Digital Commons Network^™

Fall From Grace: South Africa And The Changing International Order, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Post-apartheid South Africa has gone from being a good international citizen to defending a number of authoritarian regimes and obstructing various international initiatives aimed at strengthening the global human rights regime. This article presents this slide as a move from a ‘liberal’ foreign policy to a ‘liberationist’ one and emphasises the external sources of this shift, particularly the influence of the rest of Africa and a rising China.

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

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

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.

An Ardent Flame: Witness To Distant Suffering, Human Rights And Unworthy Victims In The Coverage By The New York Times And Two Journals Of The Religious Left Of The 1980s Civil Wars In El Salvador And Nicaragua, Charles A. Flowerday

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Scholars have investigated witness to distant suffering (WTDS) almost entirely in visual media. This study examines it in print. This form of reporting will be examined in two publications of the religious left as contrasted with the New York Times. The thesis is that, more than any technology, WTDS consists of the journalist’s moral commitment and narrative skills and the audience’s analytical resources and trust. In the religious journals, liberation theology provides the moral commitment, the writers and editors the narrative skills and trust and the special vision of the newly empowered poor the analytical foundation. In bearing witness to …

Truth Telling As Reparations, Margaret Urban Walker

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

International instruments now defend a “right to the truth” for victims of political repression and violence and include truth telling about human rights violations as a kind of reparation as well as a form of redress. While truth telling about violations is obviously a condition of redress or repair for violations, it may not be clear how truth telling itself is a kind of reparations. By showing that concerted truth telling can satisfy four features of suitable reparations vehicles, I defend the idea that politically implemented modes of truth telling to, for, and by those who are victims of gross …

At The Intersection Of Neoliberal Development, Scarce Resources, And Human Rights: Enforcing The Right To Water In South Africa, Elizabeth A. Larson

International Studies Honors Projects

The competing ideals of international human rights and global economic neoliberalism come into conflict when developing countries try to enforce socio-economic rights. This paper explores the intersection of economic globalization and the enforcement of 2nd generation human rights. The focus of this exploration is the right to water in South Africa, specifically the recent Constitutional Court case Mazibuko v City of Johannesburg. While a right to water can be constructed at the international level, the right disappears in the face of neoliberal development measures such as those that are instituted by democratic governments in developing nations faced with limited resources.

Think Outside The Cell: Are Binding Detention Standards The Most Effective Strategy To Prevent Abuses Of Detained Illegal Aliens?, Federico D. Burlon

Political Science Honors Projects

In the last twenty years the U.S. government has increasingly utilized detention to control illegal immigration. This practice has become controversial because it has caused numerous in-custody abuses and deaths of immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees and even citizens. Immigrant rights advocates have called for the passage of binding detention standards to prevent in-custody abuses. This thesis’s policy analysis reveals, however, that while they may finesse the practice of immigration detention, such binding standards would be ineffective in protecting immigrants’ rights. Instead this policy analysis calls for and explains the feasibility of discontinuing the practice of mass immigrant detention.

What Is The Role Of Annual Human Rights Reviews? Examining Biases In U.S. Department Of State’S Country Reports On Human Rights, Chad M. Kahl, Stephanie Davis-Kahl

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This paper examines biases in U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights through comparison of country profiles for Cuba, Egypt and Iran by Amnesty International (Amnesty International Report: The State of the World’s Human Rights) and Freedom House (Freedom in the World), especially post-9/11.

International Resource Network (Irn) Presents Seminars In The City, Naveed Alam

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

One of the major achievements of the IRN this year was our collaboration with CLAGS's ongoing Seminars in the City series. The Seminars in the City series is part of CLAGS's mission to make scholarly research in Queer Studies accessible to the general public.

Islam And Human Rights: Reimagining A Space For Dialogue Between Islamism And Secularism In Pakistan, Mishal Khan

International Studies Honors Projects

This thesis examines the prospects for a conversation between Islam and human rights. The basic question addressed is: where does the Islamic tradition fit in a secular discourse that inherently rejects religious doctrine? The case study of Pakistan focuses on the role of Islam in politics, and how secular human rights NGOs insert themselves in a polarized national debate about Islam in political life. What emerges is a statement of the importance of "patient and complex intellectual labor" within the Islamic tradition, showing how reformulating our understanding of secularism and the Islamic state is crucial for opening up a space …

