Understanding Of Human Rights Research Articles

Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope (review)

Reviewed by: Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope Carrie Booth Walling (bio) Sonia Cardenas , Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) 248 pp., ISBN 978-0-8122-4197-6. The human rights record of Latin America is decidedly mixed. Plagued by high levels of poverty and inequality, legal impunity, weak democratic institutions, and strong militaries, Latin America has experienced severe levels of human rights abuse. Human rights violations in the region have included torture, extrajudicial killing, forced disappearance, and political imprisonment. Individually and in tandem, authoritarian regimes in Latin America have used repression and state-sponsored terrorism in the name of political stability and national security. Human rights abuse in Latin America, until recently, had been considered among the worst in the developing world.1 The regional experience of human rights has been one of significant political terror; but Latin America is also home to powerful human rights organizations and precedent-setting efforts to secure justice and accountability for government human rights abuse. Indeed, Latin America has displayed extraordinary leadership in the development and proliferation of international human rights norms and institutions. Latin American countries played an important role in securing human rights language in the United Nations Charter, developed and ratified the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in early 1948 (preceding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and were at the forefront of efforts to ensure state accountability for human rights violations through the development of new human rights standards (protection from forced disappearance, the right to an identity) and the use of transitional justice mechanisms. There is a regional trend toward embracing human rights norms which has been aptly described as a "human rights norms cascade" in Latin America.2 Sonia Cardenas effectively captures this nuanced and complicated history of human rights in a simple but substantively rich introductory text book, Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope. Cardenas' text is an attempt to complicate simple understandings of human rights in Latin America by introducing students to the terror of human rights abuse, the hope of human rights reform, and the challenge of accountability through an examination of regional trends and cross-national dynamics. Cardenas has written her text with two audiences in mind: undergraduate students of human rights and undergraduate students of Latin America. She makes [End Page 1032] human rights concepts accessible for students by examining them within the historical and geographic experience of Latin American countries. This approach reflects a principal goal of the book: to introduce students to the systematic tools and methods for studying human rights while simultaneously introducing them to the lived experience of victims and survivors of human rights abuse. Cardenas invites her readers in "stepping back and getting up close— stepping back to identify key facts and trends, getting up close to hear personal experiences of abuse.3" As a result, the book combines quantitative analysis of human rights trends with qualitative research on the origins of abuse and the dynamics of political reform with personal narratives of survival and official documentation of repression and redress. Cardenas' text is a welcome effort at combining different literatures, analytical approaches and narrative styles, providing students with a rich and multilayered experience of human rights in both principle and practice. Cardenas achieves this by including "Up-Close" text boxes of first-hand accounts and primary documents that function as mini-case studies throughout her scholarly analysis.4 This dual approach cleverly introduces students to the broad content of human rights, perpetrators of abuse, and tools of human rights change. While the book necessarily focuses its analysis narrowly on the violation of physical integrity rights that have plagued Latin America (freedom from torture, extrajudicial execution, forced disappearance, and political imprisonment), it succeeds in introducing students to human rights issues that overlap, but push beyond these particular political and civil rights, hinting at the broad, interconnected, and interdependent character of all human rights. Using "up close" text boxes, Cardenas exposes her readers to diverse human rights issues including femicide, disability rights, sexual orientation rights, labor rights, indigenous rights, and the rights...

Sociology and human rights: what have they got to say about care and dignity?

The focus of this contribution mainly falls on the relevant policy concerning care in the United Kingdom pertaining to older people, people with mental ill health and anyone else in receipt of health and/or social care services. It offers an attempt to consider the impact that sociology could have on improving the ethical practices of care. Attempts to assert rights in residential care have been challenged by a dominant culture that has eroded claims to citizenship. It is argued that this is due to a legal emphasis on regulation through care standards that has limited use because it avoids the realities of care. This contribution argues that a purely legal understanding of human rights is inadequate to address the social realities of inadequate care. The treatment of and provision of care for people living in long-stay institutions requires a human rights framework that operates socially rather than legally to recognise lived experiences in order to empower and emancipate.

'Africanizing' Human Rights in Africa: Nigeria and Kenya Constitutions in Context

In this paper, using the examples of Nigeria and Kenya, I will propose that in spite of claims that human rights norms operated in pre-colonial socio-political African settings, this is not reflected in contemporary practice. Rather the continent is governed by largely borrowed human rights norms. Worse still, baring a few instances since flag independence in countries on the continent, no efforts have been made to Africanize human rights documents at the national level in most African countries. I will argue that where principles of African customary law could have been used to expand the understanding of human rights on the continent or to develop new norms, this has not happened because discourse about Africa’s contributions to human rights principles is frozen on the argument whether human rights are universal or culturally specific.

