Law Commons^™

October Roundtable: Un Secretary-General Report On “Responsibility To Protect: Timely And Decisive Response”, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Responsibility to Protect: Timely and Decisive Response” Ban Ki-moon, July 2012.

Responsibility To Regulate: How The ‘Responsibility To Protect’ Expands State Power, Philip Cunliffe

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Like most UN reports, particularly those concerned with the doctrine of the "responsibility to protect" (RtoP), the latest report of the UN Secretary-General is filled with plenty of pious guff mixed in with the platitudes that engulf UN diplomacy. But buried within the blathering are also some disturbing prescriptions for how the UN envisages rolling out RtoP around the world. I want to draw attention to three specific points in order to consider what these tell us about RtoP as a political model. First, I will look at the treatment of media and speech in the report; second, how the …

Politics As Usual At The Un: Implementing Pillar Three Of Rtop, Eric A. Heinze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's most recent report on RtoP seeks to evaluate the various ways that Pillar Three of RtoP can be implemented. As anyone familiar with RtoP is aware, the commitment is understood to have three separate but interrelated pillars. The first pillar says that states have the primary responsibility to protect their own citizens from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Pillar Two says that the international community should assist states in fulfilling this responsibility, while Pillar Three says that if the state fails in its primary responsibility to protect its citizens from these crimes, …

“The Rtop And Responsibility While Protecting: The Secretary-General’S Timely And Decisive Report On Timely And Decisive Responses”, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United Nations Secretary-General's report on pillar three of the responsibility to protect (RtoP), "Responsibility to Protect: Timely and Decisive Response," is the most interesting, timely, and decisive of his four reports thus far on the RtoP. To start with, the subject matter of pillar three – the international community's potentially coercive responses to humanitarian crises, including humanitarian intervention – is the most controversial part of the RtoP doctrine and the area that has attracted the most criticism from skeptics. Previous reports, such as Implementing the Responsibility to Protect(2009), gave pillar three, and humanitarian intervention in particular, fairly short shrift, …

Strategies & Decisiveness: What Is Implied By A “Timely And Decisive Response” For Rtop Situations, H. M. Roff

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Reflecting upon United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's recent report concerning the third pillar of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), on the "timely and decisive response," two items become clear to me. First is that the third pillar is inherently coercive in nature, even though the report and many RtoP pundits stress that it entails more than merely sanctioning the use of force. Second is that this is unsurprising if we recall that the purpose of RtoP is to ensure the protection of particular human rights (rights against: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing) and that having a …

Slides: Impacts Of Energy Deficits In Cooking, Illumination, Water, Sanitation, And Motive Power, Paul S. Chinowsky

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Dr. Paul Chinowsky, Director, Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities; Professor, University of Colorado

25 slides

Carl Schmitt's Critique Of Liberalism And The European Union, Kyle S. Herman

Dr. Kyle S. Herman

I invoke Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism outlined in "The Concept of the Political" to better understand the European Union (EU) as a governmental institution. It is my contention that the EU is a liberal institution, with the sole intent to drive economic policy while ignoring identity, similar to what Schmitt rails against in his critique of liberalism. For that reason I demonstrate how the EU fits well into the mold Schmitt laid out to identify liberal politics. Therefore I use Schmitt's critique as both a starting point for defining the European Union and, by superimposing his critique onto the …

March Roundtable: Responding To Syria, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Save Us from the Liberal Hawks” by David Rieff. Foreign Policy, February 13, 2012.

International Organization And Poverty Alleviation, William F. Felice, Diana Fuguitt

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The World Trade Organization and Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Edited by Sarah Joseph, David Kinley & Jeff Waincymer. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. 2009.

and

Global Poverty, Ethics and Human Rights. By Desmond McNeill & Asunción St. Clair. New York, NY: Routledge. 2009.

and

Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform. By Catherine Weaver. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2008.