Human Rights

This essay seeks to examine in parts, the ostensible absence of women’s political participation, particularly in peace processes in Africa. The essay will draw experiences and examples from a couple of African countries to argue that women’s continuous absence in peace discourses is as a result of political stereotypes, backed by patriarchal norms and masculinity tendencies which usually epitomises maleness to the ‘knower’, ‘protector’, ‘powerful’, ‘leader’.

Therefore in instances were women are able to actively participate on equal capacities like their male counterparts, it goes against and threatens the constructed patriarchal systems and its flair of hegemony.

La Agenda 2030 incorpora los Derechos Humanos de manera transversal y los ubica como una necesidad fundamental para la consecución de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible y elemento de base para la construcción de sociedades justas y no discriminatorias. Por esta razón, Red Pacto Global Chile decidió sumar a sus “Grupos de Empresas Líderes por los ODS”,  un grupo enfocado en los DD.HH. vinculados al sector privado, con la finalidad de generar iniciativas que aporten al mejoramiento de diversos temas relacionados.

En este marco, el pasado martes 23 de marzo, el Grupo de Empresas Líderes por los Derechos Humanos de Red Pacto Global Chile, presentó en un evento virtual que convocó a miembros de todos los sectores, una “Matriz de Riesgos en Derechos Humanos”, herramienta que busca facilitar al sector privado la realización de la Debida Diligencia en la materia, proceso mediante el cual las empresas pueden gestionar en forma proactiva los riesgos reales y potenciales hacia los DD.HH., en los que puedan verse involucradas.

This paper uses evangelical reflections on the meaning of "rights" to explore the juridification of religion in contemporary England. Drawing on sixteen months of participatory fieldwork with evangelicals in London, I argue that English evangelicals' critiques of Christian-interest litigation reflect the interaction of local theologies with developments in the law's regulation of religion, developments that have contributed to the relativization of Protestant Christianity even as historic church establishment is maintained. Through an exploration of the tension between the goals of (rights-based) individualism and (Christian) relationalism as they concern the law, I show how litigation can affect religious sub-jectivity even in the absence of a personal experience with the pageantry of the court.

הרצאה זו ניתנה בעקבות התערוכה "ברוש לאור הירח" של אתי אברג'יל. התערוכה הוצגה ביוני-אוגוסט  2016, באתר ההנצחה שליד הסיפרייה הציבורית, בקרית טבעון. ההרצאה עוסקת בהיסטוריה ובמקום החברתי תרבותי של "שכונת הגפן" בחיים החברתיים של היישוב: קרית טבעון. שאלת הנושא היא: האם ניתן להאיר התפתחויות תרבותיות המתרחשות כיום בחברה הישראלית דרך ההיסטוריה של "שכונת הגפן"? ההרצאה מוקדשת לאתי אברג'יל. אמנית. לזכרם של הורינו ויקירנו בשכונת "הגפן" שבקרית טבעון.

Course Description: As many as 300,000 children and young people under the age of 18 are currently fighting in conflicts around the world. Hundreds of thousands more have been recruited into armed forces. Although most child soldiers are teenagers, some are as young as 7 years old. In 1996 the UN reported that " One of the most alarming trends in armed conflict is the participation of children as soldiers. " In this course, students will view films and read texts that describe the roles played by children in conflict, explain the realities and diversity of child soldiers' experiences, and influence people's awareness of and attitudes towards child soldiers. Students will research, analyze, and consider policies and practices involved in the recruitment, rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration of child soldiers in various conflicts around the world.

Not-guilty verdicts, mistrials, and impunity for the Bundy family and many of their supporters in the armed confrontations over public land use in Nevada and Oregon. Expanded access for private oil, gas, mining, and logging industries and the downsizing of national monuments such as Bears Ears lead by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. A number of highly contentious debates and sensationalized events have again focused attention on land held in the public domain by the United States. This essay argues that federal land policy as a form of colonial administration has been constitutive for the logic of expectation as property in what is now the United States. From the state land cessions negotiated on behalf of the Articles of Confederation to the preemption acts (1830–1841) to the homestead acts (1862–1916) to present-day demands for land transfer, the acquisition and disposal of the so-called public domain have been central to westward colonization, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the promise of land ownership as the ostensible foundation of individual liberty. These dynamics are evident in contemporary conflicts over public lands and arguments for the transfer of public lands to either state or private ownership. Approaching the Bundy occupations as flashpoints that illuminate competing interpretations and claims to land within the history of westward colonization, this essay seeks to demonstrate the ways in which expectation emerges from particular economies of dispossession of indigenous peoples that have historically worked through and across the division of public and private property.

