The Myth of International Protection

The Myth of International Protection PDF Author: Claudia Seymour
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520299833
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In this viscerally intense, ethnographically-based work, Claudia Seymour, a former child protection advisor and human rights investigator for the United Nations, chronicles the heart-wrenching stories of young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo—young people who live on the front lines of conflict, in neighborhoods and villages destroyed by war, and on the streets in conditions of poverty and destitution. Seymour shares her personal journey, one that begins with the will to do good yet ends with the realization of how international aid can contribute to greater harm than good. The idea of protection and universalized human rights is turned on its head as Seymour uncovers the complicities and hypocrisies of the aid world—that in its promotion of “inalienable human rights”, the complex historical and socio-economic dynamics that lead to the violations of such rights are ignored. The Myth of International Protection offers a new perspective to reframe how the world sees the DRC, and urges global audiences to consider their own roles in fueling the DRC’s seemingly endless violence.

The Myth of International Protection

The Myth of International Protection PDF Author: Claudia Seymour
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520299833
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this viscerally intense, ethnographically-based work, Claudia Seymour, a former child protection advisor and human rights investigator for the United Nations, chronicles the heart-wrenching stories of young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo—young people who live on the front lines of conflict, in neighborhoods and villages destroyed by war, and on the streets in conditions of poverty and destitution. Seymour shares her personal journey, one that begins with the will to do good yet ends with the realization of how international aid can contribute to greater harm than good. The idea of protection and universalized human rights is turned on its head as Seymour uncovers the complicities and hypocrisies of the aid world—that in its promotion of “inalienable human rights”, the complex historical and socio-economic dynamics that lead to the violations of such rights are ignored. The Myth of International Protection offers a new perspective to reframe how the world sees the DRC, and urges global audiences to consider their own roles in fueling the DRC’s seemingly endless violence.

Protecting the Global Civilian from Violence

Protecting the Global Civilian from Violence PDF Author: Timo Kivimäki
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000387208
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
This book reveals why the UN is more successful than unilateral great powers in protecting civilians from violence, and focuses on the discourse, development and consequences of UN peacekeeping. Analysing statistics of state fragility and fatalities of violence, it reveals that the UN has managed to save tens of thousands of lives with its peacekeeping: a surprising statistic given the media consensus about the UN’s powerlessness and inefficiency. Using computer-assisted discourse analysis of resolutions from the UN Security Council, 1993-2019, the book offers data that describe the character and development of UN approach to the protection of civilians from violence. It then links the data to the statistics of conflict fatalities and state fragility to reveal, by means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, when, where, how and why the UN has been successful at protecting civilians. Two reasons for the UN’s success are highlighted in the book as being statistically most significant. First, the organization offers local ownership to peaceful solutions by considering conflicting parties as the primary agents of protection. Second, the UN approach is much less power-oriented than unilateral approaches by the great powers: protection for the UN does not mean deterrence or destruction, but rather, support for local protectors of civilians. However, strong great power influence on such operations tends to weaken UN’s ability to save lives. This book will be of much interest to students of humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, human rights and International Relations in general.

The Arc of Protection

The Arc of Protection PDF Author: T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503611426
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
The international refugee regime is fundamentally broken. Designed in the wake of World War II to provide protection and assistance, the system is unable to address the record numbers of persons displaced by conflict and violence today. States have put up fences and adopted policies to deny, deter, and detain asylum seekers. People recognized as refugees are routinely denied rights guaranteed by international law. The results are dismal for the millions of refugees around the world who are left with slender prospects to rebuild their lives or contribute to host communities. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore lay bare the underlying global crisis of responsibility. The Arc of Protection adopts a revisionist and critical perspective that examines the original premises of the international refugee regime. Aleinikoff and Zamore identify compromises at the founding of the system that attempted to balance humanitarian ideals and sovereign control of their borders by states. This book offers a way out of the current international morass through refocusing on responsibility-sharing, seeing the humanitarian-development divide in a new light, and putting refugee rights front and center.

The Myth of International Protection

The Myth of International Protection PDF Author: Claudia Seymour
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520971418
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In this viscerally intense, ethnographically based work, Claudia Seymour relates the heart-wrenching stories of young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo—young people who live on the front lines of conflict, in neighborhoods and villages destroyed by war, and on the streets in conditions of poverty and destitution. Seymour, a former child protection adviser and human rights investigator for the United Nations, chronicles her personal journey, which begins with the will to do good yet ends with the realization of how international aid can contribute to greater harm than good. The idea of protection and universalized human rights is turned on its head as Seymour uncovers the complicities and hypocrisies of the aid world. In the promotion of “inalienable human rights,” aid organizations ignore the complex historical and socioeconomic dynamics that lead to the violations of such rights. Offering a new perspective, The Myth of International Protection reframes how the world sees the DRC and urges global audiences to consider their own roles in fueling the DRC’s seemingly endless violence.

