Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry

Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry

Author: Michael Ignatieff

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-12-28

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1400842840

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Michael Ignatieff draws on his extensive experience as a writer and commentator on world affairs to present a penetrating account of the successes, failures, and prospects of the human rights revolution. Since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, this revolution has brought the world moral progress and broken the nation-state's monopoly on the conduct of international affairs. But it has also faced challenges. Ignatieff argues that human rights activists have rightly drawn criticism from Asia, the Islamic world, and within the West itself for being overambitious and unwilling to accept limits. It is now time, he writes, for activists to embrace a more modest agenda and to reestablish the balance between the rights of states and the rights of citizens. Ignatieff begins by examining the politics of human rights, assessing when it is appropriate to use the fact of human rights abuse to justify intervention in other countries. He then explores the ideas that underpin human rights, warning that human rights must not become an idolatry. In the spirit of Isaiah Berlin, he argues that human rights can command universal assent only if they are designed to protect and enhance the capacity of individuals to lead the lives they wish. By embracing this approach and recognizing that state sovereignty is the best guarantee against chaos, Ignatieff concludes, Western nations will have a better chance of extending the real progress of the past fifty years. Throughout, Ignatieff balances idealism with a sure sense of practical reality earned from his years of travel in zones of war and political turmoil around the globe. Based on the Tanner Lectures that Ignatieff delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 2000, the book includes two chapters by Ignatieff, an introduction by Amy Gutmann, comments by four leading scholars--K. Anthony Appiah, David A. Hollinger, Thomas W. Laqueur, and Diane F. Orentlicher--and a response by Ignatieff.


The Right to Have Rights

The Right to Have Rights

Author: Stephanie DeGooyer

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-02-13

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1784787523

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Sixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, an exiled Jew deprived of her German citizenship, observed that before people can enjoy any of the "inalienable" Rights of Man-before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on-there must first be such a thing as "the right to have rights". The concept received little attention at the time, but in our age of mass deportations, Muslim bans, refugee crises, and extra-state war, the phrase has become the centre of a crucial and lively debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied disciplines-including history, law, politics, and literary studies-discuss the critical basis of rights and the meaning of radical democratic politics today.


Realizing the Right to Development

Realizing the Right to Development

Author: United Nations. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 584

ISBN-13:

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This book is devoted to the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development. It contains a collection of analytical studies of various aspects of the right to development, which include the rule of law and good governance, aid, trade, debt, technology transfer, intellectual property, access to medicines and climate change in the context of an enabling environment at the local, regional and international levels. It also explores the issues of poverty, women and indigenous peoples within the theme of social justice and equity. The book considers the strides that have been made over the years in measuring progress in implementing the right to development and possible ways forward to make the right to development a reality for all in an increasingly fragile, interdependent and ever-changing world.


The Last Utopia

The Last Utopia

Author: Samuel Moyn

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-03-05

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0674256522

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Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.


Protecting the right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights

Protecting the right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights

Author: Bychawska-Siniarska, Dominika

Publisher: Council of Europe

Published: 2017-08-04

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13:

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European Convention on Human Rights – Article 10 – Freedom of expression 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. In the context of an effective democracy and respect for human rights mentioned in the Preamble to the European Convention on Human Rights, freedom of expression is not only important in its own right, but it also plays a central part in the protection of other rights under the Convention. Without a broad guarantee of the right to freedom of expression protected by independent and impartial courts, there is no free country, there is no democracy. This general proposition is undeniable. This handbook is a practical tool for legal professionals from Council of Europe member states who wish to strengthen their skills in applying the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in their daily work.


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 21st Century

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 21st Century

Author: Gordon Brown

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2016-04-18

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1783742216

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The Global Citizenship Commission was convened, under the leadership of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the auspices of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study, to re-examine the spirit and stirring words of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The result – this volume – offers a 21st-century commentary on the original document, furthering the work of human rights and illuminating the ideal of global citizenship. What does it mean for each of us to be members of a global community? Since 1948, the Declaration has stood as a beacon and a standard for a better world. Yet the work of making its ideals real is far from over. Hideous and systemic human rights abuses continue to be perpetrated at an alarming rate around the world. Too many people, particularly those in power, are hostile to human rights or indifferent to their claims. Meanwhile, our global interdependence deepens. Bringing together world leaders and thinkers in the fields of politics, ethics, and philosophy, the Commission set out to develop a common understanding of the meaning of global citizenship – one that arises from basic human rights and empowers every individual in the world. This landmark report affirms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seeks to renew the 1948 enterprise, and the very ideal of the human family, for our day and generation.


Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty

Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty

Author: Joel Feinberg

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1400853974

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This volume of essays by one of America's preeminent philosophers in the area of jurisprudence and moral philosophy gathers together fourteen papers that had been published in widely scattered and not readily accessible sources. All of the essays deal with the political ideals of liberty and justice or with hard cases for the application of the concept of a right. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Christ and Human Rights

Christ and Human Rights

Author: Professor George Newlands

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-05-28

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1409477150

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Human rights is one of the most important geopolitical issues in the modern world. Jesus Christ is the centre of Christianity. Yet there exists almost no analysis of the significance of Christology for human rights. This book focuses on the connections. Examination of rights reveals tensions, ambiguities and conflicts. This book constructs a Christology which centres on a Christ of the vulnerable and the margins. It explores the interface between religion, law, politics and violence, East and West, North and South. The history of the use of sacred texts as 'texts of terror' is examined, and theological links to legal and political dimensions explored. Criteria are developed for action to make an effective difference to human rights enforcement and resolution between cultures and religions on rights.