Digital Commons Network^™

Ko Ko Gyi [Myanmar, Activist], Ko Ko Gyi

Digital Narratives of Asia

Myanmar democracy activist Ko Ko Gyi spent a total of 17 years in prison for his political beliefs. First detained for his involvement in student protests in 1989, he was eventually released in 2012, along with 600 others, when the military-led government began implementing reforms. Mr Ko Ko Gyi now champions democracy and human rights issues as General Secretary of the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society. He was also a member of the government's Rakhine Investigation Commission to investigate the sectarian violence in Rakhine state. He speaks to DNA about the darkest days of his time in the infamous …

Global Capitalism, Immigrant Labor, And The Struggle For Justice, William I. Robinson, Xuan Santos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Around the world borders are militarized, states are stepping up repressive anti-immigrant controls, and native publics are turning immigrants into scapegoats for the spiraling crisis of global capitalism. The massive displacement and primitive accumulation unleashed by free trade agreements and neo-liberal policies, as well as state and “private” violence has resulted in a virtually inexhaustible immigrant labor reserve for the global economy. State controls over immigration and immigrant labor have several functions for the system: 1) state repression and criminalization of undocumented immigration make immigrants vulnerable and deportable and therefore subject to conditions of super-exploitation, super-control and hyper-surveillance; 2) anti-immigrant …

Review Of "Human Rights In Asia: A Comparative Legal Study Of Twelve Asian Jurisdictions, France And The Usa", Su-Mei Ooi

Su-Mei Ooi

This article reviews Human Rights in Asia: A Comparative Legal Study of Twelve Asian Jurisdictions, France and the USA by Randall Peerenboom, Carole J. Petersen, and Albert H.Y. Chen.

Emerging From The Shadows: Civil War, Human Rights, And Peacebuilding Among Peasants And Indigenous Peoples In Colombia And Peru In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries, Charles A. Flowerday

Anthropology Department: Theses

Peacebuilding in Colombia and Peru following their late-20^th and early 21^st century civil wars is a challenging proposition. In this study, it becomes necessary as indigenous peoples and peasants resist domination by extractive industries and governments in their thrall. Whether they protest nonviolently or rebel in arms, they are targeted for human-rights violations, especially murder, disappearance and displacement. The armed actors, state, insurgency, paramilitaries or drug traffickers, destroy civic institutions (local or regional government) and the civil (nonprofit) sector and replace them with their own authoritarian versions. Therefore, peacebuilding has emphasized rebuilding civic institutions, civil society and local …

International Norm Echoing In Rebel Groups: The Cases Of The Kosovo Liberation Army And The Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam, Jennifer A. Mueller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research demonstrates that rebel groups use international norms in their discourse and echo patterns in the discourse of states and that they do so to promote their own legitimacy at key turning points in their conflicts. Which international norms rebel groups use most frequently is partially determined by the congruence of those norms with their local norms and beliefs and the degree to which a group's internal structure has become more hierarchical and specialized. Two rebel groups are examined in this study over the course of their conflicts: the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil …

Reconciling Liberalism And Judaism? Human Rights In Israel, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This essay argues that mixing religion in politics is problematic. It becomes destructive when the religion is unyielding and coercive. Whenever religious powers are on the rise, the foundations of liberal democracy are shaken and its protective mechanisms are regressing. Indeed, in Israel egalitarianism is still in the making. Orthodox Judaism and liberal democracy are in conflict. The rise of one comes at the expense of the other in a situation where religion does not encompass the concept of freedom from religion. This essay further argues that Palestinians and Israelis are entitled to the same rights and liberties. Accommodations and …

Neglecting The 'Right On Which All Other Rights Depend': Press Freedom In The International Human Rights Discourse, Wiebke Lamer

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Historically and philosophically, press freedom has closely been linked to the fight against tyranny and the advancement of human rights. But coverage of press freedom as a distinct human right is surprisingly absent from scholarship and the human rights agenda. This dissertation fills this gap in the academic literature by examining why press freedom has not become part of the established international human rights debate, despite its centrality to democratic theory.

It does so in three steps: First, it outlines the distinction between press freedom and other human rights to which it is usually subjugated, like free speech and freedom …

Human Rights Appeals In International Politics: Amnesty International's Urgent Action Texts, Ann Marie Clark, Paul J. Bracke Ph.D., Amy Barton M.L.S.

