Reclaiming Activism

By Alex DeWaal

The World Peace Foundation: Reinventing Peace, Tufts University  - April 30, 2013

For most of my adult life I introduced myself as an “activist” first and a writer, researcher, or practitioner of humanitarian action or peacemaking second. Then, about seven or eight years ago, I became rather uncomfortable with the word. Not because I had diluted my personal commitment to working in solidarity with suffering and oppressed people, but because a group of people, in whose company I didn’t want to be, were claiming not only to be activists but to define “activism” itself. I am speaking of course about the policy lobbyists in Washington DC, also known as “designer activists,” who took on the role of promoting certain causes related to Africa, and who arrogated to themselves the privilege of defining these problems and identifying and pursuing ostensible solutions. It was no accident that those purported solutions placed the “activists” themselves at the center of the narrative, because many of them were Hollywood actors—or their hangers on—for whom the only possible role is as the protagonist-savior. The actions they promoted all had one thing in common: using more U.S. power around the world.

I was not the only one to find this arrogation of “activism” offensive, demeaning and counter-productive. One of the most refreshing aspects of our recent seminar at the World Peace Foundation was finding out just how much the consensus among national civil society activists from Uganda and Congo, as well as Sudan, has coalesced around the view that the basic narratives and policy prescriptions of the Enough Project and its ilk are not only simplified and simplistic, but actually pernicious. Theirs isn’t activism: it’s insider lobbying within the Washington establishment using celebrity hype as leverage. They are not just a benign variant of advocacy, perhaps somewhat simplified: they are wrong.

To read more....

How Hollywood cloaked South Sudan in celebrity and fell for the 'big lie'

Film stars have been speaking from a flawed script about the newest nation. Daniel Howden points a finger at those who have failed to grasp the awful reality      

By Daniel Howden  

The Observer, Saturday 28 December 2013

When violence erupted two weeks ago in the world's youngest country, one of the first voices to speak out, before the US president or the head of the United Nations, was that of the Hollywood actor George Clooney. There was nothing particularly objectionable about his counsel, which in any case was more likely authored by the American activist John Prendergast, with whom he shared a byline. It spoke of the need for a robust UN response and, even as tens of thousands of civilians fled ethnically motivated death squads, of the "opportunities" present in South Sudan.

This is a country, not yet two and a half years old, whose birth has been soaked in celebrity like no other. As well as Clooney, Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle have been occasional visitors who have tried to use their star power to place the international public firmly in the corner of this plucky upstart nation.

Unsurprisingly, the actors were highly effective at communicating a narrative about the new country that borrowed from a simple script. The south had fought a bloody two-decade battle for its independence against an Islamic and chauvinist north led by an indicted war criminal. The cost of that war, regularly touted as two million lives, meant that the south would need huge development support to lift it from the impoverished floor of every quality of life index published.

The great threat in this narrative was the vile regime in Khartoum, the capital of rump Sudan, which would seek to undermine its southern breakaway, or march back to war to reclaim some of its lost oilfields.

To read more....

A New Book: NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects

Edited by Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor

GOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects
Edited by Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor 
Zed Books
11 July 2013 Paperback ISBN: 9781780322575 248 pages 

The growth and spread of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at local and international levels has attracted considerable interest and attention from policy-makers, development practitioners, academics and activists around the world. But how has this phenomenon impacted on struggles for social and environmental justice? How has it challenged - or reinforced - the forces of capitalism and colonialism? And what political, economic, social and cultural interests does this serve?
NGOization - the professionalization and institutionalization of social action - has long been a hotly contested issue in grassroots social movements and communities of resistance. This book pulls together for the first time unique perspectives of social struggles and critically engaged scholars from a wide range of geographical and political contexts to offer insights into the tensions and challenges of the NGO model, while considering the feasibility of alternatives. 

Table of Contents

Preface by Sangeeta Kamat
Introduction - NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects - Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor
1. Saving Biodiversity, for Whom and for What? Conservation NGOs, Complicity, Colonialism and Conquest in an Era of Capitalist Globalization - Aziz Choudry
2. Social Action and NGOization in Contexts of Development Dispossession in Rural India: Explorations into the Un-civility of Civil Society - Dip Kapoor
3. NGOs, Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations - Sharon H. Venne
4. From Radical Movement to Conservative NGO and Back Again? A Case Study of the Democratic Left Front in South Africa - Luke Sinwell
5. Philippine NGOs: Defusing Dissent, Spurring Change - Sonny Africa
6. Disaster Relief, NGO-led Humanitarianism and the Reconfiguration of Spatial Relations in Tamil Nadu - Raja Swamy
7. Seven Theses on Neobalkanism and NGOization in Transitional Serbia - Tamara Vukov
8. Peace-building and Violence against Women: Tracking the Ruling Relations of Aid in a Women's Development NGO in Kyrgyzstan - Elena Kim and Marie Campbell
9. Alignment and Autonomy: Food Systems in Canada - Brewster Kneen

