Mounties on the Loose

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Robert Justin Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Medical Records ◽  
Third World ◽  
State Department ◽  
Royal Canadian Mounted Police ◽  
The World ◽  
American Press ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Political Office ◽  
The U.S

According to a recent publication of the U.S. State Department, “The Canadian record in protection of human rights is one of the finest in the world.” Although President Carter has frequently spoken about threats to human rights in Communist and Third World countries, he has seemingly endorsed the State Department view by not saying a word about problems in Canada. Carter's silence has been largely matched by that of the American press, with the result that few Americans know that within the last year Canada has been rocked by a continuing scandal in which it has been revealed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP—yes, the “Mounties“) has for decades been systematically and secretly opening mail, breaking into homes and offices, and obtaining confidential tax, unemployment, and medical records, and checking into all candidates for political office.

TO THE QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR TORTURE IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
ASTEMIR ZHURTOV ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Life ◽  
International Standards ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The Russian Federation

Cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as humiliate the dignity, are prohibited in most countries of the world, and Russia is no exception in this issue. The article presents an analysis of the institution of responsibility for torture in the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that the current criminal law of Russia superficially and fragmentally regulates liability for torture, in connection with which the author formulated the proposals to define such act as an independent crime. In the frame of modern globalization, the world community pays special attention to the protection of human rights, in connection with which large-scale international standards have been created a long time ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international acts enshrine prohibitions of cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as degrade the dignity.Considering the historical experience of the past, these standards focus on the prohibition of any kind of torture, regardless of the purpose of their implementation.

Making Human Rights a Reality

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
World Population ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
National Human ◽  
The World ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions

In the last six decades, one of the most striking developments in international law is the emergence of a massive body of legal norms and procedures aimed at protecting human rights. In many countries, though, there is little relationship between international law and the actual protection of human rights on the ground. This book takes a fresh look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk. The book argues that more progress is possible if human rights promoters work strategically with the group of states that have dedicated resources to human rights protection. These human rights “stewards” can focus their resources on places where the tangible benefits to human rights are greatest. Success will require setting priorities as well as engaging local stakeholders such as nongovernmental organizations and national human rights institutions. To date, promoters of international human rights law have relied too heavily on setting universal goals and procedures and not enough on assessing what actually works and setting priorities. This book illustrates how, with a different strategy, human rights stewards can make international law more effective and also safeguard human rights for more of the world population.

The Persecuted Body

Facing Fear ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melani Mcalister
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
First Century ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
The World ◽  
Politics Of Fear ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
International Religious Freedom Act ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the politics of fear underlying the antipersecution discourse that revolved around evangelical Christians at the turn of the twenty-first century. A video made by the U.S.-based Christian evangelical group Voice of the Martyrs showed that Christians are being persecuted all around the world. By the turn of the twenty-first century, a passionate concern with the persecution of Christians united conservatives as well as liberal and moderate evangelicals. The chapter shows how antipersecution discourse resulted in the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. It also considers the significance of spectacles of the violated body to the discourse of persecution and how intense attention to Christian persecution created a tension for evangelicals between the universalizing language of human rights and a specific commitment to the “persecuted body” of Christ. Finally, it explores how evangelicals' attention to Christian persecution intersects with Islamic concerns.

America and the World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mugambi Jouet
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
Original Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

America has long been much more inclined than other Western democracies to defy norms of diplomacy, international law, and human rights deemed against its interests, although these stances have at times profoundly divided the U.S. public. Americans were bitterly divided over the Bush administration’s use of torture, its aim to detain alleged terrorists forever without trial at Guantanamo, and its catastrophic invasion of Iraq on grounds later revealed to be false. The Obama administration’s rather different approach to foreign policy proved divisive too. The chapter explores why Americans are far more polarized than Europeans over fundamental issues like war, diplomacy, the United Nations, and human rights. From the ideal of Manifest Destiny to America’s relative geographic isolation, superpower status, and the idea that God chose it to lead the world, Mugambi Jouet’s original analysis explains the interrelationship between the different aspects of American exceptionalism shaping U.S. foreign policy.

