Support For Human Rights Research Articles

Realization of Human Security in Light of Good Governance

Support of human rights and the appearance of “human security” issue in the new system of international law as a newfangled concept, has led to a change in traditional outlook towards security. In the present paper beside taking into consideration the concept of security in Realist and Liberal Perspectives, the developmental performance of the state regarding enforcement of rules (as the first serious addressee of providing and guaranteeing human rights in international rights system) from national security with a focus on human security in the context of good governance was considered as well. The primary objective of the study was to understand the effect of good governance on human security realization. In such a way that states would be able to increase the coefficient of human security provision and guaranty by changing the method of governance in their territory. Also, reforming the governance structure besides taking steps to strengthen individuals in the face of human insecurity is also a coherent approach to providing a helpful background for civil society.

South Africa’s Reform Diplomacy and the Legitimacy of the UN Security Council

ABSTRACTUsing the case study of South Africa, this article examines how influential outsider states perceive the legitimacy of the UN Security Council and whether they can perform a critical role in affecting the legitimacy of the institution. The article demonstrates that South Africa’s reform diplomacy challenges the authority of the existing membership of the Council but not the legitimacy of the original mandate of the Council as the guarantor of international peace and stability. Such a reform agenda allows for promoting South Africa’s own candidacy as a new permanent member of the Council. Despite its activism in promoting such reform, South Africa’s diplomacy is undermined by its incapacity to influence the positions of the permanent five members, the lack of support by other African states, and its own ambivalent foreign policy that oscillates between support for human rights and allegiance to the global South.

United Nations Endorsement & Support for Human Rights: An Experiment on Women's Rights in Pakistan

The United Nations is the organization charged with developing and promoting international human rights law. One of the primary ways that the United Nations tries to do that is by regularly reviewing the human rights practices of member states and then recommending new policies for that state to implement. Although this expends considerable resources, a number of obstacles have made it difficult to empirically assess whether the United Nations’ review process actually causes countries to improve their human rights practices. In order to study this topic, we conducted an experiment in Pakistan that tested whether respondents were more likely to support policies aimed at improving women’s rights when they learned that the reforms were proposed by the United Nations. Our results indicate that the respondents who were randomly informed of the United Nations endorsement not only expressed higher support for the policy reforms, but also were more likely to express willingness to “mobilize” in ways that would help the reforms be implemented. Our treatment did not have any effect, however, on respondents that did not already have confidence in the United Nations. This suggests that the international human rights regime may only be able to aid domestic reformers when there is already faith in those institutions.

Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First-Century Theater: Global Perspectives ed. by Florian N. Becker, Paola S. Hernández, and Brenda Werth

