Human Rights

Seven Theses on Human Rights: (3) Neoliberal Capitalism & Voluntary Imperialism

By
1
23 May 2013
Barcode Prison

Thesis 3: The post-1989 order combines an economic system that generates huge structural inequalities and oppression with a juridico-political ideology promising dignity and equality. This major instability is contributing to its demise. Why and how did this combination of neoliberal capitalism and humanitarianism emerge? Capitalism has always moralized the economy and applied a gloss of righteousness to profit-making and unregulated competition precisely because it is so hard to believe. From Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ to the assertion that unrestrained egotism promotes the common good or that beneficial effects ‘trickle down’ if the rich get even bigger tax breaks, capitalism has consistently tried to claim the moral high ground. Sim­il­arly, human rights and their dis­sem­in­a­tion are not simply the res­ult ...
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Seven Theses on Human Rights: (2) Power, Morality & Structural Exclusion

By
2
21 May 2013
Guantanamo

Thesis 2: Power and morality, empire and cosmopolitanism, sovereignty and rights, law and desire are not fatal enemies. Instead, a historically specific amalgam of power and morality forms the structuring order of each epoch and society. We will explore the strong internal con­nec­tion between these super­fi­cially ant­ag­on­istic prin­ciples, at the point of their emer­gence in the late 18th cen­tury here and in the post-​1989 order in the next part. The reli­gious ground­ing of human­ity was under­mined by the lib­eral polit­ical philo­sophies of early mod­ern­ity. The found­a­tion of human­ity was trans­ferred from God to (human) nature. Human nature has been inter­preted as an empir­ical fact, a norm­at­ive value, or both. Sci­ence has driven the first approach. The mark of human­ity ...
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Seven Theses on Human Rights: (1) The Idea of Humanity

By
14
16 May 2013
Jheronimus_Bosch

Thesis 1: The idea of ‘humanity’ has no fixed meaning and cannot act as the source of moral or legal rules. Historically, the idea has been used to classify people into the fully human, the lesser human, and the inhuman. Let me have a brief look at its history. Pre-modern societies did not develop a comprehensive idea of the human species. Free men were Athenians or Spartans, Romans or Carthaginians, but not members of humanity; they were Greeks or barbarians, but not humans. According to classical philosophy, a teleologically determined human nature distributes people across social hierarchies and roles and endows them with differentiated characteristics. The word humanitas appeared for the first time in the Roman Republic as a ...
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Homegrown Terror: The Boston Marathon’s Media Coverage

By
1
8 May 2013
The moment of the Boston Marathon explosion

In the wake of the Boston Mara­thon explo­sions (15 April 2013), the Obama Depart­ment of Justice’s treat­ment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — Amer­ican cit­izen and primary ter­ror sus­pect — gained sig­ni­fic­ant atten­tion from lib­eral media. Dzhokhar will be charged as a civil­ian for using weapons of mass destruc­tion; he was provided legal rep­res­ent­a­tion and Mirand­ized at Boston’s Beth Israel Dea­con­ess Hos­pital. Reportedly, he refuses to cooper­ate with ques­tion­ing. He has been moved from Beth Israel in Boston to Devens Fed­eral Med­ical Cen­ter (oper­ated by the DOJ’s Fed­eral Bur­eau of Pris­ons), which spe­cial­izes in treat­ing inmates who require long-​term med­ical and/​or psy­chi­at­ric care. Since his move to Devens, there have been sug­ges­tions that nego­ti­ations are cur­rently tak­ing place, poten­tially elim­in­at­ing the death pen­alty as one of ...
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On Human Rights: Two Simple Remarks

By
3
10 April 2013
J-L Nancy

Today, political correctness demands that we say in French droits humains when we used to say droits de l’homme . This demand, which also occurs in other areas, is made because the French homme, like man in English, does not distinguish between the human race and the male gender. German is better equipped, differentiating between Mensch and Mann. Latin distinguishes between vir and homo, Greek between anèr and anthropos, etc. We could discuss the reasons for this. However, it is also important to note the introduction of another ambiguity. The adjective ‘human’ in French has a value that corresponds to the usual meaning we now give to the term ‘humanist’ and, more generally, to the ...
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Debating BDS (Boy­cott, Divest­ment, Sanc­tions): Fraser v UCU

