Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Peace Without Justice, Or Justice Without Peace?, Clair Apodaca

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Peace without justice is an illusion. The use of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute human rights violations not only provides restorative justice for those harmed by the wrongdoing but also retributive justice towards the perpetrators. Restorative justice seeks to help heal the wounds of the victims and community by acknowledging and witnessing the pain and suffering of the victim. Retributive justice seeks to punish the offenders. The hope is that retribution will deter or prevent future acts of violence by holding perpetrators accountable for the violations of human rights, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. …

December Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Activist.” Harper's Magazine. November 2008.

Human Rights Or Inhuman Wrongs, Edward Friedman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The project of promoting universally recognized human rights, that is, the commitments of the U.N. General Assembly-ratified Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), is in danger. Military and political intervention, including economic sanctions, to stop genocide and ethnic and other political mass murder is under attack. Apparently the lessons of Hitler’s holocaust, the Turkish genocide of Armenians, Pol Pot’s slaughter of innocents, and the loss of life in Rwanda are being rethought and un-taught. So-called peace is now preferred over prevention. The dead may have died in vain.

Global Ethics And The Role Of Academics, Christien Van Den Anker

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Academics have a social and professional responsibility that stems from their individual duties as global citizens. With their privileged position as lifelong learners they need to assess carefully where they direct their attention for research, their teaching and their exchange of knowledge with the wider public. This means that academic freedom does not only bring a range of rights, it also involves duties to develop and advocate ethical positions on real-life dilemmas and to engage in self-reflection on being in the role of contributing to oppression.

Challenging The International Criminal Court Over Al-Bashir, Emma Gilligan

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As of late November 2008, we are still awaiting the decision of the U.N. Security Council with regard to the request for the arrest of Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide put forward by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in July. With former Presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia as the only two heads of state formally indicted by the ICC since its inception in 2002, the question remains whether the U.N. Security Council will allow this controversial indictment of al-Bashir by Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo or invoke Article 16 …

Alex De Waal's Shuttle Diplomacy, Sarah Stanlick

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This month’s discussion piece, “The Activist,” is a critical look at one of the most renowned scholars of the turmoil in Sudan. Alex de Waal, a man with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the different factions, aspects, and issues surrounding the conflicts in Sudan, is profiled under a careful eye. De Waal, a competent critic—as McDonell notes who “takes pride in his competence, and he does not hesitate to criticize activists he deems inexpert”— has built a career on a meticulously researched understanding of the conflict. He honed that reputation through careful action, critical thinking, and a critical voice for …

Diplomacy Meets Conflict: Darfur, Sudan And The Limits Of International Diplomacy, Tinacho Chitongo

Global Studies Student Scholarship

Despite claims that the world is generally more developed and stable than previous times in man's history there are places on earth where war is still the name of the game. Tactics such as rape, murder, vandalism and ethnic cleansing are still prevalent. The paper studies the complex issues confronting Africa's largest country, Sudan. The country stands on a fragile ceasefire that ended a 2 decade civil war in 2002. The main focus is on the Darfur region which is in Western Sudan. Rebels there began fighting in 2003 and the region has been something of a conundrum of violence. …

American Humanitarian Intervention: How National Interests, Domestic And International Factors, And 'Historical Milieu' Shape U.S. Intervention Policy, Grant Stegner

Political Science Honors Projects

This paper examines why the US intervenes militarily in some humanitarian crises, but not in others. While US national interests at stake in humanitarian intervention scenarios initially guide policy formation, causal factors such as domestic and international influences, and 'historical milieu' create an 'operational environment' in which national interests and intervention policy evolve. These causal factors are then applied to the 1999 US-led NATO intervention in Kosovo, and the US' current non-intervention in Darfur. US humanitarian interventions and non-interventions form a broader, non-linear trajectory of engagements in which past precedents and experiences continually reshape subsequent intervention policy. The critical denominator …