BELARUS: TRANSFORMATION FROM AUTHORITARIANISM TOWARDS SULTANISM

In the context of a transforming media landscape, the internet has emerged as a pivotal communication platform, extending beyond traditional media channels. This study explores the mechanisms of internet control exercised by the authoritarian regime in Russia under President Vladimir Putin. The analysis begins with the Terentiev case, a significant event that marked the commencement of rigorous internet censorship by the Russian government. It then delves into the principal activities of key entities such as Roskomnadzor, the Safe Internet League, and Cyberdruzhina, which collectively contribute to internet censorship. Globally, the rationale for internet regulation is gaining traction, often framed as the regulation of harmful content. However, such censorship poses substantial risks to the fundamental human right of freedom of expression, potentially overstepping the boundaries of universal moral standards. In Russia's authoritarian context, the government's prerogative, under the guise of national interest and security, has become the benchmark for internet censorship. This approach diminishes the role of Runet as a free public sphere and is anticipated to escalate. The study highlights the implications of such censorship practices on freedom of expression and the broader discourse on human rights in the digital age.

Conquest, Tyranny, and Ethnocide against the Oromo:A Historical Assessment of Human Rights Conditions in Ethiopia, ca. 1880s–2002 Mohammed Hassen This article attempts to assess the human rights conditions of the Oromo people under four Ethiopian regimes. Beginning with the conquest and incorporation of Oromia into the Ethiopian empire, it provides an overview of the brutality and depredations that Oromos suffered at the hands of Ethiopian soldiers and administrators under Menelik (r. 1880s–1913) and the concerted attacks on the Oromo cultural heritage, language, and national identity during the six decades when Haile Sellassie dominated the Ethiopian political landscape (1916–74). Then it examines the violence against the Oromo national identity and the attempt to alter the demographic makeup of Oromia by the Ethiopian military-socialist regime (1974–91) and the massive human rights violations perpetrated against the Oromo since 1992 in the name of democracy and federalism. In all, the article shows that for more than a century, the Oromo have endured unrelenting attacks on their individual rights, their national identity and cultural institutions, and their independent organizations. Ethiopia has yet to produce a government that respects Oromo human rights. Before I proceed, a few caveats are in order. First, the definition of human rights varies depending on cultural, historical, political, economic, and ideological considerations. In this article, I will follow the definition of Mahmood Monshipuri: [End Page 15] The concept of human rights . . . refers to . . . civil and political rights; rights to life, privacy, a fair trial, humane treatment, prohibition of torture and slavery, freedom of movement and residence; the right not to be arbitrarily arrested or detained; freedom of association, political participation, and equal protection under the law.2 Second, "Historians, in general, are most at home when dealing with events that have been allowed to settle over time."3 It is easier to discuss Oromo human rights conditions before 1991, an era that belongs to history, than in the period since 1991, a highly contested period of history in the making. As I have noted elsewhere, "the present is an emotionally charged psychological moment."4 While it is possible to present a relatively objective picture of Oromo human rights conditions based on the record produced by both Ethiopian and foreign writers,5 one cannot escape being accused of exaggerating the Oromo people's plight and indulging in anti–Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) propaganda. My purpose is nevertheless to document the human rights conditions of the Oromo as a scholar loyal to the canons and standard practices of my discipline. If this article encourages others to write about human rights conditions in Ethiopia, its purpose will have been served. Third, the Oromo do not have influential friends in positions of power among Western governments and the Western media. Diaspora Oromos do not have the numerical strength and resources necessary to capture the attention of either the governments or the media. Consequently, the sufferings of the Oromo have received little international attention. The apparent Western indifference to the misery of the Oromos has encouraged the TPLF authorities to continue their Oromo human rights violations with impunity. I believe my duty to the victims of human rights violations is "to record their plight so that they are not forgotten by history, and that history is not rewritten to conceal or distort embarrassing facts."6 This article is an attempt to contribute in a small way to the effort of recording the past in its totality so that future generations will not have to relive their tortured past. Space does not permit me to provide a thorough account of human rights conditions in Ethiopia between the 1880s and 2002. Instead of a detailed discussion, I will outline the salient features of the human rights conditions experienced by the Oromo people [End Page 16] during the century after Menelik's conquests in the 1880s, and I will focus especially on the period after 1991. Conquest, Exploitation, and Deculturation: The Imperial Period, 1880s–1974 During the second half of the nineteenth century, the steady flow of European warfare technology into Abyssinia and its virtual absence from Oromia facilitated and increased Abyssinian raids for slave and cattle into Oromo territory. This...