Mandela Is Gone, but Apartheid Is Alive and Well in Australia

By John Pilger

Truthout | Op-Ed  - Thursday, 19 December 2013

Apartheid was defeated largely by a global campaign from which the South African regime never recovered. Similar disapproval seldom has found its mark for Australia's treatment of its Aboriginal population.
In the late 1960s, I was given an usual assignment by the London Daily Mirror's editor in chief, Hugh Cudlipp. I was to return to my homeland, Australia, and "discover what lies behind the sunny face." The Mirror had been an indefatigable campaigner against apartheid in South Africa, where I had reported from behind the "sunny face." As an Australian, I had been welcomed into this bastion of white supremacy. "We admire you Aussies," people would say. "You know how to deal with your blacks."
I was offended, of course, but I also knew that only the Indian Ocean separated the racial attitudes of the two colonial nations. What I was not aware of was how the similarity caused such suffering among the original people of my own country. Growing up, my school books had made clear, to quote one historian: "We are civilised, and they are not." I remember how a few talented Aboriginal Rugby League players were allowed their glory as long as they never mentioned their people. Eddie Gilbert, the great Aboriginal cricketer, the man who bowled Don Bradman for a duck, was to be prevented from playing again. That was not untypical.

To read more....

Turkey’s human rights groups in a funding squeeze

By Murat Çelikkan

Opendemocracy - 10 December 2013

In their study, “Universal values, foreign money,” Ron and Pandya find that most human rights groups in selected parts of India, Mexico and Morocco rely heavily on foreign funds. The authors then raise provocative questions about why this is so. Poverty? Fear of government retribution? Lack of public trust in human rights groups themselves?
Their findings inspired me to investigate the same questions in my own country, Turkey. I quickly discovered that there are almost no studies of nonprofit funding in Turkey, and that is especially true for Turkey’s human rights organizations. So this essay is limited to what little I could learn about the largest domestic rights groups in the country.

First, a little history

In 2005, a group of activists created a national umbrella organization for Turkish human rights organizations, the Human Rights Joint Platform (İnsan Hakları Ortak Platformu - İHOP). Its founding members were the Human Rights Association (IHD, 1986), Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı - TİHV, 1990), Organization of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People (İnsan Hakları ve Mazlumlar Derneği - Mazlumder, 1991), Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (Helsinki Yurttaşlar Derneği_- HYD, 1993), Amnesty International - Turkey (Uluslararsı Af Örgütü - UAÖ, 1995), and the Human Rights Research Association (İnsan Hakları Araştırmaları Derneği- İHAD, 2006). Although the Human Rights Foundation and Mazlumder later abstained from formal membership, they still participate in some IHOP activities.

To read more...

Thinktank director Tim Wilson appointed human rights commissioner

Attorney general says director of right-wing Institute of Public Affairs will 'restore balance' to Human Rights Commission      

By Bridie Jabour   

theguardian.com, Monday 16 December 2013

The attorney general has appointed a director from the right-wing thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs as Australia’s human rights commissioner.
George Brandis said Tim Wilson, a member of the Liberal party until this month, had been appointed to “restore balance” to the Human Rights Commission.
Wilson, a self-declared classic libertarian, directs climate change policy at the IPA as well as the Intellectual Property and Free Trade Unit.
Wilson said he had stepped down from his position at the IPA as well as resigned from the Liberal party to take up the appointment.
The IPA called for the Human Rights Commission to be abolished earlier this year with Simon Breheny, director of its Legal Rights Project, saying it did not protect human rights.

To read more...

Biden lectures Chinese leaders on “human rights”

By John Chan

World Socialist Web Site - 6 December 2013

In a provocative move that will further strain already tense relations with China, US Vice President Joe Biden made a point of sharply criticising the Chinese government over “human rights” in a speech yesterday to American business leaders in Beijing.
Biden called on China to “open its politics and society as well as its economy,” so that people could “speak freely” and “challenge orthodoxy” and “newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences.” He declared: “We have many disagreements, and some profound disagreements [with China], on some of those issues right now, in the treatment of US journalists.”
Biden said that he had raised the issue with top Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, after meeting with a group of US journalists in China. Sections of the American media have complained that China has refused to renew the visas of a number of journalists, including from the New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, following the publication of stories critical of Beijing.
Beijing blocked the New York Times and Bloomberg web sites in China after their exposure last year of the huge fortunes of top Chinese leaders. The New York Times found that former Premier Wen Jiabao’s family had amassed at least $US2.7 billion, while Bloomberg exposed the hundreds of millions of dollars of assets owned by President Xi’s extended family members. The Chinese leadership is deeply concerned that the vast social gulf between the wealthy privileged ruling elite and the mass of the population can trigger social unrest.

To read more...

A New Book: Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights,

Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights
Cotesta V., Cicchelli V. and Nocenzi M. (eds)
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013

Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights is the outcome of a decade-long scholarly project. The point of convergence emerging from the analyses contained in this volume is that “global society”, “cosmopolitanism” and “human rights” are likely to constitute the basis of present and future ways of life. The “project for humanity” of the future, while resting on local social associations, will have “globality” as its reference.

For further information, see the following link:
http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/978-1-4438-5161-9-sample.pdf

French general Paul Aussaresses who admitted torture dies at 95

The general was convicted for 'complicity in justifying war crimes' in connection with his memoir about Algerian independence war 

theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013

The French general Paul Aussaresses, whose cold admission of executions and torture during the Algerian independence war five decades ago forced France to examine a dark period of its past, has died. He was 95.

