Africa’s Approach to Human Rights at the United Nations

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-21
Author(s):  
Warren Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Labor Organization ◽  
World War ◽  
The Law

International concern with the rights of man is not new. During the 1800s the movement to abolish slavery was an emanation of this concern. In the mid-1800s the International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in reaction to the lack of care for wounded soldiers on battlefield. Under its aegis there developed humanitarian law, both the Law of Geneva and the Law of The Hague.In the post World War I period, civil and political rights were given international protection in a series of “minorities treaties.” In addition, economic and social rights received international recognition with the creation of the International Labor Organization (I.L.O.) in 1919. Refugees received assistance with the establishment of a High Commissioner for Refugees. It has, however, only been in the post World War II period that international human rights, and their protection, have received extensive recognition.

The dilemmas of protecting civilians in occupied territory: the precursory example of World War I

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (885) ◽  
pp. 117-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Becker
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Occupied Territory ◽  
The Law

AbstractAdvances in the law of Geneva and the law of The Hague did not remain a dead letter during the World War I, but this was essentially with regard to the wounded and prisoners of war. Those categories of persons were better protected than civilians by treaty-based humanitarian law, which was still in its infancy. Although the ideal of humanity was realized on a large scale thanks to the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and myriad other charitable, denominational, or non-denominational organizations, none of the belligerents hesitated to infringe and violate the law whenever they could. The various occupied populations, on the Western and Eastern fronts and in the Balkans, served as their guinea pigs and were their perfect victims.

The Evolving International Human Rights System

2006 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Buergenthal
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
World War ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
American Society

Few, if any, branches of international law have undergone such dramatic growth and evolution as international human rights in the one hundred years since the founding of the American Society of International Law. This branch of international law did not really come into its own until after World War II. Before then, what today we would broadly characterize as human rights law consisted of diffuse or unrelated legal principles and institutional arrangements that were in one way or another designed to protect certain categories or groups of human beings. Included in this mix prior to World War I were state responsibility for injuries to aliens, international humanitarian law (as we know it today), the protection of minorities, and humanitarian intervention.

Hemingway and Italy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Cirino ◽  
Mark P. Ott
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
World War ◽  
Italian Fascism ◽  
Crucible Experience

The introduction provides an overview on Hemingway’s association with Italy, both his biographical connection and through the resonance of his Italian work. The introduction continues to trace the narrative of the volume, providing the context of each essay and the loose narrative that emerges from our sequence. He first traveled to Italy in the crucible experience of 1918, as a volunteer with the Red Cross serving the Italian Army during World War I. Hemingway’s writing on Italy presented a constant and relentless criticism of Italian fascism. For this reason, he felt unwelcome in the country until after World War II and the election of 1948 that democratized Italy. Soon after, he returned to Italy, but as a wealthy celebrity

Contemporary Research on Proportionality in Armed Conflicts: A Select Review

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Hebrew University ◽  
Scope Of Application ◽  
Proportionality Principle

In an attempt to impose limits on the level of acceptable incidental civilian suffering during armed conflict, international humanitarian law (IHL) articulates a proportionality formula as the test to determine whether or not an attack is lawful. Efforts to comply with that formula during the conduct of hostilities can involve a host of legal and operational challenges. These challenges have inspired a growing body of doctrinal and empirical research. A recent international conference in Jerusalem, co-sponsored by the Delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel and the Occupied Territories and the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, brought together human rights lawyers, military experts and scholars from a variety of disciplines to assess recent developments relating to the proportionality principle in international humanitarian law. This report examines ten conference presentations which offer important insights into: the nature, scope of application and operational requirements of the proportionality principle under IHL; the modalities of investigation and review of proportionality decisions; and the challenges involved in proportionality decision-making.