By
0
2 April 2013
images

On March 22nd, 2013 the Employ­ment Tribunal (UK-London) rendered judg­ment in the case of Fraser v Uni­ver­sity & Col­lege Union (UCU). Rul­ing in favour of UCU, the Tribunal’s judg­ment brought immense relief to UCU mem­bers, BDS (Boy­cott, Divest­ment, Sanc­tions) act­iv­ists, and oth­ers who were anxious about the poten­tial reper­cus­sions that a neg­at­ive out­come might have for free­dom of polit­ical expres­sion, par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of union act­iv­ism, anti-​racism and human rights. The rul­ing is an inter­est­ing read in its effort to come to grips with the spirit and let­ter of the 2010 Equal­it­ies Act legis­la­tion. The case is also sig­ni­fic­ant as one among many dif­fer­ent attempts to con­test BDS through the courts in a vari­ety of jur­is­dic­tions includ­ing France and the UK. The ...
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Happiness and Human Rights in Shangri-​La

By
1
25 March 2013
A Bhutanese refugee looks from a bamboo hut in the Ti Mai camp, Nepal. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters

In the early 1990s, Indra was forced to flee her home coun­try of Bhutan after her father had been imprisoned and tor­tured. “In prison they hung my father upside down and beat him. Then they hung him over chili smoke,” she explained. “After that they ordered him to leave the coun­try with all his fam­ily. That very night myself and my fam­ily left our house and our coun­try empty handed. There were many tears.” Soon there­after, Indra and her fam­ily found them­selves liv­ing in a refugee camp in neigh­bor­ing Nepal. More than 80,000 people endured the same fate as Indra when the Bhu­tanese gov­ern­ment for­cibly expelled eth­nic Nepalis in an act of eth­nic cleans­ing. The res­ult­ing refugee crisis has gone ...
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The Bias of Human Rights Watch

By
6
21 March 2013
hrw

Over the past thirty years, Human Rights Watch has become one of the most recog­nized non-​governmental organ­iz­a­tions in the world due to its global pro­mo­tion of human rights. But des­pite its claims to be an advoc­ate of inter­na­tional human rights law, the reports issued by Human Rights Watch over the past dec­ade have increas­ingly exhib­ited a bias towards cer­tain rights over oth­ers. More pre­cisely, Human Rights Watch repeatedly focuses on polit­ical and civil rights while ignor­ing social and eco­nomic rights. As a res­ult, it routinely judges nations through­out the world in a man­ner that fur­thers cap­it­al­ist val­ues and dis­cred­its gov­ern­ments seek­ing social­ist altern­at­ives. It is this bias that lies at the root of Human Rights Watch’s scath­ing attacks on the gov­ern­ment of ...
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The Public Life of Private Law: Seminar Series Update.

By
0
21 March 2013
images

By the end of Fri­day, we will be half-​way through our ESRC sem­inar series ‘The Pub­lic Life of Private Law’. The pro­gramme for our second sem­inar is here. The focus of the second sem­inar will be on the uses of private law in seek­ing repar­a­tions for ‘human rights abuses’. In set­ting this theme we had in mind a vari­ety of legal scen­arios. To name three, we are inter­ested in: the use of neg­li­gence to hold the state to account for the actions of its sol­diers; Bici v. Min­is­ter for Defence and Al-​Jedda , and to obtain rem­ed­ies for per­sonal injur­ies suffered by the employ­ees of Brit­ish com­pan­ies abroad; Lubbe and Oth­ers v. Cape and Guer­rer­rao v. Monter­rico. the use of neg­li­gence to obtain rem­ed­ies for past injustices, such ...
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Dehumanisation and the Systemic Perpetuation of Rape

By
0
26 February 2013
Ben Walker - Gang Rape [Cropped]

Are we wit­ness­ing a global epi­demic of sexual viol­ence against women, or are we simply wit­ness­ing a tem­por­ary surge in pub­lic and media interest in a ubi­quit­ous, endemic prob­lem? I sus­pect the lat­ter — much as a spec­tac­u­lar fam­ine, or a good earth­quake, tem­por­ar­ily piques ‘inter­na­tional’ (i.e. West­ern or Euro-​American) interest in the endemic real­ity of global poverty; before ‘dis­aster fatigue’ kicks in, and the issue is once more releg­ated to the back-​burner, to the shad­ows. Too big to tackle, too far away to con­cern ‘us’. Although, of course, viol­ence against women is not phys­ic­ally far away from us, we still some­how suc­ceed in deny­ing its scale and ubi­quity; and in dis­tan­cing ourselves from its causes. It has been on my mind to lay out my very pre­lim­in­ary ...
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On the Right to Peace and the Environment

