Protecting Human Rights Defenders at Risk

Protecting Human Rights Defenders at Risk PDF Author: Alice M. Nah
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429687990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
This book assesses the construction, operation and effects of the international protection regime for human rights defenders, which has evolved significantly over the last twenty years in response to the risks people face as they promote and protect human rights. Drawing upon the experiences of human rights defenders who continue to persevere in their activism in Indonesia, Egypt, Kenya, Mexico and Colombia, this edited collection examines the ways in which formal protection mechanisms by state and civil society actors intersect with self-protection measures and informal protection initiatives by families and friends. It highlights that protection practices are most effective when they are designed to address the specific risks that human rights defenders face (which are gendered and intersectional); reflect how defenders understand ‘risk’, ‘security’ and ‘protection’; and are appropriate for the dynamic sociopolitical and legal contexts in which defenders operate. This book proposes ways in which the protection of human rights defenders at risk should be reimagined and practised. This book will be a thought-provoking guide for students and scholars of politics, international relations, law and human rights, as well as to practitioners engaged in the protection of human rights defenders at risk.

Protecting Human Rights Defenders at Risk

Protecting Human Rights Defenders at Risk PDF Author: Alice M. Nah
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429687990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book assesses the construction, operation and effects of the international protection regime for human rights defenders, which has evolved significantly over the last twenty years in response to the risks people face as they promote and protect human rights. Drawing upon the experiences of human rights defenders who continue to persevere in their activism in Indonesia, Egypt, Kenya, Mexico and Colombia, this edited collection examines the ways in which formal protection mechanisms by state and civil society actors intersect with self-protection measures and informal protection initiatives by families and friends. It highlights that protection practices are most effective when they are designed to address the specific risks that human rights defenders face (which are gendered and intersectional); reflect how defenders understand ‘risk’, ‘security’ and ‘protection’; and are appropriate for the dynamic sociopolitical and legal contexts in which defenders operate. This book proposes ways in which the protection of human rights defenders at risk should be reimagined and practised. This book will be a thought-provoking guide for students and scholars of politics, international relations, law and human rights, as well as to practitioners engaged in the protection of human rights defenders at risk.

Critical Perspectives on the Security and Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Critical Perspectives on the Security and Protection of Human Rights Defenders PDF Author: Karen Bennett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134828756
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Human rights defenders – who by peaceful means advocate, mobilise and often put their lives at risk to defend the most fundamental freedoms of their fellow citizens – are key agents of change in their own societies and make a significant contribution to the international community's efforts to support democracy and human rights. Defenders often face serious threats and can experience harm by state and non-state actors. Since the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders in 1998, there has been considerable effort to recognise and protect the right of individuals, groups and communities to promote and protect their own rights and the rights of others. Over time, a multi-level, multi-actor international protection regime for the rights of human rights defenders has emerged, which is based on existing rights derived from the international human rights regime. The authors in this book reflect on the positive developments that have emerged over time to strengthen the protection of defenders, as well as the debates, tensions and contestations in such practices. This collection provides a critical appraisal of the construction, function, ethical boundaries, and evolution of this protection regime, as well as its multi-scalar social and political effects. In particular, the authors consider the effectiveness of particular international and regional protection mechanisms for the protection of defenders, and examine the relationship between repression, activism, and tactics for managing risks in the face of danger. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights.

Rescuing Human Rights

Rescuing Human Rights PDF Author: Hurst Hannum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108417485
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Focuses on understanding human rights as they really are and their proper role in international affairs.

Human Rights in China

Human Rights in China PDF Author: Eva Pils
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509500731
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
How can we make sense of human rights in China's authoritarian Party-State system? Eva Pils offers a nuanced account of this contentious area, examining human rights as a set of social practices. Drawing on a wide range of resources including years of interaction with Chinese human rights defenders, Pils discusses what gives rise to systematic human rights violations, what institutional avenues of protection are available, and how social practices of human rights defence have evolved. Three central areas are addressed: liberty and integrity of the person; freedom of thought and expression; and inequality and socio-economic rights. Pils argues that the Party-State system is inherently opposed to human rights principles in all these areas, and that – contributing to a global trend – it is becoming more repressive. Yet, despite authoritarianism's lengthening shadows, China’s human rights movement has so far proved resourceful and resilient. The trajectories discussed here will continue to shape the struggle for human rights in China and beyond its borders.