Aussaresses, whose death was announced on Wednesday on the website of the veterans' association Who Dares Wins, was convicted and fined in January 2002 for "complicity in justifying war crimes" in connection with a memoir about the seven-year war that ended with Algeria's independence from French rule in 1962.

The general was intelligence chief and a top commander during the brutal 1957 Battle of Algiers. His admission of torture and summary killings horrified then-French President Jacques Chirac, who also served in the French army during the French-Algerian war in 1954.

"I express regrets," Aussaresses said in a 2001 interview with the Associated Press. "But I cannot express remorse. That implies guilt. I consider I did my difficult duty of a soldier implicated in a difficult mission."

Aussaresses was instantly recognisable by his eye patch. He lost sight in one eye because of a botched cataract operation, not combat.

To read more....

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? - Lila Abu-Lughod

Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod analyzes the rise of a pervasive literary trope in the West—that of the abused Muslim girl.

The Daily Beast – Women in the World – October 22, 2013

This book seeks answers to the questions that presented themselves to me with such force after 9/11 when popular concern about Muslim women’s rights took off. As an anthropologist who had spent decades living in communities in the Middle East, I was uncomfortable with disjunction between the lives and experiences of Muslim women I had known and the popular media representations I encountered in the Western public sphere, the politically motivated justifications for military intervention on behalf of Muslim women that became common sense, and even the well-meaning humanitarian and rights work intended to relieve global women’s suffering. What worldly effects were these concerns having on different women? And how might we take responsibility for distant women’s circumstances and possibilities in what is clearly an interconnected global world, instead of viewing them as victims of alien cultures? This book is about the ethics and politics of the global circulation of discourses on Muslim women’s rights.

Primed for Moral Crusades

To understand why the new common sense about going to war for women’s rights seems so right despite the flaws I have laid out—whether its reliance on the myth of a homogeneous place called IslamLand or its selective and moralizing imperative to save others far away—we need to look sideways. Two other popular ways of talking about violations of women’s rights that have emerged in the past few decades lend support to the kinds of representations of women’s suffering that writers like these present. On one side is a political and moral enterprise with tremendous legitimacy in our era: international human rights. Women’s rights language and the institutional apparatus that has developed in tandem have been associated with human rights since the 1990s: feminists began to campaign with the slogan “women’s rights are human rights.” Their successes have led some in legal studies to detect the emergence of governance feminism (GF), the domination by radical feminists of legal, bureaucratic, and political institutions around the world. At the center of this set of institutions is a claim to universal values.

To read more...

A Classic on Human Rights Literature: Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights By Carol C. Gould

Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights

By Carol C. Gould

Cambridge University Press - 2004


Carol Gould addresses the fundamental issue of democratizing globalization, or finding ways to open transnational institutions and communities to democratic participation by those widely affected by their decisions. Gould develops a framework for expanding participation in cross-border decisions, arguing for a broader understanding of human rights. In addition, she introduces a new role for the ideas of care and solidarity at a distance. Her accessible text will be a major new contribution to political philosophy.

Introduction: between the personal and the global
Part I. Theoretical Considerations:
1. Hard questions in democratic theory: when justice and democracy conflict
2. Two concepts of universality and the problem of cultural relativism
Part II. Democracy and Rights, Personalized and Pluralized:
3. Embodied politics
4. Racism and democracy
5. Cultural identity, group rights, and social ontology
6. Conceptualizing women's human rights
Part III. Globalizing Democracy in a Human Rights Framework:
7. Evaluating the claims for a global democracy
8. Are democracy and human rights compatible in the context of globalization?
9. The global democratic deficit and economic human rights
Part IV. Current Applications:
10. Democratic management and the stakeholder idea
11. Democratic networks: technological and political
12. Terrorism, empathy, and democracy

U.S. National Human Rights Institution: A Bad Idea

By Steven Groves

The Heritage Foundation - November 15, 2013

Abstract

Human rights activists have called for creation of a U.S. National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) to promote and monitor implementation of international human rights treaties, norms, and standards in the United States. Yet any violation of human rights as such rights are understood in the U.S. legal system is already justiciable in U.S. courts. Instead, activists would use a U.S. NHRI to promote economic, social, and cultural “rights” that lack constitutional or legal foundation and have been rejected for decades by the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress should reject any attempt to create a U.S. NHRI or expand the mandate of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to include the enforcement of human rights.

For several years elements of the international human rights community have advocated that the United States should establish a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) to promote and monitor implementation of international human rights treaties, norms, and standards in the United States. However, creating a NHRI is a bad idea.
Human rights activists would use a NHRI to advocate for recognition of supra-constitutional human rights norms that the U.S. has chosen not to recognize and find no support under the law. The NHRI’s central mission would be to promote economic, social, and cultural (ESC) “rights” that lack constitutional or legal foundation and have been rejected for decades by the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress. The NHRI would serve as a platform to harass U.S. business and industry with subpoenas, investigations, and show hearings for allegedly violating such “human rights” as the “right to a healthy environment” and the “right to water.”

To read more...

Digital Citizen is a monthly review of news, policy, and research on human rights and technology in the Arab World.