By
0
18 February 2013
War and Destruction / Kuwait

Peace and the envir­on­ment are two equally wide-​reaching top­ics, and con­sequently they could be stud­ied sep­ar­ately and from a vari­ety of per­spect­ives. In this art­icle, we will endeav­our to demon­strate the rela­tion­ship between peace and the envir­on­ment start­ing with the idea that the pre­ser­va­tion of both is sig­ni­fic­antly com­prom­ised by the cur­rent eco­nomic sys­tem. Our cent­ral premise is that both peace and an eco­lo­gic­ally bal­anced envir­on­ment are incom­pat­ible with con­tem­por­ary eco­nomic practices. The mar­ket eco­nomy, which has been the pre­dom­in­ant sys­tem since the Age of Dis­cov­ery took hold in the six­teenth cen­tury, is sus­tained by the incess­ant exploit­a­tion of nat­ural resources and by viol­ent con­flict. Both our envir­on­mental exploit­a­tion and our con­flicts have been becom­ing increas­ingly intense and soph­ist­ic­ated, to ...
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Flag Protests, Politics and Transition in Northern Ireland

By
1
4 February 2013
N04067613590264794_1153899t

The right to protest is cur­rently at the fore­front of crit­ical debates about demo­cracy and the nature of the state. Mass protests have been seen across the European Union in response to aus­ter­ity meas­ures and the poli­cing of protests, dir­ect action and demon­stra­tions in the UK was recently the sub­ject of the com­ment by the UN rap­por­teur on Free­dom of Assembly and Asso­ci­ation. In gen­eral terms, the right to protest, to use polit­ical action to express oppos­i­tion to unpop­u­lar laws, is regarded as a fun­da­mental part of any demo­cratic state. It is an import­ant mech­an­ism whereby the ongo­ing con­test­a­tion of law can be expressed and con­flict­ing views articulated. This appears to be true, how­ever, only to the extent that the ...
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Asylum Seekers, Migrants and Indefinite Detention

By
0
28 January 2013
Detainee

Lib­eral demo­cra­cies, ostens­ibly such as the United King­dom, should respect the neg­at­ive liberty of free­dom from unlaw­ful and arbit­rary arrest and impris­on­ment. In addi­tion, the UK is a sig­nat­ory of the European Con­ven­tion of Human Rights, as fur­ther incor­por­ated into domestic law through the Human Rights Act 1998. With regards to asylum seekers, migrants and ex-​foreign national pris­on­ers (ex-​FNPs) in hold­ing facil­it­ies inclus­ive of Immig­ra­tion Removal Centres (or pris­ons) in the UK, this liberty seems to be ambigu­ous and pre­cari­ous. Indeed, by stat­ute, immig­ra­tion deten­tion is per­mit­ted “in a num­ber of situ­ations includ­ing pending a person’s exam­in­a­tion and a decision on his or her admis­sion to the U.K., and pending a decision whether or not to give removal dir­ec­tions, and pending removal in pur­su­ance ...
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Democracy, Distrust and the Right to Resist, Today

By
2
21 January 2013
15-M Puerta del Sol at Midnight 14 May 2012

According to classical theory, the roots of democracy are in consensus. The truth, however, is quite the opposite. Experience has shown us that the key to democracy lays elsewhere; in the capacity to accept and even guarantee dissent and criticism of the established powers, with resistance to these powers playing an even more important role. Although trust is a vital component of democracy, distrust and maintaining a permanently critical attitude towards the execution of power are even more essential. The way in which this power is exercised must be controlled if we hope to preserve any essence of the notion of power to the people. A serious look at the critical evidence leaves us in no doubt that this ...
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Mining Projects and Popular Movements in Colombia: Chasing AngloGold Ashanti

By
1
17 January 2013
13ede7788c591f582248c40209bdc538_L

The road to Doima (Colom­bia), at best unpaved and bumpy, is today crossed by rivers in flood. The rivers have sub­merged the low con­crete bridges and at the second bridge the river is so high the bus has to stop and wait for the waters to sub­side. The rain­storm that caused the flood gradu­ally dies and so the river begins to sink again. It leaves behind a large branch block­ing the bridge. A truck comes for­ward to haul it out of the way and is then the first to cross the rush­ing waters. Cheers go up as it reaches the other side safely and every­one piles back into the bus. Once across that river there is another river in flood to ...
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