This article presents a comparative analysis of political bias in the outputs of three Large Language Model (LLM)-based chatbots – ChatGPT (GPT3.5, GPT4, GPT4o), Bing Chat, and Bard/Gemini – in response to political queries concerning the authoritarian regime in Russia. We investigate whether safeguards implemented in these chatbots contribute to the censorship of information that is viewed as harmful by the regime, in particular information about Vladimir Putin and the Russian war against Ukraine, and whether these safeguards enable the generation of false claims, in particular in relation to the regime’s internal and external opponents. To detect whether LLM safeguards reiterate political bias, the article compares the outputs of prompts focusing on Putin’s regime and the ones dealing with the Russian opposition and the US and Ukrainian politicians. It also examines whether the degree of bias varies depending on the language of the prompt and compares outputs concerning political personalities and issues across three languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and English. The results reveal significant disparities in how individual chatbots withhold politics-related information or produce false claims in relation to it. Notably, Bard consistently refused to respond to queries about Vladimir Putin in Russian, even when the relevant information was accessible via Google Search, and generally followed the censorship guidelines that, according to Yandex-related data leaks, were issued by the Russian authorities. A subsequent evaluation of Gemini showed that the chatbot restricts political information beyond what was officially confirmed by Google. In terms of false claims, we find substantial variation across languages with Ukrainian and Russian prompts generating false information more often and Bard being more prone to produce false claims in relation to Russian regime opponents (e.g., Navalny or Zelenskyy) than other chatbots. We also found that while GPT4 and GPT4o generate less factually incorrect information, both models still make mistakes, with their prevalence being higher in Russian and Ukrainian than in English. This research aims to stimulate further dialogue and research on developing safeguards against the misuse of LLMs outside of democratic environments.

The Article discusses the democratic backsliding after 2010 in Hungary, and how it affected the state of human rights in the country, a Member State of the European Union. The main argument of the Article is that paradoxically the non-legitimate 1989 constitution provided full-fledged protection of fundamental rights, while the procedurally legitimate 2011 constitution-making resulted in curtailment of rights and their constitutional guarantees. The Article first describes the democratic transition that occurred in 1989–1990 as a rights revolution and the results of the 2011 “illiberal” constitution, called Fundamental Law, as counter-revolution. The second part of the Article illustrates the constitutional and statutory regulation of human rights protection after this “rule of law revolution,” and the activist jurisprudence of the first Constitutional Court using the concept of an “invisible constitution” to protect human rights. The third part discusses the rights provisions of the new Fundamental Law and several statutes dismantling the guarantees of human rights, with special attention to the decreased possibilities of state institutions, such as the Constitutional Court, the ordinary judiciary and ombudsmen, as well as civil society organizations to effectively protect fundamental rights. The fourth part assesses the efforts of European institutions to force the Hungarian government to comply with the human rights standards laid down in the European Convention of Human Rights and in the Treaty of the European Union. The Article concludes that neither internal nor external challenges could prevent the development of a new authoritarian regime with no guaranteed human rights.