Disability, Economic Globalization and Privatization: A Case Study of India

People with disabilities are one of the most disenfranchised groups in India. Standardized measurements of disability in India and internationally have overlooked the linkages between the economy and disability. In recent decades, neo-liberal economic reforms imposed in developing countries, under pressure from international financial institutions, have downsized state role, privatized social goods, and encouraged export-led strategies and market-based economics. India’s economic reforms, initiated in 1991, have led to rapid economic growth that is, however, increasingly mal-distributed. This paper investigates the implications of economic restructuring in the arenas of social programs, education, employment, accessibility, health, agriculture and food security, and water and land acquisition from a disability perspective. Our analysis shows that while increased employment opportunities and accessibility have benefitted middle-class and highly-skilled disabled persons, the majority of people with disabilities have been left out of India’s economic affluence. We contend that India’s globalized economy and reduced state role necessitate renewed understanding of human rights, including disability rights.

The politics of motherhood: maternity and women's rights in twentieth-century Chile

With the 2006 election of Michelle Bachelet as the first female president and women claiming fifty percent of her cabinet seats, the political influence of Chilean women has taken a major step forward. Despite a seemingly liberal political climate, Chile has a murky history on women's rights, and progress has been slow, tenuous, and in many cases, non-existent. Chronicling an era of unprecedented modernization and political transformation, Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney examines the negotiations over women's rights and the politics of gender in Chile throughout the twentieth century. Centering her study on motherhood, Pieper Mooney explores dramatic changes in health policy, population paradigms, and understandings of human rights, and reveals that motherhood is hardly a private matter defined only by individual women or couples. Instead, it is intimately tied to public policies and political competitions on nation-state and international levels. The increased legitimacy of women's demands for rights, both locally and globally, has led to some improvements in gender equity. Yet feminists in contemporary Chile continue to face strong opposition from neoconservatism in the Catholic Church and a mixture of public apathy and legal wrangling over reproductive rights and health.

Toward a Critical Anthropology of Security

While matters of security have appeared as paramount themes in a post-9/11 world, anthropology has not developed a critical comparative ethnography of security and its contemporary problematics. In this article I call for the emergence of a critical “security anthropology,” one that recognizes the significance of security discourses and practices to the global and local contexts in which cultural anthropology operates. Many issues that have historically preoccupied anthropology are today inextricably linked to security themes, and anthropology expresses a characteristic approach to topics that today must be considered within a security rubric. A focus on security is particularly important to an understanding of human rights in contemporary neoliberal society. Drawing on examples from Latin America and my own work in Bolivia, I track the decline of neoliberalism and the rise of the security paradigm as a framework for organizing contemporary social life. I suggest that security, rather than a reaction to a terrorist attack that “changed everything,” is characteristic of a neoliberalism that predates the events of 9/11, affecting the subjects of anthropological work and shaping the contexts within which that work is conducted.

Human Rights as Legal Rights

This essay is a reply to Joseph Raz’s ‘Human Rights in the Emerging World Order.’ In that essay Professor Raz commits three errors about human rights. First, he identifies rights with the legal relations that these may entail. Second, he presents human rights as summaries of value, something that does not explain their peremptory force. Third, he considers human rights as continuous with interpersonal rights. A better account of human rights will be more sensitive to the distinctness of human rights as legal rights. Such a theory must, first, draw a clear distinction between legal rights and the legal relations these may be entail (something which Raz himself explained in his earlier analysis of rights). Second, it must highlight the way in which rights are peremptory reasons for action that escape the balancing of values or interests. Third, it ought to locate human rights in an institutional domain appropriate for international relations. Failing to see this distinct role of human rights as legal rights undermines our proper understanding of human rights and their justification.

Queer Existence under Global Governance: A Taiwan Exemplar

Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan has prided itself on steady progress toward liberal democracy with an ever-broadening understanding of human rights that now allegedly includes the rights of gays and lesbians. Yet at the same time, under the child-protection imperative, a series of new laws, litigation, and regulations has been put into place that criminalizes practically all sex-related publications and video images, more specifically any sex-related information, contact, and even inquiries on the Internet. How are we to understand such sexual mass hysteria in Taiwan in an age of seeming social openness and toleration? The present article demonstrates how the politics of sexual stigma and shame that once made up the oppression of gays and lesbians and other sexual minorities in Taiwan has now shifted its field of operation from the realm of culture to that of law. The emergence of this new form of power deployment works not only in collusion with the populist government's urgent desire to consolidate its legitimacy and power, but also in collaboration with expanding global governance through which Taiwan's nation-state status bid hopes to find a promising future at the expense of civil liberties for marginalized sexualities.

