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Human Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice
by Jim Ife Linda Briskman Karen SoldatićHuman Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice helps students and practitioners understand how human rights concepts underpin the social work profession and inform their practice. This book examines the three generations of human rights and the systems of oppression that prevent citizens from participating in society as equals. It explores a range of topics, from ethics and ethical social work practice, to deductive and inductive approaches to human rights, and global and local human rights discourses. The language, processes, structures and theories of social work that are fundamental to the profession are also discussed. This edition features case studies exploring current events, movements and human rights crises, including the Black Lives Matter movement, the Northern Territory Emergency Response, and homelessness among LGBTIQA+ young people. This edition is accompanied by online resources for both students and instructors. Human Rights and Social Work is an indispensable guide for social work students and practitioners.
Human Rights and Standard of Living in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Prospects (Routledge Studies in Law, Rights and Justice)
by Augustine Edobor ArimoroThis book offers a comprehensive and nuanced examination of the right to an adequate standard of living in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), shedding light on the multifaceted challenges, opportunities, and imperatives for action. The right to an adequate standard of living is a fundamental human right, essential for the dignity and well-being of all individuals. Yet, in SSA, the realisation of this right remains a complex and elusive goal, with millions of people facing poverty, inequality, and limited access to basic services. Through a series of in-depth chapters, the book explores the various dimensions of the right to an adequate standard of living, from the pervasive impacts of poverty and inequality to the critical importance of access to healthcare, education, housing, and justice. Drawing on a rich array of case studies, data, and expert analysis, the work provides a compelling and evidence-based assessment of the current state of affairs in SSA, highlighting the urgent need for comprehensive and context-specific approaches to advancing this fundamental right. Providing a roadmap for promoting sustainable and inclusive development, reducing poverty and inequality, and ensuring access to basic services for all, the volume offers a set of actionable recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working in the areas of Human Rights Law, Development Law and, in particular, those focused on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, it identifies key areas for further research and investigation, underscoring the importance of ongoing knowledge generation and exchange in support of evidence-based policy and practice.
Human Rights and The Revision of Refugee Law (Law and Migration)
by Romit BhandariThis book addresses the relationship between International Refugee Law and International Human Rights Law. Using international refugee law’s analytical turn to human rights as its object of inquiry, it represents a critical intervention into the revisionism that has led to conceptual fragmentation and restrictive practices. Mainstream literature in refugee law reflects a mood of celebration, a narrative of progress which praises the discipline’s rescue from obsolescence. This is commonly ascribed to its repositioning alongside human rights law, its veritable rediscovery as an arm of this far greater edifice. By using human rights logic to construct the current legal paradigm and inform us of who qualifies as a refugee, this purportedly lent areas of conceptual uncertainty a set of objective, modern criteria and increased enfranchisement to new, non-traditional claimants. The present work challenges this dominant position by finding the untold limits of its current paradigm. It stands alone in this orientation and hereby represents one of the most comprehensive, heterodox and structurally detailed reviews of this connection. The exploration of the gap between modern approaches and the unsatisfactory realities of seeking asylum forms the substance of this book. It asserts, by contrast, the existence of revolution rather than evolution. Human rights law has erased the founding tenets of the Refugee Convention, enabling powerful states to contain refugees in their region of origin. The book will be essential reading for those interested in Refugee Law, Refugee Studies, Postcolonial Legal Studies, Postmodern Critiques and Critical Legal Theory. Additionally, given its relevance for the adjudication of refugee claims, it will be an important resource for solicitors, barristers and judges.
Human Rights and the Criminal Justice System
by Anthony Amatrudo Leslie William BlakeWe now live in a world which thinks through the legislative implications of criminal justice with one eye on human rights. Human Rights and the Criminal Justice System provides comprehensive coverage of human rights as it relates to the contemporary criminal justice system. As well as being a significant aspect of international governance and global justice, Amatrudo and Blake argue here that human rights have also eclipsed the rhetoric of religion in contemporary moral discussion. This book explores topics such as terrorism, race, and the rights of prisoners, as well as existing legal structures, court practices, and the developing literature in Criminology, Law and Political Science, in order to critically review the relationship between the developing body of human rights theory and practice, and the criminal justice system. This book will be of considerable interest to those with academic concerns in this area; as well as providing an accessible, yet sophisticated, resource for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate human rights courses.