Moscow—When the Soviet Union collapsed, many observers expected its fearsome intelligence apparatus to wither as well. Instead, the post-Soviet era has seen the emergence of an even more influential collection of intelligence organizations that grew out of the two premier Soviet agencies: the KGB, which combined domestic and foreign political intelligence, and the gru, which handled military intelligence. The prominent—even dominant—role of intelligence within contemporary Russia's political system is a sign of the Kremlin's growing ambitions. But it also reflects a profound fear of being outmaneuvered by the West in Russia's traditional sphere of influence, which now comprises 10 more or less independent nations that once belonged to the Soviet Union. Within that vast territory—and in the areas that directly border it—an intense and largely invisible battle for control is being fought every day.This struggle has put the Kremlin's intelligence agencies in direct competition with Western intelligence services, with all parties retaining some old habits left over from the Cold War. At the same time, the unique status and financial resources provided to Russia's secret services in the early 2000s by then-President Vladimir Putin makes them even more unpredictable than their predecessor, the KGB, which was a powerful organization, but came under the firm control of the political structure. The Communist Party presided over every KGB section, department, and division. By contrast, over the last decade in Russia, the resurgent secret services have become a new elite, enjoying expanded responsibilities and immunity from public oversight or parliamentary control. Today's Russian secret services are impenetrable to outsiders. While the KGB played by the Cold War's rules, its inheritors are given a freer hand to make decisions on their own.Surprisingly, though, the biggest beneficiaries of the elevation of Russian intelligence have been the authoritarian regimes that filled the vacuum after the breakup of the Soviet Union—the dictators of Central Asia, who have used Russian security forces to facilitate the abduction, even rendition, of their own opposition forces. In an unexpected reversal, Russia has become a hunting ground for the security services of many of the world's most vicious rulers.Today, there are three principal Russian intelligence services. The svr, or Foreign Intelligence Service, operates largely in Western Europe and the United States. The gru, the old military intelligence service under the Soviet Union, remains intact, with virtually the same global portfolio. The fsb, or Federal Security Service, the most direct successor to the old KGB, operates principally in the former Soviet Republics, sometimes still referred to as the Commonwealth of Independent States (cis), the loose confederation that was established to succeed the USSR after it collapsed. The fsb is also active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which border the former Soviet sphere. Of course, these delineations are not set in stone, and there is persistent overlap and competition between these organizations, as agents of both the fsb and svr are often found falling all over each other.When the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, the leaders of the former Soviet republics were very slow to create completely independent states. Initially, they even agreed to maintain the united armed forces of the cis, giving Moscow a chance to retain its influence. Intelligence cooperation was a natural outgrowth of this dependency, and the Kremlin was happy to help the still-unproven leaders of these new states bolster their security structures. These relations were formalized in April 1992, when the svr signed an agreement with its counterparts in the cis, agreeing not to spy on each other.But the relationship proved to be very much a one-way street. The svr effectively assumed the posture of “Big Brother,” making visits to cis capitals to attend multilateral meetings or bilateral talks, where they were sometimes received by heads of state.Not all cis members were equally happy at finding themselves once again under the direct scrutiny of the Kremlin. Throughout the 1990s, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan remained firm allies, allowing Russian military bases to remain on their soil and continuing to cooperate on intelligence. But Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine drifted in NATO's direction, in part because Russia supported separatist movements in each of those nations. Lastly, the governments of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, long suspicious of ethnic Russians who had migrated during Soviet times, signaled their independence by purging Russians from the ranks of their security services.During this time, Russia's other security agency, the fsb, was also eager to establish its own special relations with security services in the cis. This effort was aided in no small part by the rise of Putin, a veteran of the KGB's First Directorate, which dealt with foreign intelligence activities. By the late 1990s, with Putin's profile growing, the fsb had found its way into the “near-abroad,” as the former outlying Soviet republics are now called. It justified its expanded reach by pointing to a shared regional struggle against illegal drug trafficking and terrorism.That explanation was nothing more than a pretext for a power grab—but it more than sufficed. By 2000, the fsb was becoming the dominant intelligence player in what had been the Soviet Union. That year, Russia backed the establishment of a cis Antiterrorist Center, headquartered in Moscow with a Central Asian branch in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Though the center was conceived as a supranational structure, it was effectively under full fsb control—headed by the service's first deputy director—and supervised “collective” anti-terrorist exercises in Central Asia every April. The Antiterrorist Center's mandate was to create a database for intelligence sharing among the security services of all member countries. But the idea of pooling intelligence information was abandoned when members learned that the database would be located in Moscow. Some cis states simply did not buy the notion that Russia had a sincere desire to help with counter-terrorism efforts on their soil. Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan refused to send representatives to the center at all. They saw it, quite correctly, as a not very subtle Russian foot in their door. Still, the fsb's timing was good. Under the umbrella of anti-terrorism, it soon had much more credible justification for its regional expansion.In the early 2000s, it became evident that the political status quo in many of the post-Soviet republics was under threat. One after another, the old regimes that had been established in the early 1990s fell like dominoes in a series of popular uprisings known as the “color revolutions”: the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004), and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005). These regime changes were neither predicted nor prevented by Moscow. The Kremlin and the fsb viewed these events as Western concoctions, modeled after the toppling of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. As these events unfolded, the Kremlin became increasingly paranoid that Russia and its political allies in the region would be next. Russia's sphere of influence, it seemed, had to be watched more carefully.As the Kremlin turned increasingly to the fsb, it began to emerge as the single most powerful Russian secret service, especially in the former cis regions. Although the svr had promised not to spy within the territories, the fsb had never signed any such agreement and felt free of any obligation. As a result, in late 1999, the fsb was granted permission to establish a new directorate to focus on Russia's nearest neighbors. The newly formed Directorate of Operative Information (ukoi) was established inside the Department of Analysis, Forecasting, and Strategic Planning. The structure of the directorate was established along geographical lines and its officers were granted the right to travel abroad—or at least to the “near-abroad.” ukoi was headed by Major General Vyacheslav Ushakov, a member of an influential group of intelligence veterans who had served together in the fsb's regional departments in St. Petersburg and neighboring Karelia. The group included Putin himself, as well as then- fsb director Nikolai Patrushev.On June 30, 2003, an amendment to the “Law on the Organs of the Federal Security Service” was adopted, stipulating that the fsb would contain a special body dealing with such foreign intelligence. In 2004, the directorate was re-named the Department of Operative Information (doi), and its chief, Ushakov, was promoted to deputy director of the fsb. Ushakov was replaced as head of the unit by Sergei Beseda, a general who had become influential and well-connected while serving in the fsb section supervising the Administration of the President.While the operations of this department are cloaked in the deepest secrecy, some of its key officials are believed to have traveled to the former Soviet republics during political turning points. In May 2005, the head of the fsb, Patrushev, claimed before the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, to have helped unmask a plot against the regime in Belarus. According to Patrushev, international NGOs, mostly based in the West, had met in the Slovak capital of Bratislava in late 2004 at the time of Ukraine's Orange Revolution “to plan the downfall of the regime of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko.” Surprisingly, Belarus's own KGB never expressed any outrage at this open intervention by the fsb into its internal affairs. Indeed, the day after Patrushev's statement, the Belarussian KGB confirmed it, suggesting that it was perfectly content to have the Russian intelligence service operating so closely in matters relating to Belarus's national security. A few days later, the heads of the security services of the cis countries gathered in Astana, Kazakhstan. Patrushev warned his counterparts about the dangers of the “color revolutions.”But the fsb's involvement in the near-abroad has not always gone smoothly, and at times has even backfired. In 2004, the leadership of the fsb's intelligence department reportedly visited Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia whose independence had yet to be recognized by Russia. The fsb officers met with Raul Khadjimba, a pro-Moscow candidate running for president of Abkhazia. It was one thing for the Russian Foreign Ministry to support an Abkhazian candidate; quite another for him to receive a visit from generals in the fsb. But Khadjimba lost the election. His victorious opponent made it known that he was not happy with the fsb's presence. As a result, fsb agents ceased to operate with a free hand in Abkhazia, seriously undermining the fsb's position in Georgia and contributing to its failure to predict the Georgian move into South Ossetia four years later, which led to full-scale war between Russia and Georgia.Beginning in the mid-1990s, Russia had become a safe haven for political opponents of Central Asian regimes. Using old but still valid Soviet passports, and taking advantage of suddenly porous borders, the flow of people into Russia included key political opponents of these regimes. In response, the secret services of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan began reaching into Russia to grab people who might cause trouble for the autocratic and corrupt regimes running those countries. In most cases, Russia's secret services turned a blind eye on the Central Asian secret services' activities on Russian soil.But the system of abductions was provisional and imperfect. It lacked some important elements: a coordination center, immunity for the secret agents involved in abductions, and legal grounds for transferring the captives. These kinds of activities appeared to be at odds with post-communist Russian law, which officially maintains an established procedure for formal extraditions, overseen by the general prosecutor. A new system, designed to avoid legal extradition entirely, was soon developed by Central Asian security organizations with the connivance of the fsb.The broader system was embedded in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sco), founded in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The stated purpose of the sco was the joint struggle against the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism, and extremism. In 2004, a special anti-terrorism organization was created within the sco and named the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure. (The English acronym, RATS, seems particularly appropriate.) rats became the mechanism of choice