Reviewed by: Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First-Century Theater: Global Perspectives ed. by Florian N. Becker, Paola S. Hernández, and Brenda Werth Amanda Boyle Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First-Century Theater: Global Perspectives. Edited by Florian N. Becker, Paola S. Hernández, and Brenda Werth. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. xii + 248 pp. $85.00 cloth. Editors Becker, Hernández, and Werth respond to and comment on the ongoing conversation regarding the intersection of human rights and theatre in [End Page 325] their collection of essays, Imagining Human Rights in the Twenty-First-Century Theater: Global Perspectives. Although we are only a decade and a half into the twenty-first century, this book addresses how far we have come in that time, and how much father we have still to go with the use of theatre and performance to effect change in improving human rights. The foreword, “Postnational Theater Studies,” written by Jill Lane, provides an example of a male flamenco singer whose song lamented a poor man who was forced into the streets by a bank in Seville, Spain, in 2012. Lane notes that this event offers a strong point of entry into “the role that theater and performance can play in relation to human rights practice today,” because of its targeted use of the body in performance to react against injustice (ix). The editors introduce key concepts such as theatre as public imaginary and Habermas’s notion of the critical public sphere, as well as describing how the two come together: “The establishment and operation of human rights has depended and continues to depend at every turn on efforts of imagination” (8). The editors argue that human rights are a “core concern” for the twenty-first century. Through its focus on the intersection of performance and activism, this collection of essays sheds new light on performance aesthetics and sites of inequality. The contributors recognize how theatre and performance act as a “distinctive representational practice” in the fight for human rights (2). This volume has two central aims: first, “to chart the extraordinary diversity, depth, and complexity of the encounter between theater, performance, and human rights over the past two decades,” and second, “to open the way toward understanding the character and significance of this encounter” (1). The book is thus an exploration of how theatre and performance are used in support of human rights. The book is divided into three thematic sections: Transnational Justice and Civil Society, The “War on Terror” and the Global Economic Order, and Transnational Publics. The three sections and twelve chapters examine plays and performances across six continents. The theatrical and performance events are closely analyzed in an attempt to investigate phenomenological and physical experiences of theatre and their impact on human rights. The editors asked their contributors to consider the aesthetics, ethics, and effects of theatre and performance as a tool for social change. Section I investigates how theatre and performance assist spectators in reimagining the politics of human rights in the face of large-scale social and national traumas. Ann Lambright focuses on how dead bodies and the mimetic embodiment of the dead can serve in the commemoration of national tragedy as she examines the relationship between the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation [End Page 326] Commission and an activist theatre troupe, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (chapter 1). Essays from Luís Madureir (chapter 2) and Paola S. Hernández (chapter 3) investigate contrasting spaces (urban vs. rural, military vs. public) in Mozambique and Buenos Aires, respectively. Brenda Werth examines two plays from Latin America’s Southern Cone that reference the Bosnian War and the Beslan schoolhouse massacre in Russia in order to question dramatic violence as a means for addressing state violence (chapter 4). Section II examines how theatrical practices have met challenges and obstacles (cultural and financial) in the wake of September 11, 2001, and President George W. Bush’s declared War on Terror. In this context, Lindsey Mantoan and Christina Wilson address the use of documentary theatre. Mantoan looks at Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo’s play Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom (2004) (chapter 5) and the play’s pushback to the media’s spectacle...

Safeguarding what and for whom? The role of institutional fit in shaping REDD+ in Mexico

McDermott, C. L., and C. Ituarte-Lima. 2016. Safeguarding what and for whom? The role of institutional fit in shaping REDD+ in Mexico. Ecology and Society 21(1):9.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08088-210109

Europe and Azerbaijan: The End of Shame

The autocratic regime of President Ilham Aliyev in Azerbaijan has managed to steal the soul of Europe’s most important human rights institution, the Council of Europe. This article reveals Azerbaijan’s hidden agenda to neutralize the “naming and shaming” strategy of the international human-rights movement, build influence through “caviar diplomacy,” and unleash a wave of repression against human-rights defenders. For the Council of Europe, whose function is to defend the European Convention of Human Rights, to align itself with a regime jailing humanrights activists is unprecedented and deeply disturbing. As the space for human-rights organizations to operate is shrinking in many parts of the world today, the capture of the Council of Europe sends a warning to all supporters of human rights, and not only in Europe.

The question concerning human rights and human rightlessness: disposability and struggle in the Bhopal gas disaster

In the midst of concerns about diminishing political support for human rights, individuals and groups across the globe continue to invoke them in their diverse struggles against oppression and injustice. Yet both those concerned with the future of human rights and those who champion rights activism as essential to resistance, assume that human rights – as law, discourse and practices of rights claiming – can ameliorate rightlessness. In questioning this assumption, this article seeks also to reconceptualise rightlessness by engaging with contemporary discussions of disposability and social abandonment in an attempt to be attentive to forms of rightlessness co-emergent with the operations of global capital. Developing a heuristic analytics of rightlessness, it evaluates the relatively recent attempts to mobilise human rights as a frame for analysis and action in the campaigns for justice following the 3 December 1984 gas leak from Union Carbide Corporation’s (UCC) pesticide manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India. Informed by the complex effects of human rights in the amelioration of rightlessness, the article calls for reconstituting human rights as an optics of rightlessness.

Culture, individual differences, and support for human rights: A general review.

Cultural and individual differences in support for universal human rights are reviewed. Cross-cultural studies suggest a common international understanding of human rights, and international surveys indicate strong global endorsement of human rights. However, country-specific events can affect support within a country, and a country’s historical culture affects whether civil and political rights, or economic, social, and cultural rights receive stronger support. Individual differences in support for human rights are strongly predicted positively by a sense of identification with all humanity and by concern for other global issues, and negatively by generalized prejudice, authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and right-wing political ideology. Many other individual differences more weakly predict human rights support. Little is known about how concern for human rights develops, and this issue merits sustained research.