Human Rights and the Environment in Africa: A Research Companion
by Jean-Claude N. Ashukem Semie M. SamaThe relationship between human rights and the environment, as evidenced by the recent UN Resolution on the human right to a healthy environment, is a topical, fascinating, uneasy, and increasingly urgent one. This timely collection explores the inextricable relationship between human rights and the environment as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key human rights and environmental issues confronting Africa. The work explores theoretical, philosophical, doctrinal, and empirical research to interrogate and provide clarity on how and whether the human rights-based approach to environmental protection and policy implications has been effective in enhancing environmental protection and sustainability in Africa. It brings together an elite group of African and international experts to investigate the increasing connectivity and problems with African human rights, environmental governance, and the quest for sustainability. The book is divided into thematic clusters, including: the right of vulnerable communities to sustainability; climate change, the right to development and natural resource governance; corporate environmental responsibility and sustainability; the philosophy of environmental ethics and theories of human rights approaches to environmental governance; procedural environmental rights; the role of the judiciary in environmental protection; and desertification. These themes provide a structure to investigate and clarify specific fundamental questions on Africa’s environmental governance paradigm. This innovative contribution provides an interdisciplinary approach to the philosophical interrelationship and use of human rights approaches to ensure and enhance environmental protection and sustainability. As such, the book will be of interest to African scholars, researchers and students in Human Rights Law, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Ecology and Conservation and Development Studies. It will also be a valuable resource for policymakers, governments, NGOs, practitioners, and all those interested in African environmental governance.
Human Rights and the United Nations: Paradox and Promise (Routledge Explorations in Development Studies)
by Yasmeen Abu-Laban Abigail B. BakanThis book considers the complex and contradictory role of the United Nations when it comes to human rights around the world. It depicts the United Nations as a global arena in which state and non-state actors continuously contest issues around human rights. This ongoing contestation simultaneously produces both advances and setbacks when it comes to the rights of stateless populations, women, Indigenous peoples, and racialized people, as well as rights related to health and the environment.Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and throughout various subsequent expansions, conventions and declarations, the United Nations has been central to the development and advancement of human rights as a primary, stated goal of global governance. However, there are various inherent contradictory tensions and challenges embedded in the United Nations promise for human rights. This timely collection investigates the United Nations’ role as knowledge producer, its relation to non-state actors, and the United Nations’ role as a system for grouping sovereign states, where there is uneven buy-in within non-binding agreements and tensions between national sovereignty and human rights. At a time when the world faces existential challenges from climate change to pandemics which disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable populations, this book addresses future challenges and possibilities for the United Nations.Human Rights and the United Nations: Paradox and Promise will be an important read for researchers and students across the fields of human rights, political science, international relations, and global development, as well as for United Nations and governmental policy analysts and advisors.
Human Rights as War by Other Means: Peace Politics in Northern Ireland (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
by Jennifer CurtisFollowing the 1998 peace agreement in Northern Ireland, political violence has dramatically declined and the region has been promoted as a model for peacemaking. Human rights discourse has played an ongoing role in the process but not simply as the means to promote peace. The language can also become a weapon as it is appropriated and adapted by different interest groups to pursue social, economic, and political objectives. Indeed, as violence still periodically breaks out and some ethnocommunal and class-based divisions have deepened, it is clear that the progression from human rights violations to human rights protections is neither inevitable nor smooth.Human Rights as War by Other Means traces the use of rights discourse in Northern Ireland's politics from the local civil rights campaigns of the 1960s to present-day activism for truth recovery and LGBT equality. Combining firsthand ethnographic reportage with historical research, Jennifer Curtis analyzes how rights discourse came to permeate grassroots politics and activism, how it transformed those politics, and how rights discourse was in turn transformed. This ethnographic history foregrounds the stories of ordinary people in Northern Ireland who embraced different rights politics and laws to conduct, conclude, and, in some ways, continue the conflict—a complex portrait that challenges the dominant postconflict narrative of political and social abuses vanquished by a collective commitment to human rights. As Curtis demonstrates, failure to critique the appropriation of rights discourse in the peace process perpetuates perilous conditions for a fragile peace and generates flawed prescriptions for other conflicts.
Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons: A Midrash Methodology
by Devorah WainerThis book provides a new framework for conducting qualitative research into Asylum Seeking Refugees based on Emmanuel Levinas’ ethic of the face-to-face encounter. The methodology originates in the term Midrash—a narrative form that exposes; investigates; searches. It reconceptualises encounters between Asylum Seeking Refugees and those researching their experiences in a manner that moves beyond the possibility of ‘Othering’ and the removal of ‘voice’ that can characterise research into refugees. This methodology allows a complex and rich multidimensional text, with heterogeneity of voices, experiences, and subjects. As a phenomenological method of research, the internal phenomena of the researcher—feeling, intuition, and personal perception—are legitimate sites of knowledge and understanding, and are not considered separate from the external, objectively observable world. While the researcher is not researching herself, she is also not separate from the research field and data. The Midrash methodology is an honest and explicit method of research designed to (re)invigorated the passion of academics and researchers.
Human Rights for the 21st Century: Foundation for Responsible Hope
by Bertram Gross Peter Juviler Vladimir Kartashkin Elena Lukasheva Stanley KatzLeading specialists and activists from Russia and the USA join, in this volume, to offer a searching assessment of human rights in their own countries and in the world at large. They reflect on past history, present problems associated with system breakdown and decline, and the obstacles and opportunities on the way to the realisation of human rights in this uncertain post-Cold War era and the millennium that is now dawning. The participants in the discussions detailed here include Yelena Bonner, Viktor Chkhikvadze, Norman Dorsen, Riane Eisler, David Forsythe, Paula Garb, Charles Henry, Susan Heuman, Irina Lediakh, Vladimir Kudriavtsev, Pavel Litvinov, Richard Schifter, Henry Shue, Evgenii Skripilev, Vladimir Vlashihin, Oleg Vorobiev and the editors.
Human Rights in Armed Conflict: Law, Practice, Policy
by Gerd OberleitnerIt is now widely accepted that international human rights law applies in situations of armed conflict alongside international humanitarian law, but the contours and consequences of this development remain unclear. This book revisits, organizes and contextualizes the debate on human rights in armed conflict and explores the legal challenges, operational consequences and policy implications of resorting to human rights in situations of inter- and intra-state violence. It presents the benefits and the drawbacks of using international human rights law alongside humanitarian law and discusses how the idea, law and policy of human rights influence the development of the law of armed conflict. Based on legal theory, policy analysis, state practice and the work of human rights bodies it suggests a human rights-oriented reading of the law of armed conflict as feasible and necessary in response to the changing character of war.
Human Rights in Asia: A Comparative Legal Study of Twelve Asian Jurisdictions, France and the USA (Routledge Law in Asia #Vol. 2)
by Randall Peerenboom Albert H. Y. Chen Carole J. PetersenHuman Rights in Asia considers how human rights are viewed and implemented in Asia. It covers not just civil and political rights, but also social, economic and cultural rights. This study discusses the problems arising from the fact that ideas of human rights have evolved in Western liberal democracies and examines how far such values are compatible with Asian values and applicable in Asian contexts. Core chapters on France and the USA provide a benchmark on how human rights have emerged and how they are applied and implemented in a civil law and a common law jurisdiction. These are then followed by twelve chapters on the major countries of East Asia plus India, each of which follows a common template to consider the context of the legal system in each country, black letter law, legal discussions and debates and key current issues concerning human rights in each jurisdiction.
