Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World by Carrie Booth Walling

Abstract

Reviewed by: Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World by Carrie Booth Walling Rebecca Sanders (bio) Carrie Booth Walling, Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World (Routledge 2022), ISBN 9780367902124, 194 pages. Carrie Booth Walling’s Human Rights and Justice for All: Demanding Dignity in the United States and Around the World provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to international human rights. Geared primarily towards university students, but also useful for scholars, professionals, and activists seeking to orient themselves, the book offers six thematic chapters and a human rights advocacy toolkit. Walling frames the pursuit of human rights as an active political project and guides readers through major issue areas, highlighting human rights deficits and violations, relevant international legal standards, and activist campaigns for change. Interspersed throughout the text, Walling profiles a diverse range of human rights campaigners, both widely and lesser known (e.g. Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, Indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec climate activist Xiye Bastida, and forensic physician Dr. Şebnem Korur Fincancı), as well as several human rights campaigns and initiatives (e.g. the UN’s Free and Equal Campaign for LGBTI rights, the Syrian White Helmets’ humanitarian rescue mission, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ farmworker advocacy in Florida), giving a face to human rights advocacy. This effort to continually link broad human rights principles back to the [End Page 352] people and processes that demand and implement rights, or as Walling frames it, the lived experience of human rights, is one of the major strengths of the book. The thematic chapters introduce readers to inter-related human rights challenges and then provide in depth illustrative case studies from around the world, all of which are well-documented in thorough endnotes. For instance, Chapter 2 on equality and non-discrimination examines systemic anti-Black racism in the US criminal justice system and Chinese repression and forced assimilation of the Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority under the guise of counterterrorism. Chapter 3 on the interdependence of human rights invokes Michael Goodhart’s “negative interdependence” framework to explore the intersections of class, racial, and political deprivations and exclusions that fueled the Flint, Michigan water crisis. Later, the chapter shifts to review the Islamic State’s sexual violence against Yazidi women and girls, examining overlapping vectors of gendered, religious, and ethnic insecurity. International crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes are analyzed in Chapter 4, which covers a range of cases and developments including the Rwandan genocide, the development of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, RUF atrocities in Sierra Leone, and grotesque war crimes in Syria. Chapter 5 on justice and reconciliation explores a variety of models of transitional justice including trials, truth commissions, apologies, memorialization, and reparations and introduces readers to concepts of retributive and restorative justices. Case studies include post-dictatorship trials in Argentina, the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and less conventionally, the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission—an unofficial community-led initiative to shed light on the 1979 massacre of anti-racist activists perpetrated by white supremacists in Greensboro, North Carolina. This latter case, along with aforementioned case studies on US criminal justice and the Flint water crisis, make the text especially useful for American students, who often struggle to critically connect domestic politics with international human rights challenges. The final two chapters examine mechanisms of human rights adoption, monitoring, and implementation. Chapter 6 reviews patterns and practices of civil society mobilization and the dynamics of Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s “transnational advocacy networks,” interspersed with numerous examples such as the work of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo or Human Rights Watch. The chapter goes on to explain the institutional international human rights machinery including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Human Rights Council, Special Procedures, and Treaty Bodies. Students can also download a supplemental seven-page file from the Routledge website which includes a list of international and regional treaties and legal instruments, trials, tribunals, and investigative bodies, and a range of human rights non-governmental organizations and journals, many of which include direct hyperlinks...