The European Union is facing with difficulty the management of migrant flows, above all of asylum seekers. According to the principle of solidarity and responsibility sharing, Member States are demanded a huge collaboration. However, some of them (the Visegard Group) have adopted a set of policies in conflict with the European Union’s approach on migration. Since 2015, Hungary, with its legal developments, has seriously undermined human rights and the right to asylum, in violation of international and EU law. Alarmed by the March 2017’s Asylum law, below discussed in detail, the aim of the Brief is to underline the illegitimacy of the measures contained in the Act. Supported by some Reports drawn up by UNHCR, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and Amnesty International, this document focuses on illegal return, detention and push back of migrants and asylum seekers who arrive in the ‘Transit Zones’. To highlight the unlawfulness of actual Hungary’s legal framework on asylum, a reference is also made to the recent jurisprudential developments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and to judgements handed down by Member States’ national Courts. In the final part of the Brief it is strongly suggested to Hungary to set remedy to EU and international law violations, and are also underlined the consequences that may emerge if the State would perpetrate its unlawful behaviour.

In December 2018, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. UNDROP is the product of 17 years of struggle by La Via Campesina, other transnational agrarian movements and allies that included NGOs, states, UN mandate holders, and academics. It recognises the dignity of rural populations, their contributions to global food production, and their ‘special relationship’ to land, water and nature, as well as their vulnerabilities to eviction, hazardous working conditions and political repression. It reiterates rights protected in other instruments and sets new standards for individual and collective rights to land and natural resources, seeds, biodiversity and food sovereignty. This Grassroots Voices forum includes interviews and articles by activists in the UNDROP campaign: peasants from Indonesia, Belgium, France, Germany, Senegal and Argentina; a US farmworker leader; a women’s rights activist from Spain; a Bolivian diplomat; the Indian leader of a transnational Catholic farmers’ movement; an advocate for fishers from Uganda; a Swiss jurist; a Mexican indigenous rights leader; and human rights advocates from the NGOs CETIM and FIAN. They describe a new kind of people’s diplomacy and an innovative, bottom-up process of building alliances, lobbying, and authoring international law.

Resistance against the appropriation of nature, especially land, has been one of the key struggles of the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) since its inception in 1993. The issue of access to land has become even more central after the food crisis of 2007-08, in a context increasingly marked by land grabbing and climate change. This contribution offers a critical examination of the emergence of the « right to land and territory », both as a collective action frame deployed by transnational peasant movements, and as a new human right in international law. It explores the various ways in which agrarian movements are using the human rights framework to question the establishment of absolute private property rights over land, and restore political limits on access to land. It argues that peasant movements are claiming a new human right to land through a combination of institutional and extra-institutional channels, in an effort not only to achieve increased protection of peasants’ land rights (against and by the state), but also to advance an alternative conception of human rights that resonates with their worldviews, and allows for the development of food sovereignty alternatives, including outside the state.

"Baruchello’s Philosophy of Cruelty, the second collection of his essays, turns a difficult and emotionally charged topic into a surprisingly informative and enlightening read. Covering the history of Western philosophy’s treatment of cruelty as a topic, yet relating every point to present-day occasions of violence and injustice, this book is a touchstone for any discussion of cruelty as a philosophical theme. It pulls no punches, yet it leaves you standing taller." (Dr. B. Myers)

(cf. http://www.brendanmyers.net/nwpbooks/baruchello2.html - incl. table of contents; the book can be ordered from Amazon or the publisher)

Please note that all author's royalties are devolved to charity.

