scholarly journals Pandemic protests: Creatively using the freedom of assembly during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 026569142110529
Author(s):  
Antoine Buyse
Keyword(s):  
To Come ◽  

It is a new truism that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated an already dire human rights situation across the globe. The waves of protest that swept across the world in the year before the pandemic seemed to have been brought to a sudden halt due to lockdowns and restrictive laws. But at the same time, people everywhere have availed themselves of the wide protective scope of the freedom of assembly, newly re-emphasized in the Human Rights Committee's General Comment of 2020, to come together, protest, and make their voices heard in numerous creative ways. Amid the restrictions, there has been resilience.

Author(s):  
Gostin Lawrence O ◽  
Constantin Andrés ◽  
Meier Benjamin Mason

This chapter examines the threat of populism to global health and human rights. Out of the ashes of World War II, institutions of global health and human rights have brought the world together in unprecedented cooperation, giving rise to the successes and opportunities detailed throughout this text. However, the current populist age threatens these successes and raises obstacles to future progress. In violent contrast with the shared goals of a globalizing world, populism seeks to retrench nations inward, with right-wing populist nationalism directly challenging institutions of global health, violating the rights of vulnerable populations, and spurring isolationism in international affairs. Such retrenchment could lead to a rejection of both global governance and human rights as a basis for global health. Yet, with hope for the future, there remains enduring strength in institutions of global health and human rights, with these institutional bulwarks capable of facing the challenges to come.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-345
Author(s):  
David T Johnson

Abstract Substantial progress has been made towards worldwide abolition of capital punishment, and there are good reasons to believe that more progress is possible. Since 2000, the pace of abolition has slowed, but by several measures the number of executions in the world has continued to decline. Several causes help explain the decline, including political leadership from the front and an increased tendency to regard capital punishment as a human rights issue rather than as a matter of domestic criminal justice policy. There are significant obstacles in the movement to eliminate state killing in the world, but some strategies could contribute to additional decline in the years to come.


Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki

The United Nations is structurally flawed and its operations are cumbersome. Despite being able to come up with excellent ideas, it often lacks the means of implementation. The UN is in need of reform, but reforming the system and obtaining world-wide international support are not new aims. ‘Reform and challenges: the future of the United Nations’ asks: how can this enormous institution that represents widely different interests from around the world be improved? How can its effectiveness be enhanced? In what ways can the UN's development policies be changed to improve the chances of success in the struggle against poverty? How can the UN safeguard both human security and human rights assertively?


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 338-356
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne ◽  
Nicholas J Wheeler

Human rights have been in the practice of international relations, but they have not been central to academic thinking on International Relations (IR) for most of the century since the discipline became institutionalized in 1919. We suggest two related reasons for this relative neglect by the IR community. First, the US heartland of IR prioritized other institutions of international order during the 1950s and 1960s, primarily the balance of power, diplomacy, and arms control. Second, human rights were treated with suspicion by realists in particular given their view that morality in foreign policy was potentially disruptive of international order. If the emergent discipline of IR largely ignored the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so did the rest of the world according to the revisionist history of human rights offered by Samuel Moyn. He challenges the idea that the birth of the regime was the culmination of a 150-year struggle that began in the minds of Enlightenment thinkers and ended with a new globalized framework of rights for all. While IR was slow to come to human rights, the pace in the last three decades has quickened considerably; the area of protecting the basic right of security from violence being a case in point, where several IR scholars have been pivotal in the development of action-guiding theory. Developing a critical theme in Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939, we consider whether these institutional developments represent great illusions or great transformations in international relations in Carr’s terms.


Author(s):  
Lawrence O. Gostin ◽  
Andrés Constantin ◽  
Benjamin Mason Meier

This chapter examines the threat of populism to global health and human rights. Out of the ashes of World War II, institutions of global health and human rights have brought the world together in unprecedented cooperation, giving rise to the successes and opportunities detailed throughout this text. However, the current populist age threatens these successes and raises obstacles to future progress. In violent contrast with the shared goals of a globalizing world, populism seeks to retrench nations inward, with right-wing populist nationalism directly challenging institutions of global health, violating the rights of vulnerable populations, and spurring isolationism in international affairs. Such retrenchment could lead to a rejection of both global governance and human rights as a basis for global health. Yet, with hope for the future, there remains enduring strength in institutions of global health and human rights, with these institutional bulwarks capable of facing the challenges to come.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-335
Author(s):  
Francine Mestrum

Mestrum draws from her extensive experience in the World Social Forum process to outline some of the reasons for past failures of left struggles to come together around the kind of fifth Internationale Amin proposes. A new Internationale, she argues “will require some serious and honest self-criticism and a downright rejection of all romanticism and naive utopianism…. we have to look for solutions beyond the easy slogans and assumptions.” Mestrum identifies important structural and ideological rifts in the global left. She is also wary of localized movements such as those advocated by Sklair, fearing that they could detract from the left’s ability to coalesce around a strong structural critique of globalized capitalism. What she sees as essential is the construction of “alter-globalist” identities and solidarity across issues and borders. This will require moving beyond abstract “anti-capitalist” ideology to build inter-connected campaigns that tackle the complex inter-connections among movement struggles. While cautioning against slogans, she sees lasting wisdom in Enlightenment principles of freedom, equality, and solidarity and modernity’s respect for universalism and diversity. These can help advance a politics of system change that is “emancipatory and transformative, geared towards the full realisation of individual and collective human rights for all.”


Author(s):  
David Cook ◽  
Nu'aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi

“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end of the world, the wars against the Byzantines, and the Turks, and the Muslim civil wars. There is extensive material about the Mahdi (messianic figure), the Muslim Antichrist and the return of Jesus, as well as descriptions of Gog and Magog. Much of the material in Nu`aym today is utilized by Salafi-jihadi groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
ASTEMIR ZHURTOV ◽  

Cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as humiliate the dignity, are prohibited in most countries of the world, and Russia is no exception in this issue. The article presents an analysis of the institution of responsibility for torture in the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that the current criminal law of Russia superficially and fragmentally regulates liability for torture, in connection with which the author formulated the proposals to define such act as an independent crime. In the frame of modern globalization, the world community pays special attention to the protection of human rights, in connection with which large-scale international standards have been created a long time ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international acts enshrine prohibitions of cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as degrade the dignity.Considering the historical experience of the past, these standards focus on the prohibition of any kind of torture, regardless of the purpose of their implementation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (03) ◽  
pp. 20628-20638
Author(s):  
Anik Yuesti ◽  
I Made Dwi Adnyana

One of the things that are often highlighted in the world of spirituality is a matter of sexual scandal. But lately, the focus of the spiritual world is financial transparency and accountability. Financial scandals began to arise in the Church, as was the case in the Protestant Christian Church of Bukti Doa Nusa Dua Congregation in Bali. The scandal involved clergy and even some church leaders. This study aims to describe how the conflict occurred because of financial scandals in the Church. The method used in this study is the Ontic dialectic. Based on this research, the conflict in the Bukit Doa Church is a conflict caused by an internal financial scandal. The scandal resulted in fairly widespread conflict in the various lines of the organization. It led to the issuance of the Dismissal Decrees of the church pastor and also one of the members of Financial Supervisory Council. This conflict has also resulted in the leadership of the church had violated human rights. Source of conflict is not resolved in a fair, but more concerned with political interests and groups. Thus, the source of the problem is still attached to its original place.


Author(s):  
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton

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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