Law Commons^™

The Perils Of Walking Fast And Walking Far, Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When Haitian President René Préval early in January 2011 lambasted the international community for riding roughshod over his country’s sovereignty and his government, and called for greater Haitian ownership over the aid and recovery effort in his country, he highlighted a frustration which has been noted by so many other nations before: while international aid efforts are welcome and usually do provide critical relief to the targeted populations in the short term, they generally tend to undermine governments (and the faith of the people in their government) over the long term.

Security Now: Addressing The Needs Of Darfur’S Children, Nicole Judd

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the Darfur region of Sudan, over 2.3 million children have been affected by the ongoing genocide (UNICEF 2008). Unlike their adult counterparts, children are impacted more severely by the consequences of warfare as they are undergoing a fragile developmental process. While each one of the affected children has had their basic human rights violated in some form, the narrative of trauma differs between groups. Sexually-exploited girls, boy soldiers, unaccompanied children, and those who remain in under-resourced camps have experienced the protracted violence in unique ways. To mitigate the effects of war, each group should receive individualized humanitarian assistance as …

Bring Back Aristide, Louis Edgar Esparza

Human Rights & Human Welfare

My friend Annie recently had her trip to Haiti postponed because of the political instability surrounding the November elections. Annie totes modest sums of cash, medicine, and clothing collected from sympathetic friends and has a resolute willingness to help. Together with the partner organizations she is working with, she is hiring Haitians to build an orphanage. Another colleague of mine, Tonya, traveled to the country very soon after the earthquake. She described her experience in The Nation, lamenting that the major US airlines, which had agreed to waive baggage fees for relief aid to Haiti, did not do so for …

February Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Tragedy and Opportunity for Haiti” by Kara C. Mc Donald. Council on Foreign Relations. January 14, 2010.

A Time For Anger. And A Time For Rights, Not Charity, Anthony Chase

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Sadness but also anger is the immediate reaction to the deaths of 200,000 Haitians. Among the dead are Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan (founders of three leading Haitian feminist organizations) and 14 of the 16 members of SEROvie, the main Haitian organization providing HIV-related services for men who have sex with men and the transgendered – people who have been at the front line in pushing for political change from within Haiti. Kara McDonald’s words that “it is hard to identify another country that has had as many peacekeeping forces, stabilization operations, and crisis responses at work …

Can They Stay The Distance? The International Response To The Earthquake In Haiti, Anna Talbot

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Haiti is devastated again. Over one hundred thousand people are presumed dead. Reports of looting and violence are emerging. The international community is responding, with a statement from the Secretary-General of the UN, a resolution by the Security Council, a Special Session, and resolution from the UN Human Rights Council and numerous aid and UN agencies in the country seeking to help as many survivors as possible. Various commentators, including Kara McDonald, have claimed this is an opportunity for a stronger Haiti. Whether this opportunity is realized or not depends in large part on the international community, and whether it …

Hope For Haiti?, Kurt Mills

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Kara McDonald raises the question of whether or not the international community will go beyond its patchwork response to Haiti's problems. One wonders why the question is even asked, given the international community's track record in Haiti, as well as in other parts of the world. Indeed, setting aside the many positive acts of individuals and states to address the suffering after the earthquake, the response to Haiti illustrates the inability of the international community to respond in a coherent and humane manner to many crises around the world.