for carrying out abductions across national boundaries and outside standard judicial procedures—operations quite similar to the American CIA's practice of extraordinary rendition.To improve rats's ability to detain suspects in the six participating states, it was necessary to guarantee absolute protection to the officers executing the operations. The sco's Convention on Privileges and Immunities, ratified by Russia in 2005, gave representatives of the organization the equivalent of diplomatic status. They are not subject to criminal liability for any actions committed in the course of their duty, and they are immune from arrest and detention. The same unlimited immunity applies to rats “experts”—secret service officers from any member country who are attached to rats for the duration of their mission. Experts are shielded from arrest during and after their business trips. Even their luggage cannot be searched.The regime in Uzbekistan has been especially enthusiastic in its embrace of rats. Islam Karimov, the country's autocratic ruler, has long fought a brutal counterinsurgency campaign against Islamist opposition groups, led by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizb ut-Tahrir. Members of these groups had been among those who found refuge across the border in Russia. rats provided an effective way for Karimov to eliminate them.“In the early 2000s, natives from Uzbekistan living in the Volga region and considered to be members of Hizb ut-Tahrir by Uzbek secret services started to disappear,” says Yelena Ryabinina, director for the Rights for Refugees Program at the Human Rights Institute, a nongovernmental organization based in Moscow. Ryabinina has spent many days in court, defending refugees from Central Asia against illegal deportation. Many of those deported were later found in Uzbek prisons.In 2004, Alisher Usmanov, a teacher at an Islamic school in the Tatarstan region of Russia, was detained by Russian police and sentenced to several months in prison for illegal possession of ammunition. Usmanov had been wanted by Uzbekistan since 1998 for what the Uzbek government claimed was an “attempt to undermine the constitutional regime of the country.” But Usmanov had been granted Russian citizenship, and thus could not be extradited, since Russia, like many other countries, refuses to extradite its citizens. On July 24, 2005, he was due to be released. Instead, he simply disappeared, claims his wife, Aisha. “When we came to the prison, we were simply told that Alisher was released at 5:00 AM and went off with the people who met him,” Aisha says.It was later determined that he had been abducted directly from prison by the fsb and its Uzbek counterpart. Usmanov was delivered to the airport and flown to Uzbekistan. In November 2005 he was convicted of “undermining the constitutional system,” participation in a criminal organization and falsifying documents, and sentenced to an eight-year prison term in Uzbekistan.Perhaps no party has benefited more from the rats program than the Karimov regime, to whom Russia has supplied a steady stream of dissidents, refugees, and alleged terrorists. Reflecting the centrality of Uzbekistan to the program, the rats headquarters was moved from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. And in 2005, Russia placed the Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir party, which is legal in Europe and the United States, on its national list of terrorist organizations, at the request of Uzbekistan. “The international terrorist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have made attempts to spread their activity to Russia,” fsb director Patrushev later declared. Uzbekistan's enemies are now officially considered a threat to Russian national security—another political gift for Karimov.In fact, to a surprising degree, it appears that the other countries involved in rats—especially Uzbekistan and China—have benefited far more from the program than Russia. Russia routinely ships back individuals sought by other countries but apparently receives none of those it seeks from them. According to information from Yelena Ryabinina, in 2007 Russia began to deport Chinese members of Falun Gong, a movement banned in China in 1999 for being “opposed to the Communist Party of China and the central government, that preaches idealism, theism, and feudal superstition,” according to the Chinese government. Publicly available fsb reports indicate that in the past decade, there were very few detentions of Russians in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, or China, and not a single suspect in a terrorism or extremism case has been extradited to Russia from Uzbekistan. It seems like little recompense for facilitating activities that could expose Russia to international condemnation.What, then, does Russia gain from rats? The payoff, from the Kremlin's point of view, is a higher profile for the sco, which Russia sees as a counterbalance to the NATO and U.S. presence in the region. In the 1990s, the sco—then known as the Shanghai Five—was a marginal group. Now, its meetings are attended by the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India and Mongolia. The sco's growing profile has inspired the Kremlin to think that Russia might once again play a crucial role in the region—an impossible dream without the support of Uzbekistan and China. 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Russian intelligence a Cold which sees the U.S. and its allies on undermining they have made public to that to themselves of that KGB the Russian secret services remain in the the same the West that of Cold At the same time, the of intelligence officials to the even when with Soviet it for Russian leaders to at any independent of information provided by the secret services. this has in and in Kremlin at and especially when dealing with Russia's or terrorism in the the fsb makes paranoid claims about the involvement of Western intelligence services in the activities of Islamist the ability of those services to help Moscow and extradite who have Russia. As a result, Putin's secret services have seriously Russia's A Russian hand is now every time a Kremlin opponent is in to a mostly threat of Western intelligence former Soviet Russia's secret services to the Kremlin's who an equally of an In response, the Kremlin seeks to all of the secret services in the of their a vicious one that effectively even that the fsb and svr more and brutal