Responses to the ‘Arabellions’: The EU in Comparative Perspective — Introduction

This article introduces the themes of this special issue which is devoted to the reactions by external actors including the EU to the events unfolding in the Arab world beginning in December 2010. In particular, we look at the balancing act by external actors between their desire for stability, on the one hand, and their normative principles toward human rights and democracy, on the other. We compare the action (and inaction) of the European Union (EU) with other international and regional players, including the United States, Russia, Turkey and Israel. The contributions assess the response of these actors to the Arabellions events and analyse changes in their approaches to the Arab region. We ask three questions: (1) How have external actors assessed the ‘Arabellions’ and what role did they see for themselves in this context? (2) Which goals and instruments did external actors pursue toward the MENA region? In particular, how did they deal with conflicting goals, such as support for human rights and democracy, on the one hand, and concerns about security and stability, on the other? (3) How can we explain the varying responses of external actors to the Arabellions?

Developing public support for human rights in the United Kingdom: reasserting the importance of socio-economic rights

Public support for human rights in the UK remains limited, partly as a result of misleading media coverage, as well as political hostility. The UK Human Rights Act, in particular, has been under sustained attack and is now threatened by the Conservative Party's drive to repeal it. We analyse recent quantitative and qualitative data on public attitudes in order to learn how to increase public support for human rights practice and principles. The conclusion we reach is that, in order to increase support for human rights in the UK, a central objective should be to shift the focus of human rights discourse so that it better reflects the every-day concerns of the UK public. We consider that this would best be achieved through emphasising socio-economic rights. This could be an especially relevant strategy in the current austerity context which presents both opportunities and threats with regard to mobilising support for human rights.

Donors in a Dictatorship: Giving, Civil Society, and Democratic Action in Communist East Germany

This history of charitable collections in the East German dictatorship (the Protestant organized Bread for the World and the student-led Initiative: Hope for Nicaragua) analyzes the relationship between philanthropy, civil society, and democratic action. These collections, widely unknown outside of the former German Democratic Republic, indicate that independent associations could form to organize philanthropic collections for international causes in this dictatorship. These groups provided the basis for actions outside of state control by engaging East Germans in support of human rights and individual need internationally. As such, my work shows that philanthropy can both exist within a dictatorship and encourage democratic action.

Democratization, regional integration, and human rights: the case of the ASEAN intergovernmental commission on human rights

The establishment of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) is extremely puzzling, because many ASEAN members have never been strong supporters of human rights, nor have they been advocates for intervening in the name of human rights. Why did ASEAN members, then, agree to establish the AICHR? We argue that the AICHR is the result of two factors: democratization in key regional countries and the intensifying effort of regional integration in the form of the ASEAN Community project. The former factor engendered key agents for pro-human rights initiatives and set the direction of human rights development within ASEAN. The latter factor weakened the old norms of the ASEAN Way and engendered new regional norms such as good governance and accountability, which were conducive to the development of human rights. It also provided persuasive power based on a shared sense of collective purpose in eliciting agreement from the authoritarian members for the AICHR. We support our argument with the analysis of all ASEAN vision statements and its ministerial meeting statements from 1967 to 2010 as well as our own interviews. The analysis shows that the emergence of new regional norms was closely associated with the development of the ASEAN Community project, and this normative change resulted in a different view of human rights, whose promotion would positively affect regional integration and stability. Our argument suggests a different perspective of a regional human rights mechanism essentially as a regional body reflecting regional norms and values.

Lessons From The Mongolia’s Millennium Development Goal-9, and Its Achievement, Opportunities

The paper contains the outputs, conclusions and recommendations of the “Support to Achieving the MDG-9, Phase II” Project (2009-2011). It has shown that reflect two interrelated activities aimed at contributing to a better quality of Mongolia’s democratic governance and describes the process of detailed account of the Project activities that have resulted in the first ever set of institutionalized and fully nationally owned democratic governance indicators in support of human rights, democratic governance and zero tolerance to corruption. The MDG-9 Project believes that the experiences shared the benefit a wide range of audiences, including international organizations and other countries that are interested in developing governance indicators and institutionalizing monitoring mechanisms. It also will be of use to the Mongolian public – both government and civil society for awareness-raising and policy action. Those mentioned descriptions and optional explanations have been categorized on the substantial narrative reports of the project implementation and background of extended activities in the last period of 2009-2011. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5564/mjia.v0i18.67 Mongolian Journal of International Affairs No.18 2013: 16-29