Refugees and the Myth of Human Rights

Refugees and the Myth of Human Rights PDF Author: Emma Larking
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317069285
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Most Western liberal democracies are parties to the United Nations Refugees Convention and all are committed to the recognition of basic human rights, but they also spend billions fortifying their borders, detaining unauthorised immigrants, and policing migration. Meanwhile, public debate over the West’s obligations to unauthorised immigrants is passionate, vitriolic, and divisive. Refugees and the Myth of Human Rights combines philosophical, historical, and legal analysis to clarify the key concepts at stake in the debate, and to demonstrate the threat posed by contemporary border regimes to rights protection and the rule of law within liberal democracies. Using the political philosophy of John Locke and Immanuel Kant the book highlights the tension in liberalism between partiality towards one’s compatriots and the universalism of human rights and brings this tension to life through an examination of Hannah Arendt’s account of the rise and decline of the modern nation-state. It provides a novel reading of Arendt’s critique of human rights and her concept of the right to have rights. The book argues that the right to have rights must be secured globally in limited form, but that recognition of its significance should spur expansive changes to border policy within and between liberal states.

National and International Civilian Protection Strategies in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

National and International Civilian Protection Strategies in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict PDF Author: Timea Spitka
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031203909
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This open access book examines security and protection within Israel and Palestine, analyzing national and international security strategies that apply to the protection of civilians. The author examines the principles, practices and the perception of protection. Focusing on protection strategies and practices in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book reveals some of the myths and enigmas of national and international protection of civilians. The book moves beyond the current lack of protection strategies to discuss more effective human security focused on prioritizing protection of civilians, use of alternative tools such as community policing and inclusive protection.

The International Containment of Displaced Persons

The International Containment of Displaced Persons PDF Author: Cecile Dubernet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351742272
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2001. This work examines four post-Cold War interventions launched on behalf of people on the move: international action in Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda. Because these crises accompanied the emergence of the concept of Internationally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in international relations, they have shaped the understandings of forced displacement issues, such as ethnic cleansing, need and humanitarian action. The author looks at attitudes towards IDPs, concluding that UN-backed interventions regarding displaced civilians were primarily about deterring, sometimes preventing, them from escaping places of conflict. Protection in this context became a device by which international protagonists sought to contain people on the move within the confines of their collapsed states. As a result, levels of safety effectively granted by the international community depended less on the vulnerability of populations than on Western fears of mass border crossings.

Switzerland and the International Protection of Refugees, La Suisse et la protection internationale des refugiés

Switzerland and the International Protection of Refugees, La Suisse et la protection internationale des refugiés PDF Author: Vera Gowlland-Debbas
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004481079
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The present volume highlights the new challenges of the international protection of refugees fifty years after the adoption of the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Focusing on the problems faced by Switzerland in the field of international protection of refugees as well as on the specificity of its asylum law and practice, this publication addresses the refugee problem from a national, European and international perspective. The Swiss experience serves to illustrate the wider problematic of on the one hand, the tensions between security, political and humanitarian concerns encountered by refugee-receiving states, and on the other, the need to preserve an international refugee protection regime which remains an essential component of international law and relations for so long as political solutions are not brought to the root causes of refugee exodus. This reflection on the international protection of refugees is organized around four main themes. The first examines Switzerland's response in the past to mass influx, in the light of historical case studies and the evolution of Swiss asylum law and practice. The second focuses on the question of access of refugees to asylum territories and refugee status determination procedures within the framework of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the current Swiss asylum law. The third centres on the wider protection regime currently being forged in Europe to address a broader category of refugees, including solutions for temporary and subsidiary protection. The final theme revolves around return of refugees, including those under the Dayton and recent Kosovo agreements and covers reintegration of returnees, assistance and long-term development. This work is based on papers presented at a colloquium of the Graduate Institute of the International Studies in Geneva which was organised in collaboration with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a contribution to the 50th anniversaries of the UNHCR and the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

Theory and Reality in the International Protection of Human Rights

Theory and Reality in the International Protection of Human Rights PDF Author: Watson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004637818
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Many theories and propositions have been advanced on the tacit assumption that international law encompasses the protection of human rights. Very few, if any, question the validity of this position. Here is a book that does. Theory and Reality in the International Protection of Human Rights presents a defense of the traditional theory of international law-based on a decentralized nation-state system of international relation—as being more appropriate for the analysis of its subject than more recent variants that allow for supranational redress at an increasingly personal level. In particular, Professor Watson shows how the proponents of the international human rights regime persistently use a legislative mode of reasoning, and how international law cannot sustain this technique. He holds that violation of the right to life is best adjudicated within a customary system, and concludes that the validity of the norms of international human rights has yet to be demonstrated. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

Rethinking International Protection

Rethinking International Protection PDF Author: Raffaela Puggioni
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137483105
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This book provides a critical account of the concept of international protection. The author questions the boundaries between protection and assistance, and challenges the dominant focus on state sovereignty. Drawing upon a broad range of sources, she scrutinises the central role played by the state in providing legal, social and economic protection, which entails positive obligations upon the state. Protection, in this context, does not simply mean protection from persecution, threats, and sustained violence, but emancipation. By focusing on the local and national contexts wherein protection is enacted, created and also contested, she combines the politics of protection with the practices of protection, with a special focus on Italy. The resulting arguments clarify the difference between the public responsibility to protect and the private desire to assist, between treating refugees as bearers of rights and considering them as objects of assistance. The author argues that the absence of protection in Italy has encouraged many to leave and find protection in other EU countries. This timely work is essential reading for students and scholars of migration, international relations and asylum politics as well as policy-makers.