“Restoring hope where all hope was lost”: Nelson Mandela, the ICRC and the protection of political detainees in apartheid South Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (903) ◽  
pp. 799-829
Author(s):  
Andrew Thompson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
African Country ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractAmidst the violent upheavals of the end of empire and the Cold War, international organizations developed a basic framework for holding State and non-State armed groups to account for their actions when taking prisoners. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) placed itself at the very centre of these developments, making detention visiting a cornerstone of its work. Nowhere was this growing preoccupation with the problem of protecting detainees more evident than apartheid South Africa, where the ICRC undertook more detention visits than in almost any other African country. During these visits the ICRC was drawn into an internationalized human rights dispute that severely tested its leadership and demonstrated the troubled rapport between humanitarianism and human rights. The problems seen in apartheid South Africa reflect today's dilemmas of how to protect political detainees in situations of extreme violence. We can look to the past to find solutions for today's political detainees − or “security detainees” as they are now more commonly called.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and humanitarian assistance: A policy analysis

1996 ◽  
Vol 36 (314) ◽  
pp. 512-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Forsythe
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
World History ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
Complex Emergencies ◽  
The Cold War

In today's armed conflicts and complex emergencies more civilians suffer than combatants. After the Cold War one could identify a zone of turmoil in which civilian suffering was acute. But one could also identify a zone of stability from which operated a complicated system of humanitarian assistance designed to respond to civilian suffering. Media coverage emphasized the suffering, but never before in world history had such a kaleidoscope of humanitarian actors tried to provide emergency relief during armed conflicts and complex emergencies. Inevitably calls were heard for better organization and coordination, and in 1991–92 the United Nations created a Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA).

scholarly journals The Right to Survival in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiyoung Song
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Confucian Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

AbstractFor the past decade, the author has examined North Korean primary public documents and concludes that there have been changes of identities and ideas in the public discourse of human rights in the DPRK: from strong post-colonialism to Marxism-Leninism, from there to the creation of Juche as the state ideology and finally 'our style' socialism. This paper explains the background to Kim Jong Il's 'our style' human rights in North Korea: his broader framework, 'our style' socialism, with its two supporting ideational mechanisms, named 'virtuous politics' and 'military-first politics'. It analyses how some of these characteristics have disappeared while others have been reinforced over time. Marxism has significantly withered away since the end of the Cold War, and communism was finally deleted from the latest 2009 amended Socialist Constitution, whereas the concept of sovereignty has been strengthened and the language of duties has been actively employed by the authority almost as a relapse to the feudal Confucian tradition. The paper also includes some first-hand accounts from North Korean defectors interviewed in South Korea in October–December 2008. They show the perception of ordinary North Koreans on the ideas of human rights.

ICRC report on the visit to “Robbeneiland” (Robben Island) Prison on the 1st May, 1964, by Mr G. Hoffmann, Delegate General of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (903) ◽  
pp. 1067-1077
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
First Time ◽  
Robben Island

On 1 May 1964, Georg Hoffmann, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Delegate General in Africa, inspected Robben Island Prison, where some twenty days earlier Nelson Mandela was visited for the first time. Having access to political prisoners in apartheid South Africa, the ICRC sought to ensure that detainees lived in decent conditions and were treated humanely.

scholarly journals Vicarius Christi: Extraterritoriality, pastoral power, and the critique of secular international law

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Daniel Ricardo Quiroga-Villamarín
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Limited Range ◽  
The Other ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Past ◽  
Pastoral Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Since the end of the Cold War, the content, scope, and extent of extraterritorial human rights obligations has become a pressing concern for international lawyers. On one end of the debate, mainstream scholarship argues that jurisdiction is primarily territorial, identifying a limited range of situations in which jurisdiction (and responsibility) is triggered. On the other end, critical scholars suggest that Empire still haunts jurisdiction. By reconstructing the history of this doctrine, they show that the imperial reach has always been extra-territorial and that the intimate linkage between state, territory, and population is of a rather recent and tenuous origin. In both of these narratives, however, lies the assumption that jurisdiction operates as a secularized power. Even if empires/states were once religious, faith’s legacy remains confined to the past. In this article, conversely, I trace a critical genealogy of Christian authority as a jurisdictional structure, in which territoriality was never presumed. After all, one cannot forget that Catholicism and Universalism were forged in the same etymological crucible. By drawing from Foucault’s analysis of pastoral power, I argue that international law has deep roots in Christianity’s claims of governmentality upon ‘men and souls’ instead of over defined territories.

Memory Wars in the ‘New Europe’

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Stone
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Cold War

Seventy years after the start of World War II, revisionists across Europe are arguing that Joseph Stalin was as much to blame for starting the war as was Adolf Hitler. As Adam Krzeminski rightly says, World War II is still being fought. This article sees ‘collective memory’ as a set of representations of the past that are constructed by a given social group (be it a nation, a family, a religious community, or other) through a process of invention, appropriation, and selection, and which have bearings on relationships of power within society. ‘Memory’ here refers not only to the academic study of memory but primarily to the various manifestations of ‘memory politics’ that have characterised Europe since the end of the Cold War. It is worth situating these European memory wars in a broader context, since they occur worldwide, especially in societies scarred by civil war, genocide, and authoritarianism, such as post-apartheid South Africa, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Argentina.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

Global Development

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Lorenzini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
History Of Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

In the Cold War, “development” was a catchphrase that came to signify progress, modernity, and economic growth. Development aid was closely aligned with the security concerns of the great powers, for whom infrastructure and development projects were ideological tools for conquering hearts and minds around the globe, from Europe and Africa to Asia and Latin America. This book provides a global history of development, drawing on a wealth of archival evidence to offer a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a Cold War phenomenon that transformed the modern world. Taking readers from the aftermath of the Second World War to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the book shows how development projects altered local realities, transnational interactions, and even ideas about development itself. The book shines new light on the international organizations behind these projects—examining their strategies and priorities and assessing the actual results on the ground—and it also gives voice to the recipients of development aid. It shows how the Cold War shaped the global ambitions of development on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and how international organizations promoted an unrealistically harmonious vision of development that did not reflect local and international differences. The book presents a global perspective on Cold War development, demonstrating how its impacts are still being felt today.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Cold War

Until recently, East Asia was a boiling pot of massacre and blood-letting. Yet, almost unnoticed by the wider world, it has achieved relative peace over the past three decades.1 At the height of the Cold War, East Asia accounted for around 80 percent of the world’s mass atrocities. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it accounted for less than 5 percent....

Vietnamese Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Pelley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asian ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Southern State ◽  
The Past ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North Vietnam

This chapter demonstrates how the process of decolonization and the ensuing separation of Vietnam into a northern and southern state as part of the Cold War in Asia led to different types of history-writing. In both Vietnamese regimes, the writing of history had to serve the state, and in both countries historians emphasized its political function. Whereas North Vietnam located itself in an East Asian and Marxist context, historians of South Vietnam positioned it within a Southeast Asian setting and took a determinedly anti-communist position. After 1986—over a decade after reunification—with past tensions now relaxed, the past could be revaluated more openly under a reformist Vietnamese government that now also permitted much greater interaction with foreign historians.

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