Human Rights in Child Protection: Implications For Professional Practice And Policy
by Asgeir Falch-Eriksen Elisabeth Backe-HansenThis open access book critically explores what child protection policy and professional practice would mean if practice was grounded in human rights standards. This book inspires a new direction in child protection research – one that critically assesses child protection policy and professional practice with regard to human rights in general, and the rights of the child in particular. Each chapter author seeks to approach the rights of the child from their own academic field of interest and through a comparative lens, making the research relevant across nation-state practices. The book is split into five parts to focus on the most important aspects of child protection. The first part explains the origins, aim, and scope of the book; the second part explores aspects of professionalism and organization through law and policy; and the third part discusses several key issues in child protection and professional practice in depth. The fourth part discusses selected areas of importance to child protection practices (low-impact in-house measures, public care in residential care and foster care respectively) and the fifth part provides an analytical summary of the book. Overall, it contributes to the present need for a more comprehensive academic debate regarding the rights of the child, and the supranational perspective this brings to child protection policy and practice across and within nation-states.
Human Rights in Global Perspective: Anthropological Studies of Rights, Claims and Entitlements (ASA Monographs)
by Richard Ashby Wilson Jon P. MitchellIn the West we frequently pay lip service to universal notions of human rights. But do we ever consider how these work in local contexts and across diverse cultural and ethical structures? Do human rights agendas address the problems many people face, or are they more often the imposition of Western values onto largely non-Western communities?Human Rights in a Global Perspective develops a social critique of rights agendas. It provides an understanding of how rights discussions and institutions can construct certain types of subjects such as victims and perpetrators, and certain types of act, such as common crimes and crimes against humanity. Using examples from the United States, Europe, India and South Africa, the authors restore the social dimension to rights processes and suggest some ethical alternatives to current practice.
Human Rights in History: Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime
by Young-Sun HongThis book examines competition and collaboration among Western powers, the socialist bloc, and the Third World for control over humanitarian aid programs during the Cold War. Young-sun Hong's analysis reevaluates the established parameters of German history. On the one hand, global humanitarian efforts functioned as an arena for a three-way political power struggle. On the other, they gave rise to transnational spaces that allowed for multidimensional social and cultural encounters. Hong paints an unexpected view of the global humanitarian regime: Algerian insurgents flown to East Germany for medical care, barefoot Chinese doctors in Tanzania, and West and East German doctors working together in the Congo. She also provides a rich analysis of the experiences of African trainees and Asian nurses in the two Germanys. This book brings an urgently needed historical perspective to contemporary debates on global governance, which largely concern humanitarianism, global health, south-north relationships, and global migration.
Human Rights in History: Idealism beyond Borders
by Eleanor DaveyThis is a major new account of how modern humanitarian action was shaped by transformations in the French intellectual and political landscape from the 1950s to the 1980s. Eleanor Davey reveals how radical left third-worldism was displaced by the 'sans-frontiériste' movement as the dominant way of approaching suffering in what was then called the third world. Third-worldism regarded these regions as the motor for international revolution, but revolutionary zeal disintegrated as a number of its regimes took on violent and dictatorial forms. Instead, the radical humanitarianism of the 'sans-frontiériste' movement pioneered by Médecins Sans Frontières emerged as an alternative model for international aid. Covering a period of major international upheavals and domestic change in France, Davey demonstrates the importance of memories of the Second World War in political activism and humanitarian action and underlines the powerful legacies of Cold War politics for international affairs since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Human Rights in Iran