What Is The Best Use Of The International Community’S Resources; Responding To Disasters Or Trying To Strengthen Fragile States?, Richard Burchill

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The recent earthquake in Haiti is, beyond doubt, a truly tragic event. The impact of the quake in terms of the physical destruction of buildings and infrastructure, the massive loss of life, and the inability of the government to respond all demonstrated how fragile the Haitian state is. While Haiti is probably at the extreme end of fragility, it is not alone in terms of states struggling to survive in difficult conditions. And when something unexpected hits a fragile state, the response of the international community is crucial, because the impact is so much greater and the state's own ability …

The Responsibility To Protect: Three Pillars And Four Crimes, Heraldo Muñoz

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The adoption of the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” (RtoP) by the Heads of State and Government in the September 2005 United Nations World Summit was a historic landmark which has generated great attention as a potentially powerful instrument to impede humanitarian tragedies. Yet much has been missing, or misinterpreted, in the public discussion of this emerging norm. Some fear that RtoP could be abused by powerful countries to intervene in developing nations alleging altruistic motives, while others believe that RtoP is already a rule of customary international law that should be applied unconditionally and without delay in the face …

African Aid And Success: Four Keys, Susan Paganelli

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has occasional success stories, but they are intermingled amongst tales of waste and failure. The stark reality is that more of the population of SSA is chronically undernourished in the present decade than it was in 1992 and 50 percent of the population is still considered to be living in extreme poverty. These problems persist in spite of the $650 billion given in aid to Africa by the world’s concerned countries since 1960 (Sunderberg and Gelp 2006). It is clear that money and good intent are not sufficient to alleviate the suffering in Africa.

September Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"The New Colonialists" by Michael A. Cohen, Maria Figueroa Küpçü, and Parag Khanna. Foreign Policy. July/August 2008.

Cosmopolitanism And Rationalizing Tendencies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When phone-in talk shows, the press, and undergraduates debate the case for cosmopolitan accounts of global distributive justice, there are a number of standard rationalizations given for why we don’t have a duty to help. These include: “we have duties only to our fellow countrymen”; “poverty is caused by corrupt leaders, so not our fault, and therefore not our responsibility“; and “humanitarian aid is counter-productive.” Unlike the other two sorts of rationalization, the latter claim does not necessarily deny the moral cosmopolitanism premise that we have extensive duties to relieve the suffering of those beyond our borders. Rather, it follows …

In With The Old, Out With The New, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Michael Cohen, Maria Figueroa Küpçü and Parag Khanna make some compelling arguments about the inherent drawbacks regarding the role diverse networks of NGOs play in keeping at-risk populations alive throughout the world. We are informed that these groups are “the new colonialists,” agencies much like the old European empires. These new colonialists are apparently enforcing a cycle of dependency which prevents the development of state structures, structures that apparently sustain these populations more effectively. The problem with this thesis is that the authors do not seem to entertain the possibility that the nation-state is itself an (old) colonial construct, and …

Saving Lives: A First Step Toward Freedom Not Dependence, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

During the nineteenth century, European powers extended and deepened their brutal domination of the so-called “uncivilized” (sic) nations and peoples around the world. These efforts were named “colonialist” and were based on the uprooting of indigenous peoples, the export and pillage of natural resources, cultural displacement, direct political control, and economic exploitation and the creation of dependency by the Europeans. While the European states gained colossal economic benefits from these arrangements, the colonized peoples were left with failed states and bad governments. Advocates of these colonialist policies often justified these actions on the basis of a deep-felt ideological belief in …

Nothing "Colonial" About It: Service Delivery And Accountability, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

At one level, there is little in “The New Colonialists” with which I disagree. The necessary state capacity in developing societies for basic service delivery is in many cases absent, significantly weak, or has been corrupted in ways that produce tremendous inequality of access and disproportionate social outcomes that are related to race, ethnicity, poverty, gender, and other categories of social identity. It is true that in the presence of weak state institutions, widespread corruption, and underdeveloped infrastructure, a large number of national and international non-governmental agencies and organizations have sought to redress such imbalances through their work in providing …

Social Contract In A Borderless World, Daniel J. Graeber

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Addressing the American Political Science Association in 2000, the international relations theorist Robert Keohane of Princeton University noted that effective governance in a globalized world depends more on interstate cooperation and transnational networks than any type of world body. Keohane made the claim that the people and players in a globalized world stand to gain from the system through cooperation across borders and boundaries. Nevertheless, Keohane also observed that the actors may exploit interdependence in that system by transferring blame to others and that, although institutions may be essential, they can also be dangerous. So it is when confronting the …