Prejudices, social competencies and political orientations in relation to schools’ hidden curriculum

In the framework of a one-and-a-half year long research and development project implemented by the Kurt Lewin Foundation, we studied the relationships between organizational culture and the hidden curriculum of schools, as well as how students’ knowledge, opinions, and attitudes are connected to active citizenship, democratic values, social and political issues, and questions related to minorities. We were interested to discover whether we could find any connections between school life, teaching competencies, teachers’ knowledge and students’ extreme right sentiments, and political attitudes. According to our hypothesis, students in a more democratic school should hold more democratic views, and should be more open towards minorities, demonstrating more support for human rights and the rule of law. Our research – focusing on graduating student cohorts, studying in secondary schools located in Eastern Hungary – only partly confirmed our hypothesis: the schools involved in the project influenced students’ knowledge, opinions, and attitudes regarding issues within schools. However, with respect to most questions, there was a limited relationship between school environment and student attitudes regarding social-political issues outside the schools. Our research also explored the underlying reasons behind the results and – connected to that – possible ways to ameliorate attitudes, from the school management level to educational policy-making.A Kurt Lewin Alapítvány másféléves kutatási-fejlesztési programja során megvizsgáltuk, hogy milyen kapcsolat van az iskolák szervezeti kultúrája, rejtett tanterve és a diákok aktív állampolgársággal, demokratikus értékekkel, szociális és politikai kérdésekkel, valamint kisebbségekkel kapcsolatos tudása, vélekedése és attitűdje között. Arra voltunk kíváncsiak, hogy található-e kapcsolat az iskolai élet, a tanítás és a tanárok ismeretei, kompetenciái és attitűdje, valamint a diákok szélsőjobboldalhoz kapcsolódó érzelmei és politikai attitűdje között. Hipotézisünk szerint a demokratikusabb iskolák diákjai maguk is inkább demokratikusak, nyitottabbak a kisebbségek felé, jobban támogatják az emberi jogokat és a jogállami kereteket. Kutatásunk, melyben kelet-magyarországi középiskolák végzős diákjai vettek rész, csak részben igazolta feltevésünket: a programba bevont iskolák a diákok iskolán belüli életére vonatkozóan bírnak befolyásoló hatással a diákok tudására, véleményére és attitűdjeire. Mindazonáltal a legtöbb kérdés esetében az iskola falain kívüli élet társadalmi-politikai ügyeit illetően nincsenek jelentős hatással. Kutatásunk annak is utána járt, hogy milyen magyarázatok találhatók az eredményekre és - ehhez kapcsolódóan - milyen fejlesztési lehetőségek állnak rendelkezésre az iskolaigazgatási szinttől egészen az oktatáspolitikai döntéshozásig. Jelen cikkünkben a diákok adott társadalmi-politikai kérdéseket illető attitűdjeire vonatkozó eredményeket és a releváns fejlesztési javaslatokat ismertetjük.

Human rights within education: assessing the justifications

While respect for human rights has long been endorsed as a goal of education, only recently has significant attention been paid to the need to incorporate rights within educational processes. Current support for human rights within education, however, has a variety of motivations. This paper provides a theoretical exploration of these diverse justifications, leading to a normative proposal. A distinction is made between status-based and instrumental approaches. Human rights within education can be justified from a status-based perspective on the basis of their indivisibility, meaning that the right to education must not entail an infringement of other rights. Yet while rights-respecting environments are important sites of learning, instrumental justifications can be a source of concern, if the goals in question are irrelevant or inimical to the enhancement of rights. An argument, therefore, is put forward for a simultaneous realisation of embodiment of and opportunity for learning about human rights.

Explaining Support for Human Rights Protections: A Judicial Role?

