Human Rights and 21st Century Challenges

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
World Population ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Relative Share ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

The world faces significant and interrelated challenges in the twenty-first century which threaten human rights in a number of ways. This book examines the relationship between human rights and three of the largest challenges of the twenty-first century: conflict and security, environment, and poverty. Technological advances in fighting wars have led to the introduction of new weapons which threaten to transform the very nature of conflict. In addition, states confront threats to security which arise from a new set of international actors not clearly defined and which operate globally. Climate change, with its potentially catastrophic impacts, features a combination of characteristics which are novel for humanity. The problem is caused by the sum of innumerable individual actions across the globe and over time, and similarly involves risks that are geographically and temporally diffuse. In recent decades, the challenges involved in addressing global and national poverty have also changed. For example, the relative share of the poor in the world population has decreased significantly while the relative share of the poor who live in countries with significant domestic capacity has increased strongly. Overcoming these global and interlocking threats constitutes this century’s core political and moral task. This book examines how these challenges may be addressed using a human rights framework. It considers how these challenges threaten human rights and seeks to reassess our understanding of human rights in the light of these challenges. The analysis considers both foundational and applied questions. The approach is multidisciplinary and contributors include some of the most prominent lawyers, philosophers, and political theorists in the debate. The authors not only include leading academics but also those who have played important roles in shaping the policy debates on these questions. Each Part includes contributions by those who have served as Special Rapporteurs within the United Nations human rights system on the challenges under consideration.

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.

scholarly journals The Great Displacement: Reading Migration Fiction at the End of the World

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben De Bruyn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
Margaret Drabble ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Climate Fiction

This paper examines how contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction reflect on anticipated cases of climate dislocation. Building on existing research about migrant agency, climate fiction, and human rights, it traces the contours of climate migration discourse before analyzing how three twenty-first-century novels enable us to reimagine the “great displacement” beyond simplistic militarized and humanitarian frames. Zooming in on stories by Mohsin Hamid, John Lanchester, and Margaret Drabble that envision hypothetical calamities while responding to present-day refugee “crises”, this paper explains how these texts interrogate apocalyptic narratives by demilitarizing borderscapes, exploring survivalist mindsets, and interrogating shallow appeals to empathy.

scholarly journals Islamic Resurgence and the Twenty-First Century

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-99
Author(s):  
Hussin Mutalib
Keyword(s):  
Secretary General ◽  
First Century ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
The West ◽  
World Community ◽  
World Today ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
Islamic Resurgence ◽  
Twenty First Century

The Image and Impact of Islamic Resurgence The global phenomenon of Islamic resurgence (or Islamic revival­ism). which has caught the attention of Muslims and non-Muslims, has impacted the world community in many different ways. Much of this reassertiveness of the Islamic ethos has been discussed and published.' Feeling somewhat threatened by the "rise of Islam" as it were, the gen­eral non-Muslim and western attitude has been one of suspicion and awe: such Muslim "fundamentalist" behavior and trends, it was argued, had to be checked or even thwarted, or else Muslims would make life difficult for others. There were some exceptions to such a negative atti­tude and response. but by and large such a wariness had permeated the thinking of many non-Muslims, including western powers and the non­Muslim world generally. This mindset lingers until today as the world approaches the arrival of the twenty-first century-manifest, for instance. in the "clash of civi­lization" thesis postulated by the well-known Harvard professor, Samuel Hun-tington recently. Even more recent was the declaration by both the French Defense Minister and the NATO secretary-general that the world today is facing a new threat after the fall of communism, that of Islamic fundamentalism, and their call for the West to bolster support only to what he called moderate Muslim regimes.2 The behavior and actions of fanatics and extremists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, the world over, have exacerbated the problem and, consequently, worsened the poor image that people have of Muslims and Islam ...

AALS Annual Convention Plenary Panel: Impact of Globalization on Human Rights – Introduction of the Panel

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-374
Author(s):  
Dean Claudio Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Gabriel Garcia Marquez ◽  
First Century ◽  
Annual Convention ◽  
Development Bank ◽  
Heart Transplants ◽  
Ninth Symphony ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

Addressing Human Rights requires that we consider both reality and imagination. What forces are shaping the world in which we live? What space is available for change? What role is played, and can be played by individuals? At a meeting of relatively young leaders of this hemisphere, organized by the Inter-American Development Bank at the end of the Twentieth Century, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was asked what we might expect from the Twenty-First Century as we emerge from the Twentieth Century, which distinguished itself with two world wars and with genocide. Gabriel Garcia Marquez responded by saying that we should not expect anything from the Twenty-First Century. He explained that everything relevant was the result of imagination, from the Ninth Symphony to heart transplants; they were in the heads of their inventors before taking place in reality.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Dapo Akande ◽  
Jaakko Kuosmanen ◽  
Helen McDermott ◽  
Dominic Roser
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Political Context ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Twenty First Century

The interlocking threats of armed conflict, environmental degradation, and poverty constitute a central part of the political and moral challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century. However, anyone who considers that these challenges should be confronted with approaches that incorporate and are built upon human rights faces a difficult task. High regard for human rights seems to have developed in a particular and bygone political context. The rise of populism and nationalism in recent years may be seen as having created myriad novel and complex realities. These developments suggest that work now needs to be done to apply human rights to new realities but may also indicate that we need to adapt our understanding of human rights in light of them....

Introduction: The Right to Security of Person

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Rhonda Powell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Right ◽  
Lesser Evil

The right to security of person can be found in a plethora of international and domestic human rights instruments and, yet, we know little about it. Attention has turned to this right due to an increased focus upon ‘security’ more generally as a response to an increase in terrorism. A raft of security legislation was passed throughout the world in the early twenty-first century. These measures have been criticized for their impact upon human rights, instigating discussions about the appropriate ‘balance’ to be struck between security and human rights. Within these debates, some have suggested that we must forgo some of our liberties in the name of security—Michael Ignatieff famously questioned ‘whether the era of human rights has come and gone’ and put forward proposals that we accept the ‘lesser evil’ that is limitation of rights....

Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 449-460
Author(s):  
Jack Straw
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

If you read certain newspapers you might be forgiven for thinking that human rights were an alien imposition foisted upon us by ‘the other’. It is a misconception that has regrettably taken root. A central theme of my lecture this evening is to explode this myth, and to demonstrate how far from being some ‘European’ imposition, Britain has been at the forefront of the political and legal development of human rights across Europe and across the world.

Slavery and the Trumpocene: It's Not the End of the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Claire Colebrook
Keyword(s):  
Living System ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Geological Period

There is something more catastrophic than the end of the world, especially when ‘world’ is understood as the horizon of meaning and expectation that has composed the West. If the Anthropocene is the geological period marking the point at which the earth as a living system has been altered by ‘anthropos,’ the Trumpocene marks the twenty-first-century recognition that the destruction of the planet has occurred by way of racial violence, slavery and annihilation. Rather than saving the world, recognizing the Trumpocene demands that we think about destroying the barbarism that has marked the earth.

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.

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