Terrorism: Group dynamic and interdisciplinary aspects

Author(s):  
Thomas Wenzel ◽  
Reem Alksiri ◽  
Anthony F. Chen

In this chapter, we offer an interdisciplinary and group-focused model to examine how extreme violence develops, and discuss aspects of interventions for prevention, specifically with regard to terrorism and its many forms. We argue that an analysis of terrorism must be more open, and include research into the perpetrators of extreme violence such as genocide. In general, we see the breakdown of empathy, a group dynamic process that creates the image of ‘the other’ and the violation of basic concepts of humanitarian and human rights laws, as a precondition to terrorism when viewed as a subtype of extreme violence. In recent years, Internet-based and large multinational groups have gained importance, a factor that is insufficiently considered, meaning that more attention is needed on group dynamic processes as drivers of extreme violence. Our interpretation uses models such as that developed by the group analyst Vamik Volkan, and others, including that of chosen trauma. We discuss these factors together with possible strategies to aid transitional justice and contribute to the rehabilitation of victims and perpetrators. The specific impact of each act of terrorism and the needs of victims and society to recover reflect the complex background of each event, and of the contexts in which the crimes were committed.

Author(s):  
Nesiah Vasuki

This chapter examines the utopias called forth by the marriage of human rights accountability mechanisms on the one hand, and, on the other, arguments about the practical significance of these initiatives as preconditions for development, democracy, and political society. Transitional justice is seen to marry the ethical charge of the human rights field’s march against impunity, with an instrumental potential facilitating transition from the rule of violence into the rule of law. If the normative theories and agendas implicated by this marriage are advanced as being in the interests of justice, the accompanying instrumental theories and agendas are advanced in the interests of transition. Justice and transition operate here as allied and mutually reinforcing aspirations of and rationales for transitional justice institutions. Thus, this chapter identifies and analyses the stakes that attend this marriage of ‘ethics’ and ‘expertise’ in constituting the utopian political imagination of transitional justice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226
Author(s):  
Bonolo Ramadi Dinokopila ◽  
Rhoda Igweta Murangiri

This article examines the transformation of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and discusses the implications of such transformation on the promotion and protection of human rights in Kenya. The article is an exposition of the powers of the Commission and their importance to the realisation of the Bill of Rights under the 2010 Kenyan Constitution. This is done from a normative and institutional perspective with particular emphasis on the extent to which the UN Principles Relating to the Status of National Institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (the Paris Principles, 1993) have been complied with. The article highlights the role of national human rights commissions in transformative and/or transitional justice in post-conflict Kenya. It also explores the possible complementary relationship(s) between the KNCHR and other Article 59 Commissions for the better enforcement of the bill of rights.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Mariane Morato Stival ◽  
Marcos André Ribeiro ◽  
Daniel Gonçalves Mendes da Costa

This article intends to analyze in the context of the complexity of the process of internationalization of human rights, the definitions and tensions between cultural universalism and relativism, the essence of human rights discourse, its basic norms and an analysis of the normative dialogues in case decisions involving violations of human rights in international tribunals such as the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and national courts. The well-established dialogue between courts can bring convergences closer together and remove differences of opinion on human rights protection. A new dynamic can occur through a complementarity of one court with respect to the other, even with the different characteristics between the legal orders.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos José Pinto

This book aims to analyze the crimes against human rights that offended the Democratic Rule of Law in Brazil, committed by state agents in the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964/1985), asserting that they remained unpunished. In view of this, to address this issue, it is proposed that criminal offenders be held liable. The issue of our slow Transitional Justice will also be examined, arguing for the criminal prosecution of state agents who violated human rights in Brazil, demonstrating how and how this can occur, all in order to move away from impunity, hitherto guaranteed by the Brazilian Amnesty Law, ensuring the effectiveness of justice and the strengthening of democracy.


2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Luisa Frick

Against the background of the trend of Islamizing human rights on the one hand, as well as increasing skepticism about the compatibility of Islam and human rights on the other, I intend to analyze the potential of Islamic ethics to meet the requirements for vitalizing the idea of human rights. I will argue that the compatibility of Islam and human rights cannot be determined merely on the basis of comparing the specific content of the Islamic moral code(s) with the rights stipulated in the International Bill of Rights, but by scanning (different conceptions of) Islamic ethics for the two indispensable formal prerequisites of any human rights conception: the principle of universalism (i.e., normative equality) and individualism (i.e., the individual enjoyment of rights). In contrast to many contemporary (political) attempts to reconcile Islam and human rights due to urgent (global) societal needs, this contribution is solely committed to philosophical reasoning. Its guiding questions are “What are the conditions for deriving both universalism and individualism from Islamic ethics?” and “What axiological axioms have to be faded out or reorganized hierarchically in return?”


Author(s):  
Zoran Vrucinic

The future of medicine belongs to immunology and alergology. I tried to not be too wide in description, but on the other hand to mention the most important concepts of alergology to make access to these diseases more understandable, logical and more useful for our patients, that without complex pathophysiology and mechanism of immune reaction,we gain some basic insight into immunological principles. The name allergy to medicine was introduced by Pirquet in 1906, and is of Greek origin (allos-other + ergon-act; different reaction), essentially representing the reaction of an organism to a substance that has already been in contact with it, and manifested as a specific response thatmanifests as either a heightened reaction, a hypersensitivity, or as a reduced reaction immunity. Synonyms for hypersensitivity are: altered reactivity, reaction, hypersensitivity. The word sensitization comes from the Latin (sensibilitas, atis, f.), which means sensibility,sensitivity, and has retained that meaning in medical vocabulary, while in immunology and allergology this term implies the creation of hypersensitivity to an antigen. Antigen comes from the Greek words, anti-anti + genos-genus, the opposite, anti-substance substance that causes the body to produce antibodies.


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