Law Commons^™

Race, Class, And Katrina : Human Rights And (Un)Natural Disaster, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

This essay reflects on the international human rights implications of Hurricane Katrina. For those of us in the human rights movement, it seemed natural to see Katrina and its aftermath as both a massive international humanitarian disaster and a human rights crisis. This was not just the awful result of a huge storm having hit a densely populated area and thereby necessitating the marshalling of public and private humanitarian aid. It also revealed government inaction and affirmatively abusive actions before, during, and after the storm hit that implicate international human rights standards.

We know that Katrina was not the last …

Female Genital Mutilation And Female Genital Cutting, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or Female Genital Cutting (FGC) refers to a range of harmful traditional practices performed on infants, girls, and women in certain ethnic groups. This article, published in The Encyclopedia of Human Rights (David Forsythe, et al, ed., Oxford University Press, 2009) discusses the practices in the context of international human rights law. FGM-FGC, violates a number of international human rights standards, including the right to bodily integrity, the right to life, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the rights of children, and the rights of women and girls to equality and non-discrimination. Nevertheless, …

"New" Human Rights : U.S. Ambivalence Toward The International Economic And Social Rights Framework, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

Economic and social rights (including rights to food, adequate housing, public education, the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, fair wages, decent labor conditions, and social security) still occupy a second-class, outsider status in official United States domestic and foreign policy. This is no accident. The full recognition and implementation of such rights pose a direct threat. But that threat is not primarily to democracy or American values as some believe. Rather, because they demonstrate our system's failures to achieve equality, they threaten the deeply held belief that our country has already achieved a truly representative, human rights-based …

Statement Of Jeanne M. Woods And Hope Lewis Prepared For The Hearings Of The United Nations Special Rapporteur On Extreme Poverty, Dr. Arjun Sengupta On The Aftermath Of Hurricane Katrina, Hope Lewis, Jeanne Woods

Hope Lewis

This Statement was submitted to the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, Dr. Arjun Sengupta in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster on the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005. The Statement, submitted during the Independent Expert’s fact-finding visit, expresses concern about the extensive and alarming human rights implications of United States federal, state and local government policy and activities before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. The Statement argues that the inadequate response of government officials at all levels reflects the impact of “globalization in miniature” on the poor and other vulnerable and subordinated …

Cleaning Our Own House : "Exotic" And Familiar Human Rights Violations, Hope Lewis, Isabelle Gunning

Hope Lewis

Women's human rights activism in the United States tend to highlight human rights violations of women outside the U.S., or on women from other cultures who enter the U.S. as immigrants or asylum-seekers, while ignoring internal human rights abuses. This Article focuses on the events surrounding a recent U.S. gender asylum case involving Fauziya Kassindja, a young asylee from Togo, in an attempt to demonstrate the irony of American complacency about the status of the United States as a haven for the protection of human rights. Ms. Kassindja, and other immigrants and asylum-seekers, were subjected to degradation and abuse--in the …

Global Intersections : Critical Race Feminist Human Rights And Inter/National Black Women, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

Although there have been great strides in feminist human rights efforts in developing methods to prevent domestic violence and other forms of "private" violence against women, feminists still have far to go. For instance, feminists have only recently begun to acknowledge that physical, social, and economic violence against women, especially poor women of color, is perpetuated in part by top-down globalization. This Article demonstrates how Critical Race Feminist analysis, a set of approaches to legal scholarship rooted in feminist and anti-racist critical traditions, reconceptualizes the human rights problems facing Black women who migrate between the United States and Jamaica. Like …

Women (Under)Development : The Relevance Of The "Right To Development" To Poor Women Of Color In The United States, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

This essay, written during a time of Clinton-era welfare reform, was an attempt to reimagine South-North roles. What if "right to development" analysis were applied to poor women of color living in the United States? Some see the right to development as an anachronism in the face of the apparent globalization of market-based economic development. However, “development” in the narrow form of a thriving industrial sector, reliable infrastructure, and steady economic growth, remains beyond the reach of many nations - particularly the poorest African nations. More important, the broader goals of human development - access to basic needs and an …