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Full-Text Articles in Human Rights Law
Hope Over Experience?, Cath Collins
Hope Over Experience?, Cath Collins
Human Rights & Human Welfare
Writing about US human rights policy from the outside is always a disconcerting experience. All bets are off, and all assumptions are turned on their head. Assumptions from the South looking North are that, rhetoric aside, US interests rarely if ever feature human rights protection and promotion in first place. What’s more, they have very frequently featured the opposite: dirty tricks, torture and rendition were sadly familiar to students of Latin American history long before Guantanamo. The Clinton years went some way towards reining in the more blatant contradictions of the 1980s, but they also set in train the easy …
Change We Can Believe In?, Katherine Hite
Change We Can Believe In?, Katherine Hite
Human Rights & Human Welfare
We were warned to temper our high hopes for a bold new Obama era of human rights. After all, President Obama would have “a lot on his plate”: a serious economic crisis, high unemployment, over forty million people without health insurance, “two wars,” global volatility. But it’s very hard not to be dismayed by some of the continuities from the Bush to the Obama administration, as well as by some Janus-faced policy decisions with damning human rights implications. When it comes to US-Latin America relations, such decisions include: professing support for progressive immigration reform while expanding regressive anti-immigration measures; claiming …
From Inspiring Hope To Taking Action: Obama And Human Rights, Stephen James
From Inspiring Hope To Taking Action: Obama And Human Rights, Stephen James
Human Rights & Human Welfare
While President George H. Bush spoke of a new world order, and his “misunderestimated” son mangled the English language at countless press conferences, with Barack Obama the USA now has a talented orator as a president. There is a new word order. But does the new and skillful rhetoric match the reality when it comes to human rights?
December Roundtable: Introduction
December Roundtable: Introduction
Human Rights & Human Welfare
An annotation of:
Obama's speech to the United Nations General Assembly (September, 2009).
and
Does Obama believe in human rights? By Bret Stephens. The Wall Street Journal. October 19, 2009.
The Statesman's Dilemma: Peace Or Justice? Or Neither?, Henry Krisch
The Statesman's Dilemma: Peace Or Justice? Or Neither?, Henry Krisch
Human Rights & Human Welfare
Just as I sat down to comment on President Obama and human rights, I glanced today's (November 19, 2009) The New York Times and found several opinion essays-careful in fact, thoughtful in tone, reasonable in argument-critical of Obama's approach during his recent visit to China toward Chinese human rights violations (mainly concerning Tibet but including also imprisoned lawyers, internet censorship, and persecution of Falun Gong.) The essayists considered various tactics for exerting American pressure on China regarding human rights. Common to all of them was a tone of rueful admiration for the political and diplomatic skill with which China fended …
2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Allison Welch
2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Allison Welch
Human Rights & Human Welfare
China’s human rights record has been the subject of intense scrutiny. Therefore, when China was chosen to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, the decision was predictably controversial. There were calls for boycotts of the opening ceremony by many international actors, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and an assortment of political figures. Institutions such as the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom argued that boycotting the games would bring critical attention to China’s troubled human rights record, which would ultimately provoke Beijing to alter its controversial policies. Others argued that boycotting the games would only serve to intensify …