This chapter explores three anthropological dimensions of the denial of crimes committed during the François Duvalier regime in Haiti (1957 and 1971): the manner in which social obligations created by kinship and social bonds induce conformism, self-censorship, and eventually denial; the disassociation from the victim's suffering, a social phenomenon I call pathophobia; and the animistic dimension of denial, which considers that the victim is wrong in their very essence and thus deserving of their fate.

While recognizing the need for intelligence gathering and acknowledging that gathering such intelligence may require the adoption of extraordinary measures and approaches, international human rights law ascribes limits to how such extraordinary measures can be used. First and foremost, intelligence collection, by its very nature, is likely to infringe aspects of the right to privacy that all individuals enjoy under international human rights law. However, there are six accepted grounds in international law under which it may be acceptable to interfere with an individual’s or group’s privacy: National security, public safety, the economic wellbeing of the country, the prevention of disorder or crime, protection of public health or morals, and the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. All but public health and morals fall squarely within an intelligence service’s purview. While there is a growing body of jurisprudence on the use of so-called Special Investigation Techniques by law enforcement and domestic security agencies – for instance, telephone intercepts, eavesdropping devices, surveillance tools, undercover operations and human source recruitment – there is far less jurisprudence that touches upon the collection of foreign intelligence although perhaps some basic principles can be inferred from court rulings, as well as other international bodies.

On the History of Political Philosophy is a lively and lucid account of the major political theorists and philosophers of the ancient Greek, Roman, medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods. Topics include discussions concerning human nature, social justice, the origin of law and human rights, the rise and development of different forms of government, idealism and realism in international relations, the distinction between just and unjust war, and the sources of public authority and the nature of legitimate sovereignty. The organizing principle of the book is the idea that the great political thinkers were searching for the best political order and a criterion for human conduct in both domestic and international politics. Demonstrating the continued relevance of historical ideas to today's problems, the author traces ongoing discussions about politics by examining the ideas of key political theorists. The book is intended for use in courses on political philosophy or the history of political philosophy.
https://www.routledge.com/On-the-History-of-Political-Philosophy-Great-Political-Thinkers-from-Thucydides/Korab-Karpowicz/p/book/9780205119745

This paper deals with the relation between God and the secular legal systems of Western liberal democracies. It provides a normative argument for the compatibility of God and secular legal reasoning. In our age, in which believing in God is no longer socially axiomatic and the right to religious freedom protects all kinds of theistic and non-theistic religious beliefs, creeds, and first philosophies, it seems contrary to religious neutrality for secular legal systems to single out God. This paper instead argues that, although God and religion are inextricably intertwined, they affect the legal system in different ways because they are ontologically different. God cannot be reduced to a mere component of theistic religion. This paper argues that a proper understanding of secularization might call for keeping God outside the legal system but not for driving God out of the public sphere of democratic societies. Secular legal systems are not atheist legal systems. Secular legal systems are legal systems 'without religion' but not 'without God.' Secularization implies some degree of minimal recognition of God as a metalegal concept. The specific degree of recognition of God appropriate for any given political community depends on its cultural and communitarian identity and should be subject to the rules of democratic procedures and majorities. This is the metalegal God.

Soziale Medien haben unser Kommunikationsverhalten entscheidend verändert. Im Zuge dieser Veränderung begegenen uns bekannte Herausforderungen wie Radikalisierung oder Hassrede in neuer Intensität. Zusätzlich tun sich bislang unbekannte Phänomene beachtlicher Konsequenz, wie digitale Entrüstungsstürme auf. Der vorliegende Beitrag dikutiert, ob es in Anbetracht dessen eine Neuvermessung der Grenzen freier Meinunsgäußerung braucht.

Die digitale Revolution lässt vielfach die Einlösung des Versprechens vermissen, einen offenen Marktplatz des Meinungsaustausches zu schaffen. An die Stelle der etablierten Torwächter sind Algorithmen getreten, die bekannte Präferenzen der Nutzerinnen und Nutzer fortspinnen und sie so tendenziell Gleichem und Gleichen zuführen, statt sie mit abweichenden Positionen zu konfrontieren. Dieses als "Filterblase" bekannt gewordene Phänomen soll im folgenden Beitrag vor dem Hintergrund grundrechtlicher Anforderungen diskutiert werden.

