Human Rights Law Commons^™

Conflict And Race In Literature & Law. The Case Of Americanah, Emanuela Ignatoiu Sora

Comparative Woman

In Americanah, the 2013 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is a scene when one of the characters, Laura, speaks of her Ugandan classmate who did not get along with an African-American colleague. Laura is surprised as, for her, all persons of color are similar, with no understanding for their differences in background, personal stories and experiences. The novel depicts and critiques this very categorization of race, which flattens differences, conflating groups and individuals who might share very little, if anything. For a long time, law (with its stipulations, precedents and rulings) has operated in a similar manner, disengaging …

Women’S Human Rights And Migration: Sex-Selective Abortion Laws In The United States And India, Rangita De Silva De Alwis

All Faculty Scholarship

Sital Kalantry’s Women’s Human Rights and Migration: Sex Selective Abortion Laws in the United States and India addresses a long-existing gap in feminist theory at the intersection of a migrant woman’s experience and culturally motivated reproductive decisions. By recognising the possibility that ‘practices that are oppressive to women in one country context may not have a negative impact on women in another country context’ Kalantry takes an important step in creating a framework for evaluating competing human rights interests within the complex cultural contexts that arise in migrant-receiving countries. Her proposed framework rejects the decontextualisation and politicisation of the migrant …

A Noble Cause: A Case Study Of Discrimination, Symbols, And Reciprocity, In: Diversity And European Human Rights, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

This chapter is part of a volume dedicated to rewriting human rights cases issued by the European Court of Human Rights. It uses the case of De La Cierva Osorio De Moscoso v. Spain (1999) as a platform to discuss the inherent tension typifying signs such as nobility titles – as merely symbolic or as carrying substantive content. The problem of one’s ownership of signs is especially acute in the case of women. I will argue that the distinction between form and substance collapses in this case, as in many other cases that involve allocation of allegedly merely symbolic signifiers …

Latin America’S Indigenous Women, Courtney Hall

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Latin America’s indigenous women are as diverse as the land they inhabit. Their uniqueness is shaped by belonging to groups that have their own distinct history, traditions, and identity. Yet despite this diversity, indigenous women confront the same human rights challenges: racial, gender, and socio-economic discrimination. Without ignoring the diversity of indigenous women, a better understanding of their fundamental struggles can be gained by weaving these issues together in a comprehensive narrative.

Peeking Out From Behind The Curtain, Ian Reese

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Absconded by airport security to middle-of-nowhere Russia, Nikolai Alexeyev sat for several days in early September 2010 unaware of his infractions or of his fate. Like a page from a Cold-War spy novel, the point of his abduction was to terrorize; Alexeyev’s abductors psychologically tortured and berated him with homophobic remarks. Nikolai Alexeyev is the leading gay rights activist in Russia and has been a twisting thorn in the side of local and national government for several years. Upon his release, he resolved to agitate further by leading a public demonstration to boycott the Swiss International Air Lines for its …

Combating Discrimination Against The Roma In Europe: Why Current Strategies Aren’T Working And What Can Be Done, Erica Rosenfield

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the summer of 2010, the forced expulsion of many Roma from Western to Eastern Europe captured headlines and world attention, yet this practice simply represented the latest manifestation of anti-Roma sentiment in Europe. Indeed, the Roma—numbering over ten million across Europe, making them the continent’s largest minority—face discrimination in housing, education, healthcare, employment, and law enforcement; widespread prejudice against this group shows no evidence of receding. There is, however, certainly no shortage of national and supranational policies aiming to promote inclusion and equality for the Roma.

Violated: Women’S Human Rights In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kathryn Birdwell Wester

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In contemporary sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), women are facing human rights abuses unparalleled elsewhere in the world. Despite the region’s diversity, its female inhabitants largely share experiences of sexual discrimination and abuse, intimate violence, political marginalization, and economic deprivation.

The Brazilian Paradox: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Battle For Human Rights, Adrienne Rosenberg

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With a rich religious history of Catholicism juxtaposed with a sexually liberal public, Brazil interacts with its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community in a very distinct and often conflicting manner. Although homosexuality has been legal in the state since 1823, save the armed forces, and civil unions are currently permitted in some areas, Brazil has functioned within this paradox as both worst transgressor, with a high record of hate crimes and discrimination, and as world leader, with a progressive domestic and global push for LGBT rights. In order to accurately assess these two opposing statuses, one must analyze the …

Embracing Complexity : Human Rights In Critical Race Feminist Perspective, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

Although the voices of "women of all colors" have furthered the goals and norms of feminist human rights scholarship, the voices of women of color and Third World women have often been rejected, ignored, or otherwise made invisible. Critical Race Feminist and other multicultural approaches to legal scholarship attempt to unite such voices and reveal their experiences and perspectives in feminist human rights discourse. This Article hypothesizes that Critical Race Feminist will make important contributions to the overall international human rights agenda. It identifies four common themes in a feminist multicultural approach to human rights scholarship: (1) the recognition that …

Federal And State Services And The Maine Indian : A Report, United States Commission On Civil Rights. Maine Advisory Committee

Maine Collection

Federal and State Services and the Maine Indian : A Report.

"A report of the Maine Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights prepared for the information and consideration of the Commission. This report will be considered by the Commission, and the Commission will make public its reaction. In the meantime, the findings and recommendations of this report should not be attributed to the Commission, but only to the Maine Advisory Committee. December 1974."

Human Rights In South Africa, John T. Baker

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.