Digital Citizens - November 11, 2013

Morocco

Over the past few years, Morocco has made strides increasing Internet access for its citizens and scaling back online censorship. The Feb20 movement—Morocco’s answer to the Arab Spring—operated for the most part freely online. More recently, Moroccans enraged by the King’s pardon of a convicted pedophile mounted an unprecedented online campaign—dubbed #DanielGate—ultimately resulted in rescinding the pardon.

But recent events in the country threaten that progress. On September 17, Ali Anouzla—the co-founder and Arabic-language editor of a popular online publication, Lakome—was arrested after publishing an article that mentioned a YouTube video attributed to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Titled “Morocco: Kingdom of Corruption and Despotism,” the video was critical of Moroccan King Mohammed VI. Reporters Without Borders quoted the local public prosecutor as saying that Anouzla was arrested “as a result of the dissemination of an AQIM video inciting others to commit terrorism acts.” In fact, Anouzla’s article did not endorse the video in anyway, and only linked to an article in Spanish paper El Pais which contained a link to the original video. After being held for a little over a week, Anouzla was charged on September 25 with “material assistance” to a terrorist group, “defending terrorism,” and “inciting the execution of terrorist acts.”

To read more...

How Technology Is Helping Us Better Protect Human Rights

By  Samir Goswami

The Huffington Post - 11/11/2013

For social justice activists, the speed with which news now crosses the globe creates a tremendous opportunity to respond to human rights issues as they emerge. We can now find out about and alert the world to abuses almost as they happen, and people can act immediately to support human rights defenders and others on the front lines of crises.

However, the sheer number of people who struggle for the most basic human rights can be overwhelming. Although it is easy to get dismayed, we must stay heartened that we can make a difference in an individual's life even from thousands of miles away.

It is vital that activists who are concerned about abuses outside of their own country continue to fight not just for human rights issues -- but for the individuals behind those issues. The issues that concern us -- whether violence against women, crackdowns on freedom of expression or assembly, corporate accountability or LGBTI rights -- are brought to our attention because of the individuals on the ground who are courageously, and with much risk, advocating for change in their community. Individuals such as Mansour Ossanlu, who was imprisoned and tortured for organizing workers in Iran, Norma Cruz, who is struggling against gender-based violence in Guatemala, and Jenni Williams, who has been arrested more than 50 times for fighting for social and political rights in Zimbabwe.

To read more...

HRP hosts symposium on civilian harm caused by armed conflict

Harvard Law School - November 12, 2013

Kenneth Rutherford was working as a humanitarian aid worker in Somalia in 1993. He was driving with a colleague through a rural area near the city of Mogadishu on a clear, blue day when his vehicle hit a landmine. The explosion tore through the vehicle.
Rutherford looked to his colleague to his right, who was black, and saw that he had been turned white because he was covered in dust from the explosion. Rutherford's legs were so badly damaged that both would later have to be amputated below the knee.
"I was on my deathbed on the rocky, hard, Somali ground," Rutherford recounted for a Harvard Law School audience last week. "Blood was running down both of the backs of my legs, blood was coming out of my mouth and onto my shirt."
But he did not despair.
"I can still smell and taste my own blood, standing before you right now. But in my heart, I remember like yesterday, I was blazing with the munificent power of gratitude for everything that life has given me," Rutherford said. "I never miss an opportunity to praise God for being above ground."

To read more...

The demise of international criminal law

By Mark Osiel   

Humanity - 11/16/13

We theorists of international law like to pose venturesome, vitalizing questions, sweeping in scope: What would an ideal system of international criminal law look like, for instance, relieved of today’s geostrategic constraints? How might we lend some conceptual coherence to such a program, flesh out its normative details? What kind of world would be required for such a program to become possible, even intelligible? How should we imagine the workings of such a hypothetical world?
If we allow ourselves to descend beneath the clouds for a moment, we may also ask: Precisely how far from that ideal world do we currently reside? How might we realistically begin to construct its preconditions, through what process, by which concrete steps? We might further approach the process social-scientifically, identifying the forces which would set it in motion, hypothesizing the coalition-composition that could advance it and, when unavoidable, devise its prudent tactical retreat. Among the available accounts of global change and theories of institutional design, which of these might give us a better lever on the process, help nudge it along? These are laudable questions, especially the later, more “reality-based,” reflecting at least a bow toward “non-ideal theory,” in that philosopher’s condescending term of art.

To read more...

New directions in Southern human rights funding

Christopher Harris
Open Democracy -14 November 2013

The next generation of foundations in the Global South will likely be the vanguard of experimentation and learning. A look across the current funding landscape for human rights and justice in the Global South suggests reason for both disappointment and for optimism. For the sake of this review, I put aside official government aid—there is plenty there to discuss—and only look at the smaller world of private philanthropic giving.
Most past criticisms of foundation support for human rights and justice are still relevant. These critiques—apart from the very real problem of simply not enough money—include concern over weak funder strategies, timidity, short attention span, evaluation fetish, poor or no accountability and the absence of centres of research and learning committed to funding rights and justice.
Most funders who express concern about poverty, injustice and the abuse of human rights still employ strategies that that can be described as ‘charity’—funding the provision of services to reduce suffering or an immediate injustice. Although these are important if you are the victim, these strategies are silent on the causes of injustice, and leave them untouched. As a result, charitable approaches rarely deal with the frequently invisible structural sources of injustice, be they legal, economic, political or cultural.