This chapter attempts to analyse the way in which insights from the Marxist tradition can illuminate international human rights law. It begins by outlining the key elements of historical materialism. It then selects three key analytics – class, ideology and the structure of capitalism – and shows how they can illuminate the general phenomenon of human rights. In particular, it argues that human rights law is a social relation that mediates the struggles between classes. However, the particular form that this takes is one which tends to recast social conflict as a matter of individual rights violations and to draw attention away the root causes of social problems.

The chapter then goes on to apply these insights to the RMT v United Kingdom case, concerning the issue of secondary strikes in industrial disputes. It argues that aside from directly advantaging the capitalist class in its judgement, the European Court of Human Rights also reproduced the ideological effects of human rights law. In particular, it recast the political-economic logic of class conflict as a technocratic clash of individual rights. The chapter closes with an attempt to think through whether it would be possible to articulate a vision of human rights which takes on board the political-economic issues flagged up by Marxist analysis.

Full book available here - https://www.crcpress.com/Research-Methods-for-International-Human-Rights-Law-Beyond-the-traditional/Gonzalez-Salzberg-Hodson/p/book/9781138603554

This book aims to address ‘boat migration’ with a holistic approach. The different chapters consider the multiple facets of the phenomenon and the complex challenges they pose, bringing together knowledge from several disciplines and regions of the world within a single collection. Together, they provide an integrated picture of transnational movements of people by sea with a view to making a decisive contribution to our understanding of current trends and future perspectives and their treatment from legal-doctrinal, legal-theoretical, and non-legal angles. The final goal is to unpack the tension that exists between security concerns and individual rights in this context and identify tools and strategies to adequately manage its various components, garnering an inter-regional / multi-disciplinary dialogue, including input from international law, law of the sea, maritime security, migration and refugee studies, and human rights, to address the position of ‘migrants at sea’ thoroughly.

"En las siguientes páginas se analizan principalmente dos aspectos. En primer lugar, la posición de los diferentes actores políticos y sociales marroquíes con respecto a la situación de los derechos civiles y políticos. De entre estos actores me ha
interesado especialmente el movimiento de defensa de los derechos humanos. La pregunta que subyace en todo el estudio es en qué medida este movimiento contribuyó a la liberalización del régimen y en qué medida puede contribuir a su democratización.
Con esta intención he analizado su cultura política, sus características sociológicas y, sobre todo, su posición y margen de maniobra dentro del campo político (vínculos e instrumentalización por el poder, relaciones con los partidos políticos, con actores internacionales, etc.). Se trata de determinar la capacidad y los límites de un movimiento que ha experimentado una importante transformación en las últimas tres décadas. El contexto represivo de los años setenta (en el
que el movimiento únicamente podía preocuparse de su propia supervivencia y debía guardar silencio sobre gran parte del dossier represivo de los años de plomo) se suavizó a finales de los ochenta, y la liberalización se consolida en la segunda
mitad de los noventa."

Enacted February 24, 2014 and effective until August 1, 2014, Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act targeted Ugandans of minority sexual orientations and gender identities—many of whom self-identify as 'kuchu'—by imposing life sentences for homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. The original Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in 2009 promised even worse for kuchus: it would have mandated that all Ugandans report known homosexuals and threatened execution for serial offenders and other perpetrators of “aggravated homosexuality.” In the context of Ugandan political conflict, emerging international human rights norms, and global asymmetries of power, Uganda has become an ideological battlefront where competing actors—both US-based and Ugandan—advance their respective visions of a just and righteous global society. These factors mandate that US-based activists and organizations painstakingly consider how (or whether) they can advocate responsibly and effectively for international human rights related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Through interdisciplinary lenses and critical analysis, this paper explores three questions:

• How is Uganda distinct from other sites of antigay legislation?
• How have US-based organizations impacted Ugandan discourse and policy toward kuchus?
• How can US-based rights advocates and activists campaign for kuchus without doing them further harm?