Introduction: The Right to Security of Person

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Rhonda Powell

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....

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.


Author(s):  
Melani Mcalister

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.


Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben De Bruyn

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.


2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller

Theodicy is the branch of theology traditionally concerned with justifying palpable injustices in the world that are presumably the product of a just deity. The classical sociologists appreciated theodicy's relevance in terms of different social attitudes towards human suffering: is it to be tolerated, minimised, redressed or somehow transcended? Each answer implies a different view about the place of humanity in some larger cosmic order. In modern political theory, the question is normally specified in terms of the problem of distributive justice. However, the re-negotiation of the boundary between biology and sociology in the early twenty-first century is forcing a re-engagement with theodicy in its original broad sense, especially as we are increasingly asked to set resource distribution policies that bind across generations of humans and non-humans alike. In this context, as humans acquire an increasingly ‘godlike’ perspective on the normative order, suffering may come to be seen in more strictly instrumental terms – indeed, as itself a resource that might be recycled to produce good in the long term. Thus, we may be entering an era of ‘moral entrepreneurship’.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Atwood

This thesis attempts to suggest ways in which museums might better understand and make informed decisions about acquiring, preserving, and cataloguing photoblogs, which are an early twenty-first century photography practice. Photographers can now use the World Wide Web to show and share their images, because of the advent of digital cameras, camera phones, and cheap, open-source photo-blogging tools available to the general population. This thesis will help museums to better understand and be comfortable in acquiring digital artefacts, such as photoblogs, that will enrich their photographic collections for future generations. Acquisition tools and preservation methods are defined and discussed. The process of cataloguing photoblogs in current collections-management databases is not much different from cataloguing hard-copy photographs. The "People of Walmart" photoblog is used as an example and an illustration to clearly define the difficult technical jargon separating curatorial and collections management departments from information technology departments.


Author(s):  
Anthony Trollope

‘Though a great many men and not a few women knew Ferdinand Lopez very well, none of them knew whence he had come.’ Despite his mysterious antecedents, Ferdinand Lopez aspires to join the ranks of British society. An unscrupulous financial speculator, he determines to marry into respectability and wealth, much against the wishes of his prospective father-in-law. One of the nineteenth century’s most memorable outsiders, Lopez’s story is set against that of the ultimate insider, Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium. Omnium reluctantly accepts the highest office of state; now, at last, he is ‘the greatest man in the greatest country in the world’. But his government is a fragile coalition and his wife’s enthusiastic assumption of the role of political hostess becomes a source of embarrassment. Their troubled relationship and that of Lopez and Emily Wharton is a conjunction that generates one of Trollope’s most complex and substantial novels. Part of the Palliser series, The Prime Minister’s tale of personal and political life in the 1870s has acquired a new topicality in the early twenty-first century.


2022 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Matthew Charles Edwards

Twenty-first century politics has been marked by breaks with tradition across large areas of the world. Allegiances have broken down, and surprising results have occurred: the Brexit vote; the rise of movements of the left in Greece and the right in France, Austria, and Germany; and the success or near-success of outsider candidates. Much of this has been labeled ‘populist'. But, by itself, this explains little. The term is complex, contested, and possibly confused. This dissertation sets out why this is so, clarifies some of the competing elements within the various conceptions, and explores some of the reasons that may underlie dispute. It applies these ideas to reports and assessments of the electoral campaigns waged by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders for the US presidency, concluding on the utility of different conceptualisations of ‘populism'.


2018 ◽  
pp. 82-100
Author(s):  
John Markoff ◽  
Daniel Burridge

This chapter focuses on the great wave of democracy that had touched every continent. In the early 1970s, Western Europe was home to several non-democratic countries, most of Latin America was under military or other forms of authoritarian rule, the eastern half of Europe was ruled by communist parties, much of Asia was undemocratic, and in Africa colonial rule was largely being succeeded by authoritarian regimes. By the early twenty-first century, things had changed considerably, albeit to different degrees in different places. The chapter looks at regions of the world that underwent significant change in democracy between 1972 and 2004, including Mediterranean Europe, Latin America, Soviet/Communist Bloc, Asia, and Africa. It considers what was distinctive about each region’s democratization and what they had in common. It concludes with an overview of challenges faced by democracy in the early twenty-first century.


2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rodin

We are one humanity, but seven billion humans. This is the essential challenge of global ethics: how to accommodate the tension between our universal and particular natures. This tension is, of course, age-old and runs through all moral and political philosophy. But in the world of the early twenty-first century it plays out in distinctive new ways. Ethics has always engaged twin capacities inherent in every human: the capacity to harm and the capacity to help. But the profound set of transformations commonly referred to as globalization—the increasing mobility of goods, labor, and capital; the increasing interconnectedness of political, economic, and financial systems; and the radical empowerment of groups and individuals through technology—have enabled us to harm and to help others in ways that our forebears could not have imagined. What we require from a global ethic is shaped by these transformative forces; and global ethics—the success or failure of that project—will substantially shape the course of the twenty-first century.


2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-341
Author(s):  
Lee Byung-Jin

Mankind experienced a tremendous vortex of changes during the last century, and the world changed toward a knowledge-based society. It is also true that the eagerness for constant improvement and growth has deprived us of time to reflect and to judge whether we are moving in the right direction. There are many educational problems in Asia, and considerable parts of the problems are also common in many countries of the world. What should be taken into account here regarding education is that it was established on a strong foundation, and that it should be considered more carefully. The additional points required are a new establishment of the right direction and the provision of a vision about national identity so that the educational boom can make a great contribution toward the mutual prosperity of mankind. In this respect, ‘mutual prosperous globalization’ is the password to the future of education in the twenty-first century. Mutual prosperous globalization is a possibility, where everyone cooperates and prospers mutually to live with equal rights and privileges. The author calls this ‘Symbiotic Globalization’ for the twenty-first century. The future is not something that is taken for granted, but is something that we create. If we really have hopes and desires for an ideal future, we are obliged to make every effort and take every pain to accomplish it. Therefore, it is very important to reexamine education and national identity and to make every effort in the search for a desirable education for the twenty-first century.


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