by Reza AfshariSelected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic TitleAre the principles set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights truly universal? Or, as some have argued, are they derived exclusively from Western philosophic traditions and therefore irrelevant to many non-Western cultures? Should a state's claims to indigenous traditions, and not international covenants, determine the scope of rights granted to its citizens?In his strong defense of the Declaration, Reza Afshari contends that the moral vision embodied in this and other agreements is a proper response to the abuses of the modern state. Asserting that the most serious violations of human rights by state rulers are motivated by political and economic factors rather than the purported concern for cultural authenticity, Afshari examines one particular state that has claimed cultural exception to the universality of human rights, the Islamic Republic of Iran.In his revealing case study, Afshari investigates how Islamic culture and Iranian politics since the fall of the Shah have affected human rights policy in that state. He exposes the human rights violations committed by ruling clerics in Iran since the Revolution, showing that Iran has behaved remarkably like other authoritarian governments in its human rights abuses. For more than two decades, Iran has systematically jailed, tortured, and executed dissidents without due process of law and assassinated political opponents outside state borders. Furthermore, like other oppressive states, Iran has regularly denied and countered the charges made by United Nations human rights monitors, defending its acts as authentic cultural practices.Throughout his study, Afshari addresses Iran's claims of cultural relativism, a controversial thesis in the intense ongoing debate over the universality of human rights. In prison memoirs he uncovers the actual human rights abuses committed by the Islamic Republic and the sociopolitical conditions that cause or permit them. Finally, Afshari turns to little-read UN reports that reveal that the dynamics of power between UN human rights monitors and Iranian leaders have proven ineffective at enforcing human rights policy in Iran. Critically analyzing the state's responses, Afshari shows that the Islamic Republic, like other oppressive states, has regularly denied and countered the charges made by UN human rights monitors, and when denials were patently implausible, it defended its acts as authentic cultural practices. This defense is equally unconvincing, since it lacked domestic cultural consensus.
Human Rights in Islamic Societies: Muslims and the Western Conception of Rights (Routledge Studies in Islam and Human Rights)
by Ahmed E. SouaiaiaThis book compares Islamic and Western ideas of human rights in order to ascertain which human rights, if any, can be considered universal. This is a profound topic with a rich history that is highly relevant within global politics and society today. The arguments in this book are formed by bringing William Talbott’s Which Rights Should Be Universal? (2005) and Abdulaziz Sachedina’s Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (2014) into conversation. By bridging the gap between cultural relativists and moral universalists, this book seeks to offer a new model for the understanding of human rights. It contends that human rights abuses are outcomes of complex systems by design and/or by default. Therefore, it proposes that a rigorous systems-thinking approach will contribute to addressing the challenge of human rights. Engaging with Islamic and Western, historical and contemporary, and relativist and universalist thought, this book is a fresh take on a perennially important issue. As such, it will be a first-rate resource for any scholars working in religious studies, Islamic studies, Middle East studies, ethics, sociology, and law and religion.
Human Rights in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Routledge Advances in Asia-Pacific Studies)
by Ian NearyIan Neary looks in detail at the history of the introduction of human rights ideas into Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and examines how, and to what effect, state and society have incorporated the specific international standards on childrens' and patients' rights into legal systems and social practice. This comprehensively researched, accessibly written book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Asian studies, human rights, sociology and politics.
Human Rights in Libya: The Impact of International Society Since 1969 (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics)
by Giacomina De BonaSince the end of the Cold War a democratic wave has swept through large parts of the world, propagating liberal values and giving impetus to the case for human rights in an international society. To date however, the promotion of human rights has presented a mixed account with some countries lagging behind others in terms of their observance. In an effort to account for these differences, this book analyzes the relationship between norms and the social construction of international society, and examines how human rights are promoted in that context. Focussing on Libya as a case study, Giacomina De Bona criticises the neo-realist approach by demonstrating the impact of international society on the advancement of human rights. Libya has related to the international environment in different ways over time, ranging from isolation to reconciliation and regime change, making it a particularly interesting example. This book is of particular relevance in light of the recent Arab Spring and raises the question as to whether the coercive imposition of the Western liberal model contributes to establishing respect for human rights in what continue to be the peripheral zones of international society.
Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations in the Age of General Muhammadu Buhari and His Successors: Loving the Foreigner as Yourself
by Philip C. AkaUnder the Fourth Republic since 1999, the challenge Nigerian leaders face like never before is how to create a state that matches the expectations of their diverse peoples at home and abroad. Taking this proposition as starting point, this book advances proposals for a human-right policy, referred to alternately in the work as principled foreign policy, for Nigeria under the Fourth Republic, taking advantage of the inestimable opportunity afforded by General Muhammadu Buhari’s departure from the political scene on May 29, 2023, after the famine, domestically and externally, wrought by his two terms of office as President. It is a broad-ranging argument, draped in the less arcane constitutional vocabulary and material of human rights, for thoroughgoing reforms at home and abroad as the only antidote to the nation-building dilemmas Nigeria confronts in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Buhari’s departure marks the end of military teleguidance of Nigerian politics under the Fourth Republic in the camouflage of democratic rule, a birthmark of remote control dating back to the first military intervention in the country in January 1966. These momentous events within Nigeria coincide with equally epoch-making developments in the UK, Nigeria’s former colonial overlord, with ripple effects in Nigeria, signified by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, after seven decades on the throne, and the emergence of Prince Charles as King of England. A new monarch in Britain adds to the opportunity that falls open for the reconfiguration of Nigeria’s external relations with ramifications for the application of human rights in those relations. Despite its known disabilities, Nigeria has the potential infrastructure, including its sizable population, to conduct a human-right policy, if its leaders rationalize the country’s resources more wisely.
Human Rights in Prisons
by Andrew M. Jefferson Liv S. GaboritLike many prisons around the world, those in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and the Philippines are subject to the scrutiny and intervention of rights-based non-governmental organisations. This book compares encounters between prisons and NGOs drawing particular attention to the variation in styles of intervention. It ultimately shows how prisons act on NGOs as much as NGOs act on prisons. The authors call for a re-alignment of rights-based approaches to prison reform more finely and pragmatically attuned to the reality of interdependent relations between prisons and NGOs. Human Rights in Prisons advances understandings of institutional agency by casting a much needed empirical light on prisons, relations between staff and prisoners, and the inexorable grind of prison life.
Human Rights in Probation: Theory, Practice and Balance (Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice)
by Kyros HadjisergisExploring the application, theory, implications and socio-legal underpinnings of human rights in probation and associated offender management, this book examines the organisation and re-organization of the National Probation Service, from the introduction of the Human Rights Act (HRA) to the end of the Transforming Rehabilitation era.Outlining how the duties of probation officers are interpreted in light of the HRA, this book evaluates applicable case law as a means to exemplify and clarify the direct operation of human rights law in instances of potential human rights violations. Chapters also analyse the current and future infrastructure of probation to demonstrate challenges of awareness, implementation and compliance. Based on qualitative data analysed through a socio-legal lens and a human rights framework, themes explored include crime control and due process, and are reflective of the tensions and imbalances experienced between risk or public protection and human rights. The book also includes case studies of Serious Further Offences that have either shed light on the shortcomings in the area of human rights in probation or highlighted factors linked to human rights, including scapegoating, cumulative systemic failures, miscommunications and over-reliance on risk assessments. Finally, it provides clarity as to what the human rights duties of the Service are, what relevant laws apply alongside the HRA, and how these decisions affect risk and offender management.An important and timely study of probation in England and Wales, Human Rights in Probation will be of great interest to academics of probation, criminal justice, and human rights. It will also be of value to Probation officers (including trainees) and other practitioners working in offender management services.
Human Rights in Thailand (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
by Don SelbyWhen the Thai state violently suppressed a massive prodemocracy protest in "Black May," 1992, it initiated an unprecedented period in Thailand. The military, shamed and chagrined, withdrew from political life, and the democracy movement had more latitude than ever before in Thailand's history, gaining an institutional presence previously unseen. This extraordinary moment created a unique opportunity for the human rights movement to emerge, for the first time, on a national scale in Thailand. <P><P>Don F. Selby examines this era of Thai political history to determine how and why the time was ripe for such developments. By placing greater emphasis on human rights as an anthropological concern, he focuses on the understandings that social actors draw from human rights struggles. He concludes that what gave emergent human rights in Thailand their shape, force, and trajectories are the ways that advocates engaged, contested, or reworked debates around Buddhism in its relationship to rule and social structure; political struggle in relation to a narrative of Thai democracy that disavowed egalitarian movements; and traditional standards of social stratification and face-saving practices. <P><P> In this way, human rights ideals in Thailand emerge less from global-local translation and more as a matter of negotiation within everyday forms of sociality, morality, and politics.