Human Rights And Domestic Violence: An Advocacy Manual, Human Rights Clinic

Human Rights Institute

Though international law is traditionally called “the law of nations,” it governs far more than relations between the countries of the world. International human rights law pushes the boundaries of State responsibility and allows individuals to directly demand accountability for both governmental action and inaction that violates basic human rights. International human rights treaties declare the minimum standards by which States (i.e. nation-states, or countries) are expected to comply. The theme of the 2010 Fourteenth Annual Domestic Violence Conference at Fordham Law School, “Expanding Our Vision: Human Rights, Victims’ Rights, and Approaches to Diverse Families,” for which this manual was …

Human Rights Reference Sources: A Critical Annotated Bibliography, Chad Kahl, Stephanie Davis-Kahl

Scholarly Publications

The area of human rights has had significant attention both nationally and internationally in the press and in the political arena. While there is a renewed commitment to human rights advocacy, there is also an upward trend in popular culture of depictions of torture. This article provides critical annotations of English-language reference sources, published since 1990, and available both in print and online, in an effort to aid librarians collecting and weeding materials for human rights research. This article was included in the Journal of Academic Librarianship's Guide to the Professional Literature in 2010. The Guide "is a highly selective …

Reproductive Health As A Human Right, Lance Gable

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Negotiating The Claim To Inclusion: Statelessness And The Contestation Of The Limits Of Citizenship, Kiran Banerjee

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

This paper addresses how our conceptions of community and citizenship should be transfigured on account of the theoretical and ethical concerns revealed by statelessness. Taking my point of departure from the work of Hannah Arendt, I show how the phenomenon of statelessness reveals tensions in our conceptions of political membership and human rights, while highlighting the dilemmas that any approach to democratic inclusion must address. As Arendt’s work emphasizes, one of the greatest challenges to the cosmopolitan ideal of realizing universal human rights is the way in which realizing rights claims is tied to political membership within a particular community. …

Human Rights Abuses In 1970s Argentina, Vanessa Gomez

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

In this paper I address various components to the human rights abuses in Argentina in the 1970s. The domestic political situation is analyzed with particular attention paid to the political culture and the history of the regime. Media outlets and interviews by victims are used to facilitate first-hand accounts of the regime. The international arena and the efforts of human rights groups are mentioned as a means to demonstrate the international implications of the regime. I wrote this paper to further my knowledge on human rights abuses and further the knowledge of all who read my attempt. This essay marks …

Cosmopolitan Theory And Anthropological Practice In Brazil, Jan Hoffman French

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In relation to the theme of this volume - to inquire into transformations marked by knowledge-making projects and the role played by intellectuals - in this chapter I will focus on Brazilian anthropologists. In considering how impoverished or marginalized communities become integrated into global claims about the human condition, I analyze the efforts of Brazilian anthropologists on behalf of rural black communities in the northeastern backlands in light of cosmopolitan theory.

Human Rights And Intellectual Property: Mapping The Global Interface, Laurence R. Helfer, Graeme W. Austin

Faculty Scholarship

Human Rights and Intellectual Property: Mapping the Global Interface explores the intersections between intellectual property and human rights law and policy. The relationship between these two fields has captured the attention of governments, policymakers, and activist communities in a diverse array of international and domestic political and judicial venues. These actors often raise human rights arguments as counterweights to the expansion of intellectual property in areas including freedom of expression, public health, education, privacy, agriculture, and the rights of indigenous peoples. At the same time, the creators and owners of intellectual property are asserting a human rights justification for the …

Current Patent Laws Cannot Claim The Backing Of Human Rights, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In the dispute over the enforcement of pharmaceutical patents, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is sometimes cited as giving patent protection the status of a 'human right'. It is true that the ICESCR provides for ‘the right of everyone’ ‘[t]o benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author’. But that does not mean that patent protection is a human right. Patent fails as a human right for many reasons, one of which is the lack of fit between current patent …

Human Rights As Part Of Customary International Law:A Plea For Change Of Paradigms, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

The question for us international lawyers is how, and how much of, public sentiment for human rights has been transformed into binding international law.

The Road To Rights: Establishing A Domestic Human Rights Institution In The United States, Leadership Conference Education Fund, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

While human rights are often discussed as international standards, they are realized first and foremost at home. Respect for human rights is a domestic endeavor — the promotion, protection and fulfillment of these rights falls to national and local governments, not to international bodies. Because the front line of human rights is domestic, full realization of these rights requires coordination and dialogue between civil society, national policy-making bodies and local institutions.