Appealing To The Realist Nature Of The Problem: An Attempt To Find Common Ground, Eric K. Leonard

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Whenever I teach my undergraduate course on human rights, I inevitably have one student who argues that state sovereignty trumps all and that states should act in their “national interest” in regards to issues where human rights and sovereignty clash. They usually continue the argument by stipulating that “human rights” are not defensible unless they are universally accepted, meaning contained in a universally ratified document (and they use the term “universal” literally), because all authority resides in the state. Thus, it is always an interesting discussion when we turn to the issue of migration, and more specifically, refugees.

Reconstructing Sovereignty: From Control To Responsibility, Eric K. Leonard

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As I stood with a standing-room only crowd last fall at a United Nations University of New York (UNU-ONY) event entitled, "Prevention of Mass Atrocities: From Mandate to Realization," I began to wonder how far the responsibility to protect (R2P) could be stretched. As defined by the UNU-ONY organizers, the purpose of the event was " to explore the work of mass atrocity prevention across the UN system, with a focus on the role of the new Office of the Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (SRPGMA)." As I currently look at the international community's response …

July Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"Armed and Humanitarian" by Bruce Falconer. Mother Jones. May 19, 2008.

Mission Creep: De-Militarizing Humanitarian Protection, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Over a decade ago, the U.S. military was warning liberal internationalists about the dangers of "mission creep." Today it is doing the opposite, incorporating relief and development work into its operations. In the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma , the U.S. military's newfound mission may seem compelling. Unfortunately, expanding the military's role into humanitarian work reflects a flawed logic that should be resisted. There are more promising ways to protect victims of humanitarian disaster.

When Steel And Guns Meets Bread And Butter, Daniel J. Graeber

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Speaking before the 191-member United Nations in 2005, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that "For the first time . we are agreed that states do not have the right to do what they will within their own borders but that we in the name of humanity have a common duty to protect people where their own governments will not." This notion, that of responsible sovereignty , says that nation states forfeit the right to uninterrupted internal freedoms when they no longer uphold the responsibilities associated with sovereignty.

Ali Wyne On Understanding Poverty Edited By Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, And Dilip Mookherjee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 496pp., Ali Wyne

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Understanding Poverty Edited by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 496pp.

Armed Conflict, Health And Human Rights, Alex Deraney, Hafsteinn Hafsteinsson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This section highlights resources with information on health concerns that arise from armed conflict. It examines human rights violations as derived from health issues and the humanitarian efforts to alleviate them. The vast majority of available literature approaches conflict-related healthcare shortfalls in terms of intervention. Literature dealing with armed conflict and health as it applies to human rights is much harder to come by, which indicates the need for additional emphasis in this area.

Health Care And Professionals, Monica Fish

Human Rights & Human Welfare

One of the unfortunate truths of the current human rights regime is that it has given rise to an entirely new aid industry. Fortunate as it is that there are willing individuals eager to share their knowledge and expertise with those in need, the group of professional men and women making up the army of humanitarian workers is, perhaps, overextended and under appreciated. One way of helping the next generation of humanitarians to train and prepare for working within a context of human rights is to provide them with the sound analytical research based on research of current human rights …

Health Of Refugees And Internally Displaced Peoples, Leah Persky, Zaravshon Zukhurova

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Refugees and Internally Displaced People’s (IDPs) are extremely vulnerable to human rights abuses, particularly the lack or denial of physical and mental health care. The basic framework of refugee protection has been established and accepted worldwide for more than 50 years. Still, there is still a lack of commitment to respecting the human rights of refugees and providing adequate humanitarian assistance, including health care. Several international conventions and protocols establish the duties of states in terms of treatment of refugees. These include: the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the Geneva Conventions, the Statute of the Office of …