To read more...

Universal values, foreign money: local human rights organizations in the Global South

James Ron and Archana Pandya

Open Democracy - 13 November 2013

How important is international funding to local human rights groups worldwide? Oddly enough, there has been little published research on the topic. Pressured by angry nationalists and vengeful governments, human rights activists and donors prefer to keep money questions out of the spotlight.
Indeed, we know of only two existing studies. In 2006, a Nigerian scholar published research on 20 of his country’s 100 human rights groups, the vast majority of which were foreign-supported. Two years later, Israeli researchers published a study based on interviews with 16 of the country’s 26 human rights groups, and said that more than 90 percent of their budgets came from Europe and the United States. Neither study, however, shed light on conditions elsewhere in the world.
To rectify this gap, we began by interviewing 128 human rights workers from 60 countries in the Global South and former Communist region. Then we assembled lists of all the local rights groups we could find in Rabat and Casablanca (Morocco), Mumbai (India), and Mexico City and San Cristóbal de las Casas (Mexico). Our team identified 189 groups in total, all of which were non-governmental, domestically headquartered, politically unaffiliated, and legally registered. 

To read more....

Call For Papers: Organizing a panel - ISA Human Rights Joint Conference June 16-19, 2014, Istanbul, Turkey

Proposed Title: Critical Perspectives towards Human Rights 

ISA Human Rights Joint Conference 2014, Istanbul, Turkey
http://www.isanet.org/Conferences/HRIstanbul2014.aspx

Dear all,

The International Studies Association-Human Rights is holding a joint conference in collaboration with IPSA, APSA and the Standing Group on Human Rights and Transition and ECPR; this is the third joint international conference on human rights, on the theme of  “Human Rights and Change.” It will take place on 16-18 June 2014 at Kadir Has Üniversitesi (http://www.khas.edu.tr/en/) in Istanbul. I am in the process of writing an article on Orientalism and Human Rights, which is part of a larger book project.

If you are interested in participating in forming a panel together on Critical Perspectives towards Human Rights (this is a tentative title, we can change it after further discussion), please let me know off the list. I know this is short notice, and the deadline is the December 1st. For this conference, you need to be a member of the International Studies Association. I welcome submissions related to, but not limited to the following
subjects:

-Critical Perspectives towards Human Rights
-Human Rights Industry and New Missionaries: AI, HRW, USIP, NED, etc. 
-State actors and the Human Rights Industry
-Local actors (NGOs and think-tanks) and the Human Rights Industry
-Political Economy and Human Rights
-Democracy Promotion and Human Rights
-Regional (Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia) Implications of Human Rights Policies

Please check the following books and articles before you submit a proposal:

Bricmont, Jean.  2006. Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War. Montly Review Press. http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb1471/
Judith Blau and Mark Frezzo, 2011. Sociology and Human Rights: A Bill of Rights for the Twenty-First Century http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book235439
End human rights imperialism now http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/31/human-rights-imperialism-james-hoge
Amnesty International and the Human Rights Industry http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/08/amnesty-international-and-the-human-rights-industry/
Human Rights as Myth and Ceremony? Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties, 1981–2007 Author(s): Wade M. Cole Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 117, No. 4 (January 2012), pp. 1131-1171.
Imperialism, Human Rights, and Protectionism http://www.zcommunications.org/imperialism-human-rights-and-protectionism-by-robin-hahnel.html
Imperialist feminism redux. Saadia Toor. Dialect Anthropol. October 2012.
Globalization, the world system, and "democracy promotion" in U.S. foreign policy WILLIAM I. ROBINSON.Theory and Society 25:615-665, 1996. 

Email me the following information by Monday, November 25, be sure you are a member of ISA: http://www.isanet.org/Membership.aspx 

-abstract, 300 words
-title of your paper
-your short bio, 100-150 words, including your institutional affiliation, email, etc.

Any questions or suggestions are welcome.

Please also check the website for updates: http://sociologyofhumanrights.org/  

Best to all,

--
Tugrul Keskin

Assistant Professor of International and Middle Eastern Studies
Affiliated Faculty of Black Studies
Sociology and Center for Turkish Studies
Middle East Studies Coordinator (INTL)
Portland State University

Sociology of Human Rights and International Studies Course Readings

Sociology of Human Rights:

International Studies, Neo-Orientalism and Human Rights

INTL 407

Required Books:

This course will use sections from the following books and articles:

1.     Donnelly, Jack. 2012. International Human Rights. Westview Press.

http://www.westviewpress.com/book.php?isbn=9780813345017 

2.     Bricmont, Jean.  2006. Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War. Montly Review Press. http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb1471/

3.     Judith Blau and Mark Frezzo, 2011. Sociology and Human Rights: A Bill of Rights for the Twenty-First Century http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book235439

4.     RESOURCE BOOK: Hayden, Patrick. 1999. Philosophy of Human Rights: Readings in Context. Paragon House. http://www.paragonhouse.com/Philosophy-of-Human-Rights-Readings-in-Context.html

Other Readings will be posted on the D2L and you will find them under the course documents.