We are faced with a new reality where our reliance on internet access to fulfil basic civil tasks is threatened by increasing personal and societal cyber vulnerability. This dichotomy of dependence and vulnerability requires a new framework for understanding the legal and human rights status of this evolving technological reality. A number of theories have sought to explain how internet access could attain the status of a human right. These include reliance on the freedom of expression protection offered by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More recent approaches have suggested that international customary law could apply, or that internet access could attain the status of an auxiliary human right. Despite repeated demands by international institutions to address modern cyber challenges through a human rights lens, this assortment of legal approaches has failed to garner a consensus view in the international community. The article reviews the merits of each of these arguments, and grounds the debate in the lens of this reality of dependence and vulnerability. Of the four options surveyed, we find that auxiliary righthood is the most promising approach, but that additional research is required to substantiate the claims.

Introduction. The issue of protecting and promoting respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms guaranteed by the International Charter is firmly on the international agenda. Although the primary responsibility for ensuring human rights rests with States as key actors in international law, human rights defenders play an important role in this area. The activities of human rights defenders, whose right «individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels» enshrined in United Nations Declaration 53/144 (1998), often involve significant risks. For example, human rights defenders themselves often fall victim to human rights abuses. Such cases not only violate the human rights of human rights defenders, but also pose a threat to a democratic society and the rule of law in general. The existence of such a situation requires an effective and timely response from states and international organizations, in particular at the international regional level. The main results of the study. The article analyzes the provisions of international regional legal acts (African Union, Organization of American States, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe etc.) on the situation of human rights defenders. It is noted that the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders (1998) serves as a model act in this area. The article emphasizes the need to develop and adopt within regional organizations acts on the legal status of human rights defenders and guarantees of their activities, which take into account the specifics of the geographical region. It is also noted that at the international regional level there are relevant monitoring bodies (Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, Commissioner for Human Rights, Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Justice Operators etc.), whose functions are to study the legal status of human rights defenders, collect information on violations human best practices in combating such violations. Results. The legal basis for the status of human rights defenders and guarantees of their activities at the international regional level (AU, OAS, OSCE, CoE, etc.) is based on the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders (1998). At the same time, the adopted regional acts (resolutions, declarations, guidelines, etc.) enshrine guarantees and measures to protect the rights of human rights defenders, taking into account the specifics of the geographical region, cultural characteristics, traditions, religion. In addition, special monitoring bodies and procedures have been established within regional organizations to investigate human rights violations of the defenders, develop recommendations to states to prevent and eradicate such violations, and generalize and disseminate best practices in this area.