Headwind from Europe: The New Position of the German Courts on Personality Rights after the Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Coors
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
European Court ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The U.S

In Germany, as in the U.S., the relationship between protection of privacy and freedom of expression has been subject of many decisions. In the U.S. a right of privacy was famously conjured out of common law precedents by Warren and Brandeis. Over the course of a century, it developed into a right of publicity, which gave celebrities the power to prevent the commercial use of their names, endorsements, images, voices, and other attributes of personality by unauthorized third parties. In defining such a right, much attention has been focused on separating what is commercially unacceptable from what is desirable free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It has also been important to settle the duration of such rights. Publicity rights as a commercial value of a person's identity are therefore well established in the U.S., although state laws vary widely as to the extent of protection. In Germany, due to the constitutional background of the personality right, the balance between public and private interests still operates differently. After the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2004 convicted the German Federal Republic of violating the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights Fundamental Freedoms, the German Federal Court (Bundesgerichtshof—BGH) took the opportunity to think over its previous position about image rights. Three judgments were examined by the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht—BVerfG) and one of them was reversed.

Privileges and Immunities of the World Health Organization

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-372
Author(s):  
Gian Luca Burci ◽  
Egle Granziera
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Added Value ◽  
World Health ◽  
National Courts ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Health Organization

This paper presents a brief overview of the World Health Organization’s experience with privileges and immunities, focusing on the sources of its privileges and immunities and the challenges encountered in asserting them and securing their respect. This overview will demonstrate how complex and sometimes elusive the legal protection afforded to the WHO can be. Although the rationale for the WHO’s privileges and immunities is constitutionally founded on the notion of functional necessity,1 the scope and limits of its functions can be blurred or shifting. While the WHO has not faced the dramatic challenges to or denials of its privileges and immunities that other organizations have encountered, the trend of progressive erosion of legal protection in the name of accountability, democratic control by national courts, the protection of human rights and shifting perceptions of the ‘added value’ of international organizations may eventually require a conscious and strategic revision by the international community of the model of international cooperation represented by international organizations.

scholarly journals ASEAN’s Problematic Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights: The New Media’s Role in Enhancing the Protection of Human Rights

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Ramcharan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
New Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
World Conference ◽  
The World ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Standards

Citizens of ASEAN states appear to be increasingly involved, through Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), in pushing for greater openness and accountability of their political leaders and public institutions. In particular, ICTs afford citizens of ASEAN States and like-minded counterparts around the world in the human rights community to push for greater accountability of ASEAN’s human rights institutions. With the adoption of the ASEAN Charter in 2007, ASEAN states embarked on a process of crafting a regional ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), eighteen years after the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria. While the World Conference had reaffirmed the universality of human rights, ASEAN states have moved grudgingly and gradually, egged on by greater global concern for human rights and by the pressures of globalization, towards the protection of human rights. The Terms of Reference (TORs) of the AICHR, adopted in July 2009 and favouring promotion rather than protection of human rights did not provide for an institutionalised role for the media. Subsequent drafting by AICHR of a proposed ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) has excluded mainstream news media and civil society organizations (CSOs) from the process. In the absence of reporting and substantive reporting by most mainstream media in the region civil society, most importantly the new ICT based media, has played a vital role in seeking to advance the protection of human rights. This includes scrutiny of the specific rights that will be included in the forthcoming AHRD to ensure that international human rights standards are upheld and that ASEAN states honour their existing commitments under international instruments. The new media-environment provides a platform for a multitude of actors to disseminate human rights related information, to document human rights abuses and thereby enhance the protection of human rights in the region.  

scholarly journals Carter Versus Reagan: The Human Rights Records of Two Administrations

1988 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Michael A. Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Class Hierarchy ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The U.S

The emergence of human rights as a public concern during the Carter administration was a recrudescence of the long tradition of moralism in American foreign policy. Confident that the republic is the pinnacle of political, social, and human development, Americans have believed since 1776 that the “United States must be a beacon of human rights to an unregenerate world” (Schlesinger, 1978: 505). Yet, while to the founding fathers America’s avoidance of Europe’s evils of class, hierarchy, and power politics was to be its greatest glory it is quite clear that they intended the U.S. to illuminate the path to a better world by example not by action. John Quincy Adam’s famous July 4 speech explained his perception of America’s mission to the world.

Human Rights Minus Liberty?

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 26-36
Author(s):  
Sidney Liskofsky
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Third World ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
The West ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
The U.S

AbstractInternational agreements, of the United Nations as well as of the West European and Inter-American regional organizations, affirm commitments to such personal liberties as freedom of thought and religion, of opinion and expression, of assembly and association, and of emigration. But these liberties, until recently considered central to the concept of human rights, are under increasing threat within the U.N. system.In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, followed in 1966 by the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Both focused on these values. Forty-eight nations have ratified the Covenant, including nearly all the Communist and some radical leftist Third World states—but not, paradoxically, the U.S., even though this, more than any other U.N. convention, reflects the Western civil liberties tradition.

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