In this vivid ethnography, Harri Englund investigates how ideas of freedom impede struggles against poverty and injustice in emerging democracies. Reaching beyond a narrow focus on the national elite, Prisoners of Freedom shows how foreign aid and human rights activism hamper the pursuit of democratic citizenship in Africa. The book explores how activists’ aspirations of self-improvement, pursued […]
The most extensive sourcebook and documentary history on the issue of human rights. Human rights. Philosophers have tried to define them. Men and women have sacrificed their lives for them. Wars have been fought over them. Leaders and constitutions have promised them to people. Today they have emerged as an issue that can serve to […]
In the decades following the triumphant proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the UN General Assembly was transformed by the arrival of newly independent states from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This diverse constellation of states introduced new ideas, methods, and priorities to the human rights program. Their influence was […]
Grawemeyer Award winner Kathryn Sikkink offers a landmark argument for human rights prosecutions as a powerful political tool. She shows how, in just three decades, state leaders in Latin America, Europe, and Africa have lost their immunity from any accountability for their human rights violations, becoming the subjects of highly publicized trials resulting in severe […]
Recent events in South America, central Europe, Africa, and Russia have again brought to the world’s attention the complex interrelationship between states of emergency and the preservation of fundamental human rights. In Human Rights in Crisis, Joan Fitzpatrick offers the first systematic and comprehensive effort to examine the multifaceted system for monitoring human rights abuses […]
This volume sets out to describe the political and philosophical underpinnings of the idea of human rights by bringing together a collection of original essays by a group of highly distinguished theorists. Recognizing that Western insistence on the universality of the concept of human rights can also function as a diplomatic cover for post-colonial interventions, […]
The Ten Commandments and Human Rights sets out to evaluate the importance of the Ten Commandments for the life of faith today. The general thesis is that the commandments are immensely important not only for Jews and Christians, but for all persons seeking to find or to reaffirm a moral foundation for their life and […]
Challenging the traditional treatment of human rights cast in purely legal frameworks, the authors argue that, in order to promote the notion of human rights, its geographies and spatialities must be investigated and be made explicit. A wealth of case studies examine the significance of these components in various countries with multi-cultured societies, and identify […]
Campaigners, politicians, and the media regularly cite human rights to justify or challenge actions that range from peaceful protest to military action. The phrase -human rights- appears to have become a slogan in need of a definition. Human rights education seems more urgent than ever. Teachers and Human Rights Education helps teachers with this vital task […]
In Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights, Katerina Dalacoura explores the concept of human rights, and debate between understanding them as a simply universal norm, or a ‘Western’ value, and therefore inappropriate and irrelevant for other cultures. She examines Islam’s influence on the understanding of human rights in Muslim societies, and whether there is an inherent antithesis […]