Recommended Additional Readings:

1.     Ishay, Micheline (2008). The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era. University of California Press. http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520256415

2.     Ishay, Micheline (ed) 2008 The Human Rights Reader 2nd ed. Routledge Press.

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415951609/  

3.     Ignatieff, Michael (2003). Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry. Princeton University Press. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7119.html   

4.     Goodale, Mark (2008). Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader. Wiley-Blackwell. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405183357.html  

5.     Beitz, Charles R. (2009). The Idea of Human Rights. Oxford University Press.

6.     Moyn, Samuel (2012). The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Harvard University Press. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674048720  

7.     Griffin, James (2008). On Human Rights. Oxford University Press.

8.     Mayer, A.E. (1995) Islam and Human Rights: Traditions and Politics. 2 ed, Boulder: Westview.

9.     Goodhart, Michael (2009). Human Rights: Politics and Practice. Oxford University Press.

10.  Freeman, Michael A. (2011). Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Polity Press.

11.  Goodhart, Michael (2011). Human Rights in the 21st Century Continuity and Change since 9/11. Palgrave.

12.  Hunt, Lynn (2008). Inventing Human Rights: A History. W. W. Norton & Company, New York.  

13.  Lauren, Paul Gordon. (2011). The Evolution of International Human Rights Visions Seen. University of Pennsylvania Press. http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13971.html  

14.  Perry, Michael J. (2000). The Idea of Human Rights Four Inquiries. Oxford UniversityPress. http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/PublicInternationalLaw/InternationalHumanRights/?view=usa&ci=9780195138283  

15.  Donnelly, Jack (2003). Universal Human Right in Theory and Practice Cornell Press. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100015050

16.  Turner, Brian (2006). Vulnerability and Human Rights. Penn State University Press. http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02923-4.html

17.  Wallerstein, Immanuel (2006). European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power. The New Press. http://thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1365

18.  Steiner, Henry J. Philip Alston and Ryan Goodman (2007). International Human Rights in Context Law, Politics, Morals. Oxford University Press. http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/he/subject/PoliticalScience/PoliticalTheory/HumanRights/?view=usa&ci=9780199279425

19.  Somers, Margaret (2008). Genealogies of Citizenship.

20.  Mann, Michael (2004). The Dark Side of Democracy. Cambridge University Press.

21.  Falk, Richard (2009). Achieving Human Rights. Routledge.

22.  Beitz, Charles. “What Human Rights Mean.” Daedalus 132 (2003): 36-46.

23.  Waltz, Susan. “Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Third World Quarterly 23 (No. 3 2002): 437-448.

24.  Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955 (2003), pp. 271-276.

25.  Clark, Ann Marie. Diplomacy of Conscience: Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001: 3-20; 130.

26.  Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn. Activists Beyond Borders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998: 1-29.

27. Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui (2005) “Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The

Paradox of Empty Promises” In American Journal of Sociology Vol. 110

(5): 1373-1411.

28.  Reus-Smit, Christian. Human Rights and the Social Construction of Sovereignty. Review of International Studies (2001), 27, 519–538.

29.  Bulaç, Ali 2000 "The Medina Document" In Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook Kurzman ed. Oxford University Press.

30.  Brysk, Alison. “From Above and Below: Social Movements, the International System, and Human Rights in Argentina.” Comparative Political Studies 26 (October 1993): 259-285.

31.  Etzioni, Amitai. The Normativity of Human Rights Is Self-Evident. Human Rights Quarterly 32 (2010) 187–197.    

32.  Sen, Amartya "More than 100 Million Women are Missing. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1990/dec/20/more-than-100-million-women-are-missing/?pagination=false

33.  Farmer, Paul 2005 "On Suffering and Structural Violence: Social and Economic Rights in a Global Era" In Pathologies of Power (pgs. 29-50).

34.  Hernandez-Truyol, B.E. and Jane Larson (2002) “Both Work and Violence: Prostitution and Human Rights” In Moral Imperialism (pp. 183-211).

35.  Cortyndon, Anna ed. (2007) “Trading Away our Rights: Women Working in

36.  Global Supply Chains, OXFAM International.

37.  Economist (2010) “Gendercide” The Worldwide war on baby girls” Print Edition. March 4. http://www.economist.com/node/15636231

38.  "The Sex Market" NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/09/world/the-sex-market-scourge-on-the-world-s-children.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm 

39.  "Women's Rights: Why Not?" NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/opinion/women-s-rights-why-not.html 

40.  "US Blocks Money for Family Clinics Promoted by UN" NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/23/world/us-blocks-money-for-family-clinics-promoted-by-un.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

41.  Cortelyou, Kenny 2009 “Disaster in the Amazon: Dodging Boomerang Suits in

Transnational Human Rights Litigation” In California Law Review 857.

42.  Mertus, Julie. “The Lingua Franca of Diplomacy: Human Rights and the Post-Cold War Presidencies,” excerpt from Bait and Switch: Human Rights and US Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2004): 39-74.

43.  Sikkink, Kathryn. "The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United States and Western Europe." In Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, edited by Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. 

