Abstract: I met Bill Simmons many years ago at an annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The Human Rights Section of the APSA sponsored a workshop on teaching human rights and he presented on his approach to problem-based learning. He explained that he ran an entire semester course on human rights without a syllabus. This opening statement certainly caught our attention. He then proceeded to explain that his students selected to work on the issue of femicide in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez. The students wanted to know how to hold the perpetrators of over 300 murders accountable for what they argued were gross human rights violations. They eventually settled on the use of the US Alien Tort ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: "When is a disaster a misfortune and when is it an injustice'" begins Judith Shklar in her Storrs Lecture from 1988:Intuitively the answer seems quite obvious. If the dreadful event is caused by the external forces of nature, it is a misfortune, and we must resign ourselves to our suffering. Should, however, some ill-intentioned agent… have brought it about, then it is an injustice and we may express indignation and outrage.1It is injustice, not misfortune, that defines a human rights concern, and the authors of the books under review would no doubt agree. And yet as Shklar admits, the distinction between misfortune and injustice, however productive and generative it may be, is fundamentally unstable. In actual ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In Migrant Crossings, as the title might suggest, Dr. Annie Isabel Fukushima sets the reader out to experience multiple crossings. In the literal sense, this work crosses through an impressive range of disciplines, including women's and feminist studies, critical race and ethnic studies, sexuality studies, labor studies, legal studies, and sociology.1 In the figurative sense, Fukushima has the reader cross from this world into the spooky, abstract world through her "unsettled witnessing" of "ghosts" to her discussions of the "living dead."2 By focusing on Asians and Latinx in the United States, Fukushima asks the reader to contemplate how migrants, and specifically victims of human trafficking, "cross into ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is widely regarded as the most important human rights document and is the foundation of international human rights law. Over the last decades, a lot of research has been dedicated to the UDHR's history, content, and philosophy.Hans Ingvar Roth, a professor of human rights at Stockholm University, leads us with his book to a better understanding of the drafting process and the philosophy of the UDHR by telling the story of one of the most influential contributors to the Declaration: Pengchun Chang (1892–1957). Chang was the representative of the Republic of China and vice-chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the drafting process of the UDHR. ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Indigenous peoples' struggle for lands, territories and natural resources represents one of the most vehemently demanded collective rights in the post-colonial age. The 2019 Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) session proved emblematic in that sense. Most notably, indigenous peoples voiced concern about persisting neoliberal pressures that are translated into serious and systematic violations of indigenous rights. This primarily concerns forced displacement, territorial dispossession policies and settlement, de-regionalization policies and broader geopolitical arrangements, deportation practices, externally defined borders, land-related criminalization and persecution. Forms of violence ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Security is like liberty in that many are the crimes committed in its name1Allegations of torture have surfaced repeatedly in discreet conflicts—Algeria, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, to name but a few—and within states' security/military institutions. The extent to which law has either curbed or facilitated the worst part of these practices is the subject of significant debate; a debate that was very much present in the 1978 case of Ireland v. United Kingdom [Hooded Men], the first inter-state case of the European Court of Human Rights.2 Understanding the events which led to the Ireland case entails sifting through meta-narratives; explanations of the conflict in Northern Ireland that seek to not only inform ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Opposite the United Nations compound in Beijing, graffiti and engravings cover the curbs, benches, and pavements. They were authored by wandering petitioners, usually coming from other provinces in China, who appealed to the United Nations as their last resort against local and national authorities. Ignored by the United Nations, they left their appeals inscribed on the landscape in Beijing's diplomatic district. These appeals, read by United Nations workers during their lunch break or on their way home, are mostly accounts and histories of their personal sufferings and struggles. On the other side of the gate, in the human rights conferences at the United Nations compound, formal representatives from the ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: What will it mean for human rights when artificial intelligence transcends the human'Before I answer that question, I should explain why I think that it is an important one. On the one hand, our culture is saturated with anxiety about the hurtling speed of technological development. Public figures as different as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, and Elon Musk have all warned that we are on the verge of developing AI so complicated that we will neither be able to understand it nor control it. As Hawking once dramatically said, AI could "spell the end of the human race."1 On the other hand, the distant risk posed by the potential emergence of super-intelligent AI seems—especially for those working in ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: "Eight years after the onset of the [Syrian] civil war, international criminal justice has done little for Syria, but Syria has done a lot for international justice."1On 22 May 2014, three years after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council Resolution referring the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Seemingly angered by the vote, "the French Ambassador to the United Nations, Gérard Araud, described China's and Russia's [rejection of] the resolution as akin to 'vetoing justice.'"2 The resolution's defeat meant that those demanding accountability for atrocity crimes in Syria—including a sarin gas attack outside of Damascus in August 2013 that left ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: "The concept of justice is a moving target. Who are we trying to get justice for' For violators, for victims, for American citizens'"Interview, US Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent (12 July 2017)Since 2016, each 23 May has been declared the European Union (EU) Day Against Impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In 2018, that date coincided with the biannual meeting of the Genocide Network in The Hague, where prosecutors from across the Global North met for two days to discuss best practices for identifying, excluding, and possibly prosecuting human rights violators who have sought safe haven within their territories. In addition to hosting the Genocide Network meetings, the ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Mistrust and suspicion vis-à-vis the state and what it does and does not do for citizens have contributed to creating narratives that impede the understanding of what happens within the state apparatus, particularly with regards to human rights work. For some, the state is not to be trusted because it dictates regulations and taxes that limit free enterprise. For others, the state reproduces structures of power and domination and has violated the very human rights it was supposed to protect and promote. As the state is viewed as the perpetrator of human rights violations, especially in parts of the world that are stereotyped as places deprived of democracy and freedom, little attention has been given to the role of ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: War in South Sudan has displaced over 4 million people. In 2018, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that since December 2013, this war had likely led to the violent death of roughly 200,000 people.1 Different labels have been used to characterize the level of acute violence against civilians in South Sudan since the beginning of the third civil war (2013- present). The African Union concluded in a 2015 report that it had reasonable grounds to believe that "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" had been perpetrated by both parties to the conflict, but that no crime of genocide had been committed in South Sudan.2 In 2016 and 2017, the UN Human Rights Commission on South Sudan indicated ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Throughout history, states have long struggled with how best to address terrorism. From Narodnaya Volya of the nineteenth century to Al-Qaeda in modern times, the question remains: how can terrorism be contained, if not defeated' Avoiding the Terrorist Trap by Tom Parker addresses this question directly and offers a simple answer—by respecting human rights.1 Any strategy for addressing terrorism must include an affirmation of human rights and must reject framing the struggle against terrorism as one of "might makes right."2 This avoids the terrorist trap—an overreaction by states that polarizes opposition and brings legitimacy to a terrorist group. Moreover, fighting terrorism should not devolve to the simple use ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-05T00:00:00-05:00
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