Scholars have identified a number of societal features that contribute to the support of human rights. Controlling for the most prominent of these factors, we examine the degree to which judicial independence (JI) exerts an autonomous positive effect on human rights. We use a cross-sectional design, drawing on data for the 27 European Union members and its four prospective members, in conjunction with ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. We find that multiple indices of JI based on expert judgment, which include institutional but predominantly behavioral measures, reveal JI producing the most powerful positive effect in the support of human rights among the variables included in the analysis. Multiple measures of JI based on public surveys of the trustworthiness of a society's judicial institutions exert a positive, but not statistically significant, effect on support of human rights. Indeed, these latter effects are eclipsed by the relative equality of a society's national executive and legislature and its GDP/capita. Surprisingly, judicial review exerts no statistically significant effect on human rights protection, counter to the conventional wisdom that has driven so many constitutional designers in the post-World War II era. Our findings suggest that, while an independent judiciary holds the greatest potential for protecting human rights, constitutional drafters should focus less on institutional elements related to judicial independence and judicial review. Rather, those crafting constitutions intended to protect human rights should look to dispersing government power by enhancing electoral competitiveness and fostering judicial independence.

Fostering young people’s support for participatory human rights through their developmental niches.

The last 6 decades of empirical research on civic engagement among young people living in democracies and of the recognition of international human rights have seen the achievement of many milestones. This article focuses on some connections between these 2 areas and examines the ways in which everyday settings such as neighborhoods and the schools that exist within them can foster support for human rights (especially the practice of participatory rights) among adolescents. Secondary analysis of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Civic Education (CIVED) Study (data collected in 1999 from nationally representative samples of 14-year-olds in 28 countries) is presented. A cluster analysis of 12 attitudinal scales in 5 countries sharing the Western European tradition (Australia, England, Finland, Sweden, and the United States) is presented. A new conceptual model is also introduced, a modification of Super and Harkness's Developmental Niche. This model frames an analysis unpacking some findings from the CIVED Study and focusing on the everyday experiences and neighborhood niches for the development of participatory human rights. The larger message is that research on social justice attitudes among young people is a valuable form of social advocacy and action.

A Life of Quality: Informing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities

Quality of life is a multidimensional construct requiring self-determination and advocacy skills, employment, and recognition of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms for improvements to be made. In this study, the constructs of quality of life and self-determination were applied to the rights-based framework guaranteed by the recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (UNCRPD) to inform monitoring and implementation efforts. Persons with disabilities interested in advocacy from Nepal, Zambia, and the United States were surveyed. Significant country differences were found in ratings of quality of life, self-determination, and personal human rights, but similar low ratings in country support of human rights were found. Through the coordinated improvement of significant factors, this study supports quality of life as a useful measure for informing UNCRPD. Future research should focus on the applicability of quality of life to monitoring UNCRPD and policy and program development.

Personality and Support for Universal Human Rights: A Review and Test of a Structural Model

All individual differences that predict support for international human rights are first reviewed: support for human rights is linked most positively to "globalism" (other international and environmental concerns), "identification with all humanity," principled moral reasoning, benevolence, and dispositional empathy. It is related most negatively to ethnocentrism and its root dispositions, the social dominance orientation, and authoritarianism. Other correlates are also noted. Secondly, a structural model of the effects of authoritarianism, social dominance, ethnocentrism and identification with all humanity upon commitment to human rights is presented and tested. Across 2 studies (Study 1, N=218 nonstudent adults; Study 2, N=102 university students), ethnocentrism and identification with all humanity directly predicted human rights commitment. The effects of authoritarianism upon this commitment were fully mediated through enhanced ethnocentrism and reduced identification with all humanity. The effects of social dominance were similar, but its direct effect upon human rights commitment remained significant and was not, in the second study, mediated by reduced dispositional empathy.

An entertainment-education study of secondary delegitimization in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An important goal in educational initiatives that aim to promote peace in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is overcoming mutual delegitimization. The drama Plonter (or “serious mishap” in Hebrew) aims to address a more subtle phenomenon referred to as “secondary delegitimization” (i.e., delegitimization among people who consider themselves supporters of human rights and do not recognize how they, in fact, contribute to delegitimization of the adversary group). Drawing on entertainment–education theory, this study examined the strategies the drama used to achieve this goal, and the responses of its viewers (n = 286) measured before and after they viewed the drama. Findings indicate that the drama employed two main strategies: humor and an attempt to elicit identification. Viewers' attitudes toward the issues addressed indicated a lack of consistency in their preliminary attitudes regarding human rights. After viewing the drama, a statistically significant shift toward enhanced legitimization of Palestinian...