How can information campaigns of nongovernmental human rights organizations (HROs) to “name and shame” human rights violators improve human rights conditions? Is the effect direct—does HRO targeting induce violating states to change their behavior? Or is the effect indirect—does pressure by third parties mediate the relationship between HRO actions and changes in human rights practices? The boomerang and spiral models suggest HRO activity provokes third parties, such as other states and international organizations, to pressure violating states. This pressure, in turn, drives violating states to improve human rights conditions. On the other hand, recent empirical work finds third-party pressure can further degrade human rights conditions. In this paper we provide a comprehensive analysis of how these individual factors—HRO activities and pressure from third parties—work together in the larger chain of causal events influencing human rights conditions. Using a causal mediation model, we examine whether HRO campaigning improves human rights directly or if the effect is mediated by costs imposed by powerful actors through sanctions and military interventions. We find that, although HRO activities have an overall positive effect on human rights conditions, the negative effects of third-party pressure somewhat diminish the positive effects.

This paper focuses on human rights violation ,societal abuse and the language used in perpetrating these vices in Cross River State, Nigeria. Human rights in the state are particularly violated through child-trafficking, child-abuse, spousal rights and rights in the work-place. Child-trafficking is rampant in certain Local Government Areas (LGA) of the state, such as Yakurr and Calabar South. Although this is also a form of child-abuse it was discovered that the latter is highlighted in the home where children are used for labour and invariably denied access to education. Spousal rights are also reflected in the home where the wife is subjected to a ‘policy’ of lack of freedom to a job, further education etc by her husband. It was also observed that corruption was a harbinger of human rights violation, particularly in the civil service. Language use in persuasion and coercion play an important role in how successful these violations are carried out. However, government through its agencies, such as the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP) has been active to some extent in curbing these violations. It is hoped that this paper, will help to galvanize further action and interactions on the subject of human rights in Cross River State in particular and Nigeria in general. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n1s1p210

This chapter explains the emergence of antimask laws. It expounds on the origins of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Similar to organizations affiliated with Ku Klux Klan, the American Knights supported racial segregation while also proclaiming itself as a religion. The chapter discusses how organizations like the Ku Klux Klan benefit from the anonymous free speech that was established by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Manuel Talley. It elaborates on how New York City defended the mask ban to promote public safety at crowded public events. Pussy Riot protestors and the Ku Klux Klan fronted restrictions under the same New York antimask law even though the protestors only wanted to make a statement over Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime in Russia, while the Ku Klux Klan spread their racial hatred.

This paper examines whether U.S. aid improves the human rights conditions in aid-recipient countries. Using the cross-sectional time series data for more than 100 countries from 2007 to 2018, the multivariate regression model shows a significant positive relationship between U.S. aid receipts and human rights improvement. When the U.S. increases its foreign aid amount over the recipient country's GDP by 1% point, the level of human rights conditions in aid-recipient countries subsequently improves by 0.5%. This paper contributes to the literature in three dimensions. First, it compares the annual change in U.S. aid and the subsequent annual change in human rights instead of the absolute amount of U.S. aid and the absolute level of human rights that are used in the literature. Second, it uses the Fragile States Index as a measure of human rights which reflects the human rights conditions more comprehensively than the measures used by literature. Third, it uses the actual disbursement amount of U.S. aid rather than the obligation amount used by the literature. This paper provides evidence that U.S. foreign aid enhances human rights conditions in aid-recipient countries which is the desired outcome.

The idea of compliance assumes that International Human Rights are existent, protected and are actively enforced in different states. Measuring compliance is an exercise in policing this enforcement but what this exercise will not show is the state of the human rights in each state. This paper explores the inadequacies of using compliance as a lens to consider the normative effects of international law using Zimbabwe as a case study. This study seeks to illustrate that there has to be a wider outlook which creates space for scrutiny of the state of human rights prior to producing tables and figures which shed no light on the media censorship or the rigging of elections.

Neste artigo, as categorias de “centro”, “periferia” e “semiperiferia” são revisadas por meio dos estudos da sociedade mundial. O centro da sociedade mundial tem como diferenciação primária a funcional, enquanto outras formas de diferenciação, como diferenciação segmentar e estratificação, permanecem dominantes na periferia. A semiperiferia pode ser definida como uma arena na qual a diferenciação funcional luta pela hegemonia contra outras formas de diferenciação. Em primeiro lugar, o centro é definido por sua proximidade cognitiva assim como por seu poder de definição e interpretação contra a periferia, ao passo que a periferia só pode aceitar as interpretações, definições e decisões realizadas no centro. O surgimento da identidade nacional como uma identidade cultural fora do centro não pode ser entendida sem relação com o centro. No entanto, identidades culturais semiperiféricas e periféricas impedem algumas nações de se modernizarem em direção à diferenciação funcional. Em segundo lugar, o centro da sociedade mundial moderna é definido pela implementação de diferenciação funcional, enquanto um importante indicador da fronteira entre o centro e a periferia é o status dos direitos humanos. Assim, podemos dizer que todas as regiões estão expostas aos efeitos estruturais da sociedade mundial, especialmente aquele da economia mundial, mas todos os sistemas funcionais não foram implementados igualmente em todo o mundo. À medida em que, no centro, o acesso aos recursos sociais é garantido pelos direitos humanos individuais (direitos fundamentais), a população, na semiperiferia e periferia, necessita participar de organizações particulares ou de laços sociais para obter benefícios do mundo moderno e da economia mundial. Em terceiro lugar, enquanto a periferia da sociedade mundial é vista em “estados falidos”, este artigo propõe que os regimes autoritários são semiperiféricos. Sociedades na semiperiferia são caracterizadas pela dominação dos sistemas político e econômico sobre outros sistemas funcionais. A moderna teoria dos sistemas chama esta sociedade de sociedade organizacional.

