From Pararepublic to Parastate: International Leverage in Shaping Kosovo’s Secession

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
Mladen Mrdalj
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Clinton Administration ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
External Assistance ◽  
Slobodan Milosevic

AbstractThe Kosovo Albanian political movement in the 1990s contained three fluctuating factions with distinct strategies: boycotting Serbian institutions, participating in elections, and resorting to an armed insurgency. This article shows how expectations of external assistance, primarily from the Clinton administration, influenced which strategy was to dominate the movement at certain periods. It also shows how the movement successfully conflated the issues of human rights and the ethnonationalist secessionist agenda, even though the secessionist agenda predated the claims of human rights violations following the rise of Slobodan Milošević to power in Serbia. In the end, the article discusses how the Clinton administration’s failure in the Rambouillet peace talks, the diplomatic result of the NATO attack on Serbia, and the fall of Slobodan Milošević set the foundations for freezing the conflict and turning Kosovo into a parastate.

Truth, Justice, and Commemoration Initiatives in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onur Bakiner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
European Court ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Past Wrongs

This chapter analyzes laws and policies that seek to reveal, publicize, and officially acknowledge facts about human rights violations, procure retributive justice through criminal trials, and attain restorative justice through compensation for victims in Turkey. In addition, it discusses efforts of victims’ groups, human rights associations, opposition political parties, and other concerned civil society groups to generate awareness around those violations. It addresses two main questions: Why has the Turkish state unveiled truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives, i.e., policies and gestures to acknowledge and redress past wrongs? Why have these efforts, mostly initiated in the 2000s and early 2010s, failed? The chapter argues that the combination of civil society activism, memory initiatives by opposition parties, especially the Kurdish political movement, diaspora pressures, and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings necessitated government efforts to address past wrongs. In some ways, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government’s (2002–present) narrative of modern Turkish history facilitated these initiatives, as it sought to solidify its support among minority constituencies and liberal intellectuals by marketing itself as the voice of the “democratic majority” and as an agent of change in a country where the state routinely committed, denied, and justified human rights violations. Yet, the AKP government’s instrumentalism and selective reconstruction of the national past also explain why these truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives failed to satisfy the victims, the broader human rights community, and independent observers. In a political landscape marked by shifting opportunities, threats, and alliances, the AKP government found it politically convenient to sacrifice those initiatives after 2011. The consolidation of AKP rule and the accompanying institutional decline of democracy that started around the same time pushed them further into irrelevance.

scholarly journals Time, DNA and documents in family reckonings

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-108
Author(s):  
Claudia Fonseca
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Dna Test ◽  
The Core ◽  
Brazilian Government ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Connections ◽  
Institutionalized Patients

In this paper, drawing on literature from both STS and the anthropology of kinship, we describe a political movement aimed at legal reparation for human rights violations perpetrated by the Brazilian government against children of the compulsorily institutionalized patients of Hansen's disease. We conduct our investigation by exploring the action of intertwining technologies -- narrated recollections, written documents, and the DNA test -- employed by major actors to "reckon" the family connections at the core of this drama. The notion of technologies helps underline not only the materiality of certain processes, but also the complex temporalities at play. Responding to a challenge proposed by Janet Carsten, our ultimate aim is to show how political events as well as collective institutionalized structures - operating through the mediation of these diverse technologies - produce a particular kind of sociality, interwoven with perceptions of family and community.

Social representations of human rights violations: Further evidence

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Clémence ◽  
Thierry Devos ◽  
Willem Doise
Keyword(s):  
Cluster Analysis ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Questionnaire Study ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
High Tolerance ◽  
Individual Actions

Social representations of human rights violations were investigated in a questionnaire study conducted in five countries (Costa Rica, France, Italy, Romania, and Switzerland) (N = 1239 young people). We were able to show that respondents organize their understanding of human rights violations in similar ways across nations. At the same time, systematic variations characterized opinions about human rights violations, and the structure of these variations was similar across national contexts. Differences in definitions of human rights violations were identified by a cluster analysis. A broader definition was related to critical attitudes toward governmental and institutional abuses of power, whereas a more restricted definition was rooted in a fatalistic conception of social reality, approval of social regulations, and greater tolerance for institutional infringements of privacy. An atypical definition was anchored either in a strong rejection of social regulations or in a strong condemnation of immoral individual actions linked with a high tolerance for governmental interference. These findings support the idea that contrasting definitions of human rights coexist and that these definitions are underpinned by a set of beliefs regarding the relationships between individuals and institutions.

American and Canadian Civil Actions Alleging Human Rights Violations Abroad by Oil and Gas Companies

2008 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Horlick ◽  
Joe Cyr ◽  
Scott Reynolds ◽  
Andrew Behrman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Forum Non Conveniens ◽  
The Government ◽  
Oil And Gas Companies ◽  
Political Question ◽  
The U.S

Under the United States Alien Tort Statute, which permits non-U.S. citizens to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts for human rights violations that are violations of the law of nations, plaintiffs have filed claims against multinational oil and gas corporations for the direct or complicit commission of such violations carried out by the government of the country in which the corporation operated. In addition to exercising jurisdiction over U.S. corporations, U.S. courts have exercised jurisdiction in cases involving non-U.S. defendants for alleged wrongful conduct against non-U.S. plaintiffs committed outside the U.S.The exercise of jurisdiction by U.S. courts over non-U.S. defendants for alleged wrongful conduct against non-U.S. plaintiffs committed outside of the U.S. raises serious questions as to the jurisdictional foundation on which the power of U.S. courts to adjudicate them rests. Defences that foreign defendants can raise against the exercise of jurisdiction by the U.S. courts are an objection to the extraterritorial assertion of jurisdiction, the act of state doctrine, the political question doctrine, forum non conveniens, and the principle of comity. These defences are bolstered by the support of the defendant’s home government and other governments.

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