The Problem of Subjectivity and the Critique of Human Rights After Foucault

The problem of subjectivity – of how to conceptualise the subject – remains at the threshold of our understanding of human rights, both as a historical construct and a functional, juridical technology. Moving away from the idea of liberalism as the thought relating to political society based on the juridico-contractual relation of sovereign to subject, Foucault’s account of the economic basis for liberal governmentality, developed in the series of lectures delivered during 1978 and 1979, provides scope to reconsider the problem of subjectivity in human rights. Our focus here should be on the possibility of situating the constitution of the subject of human rights within the historical processes associated with the development of the liberal and neo-liberal arts of government, and more specifically at the juncture at which the heterogenous forms of subjectivity associated with homo juridicus (the subject of rights) and homo economicus (the subject of interests) coexist. Further, a critique of human rights with this orientation might be used to address the fundamental political contradiction inherent in the divided subjectivity of the sovereign-subject, and of individual human life as the ultimate biopolitical foundation of the state.

Reframing Violence Against Women as a Human Rights Violation: Evan Stark’s Coercive Control

Evan Stark claims that partner-perpetrated physical abuse and other forms of violence against women ought to be understood as a human rights violation. The authors engage Stark's rhetorically powerful political and analytical innovation by outlining one theoretical and one practical challenge to shifting the paradigm that researchers, advocates, and policy makers use to describe, explain, and remedy the harms of coercive control from misdemeanor assault to human rights violation. The theoretical challenge involves overcoming the public/ private dichotomy that underpins liberal conceptions of human rights.The practical challenge involves using the human rights framework in the United States, given public indifference to human rights rhetoric or law, reluctance of U.S. policy makers to submit to scrutiny or justice-oriented processes under international law on issues of human rights and especially war crimes, and the consequent U.S. legacy of refusal to participate meaningfully in the international human rights process. The authors conclude that employing a human rights framework holds potential in the United States, but the paradigm shift Stark advocates will not materialize without widespread mobilization of interest in and understanding of human rights among domestic violence advocates and the society in general.

Selected highlights of the ISTSS 2008 Annual Meeting

This special section of the Journal of Traumatic Stress contains 10 articles based on some of the key presentations from the 24th International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) Annual Meeting held in Chicago in November 2008. The articles reflect two of the many topics covered in the meeting. The conference theme was “Terror and Its Aftermath.” In the first part of the special section, there are articles by Danieli on reparative justice and by Steel, Bateman Steel, and Silove on human rights and the trauma model. They cover different ways of applying an understanding of human rights to the field of psychotraumatology. Danieli, for example, contrasts the harmful effects of the conspiracy of silence with the potential benefits available through the legal process of obtaining justice and reparation. Steel et al. outline three “generations” of human rights—civil and political; economic, social, and cultural; and collective or group rights—considering the relevance of each of these to work with trauma. Within the conference, therewas also a day-long special track on the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V ). In the second part of the special section, there are eight articles covering many of the topics discussed in the meeting. The next revision of the DSM-V by the American Psychiatric Association (APA, Washington, DC) is underway and it is important that ISTSS makes an effective contribution to this task. We were able to hear from Katherine Phillips, chair of the Anxiety, Obsessive–Compulsive Spectrum, Posttraumatic, and Dissociative Disorders Work Group, and member of the DSM-V Task Force, about the process that has already been initiated, and from Matt Friedman about some of the important questions the group had to consider. This is not just an academic exercise. The decisions made by the APA may have an important influence on the way this whole field develops over the next 20 years. Invited lecturers were then asked to summarize current evidence relevant

Legal Pluralism, Customary Law and Human Rights in Francophone African Countries

This article provides a perspective on human rights in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on states colonised and influenced by the continental cultures of France and Belgium. The author examines what the Pacific can gain from the Francophone countries' understanding of human rights, with insights into the interface of cultures in post-colonial statehood. The article is one of four background papers which provide paradigms and challenges for a possible Pacific charter.