44.  Okuizumi, Kaora. "Implementing the ODA Charter: Prospects for Linking Japanese Economic Assistance and Human Rights." NYU Journal of International Law and Politics 27 (Winter 1995): 367-408

45.  Japan Foreign Ministry, “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity: Japan's Expanding Diplomatic Horizons" http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0611.html  (also see program for MOFA symposium, 2007, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policyillar/symposium0702.html)

46.  “China Issues Human Rights Record of the US” March 2007. 

http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zt/zgrq/t302225.htm

ISA Human Rights Joint Conference 2014, Istanbul, Turkey

ISA Human Rights Joint Conference 2014, Istanbul, Turkey
http://www.isanet.org/Conferences/HRIstanbul2014.aspx

ISA HR Joint Conference Submissions are Open! 
Submissions are open for the 2014 joint Human Rights conference in Istanbul. 
We're now  accepting paper and panel proposals. This year's conference theme is Human Rights and Change. Check out the Call for more information. We hope to see you there!

Call for Papers: ISA HR Istanbul 2014
ISA-Human Rights, along with the HR sections of IPSA, APSA and the Standing Group on Human Rights and Transition, ECPR, invites paper and panel proposals on any subject related to human rights, for our joint conference in Istanbul. Particularly welcome are submissions related to our 2014 conference theme, Human Rights and Change. 

Please submit your proposals through the ISA submission system. Proposal submissions will open July 15, 2013. The proposal submission deadline is December 1, 2013.

To read more...

POLL-Egypt is worst Arab state for women, Comoros best

Thomson Reuters Foundation - Tue, 12 Nov 2013


Visit poll2013.trust.org for full coverage of our expert poll on women’s rights in the Arab world

• Egypt worst for women's rights in poll of 22 Arab states
• Iraq more dangerous for women than under Saddam Hussein
• Small steps in Saudi Arabia but women still second class
• Syria's war and discriminatory laws curtail women's rights
• Comoros first for giving women political and economic rights

LONDON, Nov 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Sexual harassment, high rates of female genital cutting and a surge in violence and Islamist feeling after the Arab Spring uprisings have made Egypt the worst country in the Arab world to be a woman, a poll of gender experts showed on Tuesday.
Discriminatory laws and a spike in trafficking also contributed to Egypt’s place at the bottom of a ranking of 22 Arab states, the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey found.
Despite hopes that women would be one of the prime beneficiaries of the Arab Spring, they have instead been some of the biggest losers, as the revolts have brought conflict, instability, displacement and a rise in Islamist groups in many parts of the region, experts said.


To read more...

A New Book: Theorising Democide: Why and How Democracies Fail

Theorising Democide:
Why and How Democracies Fail

By Mark Chou  

Palgrave, April 2013

The common assumption is that the path to democratisation is, once begun, near impossible to reverse. Particularly where democratic transition has been properly consolidated conventional wisdom and empirical evidence both suggest that no democracy should follow the example of Classical Athens or Germany's Weimar Republic and return to despotism. Starting from the premise that democracies are often deeply implicated in their own downfall, Theorising Democide challenges this conventional view by showing how democratic collapse is symptomatic of the inherent logic of democracy. Democide, in some cases, can thus be understood as a kind of ideological suicide with the tenets and devices of democracy being somehow intrinsic to its own collapse. In other words democide denotes the capacity that democracy has to come undone, to risk its own safety, to take its own life while doing what it was intended to do.

To read more....

The Best (and Worst) Countries to Be a Woman

By Sarah Green

Harvard Business Review | October 25, 2013 

The World Economic Forum has just come out with their latest data on global gender equality, and the short version could well be this old Beatles lyric: “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better. A little better, all the time. (It can’t get more worse.)”
I talked with Saadia Zahidi, a Senior Director at the WEF and their Head of Gender Parity and Human Capital. Yes, it’s getting better. Out of the 110 countries they’ve been tracking since 2006, 95 have improved and just 14 have fallen behind (a single country, Sweden, has remained the same). But that’s partly because in some places, there was nowhere to go but up.
And not everyone has improved at the same rates, or for the same reasons.
For instance, in Latin America, several countries surged ahead as more women were elected to political office. That was a trend in Europe, too – much of the improvement in Europe’s scores was due not to women’s increased workforce participation, but instead to the increasingly female face of public leadership. Although those numbers are still very low overall, increasingly women are being appointed (and somewhat more rarely, elected) to public office. “Looking at eight years worth of data, a lot of the changes are coming from the political end of the spectrum, and to some extent the economic one. So much of the [workforce] talent is now female, you would expect the changes to be on the economic front but that’s not what’s happening,” said Zahidi.

To read more.....

Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex

By Assed Baig 

Freelance print and broadcast journalist 

Huffington Post - 13/07/2013

When Malala Yusufzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen simply because she wanted to gain an education it sent shockwaves around the world.

Straight away the Western media took up the issue. Western politicians spoke out and soon she found herself in the UK. The way in which the West reacted did make me question the reasons and motives behind why Malala's case was taken up and not so many others.

There is no justifying the brutal actions of the Taliban or the denial of the universal right to education, however there is a deeper more historic narrative that is taking place here.

This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised. Journalists and politicians were falling over themselves to report and comment on the case. The story of an innocent brown child that was shot by savages for demanding an education and along comes the knight in shining armour to save her.