The Nuremberg Trial and International Law

1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Finch
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Law ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Law ◽  
Civilized World

Retribution for the shocking crimes and atrocities committed by the enemy during World War II was made imperative by the overwhelming demands emanating from the public conscience throughout the civilized world. Statesmen and jurists realized that another failure to vindicate the law such as followed World War I would prove their incapacity to make progress in strengthening the international law of the future.1

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth McKillen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Governance ◽  
International Labor Organization ◽  
World War ◽  
American Federation ◽  
International Labor

This book explores the corporatist alliance between President Woodrow Wilson and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and how it sparked debates over his foreign policy programs within labor circles. During World War II, Wilson pledged to make the world “safe for democracy.” For Wilson, the cooperation of the United States and international labor movements was critical to achieving this goal. To win domestic and international labor support for his foreign policies, Wilson solicited the help of AFL's conservative leaders. This book traces the origins of the partnership that developed between the Wilson administration and AFL leaders to promote U.S. foreign policy, from its tentative beginnings during policy deliberations over how the United States should respond to the Mexican revolution, through World War I, to its culmination with the creation of the International Labor Organization (ILO). It details the significant opposition to the Wilson–AFL collaboration that arose among U.S., transnational, and international labor, Socialists, and diaspora Left groups and how this opposition affected Wilson's efforts to create a permanent role for labor in international governance.

Hall, Helen

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Olmsted
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Far East ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
American Red Cross ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Reformer ◽  
Settlement House ◽  
The Far East ◽  
Consumer Advocate

Helen Hall (1892–1982) was a Henry Street Settlement house leader, social reformer, and consumer advocate. She served with the American Red Cross in France during and after World War I and in the Far East during World War II.

scholarly journals Jews or Germans? Nationality Legislation and the Restoration of Liberal Democracy in Western Europe after the Holocaust

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-422
Author(s):  
David Fraser ◽  
Frank Caestecker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
World War ◽  
International Convention ◽  
Paradoxical Situation

Statelessness continues to trouble today's international legal and political spheres. Despite the International Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the stateless remain an unwelcome presence and awkward anomaly within an international human rights regime still fundamentally dominated by the nation state structure. In 1945, Marc Vishniak wrote that the stateless were “… restricted in their rights more than any other people and constitute the weakest chain in the link of human rights.” Hannah Arendt, who was herself a Jewish refugee from Germany, placed the enigma of the stateless in an even more central philosophical position. Whereas Visniak emphasized the problematic and marginalized legal status of the stateless within the dominant international paradigm, Arendt proposed a re-imagining of the international legal order, a vision that would prioritize a solution to the situation of the stateless, especially stateless Jews, by “somehow or other restoring to them the inalienable rights of man.” For Arendt, Jewish former citizens of Germany, stripped of their nationality by the Nazi regime, occupied a newly paradoxical situation as empowered and voluntaryHeimatlos,precisely because they now rejected the standard legal normativity of the state/citizen template. Arendt found historical support for her argument about statelessness as both abnormal within dominant international legal thinking, and at the same time strangely empowering, with regard to the situation of the mainly Jewish refugees displaced during World War I. They had fallen outside the protections offered by new succession countries at the end of that conflict, very often by their own decision to refuse incorporation as citizens of the emergent nation states. These Jewishapatridesdiscovered “privileges and juridical advantages in statelessness.” For Arendt, Jewish former citizens of Germany at the end of World War II further embodied a move toward conceptualizing a new international paradigm wherein rights could be sought beyond the traditional bounds of a state-based legal order, precisely because those bounds had been irrevocably shattered by the state itself.

A Sea of Difference, a History of Gaps: Migrations between Italy and Albania, 1939–1992

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-118
Author(s):  
Pamela Ballinger
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
World War ◽  
Repressed Memory ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Formal Rule ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article examines extended debates after World War II over the repatriation of Italian civilians from Albania, part of the Italian fascist empire from 1939 until 1943. Italy's decolonization, when it is studied at all, usually figures as rapid and non-traumatic, and an inevitable byproduct of Italy's defeat in the war. The tendency to gloss over the complexities of decolonization proves particularly marked in the Albanian case, given the brevity of Italy's formal rule over that country and the overwhelming historiographical focus on the Italian military experience there. In recovering the complex history of Italian and Albanian relations within which negotiations over repatriation occurred, this article demonstrates the prolonged process of imperial repatriation and its consequences for the individuals involved. In some cases, Italian citizens, and their families, only “returned” home to Italy in the 1990s. The repatriation of these “remainders” of empire concerned not only the Italian and Albanian states but also local committees (notably the Circolo Garibaldi) and international organizations, including the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In recuperating this history, the analysis rejects seeming truisms about the forgotten or repressed memory of Italian colonialism. Drawing upon critical theories of “gaps,” the article addresses the methodological challenges in writing such a history.

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