Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Debra L. Delaet On War Crimes And Genocide, Debra L. Delaet

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder by Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley. Princeton University Press, 2006. 288 pp.

and

The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda by Scott Straus. Cornell University Press, 2006. 273 pp.

and

The Witnesses: War Crimes and the Promise of Justice in the Hague by Eric Stover. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 252 pp.

Us Policy On Small Arms Transfers: A Human Rights Perspective, Susan Waltz

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From Somalia and Afghanistan to Bosnia, Haiti, Colombia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo, small arms and light weapons were a common feature of the human rights calamities of the 1990’s.

© Susan Waltz. All rights reserved.*

*A shorter version of this paper is published as “U.S. Small Arms Policy: Having It Both Ways,” in the Summer 2007 issue of World Policy Journal.

This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or hard copy provided it is not modified in any way, the rights of the author not infringed, and the paper is not quoted or cited without express permission …

Allen Keiswetter On Women In The Middle East: Past And Present By Nikki R. Keddie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 416pp., Allen Keiswetter

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Women in the Middle East: Past and Present by Nikki R. Keddie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 416pp.

Law In Times Of War: The Case Of Chechnya, Federico Sperotto

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In October 1999 “the second Chechen war” broke out. In December the Russian federal army started an operation to take control of Grozny. During the confrontation between the Federal forces and the Chechen separatists, serious human rights violations occurred. Several cases concerning violations of fundamental rights, in and around the city, have been brought before the European Court of Human Rights against Russia. The lawsuits concerned in particular physical integrity issues. This study provides some insights on the jurisprudence of the European Court on Human Rights in order to ascertain the adequacy of the mechanism of protection provided by the …

Richard Matthew On Pakistan’S Drift Into Extremism: Allah, The Army, And America’S War On Terror By Hassan Abbas. London: M. E. Sharpe, 2005. 276 Pp., Richard Matthew

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror by Hassan Abbas. London: M. E. Sharpe, 2005. 276 pp.

May Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency” by Mahmood Mamdani. London Review of Books. March 8, 2007.

Politics Of Naming And Politics Of Responsibility, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Mahmood Mamdani is right to complain that the American—and international—public is unaware of the political complexity of the Darfur conflict. He is also right to point out that selective or inconsistent uses of the terms “genocide,” “civil war,” and “insurgency” can mask covert, or even overt, political agendas. His comparison of Darfur to Iraq is telling. And he is right to point out that even with the best of humanitarian intentions, the presentation of a simplified version of Darfur, in which “Arabs” persecute “Africans,” can play into the “war on terror,” insofar as, in the minds of at least some …

The Return Of Moral Equivalence, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

During the latter stages of the Cold War, one school of ethical analysis, ultimately labeled as “moral equivalence” by the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, measured Western liberal democracies against utopian standards in a radical critique which redefined the political discourse, erasing distinctions between the Soviet Union and its satellites on the one hand and the United States and its allies on the other.

Missing The Point, Colin Thomas-Jensen

Human Rights & Human Welfare

“What would happen if we thought of Darfur as we do of Iraq, as a place with a history and politics—a messy politics of insurgency and counterinsurgency?” (§4). This is the most telling question posed by Professor Mahmood Mamdani in “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.” The implication is that the growing public demand for strong international action—military or otherwise—to halt the atrocities in Darfur is somehow unwarranted because people have failed to understand that the systematic crimes against humanity committed against civilians in Darfur (and indeed Iraq) are an inevitability of “the messy politics of insurgency and …

The Moral Vocabulary Of Violence, David L. G. Rice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

What is at stake in labeling a particular incidence of large-scale violence “genocide”? Mahmood Mamdani rightly argues that “genocide” is an insufficient description of the conflict in Darfur. I would suggest that the problematic nature of that terminology goes back to its inception after World War II. Activists have inherited the concept of “genocide” from a particular historical moment. Now, “ genocide” carries unique moral weight in the discourse of international politics. When violence against civilians has been widely accepted as a necessary outcome of the preservation of peace, activists find it necessary to imagine a worse evil than the …

April Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Women Come Last in Afghanistan ” by Ann Jones. Salon.com. February 6, 2007.

The Trouble With Rights, David L. G. Rice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Do human rights imply enforcement powers? Do they require police or armies? How many soldiers would it take to secure universal human rights? What sort of weaponry would suffice?

The Limits Of “No-Limit”, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

One must acknowledge and even admire the passion that writer and photographer Ann Jones brings to the different causes she embraces as she meanders along the paths of her rather eclectic career, now spanning over three decades. Her first book, Uncle Tom’s Campus (1973), examines how her students, in a predominantly African-American college, were being shortchanged by the system. In the late 1990s, she took off across Africa in search of a legendary tribe ruled by women and supposedly noted for its embrace of “feminine” principles of tolerance, diplomacy, and compromise, and returned to publish a travelogue-cum-utopian Weltanschauung set in …

Oppressing Women: Who Benefits And How?, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Women are the world’s oldest marketable commodity. “Good” women are marketed by their fathers, or brothers, to other men as wives. “Bad” women are incarcerated, raped, killed, or prostituted. Methods of marketing women range widely in kind: from simple one-on-one bargains, where two men exchange daughters or sisters; to exchange of women for material goods; to use of women to pay debts; to renting out women by the hour or minute to other men for sex.

Global Health And Global Hegemony, Randall Kuhn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As the new director of a unique graduate program in Global Health Affairs, coming from the world of basic research, I have been faced with the need to reconcile a central paradox of American power and hegemony: I conduct my work as an American citizen and often with U.S. government funding in the hope that it will make a positive or at least neutral impact on my world. Yet my government (not only under the present administration) initiates imperial adventures that cause untold damage to the health, welfare, and survival of individuals throughout the world.

March Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Prisoners of Sex” by Negar Azimi. New York Times Magazine. December 3, 2006.

Human Rights And Personal Stories, David L. G. Rice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Negar Azimi’s “Prisoners of Sex” is a welcome reminder that human rights discourse should always keep its subject, “humans,” firmly in view. The stories she tells of death, torture, hope, and survival bear witness to the challenges and dangers faced by gays and lesbians in Egypt.

Cultural Rage: A Severe Threat To Gay Men, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Men who have sex with men have become a world cultural flashpoint. Fomenting and exploiting cultural rage at the West is a useful way for Islamists to gain electoral and other types of support, even though the motives of the Islamists may have more to do with the drive for power, regional influence, or economic benefit.

Exporting And Negotiating Human Rights, Randall Kuhn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In 2000, renowned Egyptian activist-sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim and 27 colleagues were tried, convicted and imprisoned by the Egyptian government on a range of politically-motivated charges. In 2003, Ibrahim was released after three years of imprisonment and torture and a concerted campaign to secure his release by concerned academics, activists, and political leaders. Two years later, physically weakened but morally indefagitable, he visited colleagues at the University of Colorado and talked about his experiences as an academic and activist.

Matthew S. Weinert On Human Security And The Un: A Critical History By S. Neil Macfarlane And Yuen Foong Khong. Bloomington, In: Indiana University Press, 2006. 341pp., Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Security and the UN: A Critical History by S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006. 341pp.

Joel R. Pruce On The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches And Documents From Ancient Times To The Present (Second Edition), By Micheline R. Ishay. New York, Ny: Routledge, 2007. 592pp., Joel R. Pruce

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches and Documents from Ancient Times to the Present (Second Edition), by Micheline R. Ishay. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. 592pp.

Freeing All God’S Children, Clifford Bob

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights by Allen D. Hertzke. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 419pp.