Law Commons^™

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 …

Human Rights And The War On Terror: Complete 2005 - 2007 Topical Research Digest, Jack Donnelly, Simon Amajuru, Susannah Compton, Robin Davey, Syd Dillard, Amanda Donahoe, Charles Hess, Sydney Fisher, Kelley Laird, Victoria Lowdon, Chris Maggard, Alexandra Nichols, Travis Ning, Toni Panetta, Greg Sanders, James Smithwick, Angela Woolliams, Chris Saeger, Sarah Bania-Dobyns, Eric Dibbern, David Gillespie, Latife Bulur, Katie Friesen, Arika Long, Arianna Nowakowski, Joel R. Pruce

Human Rights & Human Welfare

“9/11 changed everything.” Not really. In fact, there has been far more continuity than change over the past six years in both international and domestic politics. Nonetheless, human rights often have been harmed—although not by terrorism but by “the war on terror.”

Aiding Whom? Competing Explanations Of Middle-Power Foreign Aid Decisions, Bethany Barratt Phd

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Paper presented at International Studies Association annual meeting Honolulu, Hawaii March 2005. I thank Sabine Carey, Christian Erickson, Scott Gartner, Miroslav Nincic, Steve Poe, and Randolph Siverson for excellent feedback on earlier versions of this research, and Richard Tucker for generously providing the Similarity of UN Policy Positions data.

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 of the author. The editors cannot guarantee a stable URL for any paper posted …

The United States And Economic And Social Rights: Past, Present…And Future?, Daniel J. Whelan

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There is probably no other topic in the field of human rights that is more difficult to talk about clearly than economic and social rights. The language surrounding economic and social goods as rights claims is often muddled and confusing, lacks precision, and is difficult to grasp. What does it mean, for example, to have a right to the “highest attainable standard of mental and physical health,” for example? What is “highest”? What about “attainable standard”? What is included in “mental and physical health?” Should health care be free-of-charge? Should the state provide it? Would we have to go court …

Human Rights And The War On Terror: Introduction, Jack Donnelly

Human Rights & Human Welfare

War rarely is good for human rights. The decision of the United States to launch a “global war on terror” in response to the suicide airplane bombings in New York and Washington has had predictably negative human rights consequences. In combating a tiny network of violent political extremists, human rights have in various ways, both intentional and unintentional, been restricted, infringed, violated, ignored, and trampled in many countries, sometimes severely.

Internationally Protected Human Rights: Fact Or Fiction?, Paul J. Magnarella

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Theory and Reality in the International Protection of Human Rights by J. Shand Watson. Ardsley, New York: Transnational Publishers, 1999. 340pp.

and

The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights by Robert F. Drinan, S.J. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 256pp.