The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and Other European Fora on Migration

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-590
Author(s):  
Jan Niessen

In the 1970s, during the Cold War era, European and North American states began a dialogue in Helsinki which became known as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), or the Helsinki process. For Western states the CSCE served as a platform to raise questions related to security in Europe and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Eastern European states considered the CSCE as a means to secure the postwar borders and an opportunity to discuss economic and scientific cooperation. Today, 51 European States, plus the United States of America and Canada, participate in this process. Notwithstanding the many and often intense political tensions between the West and the East during those twenty years, quite a number of conferences, seminars and other meetings were held and a great many agreements were adopted and documents issued, dealing with matters related to CSCE's three main areas of concern: security in Europe; cooperation in the fields of economics, science, technology and environment; the promotion of human rights. In response to the fundamental changes in Europe in the late 1980s, the CSCE was given a new impetus and its operational framework was broadened. CSCE offices were established in Prague (CSCE Secretariat), Vienna (Conflict Prevention Center) and Warsaw (Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) with the aim to strengthen and monitor compliance with CSCE commitments, especially in the area of human rights. A Parliamentary Assembly was established and met twice, first in Budapest and then in Helsinki. A General Secretary and a High Commissioner on Minorities were appointed, with offices in Vienna and The Hague, respectively.

1982 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-ming Shaw

Reverend John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962) served as U.S. ambassador to China from July 1946 until August 1949. In the many discussions of his ambassadorship the one diplomatic mission that has aroused the most speculation and debate was his abortive trip to Beijing, contemplated in June–July 1949, to meet with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Some students of Sino-American relations have claimed that had this trip been made the misunderstanding and subsequent hostility between the United States and the People's Republic of China in the post-1949 period could have been avoided; therefore, the unmaking of this trip constituted another “lost chance in China” in establishing a working relationship between the two countries. But others have thought that given the realities of the Cold War in 1949 and the internal political constraints existing in each country, no substantial result could have been gained from such a trip. Therefore, the thesis of a “lost chance in China” was more an unfounded speculation than a credible affirmation.


Author(s):  
Nina I. Karpachova

The task of this paper is to study the role of international human rights organizations in response to the conflict taking place in eastern Ukraine. The study is based on recent reports from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the OSCE on Ukraine. The relevance of the stated topic is determined by the situation with human rights violations in the armed conflict in Ukraine and the significant role of international human rights organizations, making active efforts to resolve it. The purpose of this study is to determine the main aspects of the role that international organizations play in resolving this range of issues. This will help to identify potential opportunities to tackle the problem with human rights violations in the Ukrainian territories. The study combines quantitative and qualitative research of the entire spectrum of issues brought into the subject. The main results obtained are: analysis of the role and place of international human rights organizations in assessing the situation with the conflict in the Ukrainian territories and obtaining statistical information on the current status of human rights violations in these territories. The value of this paper lies in obtaining practical recommendations for finding ways to peacefully resolve the conflict in the East of Ukraine and implementing comprehensive measures to create conditions for the protection of human rights in this region


2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1169-1170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis

Among the many issues raised by James Lebovic's perceptive review are two that strike me as crucial: the relationships between intelligence and social science and those between intelligence and policymaking. The first itself has two parts, one being how scholars can study intelligence. Both access and methods are difficult. For years, diplomatic historians referred to intelligence as the “hidden dimension” of their subject. Now it is much more open, and Great Britain, generally more secretive than the United States, has just issued the authorized history of MI5 (see Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, 2009). Since the end of the Cold War, the CIA has released extensive, if incomplete, records, and the bright side (for us) of intelligence failures is that they lead to the release of treasure troves of documents, which can often be supplemented by memoirs and interviews. But even more than in other aspects of foreign policy analysis, we are stuck with evidence that is fragmentary. In this way, we resemble scholars of ancient societies, who forever lament the loss of most of the material they want to study.


Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier

This chapter explains that the driving force behind the protection of human rights worldwide, today and for roughly the past thirty-five years, has been the nongovernmental human rights movement. Intermittently during the last two-and-a-half centuries, citizens' movements did play important roles in efforts to promote human rights, as during the development of the antislavery movement in England in the eighteenth century and the rise of the feminist movement in the United States in the nineteenth century. The contemporary human rights movement responds to victories and defeats by shifting focus from time to time, but it shows signs that it will remain an enduring force in world affairs. Efforts by those outside governments have been particularly important in extending the protection of rights beyond national boundaries, and it is in the present era that they have been most significant.