U.S. human rights advocates have continually emphasized that “human rights begin at home,” and it is only when the full spectrum of rights are recognized and protected in local …

Collective Management Of Copyrights And Human Rights: An Uneasy Alliance Revisited, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This essay analyzes the “creators’ rights” provisions of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in the context of the collective administration of copyright and neighboring rights and the policies and practices of collective management organizations (CMOs). It also addresses other human rights treaties and international court rulings relevant to collective rights management. The essay begins with an overview of the ICESCR Committee’s General Comment on ICESCR Article 15(1)(c), “the right of everyone to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the …

A Closer Look At Law: Human Rights As Multi-Level Sites Of Struggles Over Multi-Dimensional Equality, Susanne Baer

Articles

In many societies, deep conflicts arise around religious matters, and around equality. Often, religious collectives demand the right to self-determination of issues considered - by them - to be their own, and these demands collide with individual rights to, again, religious freedom. These are thus conflicts of religion v. religion. Then, collective religious freedom tends to become an obligation for all those who are defined as belonging to the collective, which carries the problem that mostly elites define its meaning and they silence dissent. Usually, such obligations are also unequal relating to gender, with different regimes for women and for …

Economic Development At The Cost Of Human Rights: China Nonferrous Metal Industry In Zambia, Brian Chama

Publications and Scholarship

The international human rights system is primarily based on the relationship between the state and its citizens. The overarching question is where the responsibility for human rights does and should lie in a world where the movement of human beings, goods, and capital are increasingly transnational in scope. The amount of responsibility that powerful actors like international corporations should have for protecting human rights is unclear. How this responsibility should be understood in relation to the responsibility of the state to protect its own people from human rights violations and also pursue strategies to hold international corporations accountable is also …

Human Rights Reference Sources: A Critical Annotated Bibliography, Chad M. Kahl, Stephanie Davis-Kahl

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The area of human rights has had significant attention both nationally and internationally in the press and in the political arena. While there is a renewed commitment to human rights advocacy, there is also an upward trend in popular culture of depictions of torture. This article provides critical annotations of English-language reference sources, published since 1990, and available both in print and online, in an effort to aid librarians collecting and weeding materials for human rights research.

A Behavioral Approach To Human Rights, Andrew K. Woods

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For the last sixty years, scholars and practitioners of international human rights have paid insufficient attention to the ground level social contexts in which human rights norms are imbued with or deprived of social meaning. During the same time period, social science insights have shown that social conditions can have a significant impact on human behavior. This Article is the first to investigate the far-ranging implications of behavioralism—especially behavioral insights about social influence—for the international human rights regime. It explores design implications for three broad components of the regime: the content, adjudication, and implementation of human rights. In addition, the …

A State Of Rightlessness: The Egregious Case Of North Korea, Morse Tan

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications

This essay steps into the relative dearth of popular and legal academic treatment to analyze this egregious state of rightlessness (an intentional neologism) and concludes with reflections upon possible judicial redress options. Experts in the human rights field have averred that the human rights situation in North Korea is the worst in the world. The North Korean government denies any human rights abuses, insisting “that 'there is no human rigths [sic] problem in North Korea.'" This academic work challenges this outright denial by providing an analysis of various human rights abuses persisting north of the most heavily armed border in …

Human Rights And American Bioethics: Resistance Is Futile, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The Borg are always confident that humans will be assimilated into their collective hive and therefore that, as they say, “resistance is futile.” In Star Trek, of course, the humans always successfully resist. Elizabeth Fenton and John Arras, like the Borg, resist the idea that humans are uniquely special as well as the utility of the human rights framework for global bioethics. I believe their resistance to human rights is futile, and I explain why in this essay. Let me begin with their subtitle, because we do seem to agree that popular culture is a powerful aid to understanding human …

Enhancing Enforcement Of Economic, Social And Cultural Rights Using Indicators: A Focus On The Right To Education In The Icescr, Sital Kalantry, Jocelyn E. Getgen, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly fifteen years ago, Audrey R. Chapman emphasized the importance of ascertaining violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as a means to enhance its enforcement. Today, the violations approach is even more salient given the recent adoption of the ICESCR’s Optional Protocol, a powerful tool to hold States parties accountable for violations.

Indicators are essential tools for assessing violations of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) because they are often the best way to measure progressive realization. Proposed guidelines on using indicators give guidance on the content of States parties reports to treaty monitoring …

Human Rights For Hedgehogs?: Global Value Pluralism, International Law, And Some Reservations Of The Fox, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, a contribution to the Boston University Law Review’s symposium on Ronald Dworkin’s forthcoming book, Justice for Hedgehogs, critiques the manuscript’s account of international human rights on five grounds. First, it is vague: it fails to offer much if any guidance relative to many of the most difficult concrete issues that arise in the field of international human rights law and policy - precisely the circumstances in which international lawyers might benefit from the guidance that moral foundations supposedly promise. It is also troubling, and puzzling given Dworkin’s well-known commitment to the right-answer thesis, that his account of human …