scholarly journals Abolition Then and Now: Tactical Comparisons Between the Human Rights Movement and the Modern Nonhuman Animal Rights Movement in the United States

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Lee Wrenn
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier

This chapter explains that the driving force behind the protection of human rights worldwide, today and for roughly the past thirty-five years, has been the nongovernmental human rights movement. Intermittently during the last two-and-a-half centuries, citizens' movements did play important roles in efforts to promote human rights, as during the development of the antislavery movement in England in the eighteenth century and the rise of the feminist movement in the United States in the nineteenth century. The contemporary human rights movement responds to victories and defeats by shifting focus from time to time, but it shows signs that it will remain an enduring force in world affairs. Efforts by those outside governments have been particularly important in extending the protection of rights beyond national boundaries, and it is in the present era that they have been most significant.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Young

The human rights movement has done little to address economic inequality. So says Samuel Moyn in Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. Reviewer Katharine Young disagrees. The good work promoting equality has been done, but this time, it has been done outside the United States. Had Moyn originally looked to where Young is now pointing, his book would have been much improved.


Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier

This chapter highlights the significant role of the human rights movement after September 11, 2001. It points out how Al-Qaeda made no claim to respect rights after 9/11, making them insusceptible to the human rights movement's main weapon: embarrassment. It also details how the United States played a crucial role in the promotion of human rights worldwide during and after the Cold War. The chapter analyzes the consequence of the decision to make prevention the defining concern of U.S. government policy in responding to the threat of terrorism for human rights. It looks at the consequences of the primacy given to prevention that removed one of the restraints on the use of torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.


Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier

This chapter analyzes Amnesty International, the best known and by far the largest human rights organization in the world, which was established in London in 1961. Its creation was a major milestone in the emergence of an enduring human rights movement. From the start it was intended to be a global organization. That is, those who would participate in its efforts would come from all over the world, and those on whose behalf it campaigned would be persons everywhere who suffered abuses of human rights. Today, Amnesty International is probably somewhat less influential, both in the United States and globally, than it was at its high point in the 1970s and the 1980s. Some would argue that this reflects the extension or dilution of its mandate to cover the full range of human rights issues, including economic and social rights.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document