The actions of the West, the bombings, the occupations the wars all seem justified now, "see, we told you, this is why we intervene to save the natives."

To read more....

Books Available for Review for Human Rights Review

From: Lilian Barria <labarria@eiu.edu>
Date: Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:24 PM
Subject: Books Available for Review for Human Rights Review
To: Melissa Labonte <labonte@fordham.edu>

Dear Colleagues,

As the Book Review Editor for Human Rights Review, I invite you to review a
book for the journal. The list of “Books Available for Review” includes
over one hundred titles and can be found on the Human Rights Review webpage
under FOR AUTHORS AND EDITORS at:

http://www.springer.com/law/journal/12142

If you are interested in doing a "Review Essay," you can select three (3)
books that touch on common themes. There are web links to the publishers of
the books for general information regarding the focus of each book on the
list.

Please CONTACT ME DIRECTLY at labarria@eiu.edu OR hrrbooks@eiu.edu with any
questions and/or to request a book from the current list for review.

Interested reviewers should provide:

(1) A mailing address
(2) An estimated deadline for completion of the review (at this point I
suggest four possible deadlines from which to choose: February 1, 2014;
April 1, 2014; June 1, 2014; or August 1, 2014).

Reviews are generally published in the journal 6-12 months after the review
is received.

Best regards,

Lilian A. Barria, Ph.D.
Book Review Editor, Human Rights Review
Professor
Department of Political Science
Eastern Illinois University
Charleston, IL 61920
USA
Telephone: 1-217-581-2079
Fax: 1-217-581-2926
Email: LABARRIA@EIU.EDU

Cfp: "The Human, Human Rights, and the Humanities" Humanities and Western Civilization Program University of Kansas, April 3-4, 2014

Deadline for abstracts: December 6, 2013

This conference offers a venue to critically examine the interrelationship of "the human," human rights, and the purview of the humanities--interpreting human expression. We welcome papers from undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences that explore topics including, but not limited to, the following:

What are the benefits and limits to a notion of universal human rights?
Are there notions of being human that are not encapsulated by a human rights framework?
How do artists and writers engage or critique notions of human rights?
What can we learn about the human experience, and, potentially human rights, from a speculative vantage point, such as that of science fiction?
How do disciplines that challenge normative parameters of human experience such as Queer Studies, Disability Studies, or Animal Studies enrich and/ or complicate notions of human rights?

Please submit 250 word paper abstracts to Dr. Marike Janzen, mjanzen(at)ku.edu, by December 6, 2013.

Marike Janzen
University of Kansas
Humanities and Western Civilization Program
Bailey Hall
1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 308
Lawrence, KS 66045

Email: mjanzen@ku.edu

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? By Lila Abu-Lughod

Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod analyzes the rise of a pervasive literary trope in the West—that of the abused Muslim girl.

The Daily Beast – Women in the World – October 22, 2013

This book seeks answers to the questions that presented themselves to me with such force after 9/11 when popular concern about Muslim women’s rights took off. As an anthropologist who had spent decades living in communities in the Middle East, I was uncomfortable with disjunction between the lives and experiences of Muslim women I had known and the popular media representations I encountered in the Western public sphere, the politically motivated justifications for military intervention on behalf of Muslim women that became common sense, and even the well-meaning humanitarian and rights work intended to relieve global women’s suffering. What worldly effects were these concerns having on different women? And how might we take responsibility for distant women’s circumstances and possibilities in what is clearly an interconnected global world, instead of viewing them as victims of alien cultures? This book is about the ethics and politics of the global circulation of discourses on Muslim women’s rights.

Primed for Moral Crusades

To understand why the new common sense about going to war for women’s rights seems so right despite the flaws I have laid out—whether its reliance on the myth of a homogeneous place called IslamLand or its selective and moralizing imperative to save others far away—we need to look sideways. Two other popular ways of talking about violations of women’s rights that have emerged in the past few decades lend support to the kinds of representations of women’s suffering that writers like these present. On one side is a political and moral enterprise with tremendous legitimacy in our era: international human rights. Women’s rights language and the institutional apparatus that has developed in tandem have been associated with human rights since the 1990s: feminists began to campaign with the slogan “women’s rights are human rights.” Their successes have led some in legal studies to detect the emergence of governance feminism (GF), the domination by radical feminists of legal, bureaucratic, and political institutions around the world. At the center of this set of institutions is a claim to universal values.

To read more....

Please tell me, Mr President, why a US drone assassinated my mother

By Rafiq ur Rehman             

Momina Bibi was a 65-year-old grandmother and midwife from Waziristan. Yet President Obama tells us drones target terrorists   

theguardian.com, Friday 25 October 2013

The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children.

Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.

Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 65-year-old grandmother of nine.

My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of? Or perhaps, it was my brother's children? They, too, were there. They are aged three, seven, 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. The eldest four had just returned from a day at school, not long before the missile struck.

But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this. No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.

I care, though. And so does my family and my community. We want to understand why a 65-year-old grandmother posed a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world. We want to understand how nine children, some playing in the field, some just returned from school, could possibly have threatened the safety of those living a continent and an ocean away.

To read more...