective, to identify what barriers or enabling factors may exist for forming bi-sectoral partnerships. Eighty-one semi-structured interviews and seven focus group discussions were conducted with 120 key stakeholders drawn from five of the ten regions in Ghana. The results were analysed through a framework approach. Respondents indicated many reasons for the appeal of traditional and faith healers, including cultural perceptions of mental disorders, the psychosocial support afforded by such healers, as well as their availability, accessibility and affordability. A number of barriers hindering collaboration, including human rights and safety concerns, scepticism around the effectiveness of ‘conventional’ treatments, and traditional healer solidarity were identified. Mutual respect and bi-directional conversations surfaced as the key ingredients for successful partnerships. Collaboration is not as easy as commonly assumed, given paradigmatic disjunctures and widespread scepticism between different treatment modalities. Promoting greater understanding, rather than maintaining indifferent distances may lead to more successful co-operation in future.