Abstract: On 26 November 2018, Human Rights Watch filed a submission with the Argentinian prosecutors, calling for criminal investigations and charges against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who was expected to attend the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires. The human rights NGO highlighted Bin Salman's alleged complicity in war crimes in Yemen and in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist killed in Istanbul's Saudi consulate in October 2018. On 28 November, the Argentinean judiciary opened an investigation against the Saudi leader. Mohammed Bin Salman attended the summit, engaged in discussions with other world leaders, and left Argentina on 2 December. He was not arrested but had to spend the nights at ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: A striking feature of recent analysis on the international human rights regime has been the emphasis placed on its perceived limitations and even its continuing relevance. Whether based on concerns about rights inflation, politicization, neo-imperialism, or linkage to neo-liberalism, there has been an apparent tidal wave of criticism of international human rights law and the institutions by which it is generated.1 Constructive critique is useful as it provokes debate2 and reflection on what may be regarded as a phenomenon of rights-expectation—the apparently creeping notion that human rights should be the panacea for all ills. At a more practical level, it prompts us to consider ways and means of enhancing the ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Europe is faced with a changing political scenery oriented towards right-wing movements and parties promoting antimigration perspectives. These both absorb publicly pronounced disapproval of multiplicities and perpetuate negative sentiments towards multiculturalism, plural conceptions of society, and non-discriminatory enjoyment of human rights.1 Integrationist, assimilationist policies transcend both parliamentary majorities of the right and like-minded parliamentary opposition elsewhere. In that sense, citizenship and other exclusive legal categories forcibly harmonize plural understandings of identities and become part of political discourse, which eventually results in formalized processes of exclusion. These ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.1At forty years old, Charles Habib Malik (1906–1987) was the youngest founding member of the HRC which, after approximately two years of drafting, produced the UDHR in December 1948. A Lebanese scholar, philosopher, and diplomat, Malik was instrumental in the drafting of the UDHR, serving in important positions on the HRC: first as Rapporteur, in which he was responsible for summarizing and preparing official ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: It has been stated by numerous international human rights bodies that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other instruments include a right to sexuality education. Yet international research also tells us that the provision of comprehensive sexuality education is not the norm. The primary reason for this appears to be the notion—perceived or real—that parents will oppose it, and that it is the "right" of parents to withhold this education from their children if they see fit. Various jurisdictions have experienced legal challenges to their provision of sexuality education in public schools by conservative/religious parents (and organizations) on the basis that it interfered with parental ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In 2017, when I first started my research on domestic workers' rights in the Philippines, one organization—the National Linkage Association of Domestic Workers in the Philippines (SUMAPI)—emerged from my readings as the key national player.1 It seemed therefore logical to start my empirical inquiry by making contact with this organization. Surprisingly, that proved much harder than expected. I could not find any website or Facebook profile of the organization with the sole exception of a Twitter account, which however had been inactive since 2013. Upon my arrival in the Philippines in March 2018, I soon realized that SUMAPI was long-time gone. A question remained though: how was it possible that an organization ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The 2013 conviction of Guatemalan general, Efraín Ríos Montt, was historic. Never before had a country's national court prosecuted its own former head of state for genocide.1 But despite its historical significance, the case represented only the latest development in a three-decades-long global trend toward greater accountability for human rights violations—dubbed the "justice cascade."2 How did the justice cascade come about'The origins of the Ríos Montt trial reflect common explanations for the general rise of human rights accountability. In Guatemala, a convergence of political factors helped put accountability on the national agenda and bolstered efforts to overcome decades of political resistance by the ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: An article recently published in Human Rights Quarterly poses a controversial question: "Is religion the enemy of human rights'"1 Debates rage over whether religion is friend or foe to human rights, generating much heat but often shedding little light on the matter. Philosophical arguments and anecdotal evidence on both sides of this tendentious issue abound. David Cingranelli and Carl Kalmick's contribution seeks to bring reasoned theoretical arguments and systematic empirical evidence to bear on the question. Using data for a diverse sample of countries between 1981 and 2015, these authors conduct multivariate regression analyses with the goal of establishing robust correlations between measures of societal ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In our previous article, "Is Religion the Enemy of Human Rights'" we proposed a "bottom-up" theory of human rights protection.1 The main idea is that national governments only protect the human rights their citizens care about. As a corollary, we argued that the teachings of organized religions have a strong influence on what human rights citizens care or do not care about. Perhaps most provocatively, we contended that the net effect of societal religiosity on government respect for many human rights is negative, because societal acceptance of some common teachings