What is the link between democratic backsliding and human rights? Existing literature has focused almost exclusively on the effect of increasing democratic features on improvements in human rights. In contrast, we know less regarding the impact of decreasing democracy (i.e., democratic backsliding) on a state’s human rights conditions. With the growing influence of antidemocratic movements in many democracies recently, it is imperative that we explore the relationship between democratic backsliding and human rights conditions. We suspect that democratic backsliding has a substantial negative impact on human rights conditions. We posit that countries experiencing a period of democratic backsliding will also experience human rights violations to a greater degree. Additionally, we maintain that the scale of the backsliding matters, wherein states experiencing more democratic backsliding also experience more substantial reductions in human rights conditions. In testing these assertions, we find strong empirical support using a range of data sources and model specifications.

This article examines, on the basis of international human rights norms, the controversies that exist in South Korean society with respect to North Korean human rights issues. The article looks at current human rights conditions in North Korea; the root causes of these human rights concerns; the conditions faced by the problems associated with planned defection; reactions to the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act passed by the U.S. Congress; and the direction that should be taken to improve human rights conditions in the country. We can only expect a continuation of debate within South Korean society on these issues until a fundamental point of agreement is reached, one that can serve as a rational and practical basis for improving the human rights situation in North Korea. Key words: North Korea, human rights-East Asia, South Korea Introduction Issues regarding North Korea and its policies have always been under the spotlight in South Korean society. It should perhaps be of no surprise that such issues are being discussed ever more frequently as Korea's economy further advances and its democracy continues to mature. Since the end of the cold war, international concern over nuclear weapons development and human rights conditions in North Korea has grown steadily. Undoubtedly, South Korea's role in persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions and improve the living conditions of North Korean citizens is paramount as South Korea works to build a solid foundation for an eventual peaceful reunification of the two Koreas. In order to succeed, the people of South Korea need to reach a fundamental agreement on the issues at hand. From this agreement, the government needs to develop and employ policies that have the support of the international community and South Korean people. Within South Korean society, many different opinions exist on the North Korean nuclear issue. Similarly, political parties, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and media outlets show little agreement on the issue of human rights in North Korea. The lack of public consensus on these issues is not the problem; rather, the problem is the hostility displayed between groups that hold opposing views, which extends to their unwillingness to listen to different opinions on the issues. Conflict and a lack of trust persist when what South Korea truly needs at this time is diversity and creativity. This article examines, based on international human rights norms, the controversies that exist in South Korean society with respect to North Korean human rights issues. The issues under examination are as follows: the current human rights situation in North Korea; the root causes of these human rights concerns; the conditions faced by displaced persons; the problems associated with planned defections; the reactions to the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 passed by the U.S. Congress; and the most desirable direction to take in order to improve the human rights situation in North Korea. The Current Human Rights Situation in North Korea Few would object to the observation that the quality of life in North Korea is remarkably poor when held up to the standards set by various human rights conventions and other nations. To date, North Korea has entered into four international human rights conventions: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). From the late 1990s until recently, North Korea has also submitted ICCPR, ICESCR, CRC and CEDAW reports to the corresponding committees, and followed examination procedures in the face of international calls to improve its human rights situation. North Korea has also made some efforts to improve the living conditions of its people. …