Ann Marie Clark

With the cooperation of Amnesty International, the authors are collaborating to digitize the complete set of Amnesty International's Urgent Action bulletins from 1974-2007, to be available for public use. Our process combines library standards for digitization and electronic collections with additional researcher- and practitioner-driven metadata and coding categories. The result will be a searchable, full-text el-archive, with potential for expansion of the data into a numeric data set compatible with other international data sources.

Is ‘Human Rights’ The Right Approach For Protecting The Interests Of Forest-Dependent People?, Prakash Kashwan

Prakash Kashwan

Nature conservation is often promoted in the name of the greater good of humanity. However, in a large number of cases, nature conservation is associated with increased militarization of resource control (see the select bibliography below). International conservation organizations have responded to such concerns by developing proposals for what they refer to as ‘rights-based approaches to conservation’. Some of the biggest conservation organizations have also come together to form the Conservation Initiative on Human Rights (CIHR), which is a consortium of international conservation NGOs that seek to improve the practice of conservation by promoting integration of human rights in conservation …

South Africa And The United Nations Human Rights Council, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article assesses South Africa's foreign policy commitment to human rights, by studying the country's role in the United Nations Human Rights Council, which began its work in 2006. South Africa's behavior is evaluated in terms of its participation in four aspects of the Council's work: the institution-building phase that took place during the body's first year, country-specific human rights issues, thematic human rights problems, and the Universal Periodic Review. It is concluded that, South Africa has become a defender of unpalatable regimes and an obstacle to the international promotion of human rights.

The Eu And The Rights Of The Roma: How Could The Eu Have Changed The French Repatriation Program Of 2010?, Julia M. Markham-Cameron

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

In August of 2010, the French government began a program of deporting those Roma who lived within the country. Under European Union (EU) law, mass expulsions based on ethnicity are forbidden, as are mass examinations of peoples as opposed to individual assessments in the case of a crime. However, in the spirit of egalitarianism, France does not acknowledge the idea of racial or ethnic minorities. Instead, they have reframed the non- French Roma as a group engaged in criminal activity following Italy’s “security package” of 2008, which described ‘nomads’ as a national security threat and created legislation leading to expulsions …

Self-Determination As A Human Right; On Identity Politics And The Changing Concept Of Sovereignty In International Law, Tina Magazzini

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Impact Of International Human Rights Pressures: The Dominican Republic And China, Limer Batista

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The International Human Rights Policies Of New Democracies: Brazil And Chile In Comparative Perspective, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the majority of Latin American states have attempted to incorporate in some way or another human rights concern into their respective foreign policies, highlighting a history of human rights abuses and the return of democratic political rule as a trigger for galvanizing a commitment to assist in preventing such violations in other countries. Yet, while human rights have come to play a non-trivial role in the contemporary foreign policy of many Latin American states, there is great diversity in the ways and the extent to which they go about incorporating human rights concerns into …

Least Developed Countries And Ratification Of Human Rights Treaties; Motives For Adherence, Valerie Nolasco

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Memory, Truth And Justice: A Contextualisation Of The Uses Of Photographs Of The Victims Of State Terrorism In Argentina, 1972-2012: Communicating An Intersection Of Art, Politics And History, Richard Askam

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Photographs of the victims of Argentine state terrorism from 1972 to 1983, and most prominently those of the detained-disappeared victims of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional dictatorship (1976-1983), have had a significant role in elucidating the demands of human rights activists since the aftermath of the Trelew Massacre in 1972. In this thesis I examine the role of photographs of victims of state terrorism in the construction of unofficial, or counter, narratives critical of those produced by two dictatorships and by elected democratic administrations in the demand for truth and justice, and in the construction of social memory. I discuss …

In The Name Of National Interest? Assessing The Shift Of Australian Foreign Policy Regarding West Papua During 2006, Jaymin Beck

Theses : Honours

The Australian government currently maintains a strong position against an independent West Papua. Despite claims of human rights abuses by the Indonesian Government in West Papua and the huge number of West Papuan refugees fleeing to Australian shores, the Australian Government continues to tighten foreign policy and migration laws to make it increasingly difficult for West Papuans to seek asylum in Australia and hope for an independent West Papua. When Australia’s humanitarian intervention in the Timor-Leste fight for independence in 1999 is considered, reasons why the Australian government maintains an anti-separatist position towards West Papua are unclear. Australia took a …