of the world's major religions undermines the crucially important human rights norm of non-discrimination.We tested this religiosity hypothesis by ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The use of violence or nonviolence has been generally debated vis-à-vis its strategic usage in achieving targeted goals in social movements and political theory, which largely neglects its ethical and normative dimensions. While counter-violence is adopted as a form of resistance in some circles of the political left, nonviolence as an ethical position is either regarded as a naïve or an unrealistic practice against subjugation and hegemony. In her book, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind, Judith Butler suggests otherwise, favoring the pursuit of nonviolence as an ongoing struggle for social equality and interdependency. Nonviolence has usually been considered as a passive practice or a ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Jack Donnelly's International Human Rights is now in its sixth edition, and since its fifth it has a new co-author, Daniel J. Whelan.1 The latest edition, with probably much credit due to Whelan, keeps the book as relevant as ever. Part of the staying power of this book is its continuous updating, which acknowledges the ever-developing field of human rights. However, the sixth edition remains true to the essence that has made this a highly popular book in human rights courses. It is one of Donnelly and now Whelan's most important scholarly contributions to the topic of human rights. While much of this text involves the "what" and "how" of human rights, the authors offer a unique commentary and examination of ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: As one of the leading scholars in her field, Ana Forcinito has made another significant cross-disciplinary contribution with Intermittences: Memory, Justice, & the Poetics of the Visible in Uruguay. The book's cross-disciplinary spirit remains intact and multidimensional throughout, helping us to understand the complexities of the recent Uruguayan dictatorship, both from within and beyond Latin American memory studies. Forcinito's book begins with a layered question that involves, above all, "the meaning of what is remembered—both individually and collectively—and the disputes over those meanings" after state terrorism and during Uruguay's transitional justice period.1 Focusing on cultural production in eight ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: International law, and human rights law more specifically, permeate the subject matter of this book. It focuses on social order between nonstate actors, mostly illegal armed groups, and the general population in Colombia's borderlands (the borders with Ecuador and Venezuela, not with Panama). International law and human rights law are palpably present in these regions, despite their alleged "lawlessness."1 In 2008, Ecuador brought a case against Colombia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding the fumigations of coca plants with glyphosate by Colombia in border zones (the case name refers neutrally to "Aerial Herbicide Spraying").2 Ecuador discontinued this case in 2013, when the two states agreed ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: During the Middle Ages in Europe torture drew distinction from its association with confessed truth, repentance, and salvation, yet by 1874 Victor Hugo could write that "torture has ceased to exist." This magisterial book reminds us how much torture has outlived its obituarists, noting in the Preface that the US Office of Refugee Resettlement estimates that 500,000 torture survivors live in the United States alone. It would seem astonishing to the average citizen that a practice so noxious, the ostensible province of the barbarian—the very antithesis of the professed values and public reputation of the medical profession—should have so intimately involved doctors in so many countries, not least in Western ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Kelly J. Shannon's well written and concise account explores how and why the American public and later the United States government came to care about the human rights of Muslim women. She shows that concern about Muslim women's rights has intersected with US foreign policy in meaningful ways over the last forty years, yet no historical work has previously examined this aspect.In particular, with U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights, Shannon demonstrates the link between the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the "human rights revolution" of previous years. Her work studies how Americans concerned about the abrogation of women's rights in Iran worked to make women there "less alien" to the US public.1 ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Imagine a charismatic, young, minority congressman with progressive views on health care, homelessness, immigration, Black-Latino coalitions, human rights, and humanitarian aid. Imagine also that this politician had been a community organizer and had an especially close connection to East Africa. No, it's not an idealized version of Barack Obama, it is Mickey Leland.The late Houston Representative is the subject of Benjamin Talton's In This Land of Plenty. Leland may have emerged as a presidential candidate if not for his tragic death in a plane crash while on a humanitarian aid mission in Ethiopia in August 1989. Leland was a larger than life figure in Houston and among his colleagues on the Capitol Hill, yet he ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Gamze Erdem Türkelli's book Children's Rights and Business is an extraordinary academic achievement that will be quite useful to human rights practitioners. For one thing, it brings together two topics that, inexplicably enough, have generally remained apart from one another. Beyond this, the book delivers a devasting blow to the state-centric myopia of international law, including international human rights law, simultaneously providing a broadside against the way in which "responsibility" under human rights law has been assigned.Erdem Türkelli begins by establishing the particular vulnerability of children to business and then goes on to show through several well documented case studies how younger demographics ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-20T00:00:00-05:00
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