Samoan Custom and Human Rights: An Indigenous View

This article focuses on human rights as seen from the perspective of Samoan custom and social life. It argues that the roots of human rights as understood by Western societies are metaphysical whereas human rights under Samoan culture stem from being born from human parents and, therefore, an heir or suli. While the genesis of rights may be different, the overall understanding of human rights, however, is argued to be the same. The article examines Samoan cultural practices in light of international human rights standards and draws parallels between them. Custom can then be seen as a source of human rights.

Working toward the De‐essentialization of Identity Categories in Conflict and Postconflict Societies: Israel, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland

During the past decade, we have conducted research in our own countries, all of which are considered conflict or postconflict societies: Israel, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland. We have focused on a variety of topics related to peace education, reconciliation, and coexistence. Giving special emphasis to the formation of identity in educational settings, two of us have investigated primarily in integrated schools (in Israel and Northern Ireland), while the third has conducted research in multicultural schools (in Cyprus). We believe that a comparative study of these three settings is valuable because such juxtaposition helps to conceptualize how some aspects of identity are developed in practice in the countries in question (Phillips and Schweisfurth 2006). What has attracted our attention in this body of research are the dissimilar ways in which educators and children attend to identity issues when such issues appear in interactional events. Although educators, in their rhetoric and educational practices, often seem to essentialize ethnic or religious identity and mark events as related to absolute categories, children, though knowledgeable of these categories, seem less attentive to them in their social activities and construct their social worlds with less emphasis on ethnic or religious divisions. Regardless of the differences in identity found in the educational policies of Israel (emphasis on Zionist ethos), Northern Ireland (focus on pluralism), and Cyprus (priority on Greek-centered education), we have observed that, in practice, children’s perspectives differ from those of adult educators. In this article, we examine the ways in which educators engage in educational initiatives geared toward peace, coexistence, and/or conflict resolution and consider the implications for such initiatives if children’s perspectives were taken into consideration. We first summarize the similarities and differences with respect to the sources of conflict in the three societies. Then we offer short descriptions of the educational initiatives under examination and the sociopolitical con

Missed opportunities: human rights and the Commission on Social Determinants of Health

All those responsible for ‘Closing the gap in a generation’ (1), the report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, deserve great credit for placing equity at the heart of the debate about health. This excellent report highlights vital issues that are often neglected. Others have emphasised the report’s many strengths and virtues. I will not repeat, but firmly endorse, these richly deserved remarks. In this supportive context, I offer some constructive criticism of the report. My remarks aim to deepen and advance the report’s analysis and recommendations. ‘Closing the gap’ is a human rights report, no less than a publication of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or the UN Human Rights Council. It exposes systemic inequality and discrimination on a global scale – and the struggle against inequality and discrimination lies at the heart of human rights. One of the cardinal objectives of the United Nations – set out in the opening article of the UN Charter – is to promote and protect human rights without discrimination. Equality and non-discrimination are key elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 60th anniversary of which we celebrate next month. The entire post-1945 international code of human rights rests upon the principles of equality and non-discrimination (2), and these issues form part of the report’s fabric. But the report is a human rights report in other ways, too. The report is about poverty – and today it is recognised that poverty is a human rights issue (e.g. see Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (3,4)). Numerous human rights bear upon poverty: the rights to basic shelter, food, education and health-related services, as well as classic civil and political rights, such as freedoms of expression, assembly and association. The report is replete with other important human rights issues, the right to safe working conditions, the right to a safe environment and so on. So, in an important sense, ‘Closing the gap’ is a human rights report. And yet, strangely, it isn’t! Despite the multiple, dense connections between social determinants and human rights, the report’s human rights content is disappointingly muted. The human rights analysis is not absent, but underdeveloped and understated. The last 10 years have witnessed some remarkable changes in our understanding of human rights and health but, with honourable exceptions, the

Comment on Mathias Risse: "A Right to Work? A Right to Leisure? Labor Rights as Human Rights"