Human Rights in Theory and Practice: An Overview of Concepts and Treaties
by Ravindran DanielAppreciation of the context that advances or hinders the enjoyment of human rights would provide the basis for developing relevant strategies, including the use of concepts, laws and mechanisms to promote human rights protection. With this aim, this book facilitates reflection on the theory and practice of human rights. It deals with the historical evolution of human rights ideas, traces the evolution of international human rights law, examines the UN and other human rights protection mechanisms, discusses the growth of human rights NGOs and their contribution, and studies the changing contours of the human rights movement. Human Rights in Theory and Practice: An Overview of Concepts and Treaties includes detailed examination of the provisions of major human rights treaties. It is a revised and updated version of the 1998 publication, Human Rights Praxis: A Resource Book for Study, Action and Reflection, which was widely used by activists and other readers and was translated into Bahasa Indonesia, Thai and Tamil. The present book will similarly be of interest to human rights activists and scholars of politics, law, sociology, history, international relations and peace studies.
Human Rights in Turkey: Assaults on Human Dignity (Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations #15)
by Winston Langley Hasan AydinThe book provides the historical setting of Turkey related to the development of democracy, human rights issues, the treatment of cultural and ethnic minorities, and the short- and long-term consequences of the crackdown including impacts on individuals, institutions like education and the media, the criminal justice system, the economy, and Turkey’s standing in the international community. Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, the military and the media have been the main traditional powers of oppressive, secularist, and nationalist regimes in the country. After a period of initial reforms, rather than eliminating the structures of the authoritarian state, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seized the levers of power and used them aggressively against his political enemies. He turned Turkey into a one-man regime after the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, and his actions included the widespread violation of human rights.This book tells the tale of the consequences of the measures taken after the failed coup attempt that have adversely impacted the development of democracy and human rights in Turkey, altering the nation’s course of history. Beginning with a State of Emergency that was declared in July of 2016, Turkey has moved to a more authoritarian state. Among the consequences of the actions taken have been imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, the shuttering of media, the dismissal of public employees, the dismissal of academics, jailed elected Kurdish politicians, and the misuse of the criminal justice to victimize the population. Adverse effects have included widespread violations of human rights, torture, and mistreatment of prisoners, false imprisonment, and the absence of the right to a fair trial. This book examines some of the thorniest questions of Turkish democratization and human rights, including the underlying reasons for the decay of democracy and what has happened as a result of this decay. Among these is a deterioration of the educational system, a reduction in economic stability, the absence of the rule of law and due process, a radical transformation of the country, and violations of universal human rights.Endorsements:As one who knows people who have been victimized by the authoritarian regime in Turkey, “Human Rights in Turkey” provides unique insights and perspectives on the changes that have befallen his wonderful country. It is truly insightful. David L. Carter, Ph.D., Michigan State UniversityHuman Rights in Turkey: Assaults on Human Dignity fills a major gap in contemporary political scholarship. Its elucidation of Turkey’s democratic backsliding into a one-man authoritarian regime is insightful and unique. Absolutely required reading for anyone who cares about this beautiful country, its wonderful people, and its uncertain future. Kati Piri, Member of the European Parliament and Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary CommitteeAydin’s and Langley’s book addresses critical issues in a critical case. Turkey had been regarded as a rising democracy in a troubled region, but in recent years the country has experienced troubling signs of democratic erosion. Central to that decline is the precarious status of basic human rights of expression, association, religion, and due process. This book explores what has happened and how it affects individuals and the Turkish polity more broadly.John M. Carey, Ph.D.. Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences, Dartmouth College, NH, USATurkey was once a poster-boy of the league of modernizing countries – a staunch ally of the West, an almost-democracy that would become better soon enough. It might even be the first Muslim country to join the European Union. That image now lies shattered under the erratic one-man-show of Tayyip Erdoğan. The police state reigns supreme, opposition is cowed, the courts are in shambles, and more journalists are jailed for their opinions than in any