Not Enough

Not Enough PDF Author: Samuel Moyn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067498482X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
“No one has written with more penetrating skepticism about the history of human rights.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “Moyn breaks new ground in examining the relationship between human rights and economic fairness.” —George Soros The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. While state violations of political rights have garnered unprecedented attention in recent decades, a commitment to material equality has quietly disappeared. In its place, economic liberalization has emerged as the dominant force. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn considers how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of broader social and economic justice. Moyn places the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift and explores why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside exploding inequality. “Moyn asks whether human-rights theorists and advocates, in the quest to make the world better for all, have actually helped to make things worse... Sure to provoke a wider discussion.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “A sharpening interrogation of the liberal order and the institutions of global governance created by, and arguably for, Pax Americana... Consistently bracing.” —Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books “Moyn suggests that our current vocabularies of global justice—above all our belief in the emancipatory potential of human rights—need to be discarded if we are work to make our vastly unequal world more equal... [A] tour de force.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Human Rights Defenders and the Law

Human Rights Defenders and the Law PDF Author: Núria Saura-Freixes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429559046
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive examination of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and provides an analysis of the level of its reflection in regional human rights systems. The work explores the development of the role of the individual in human rights protection since the 1998 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. It locates the nature, activities and need for protection of human rights defenders within the current international legal framework and outlines the place and scope for a specific right to promote and protect human rights. It traces the origins of the right and the main international instruments that define it, both at national and international level. Finally, it considers the impact that the right to defend human rights can have on constitutional and international law. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law.

Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE

Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE PDF Author: United States. Congress. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : CSCE Meeting on the Human Dimension
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description


Law and Cultural Studies

Law and Cultural Studies PDF Author: John Erni
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317156218
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
New and unremitting violence linked to state, inter-state, and private actors has precipitated a renewal of social movements, many of which act in concert with human rights ethos and legal conceptions. Yet, cultural studies has so far had little engagement or institutional connection with these movements. How can cultural studies as a progressive discipline think with, and make space for, rights-inflected legal and humanitarian practices? This book considers the ways in which cultural humanism and the critical approach to rights, and more broadly between culture and law, can be brought together to open a new intellectual space to allow cultural studies to better engage with the current challenges presented by social and political struggles worldwide. It lays out the central theses essential for constructing a critical view of human rights, and then advances a distinctive critical model of analysis that incorporates insights of postcolonial legal theorists and jurists from the Global South and important cultural theorists from the North, while rethinking law, rights, and social movements as something constituted by multiple legal modernities. Through case studies covering questions relating to sovereignty, citizenship, refugee displacement, human rights defenders, and gender and sexual rights, Law and Cultural Studies develops a means by which the practice of cultural studies can be reinvigorated around the legal spaces, institutions, and movements tied to human rights struggles. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, critical legal studies, political theory, postcolonial studies, and human rights.

International Human Rights Law and Practice

International Human Rights Law and Practice PDF Author: Ilias Bantekas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009306383
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1033

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Book Description
Now in its fourth edition, this well-respected textbook blends the theory of human rights with its context, debates and practice.

Beyond Virtue and Vice

Beyond Virtue and Vice PDF Author: Alice M. Miller
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812251083
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Over the past two decades, human rights as legal doctrine and practice has shifted its engagement with criminal law from a near exclusive condemnation of it as a source of harm toward increasingly invoking it as a necessary remedy for abuses. These shifts are most visible in the context of sexuality, reproduction, and gender. Criminal law appears in modern states as a tool for societies to define forbidden acts (crimes) and prescribe punishments. It authorizes the state to use force as an aspect of expressing and establishing norms—societal expectations for acceptable behavior which when breached permit individuals to be excluded and stigmatized as unfit for inclusion. But the core principles of human rights oppose exclusion and stigma and embrace the equality and dignity of all. Therefore there is an insuperable tension when human rights actors invoke criminal law to protect and vindicate human rights violations. Beyond Virtue and Vice examines the ways in which recourse to the criminal law features in work by human rights advocates regarding sexuality, gender, and reproduction and presents a framework for considering if, when, and under what conditions, recourse to criminal law is compatible with human rights. Contributors from a wide range of disciplinary fields and geographic locations offer historical and contemporary perspectives, doctrinal cautionary tales, and close readings of advocacy campaigns on the use of criminal law in cases involving abortion and reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, sex work and prostitution law, human trafficking, sexual violence across genders, child rights and adolescent sexuality, and LGBT issues. The volume offers specific values and approaches of possible use to advocates, activists, policy makers, legislators, scholars, and students in their efforts to craft dialogue and engagement to move beyond state practices that compromise human rights in the name of restraining vice and extolling virtue. Contributors: Aziza Ahmed, Widney Brown, Sealing Cheng, Sonia Corrêa, Joanna N. Erdman, Janet Halley, Alli Jernow, Maria Lucia Karam, Ae-Ryung Kim, Scott Long, Vrinda Marwah, Alice M. Miller, Geetanijali Misra, Rasha Moumneh, Wanja Muguongo, Oliver Phillips, Zain Rizvi, Mindy Jane Roseman, Esteban Restrepo Saldarriaga, Tara Zivkovic.