2021 ◽  
pp. 27-53
Author(s):  
Johanna Bond

This chapter delves into examples of global intersectionality to illustrate the need for a thorough and consistent intersectional approach to human rights violations around the world. Although it is impossible to provide an exhaustive analysis of the many and varied types of intersectional human rights violations, this chapter offers multiple examples of intersectional human rights violations, including (1) gender-based violence, including both non-state actors who commit intimate partner violence and sexual violence in armed conflict; (2) maternal mortality and inadequate prenatal care in Brazil; (3) coerced sterilization among the Roma in Europe; (4) disproportionate discipline and punishment of Black girls in the United States; and (5) inconsistent LGBTQI rights. These case studies implicate different human rights, including the right to be free from violence, the right to education, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Each example demonstrates how a more nuanced, intersectional lens is necessary to capture the rights at stake and to contemplate appropriate remedies for victims of human rights violations in full.


Author(s):  
Gregory J. Moore

Reinhold Niebuhr was perhaps the preeminent American intellectual of the twentieth century. He was at once teacher, preacher, philosopher, social critic, public intellectual and ethicist, applying his brand of human nature Realism in both the secular and religious worlds. He was a highly influential thinker, especially at the height of the Cold War, addressing the economic, spiritual, social, and political issues of his day. He profoundly influenced the early classical Realists such as Hans Morgenthau, Henry Kissinger, and George F. Kennan. While Niebuhr has been forgotten by some, indeed there has been a marked resurgence of interest in Niebuhr’s work both in the United States and abroad in recent years, particularly in the wake of the 911 attacks and the invasion of Iraq. As we look forward, it is helpful to look backward to Niebuhr, for his views on international relations may well guide us as we attempt to deal with the many intractable problems of the present age.


2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 745-751 ◽  

On June 19, 2018, the United States withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council. Announcing this decision, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley characterized the Council as “a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo observed that while “the United States has no opposition in principle to multilateral bodies working to protect human rights,” nonetheless “when organizations undermine our national interests and our allies, we will not be complicit.” The withdrawal occurred one day after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized the United States in a speech at the Human Rights Council for its “unconscionable” practice of forcibly separating undocumented families entering the United States. In August, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that in addition to withdrawing from the Council, the United States would also reduce its assessed contribution to the United Nations by the amount that would ordinarily flow to the Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 290-317
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gehrig ◽  
James Mark ◽  
Paul Betts ◽  
Kim Christiaens ◽  
Idesbald Goddeeris

Anti-apartheid advocacy allowed Eastern Bloc countries to reframe their ideological language of solidarity towards African countries into a legalist rhetoric during the 1960s and 70s. Support for international anti-racial discrimination law and self-determination from colonial rule reinforced their ties to Africa after the disenchantment of the Hungarian Uprising. Rights activism against apartheid showcased the socialist Bloc’s active contribution to the international rise of human rights language and international law during the Cold War. By the mid-1970s, however, international rights engagement became problematic for most Eastern European states, and dissidents at home eventually appropriated the term apartheid based on decades of state-mandated international rights activism to criticise socialism.


2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1050-1051
Author(s):  
Abdul Rahman Embong

Democracy, Human Rights, and Civil Society in South East Asia, Amitav Acharya, B.M. Frolic and Richard Stubbs, eds., Toronto: Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 2001, pp. 208This is an important volume on the hotly debated topic of democracy, human rights and civil society in South East Asia, a region that has witnessed a confrontation between the old order of authoritarian regimes and strong states on one hand, and the new democratic forces embedded in an emerging civil society, on the other. The focus of the book is on the evolution of debates about democracy and human rights during the decade following the end of the Cold War in 1989 to the 1997–98 Asian economic crisis, with the latter being regarded as the watershed that unleashed the democratic forces. The book consists of nine chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion, contributed by nine political scientists. Except for Johan Saravanamuttu, who is from the region under study, the other contributors are Southeast Asianists teaching at various universities in Canada, the United States, and Australia.


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