In his ambitious paper, Risse addresses many important topics ranging from very general issues about what human rights are to quite specific questions about rights to work and leisure. I comment on four themes arranged in order of decreasing generality: Risse's understanding of what human rights are, Risse's suggestion that a conception of human rights should best be "basis-driven," Risse's particular basis-driven conception of human rights, and Risse's specific position on human rights relating to labor and leisure.What grounds can Risse give us for accepting his revisionist understanding of human rights as membership rights, which is so dramatically at odds with fundamental fixed points that have been taken for granted in human rights disputes over the last 60 years or so? If Risse has his way, then the treatment of a human being by others raises human rights concerns only if she is a participant in the global order and only if her treatment is a matter of international concern. It is obvious how this understanding of human rights is welcome to those who seek to free their own conduct or their country's policies from human-rights constraints. Appealing to Risse's understanding, they will be able to block criticisms based on human rights by denying, for example, that the people of the Gaza Strip are members of the global order or by denying that the torture of Burmese citizens within Burma is a matter of international concern. For those whose human rights are in jeopardy, Risse's understanding of human rights could be a disaster. We should therefore examine very closely the arguments he may yet produce for his understanding and, unless they are hugely compelling, stick to the orthodox understanding of human rights as rights that all human beings have against all other human agents.

The Rights of the Child in the Islamic Context: The Challenges of the Local and the Global

AbstractWithin the Islamic context, it is strongly believed that Islamic principles are fully compatible with the international concepts of human rights. Nevertheless, Islamic Shariah law has been condemned by the widespread secular discourse on universal human rights as a blatant violation of human rights. Carrying out a thematic analysis of the main Islamic Conventions/Declarations on Human Rights and the Rights of the Child, issued and ratified by the largest Islamic inter-governmental body, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), this paper reveals that although the first Islamic Conventions/Declaration on the Rights of the Child (during 1980s) largely reiterated the religious rhetoric of Islam's commitment to children's rights, since then the Islamic states have begun to internalize a more universal understanding of human rights which reflects a change from a mainly ideological, conservative monologue into a more universal dialogue.

How Adolescents in 27 Countries Understand, Support, and Practice Human Rights

An understanding of human rights among young people forms a foundation for future support and practice of rights. We have used data from 88,000 14‐year‐olds surveyed in the 1999 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study to examine country differences in students' knowledge pertaining to human rights compared with other forms of civic knowledge, and in students' attitudes toward promoting and practicing human rights. A hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis examines student‐level predictors (e.g., gender and school experiences) and country‐level predictors (e.g., history of democracy) of rights‐related knowledge and attitudes. Countries with governments that pay more attention to human rights in intergovernmental discourse (i.e., dialogue between nations and international governing bodies) have students who perform better on human rights knowledge items. Students' experiences of democracy at school and with international issues have a positive association with their knowledge of human rights. Significant gender differences also exist. Looking at rights‐related attitudes, students with more knowledge of human rights, more frequent engagement with international topics, and more open class and school climates held stronger norms supporting social movement citizenship, had more positive attitudes toward immigrants' rights, and were more politically efficacious. Implications are drawn for psychologists and educators who wish to play a role in increasing adolescents' understanding, support, and practice of human rights.

Evangelicals and Human Rights: The Continuing Ambivalence of Evangelical Christians' Support for Human Rights

The language and ideas of “international human rights” have become seemingly ubiquitous in modern times. Indeed, within the United States, even many prominent evangelical Christian churches and leaders have sparingly started to use the language of human rights despite earlier misgivings. While there has been important academic discussion concerning the foundational role of Christian theology for the modern human rights regime, and literature discussing the acceptance of human rights within Catholic, mainline Protestant, and even Orthodox Christian circles, gaps remain in the literature concerning the relationship between general human rights norms, language, and culture and evangelical Christian theology.This Article suggests that evangelical Christians have a greater connection to human rights than is often acknowledged (and greater than they often acknowledge themselves). But, it ultimately appears doubtful whether modern evangelical theology is amenable to a robust and deep understanding of human rights. Nonetheless, the recent rise in the number of evangelical non-governmental organizations and the attendant rise in awareness of human rights within evangelical discourse potentially serve as signposts that the uncomfortable dance of evangelicals and the human rights movement may become slightly less awkward over the coming years.

The Theory of Universal Human Rights: A Comment on Talbott

In this analysis of William Talbott’s important book, I note with appreciation his defense of universal moral principles and of moral justification as a “social project,” his focus on the critique of oppression, and his emphasis on empathic understanding in the account of human rights. I go on to develop some criticisms regarding: 1) Talbott’s traditional understanding of human rights as holding against governments and not also applying to nonstate actors; 2) his account of the interrelations among well-being, autonomy, claims for first person authority in moral judgment, and human rights; 3) his strongly rationalist and liberal individualist interpretation of moral judgment and autonomy; and 4) the lack of a role for intercultural dialogue about human rights, which nonetheless are held to apply to all human beings across cultures. In each case, I briefly consider what an alternative approach would look like.