Beneath International Famine Relief in Ethiopia: The United States, Ethiopia, and the Debate over Relief Aid, Development Assistance, and Human Rights

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Kissi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Development Assistance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Famine Relief ◽  
Mutual Antagonism ◽  
Ethiopian Government ◽  
The Government

Abstract:This article analyzes the conflicting interpretations of famine, relief aid, development assistance, and human rights by the Ethiopian and American governments, and the complexity of each government's policy and motives. It argues that in the 1970s and 1980s, the Carter and Reagan administrations faced the moral and political dilemma of assisting people in Ethiopia who were in desperate need with-out strengthening the hostile Ethiopian government in the process. And the government of Ethiopia had to make the difficult choice of accepting American aid on American terms at a period in Ethiopian history when doing so was politically suicidal. That America provided the aid and Ethiopia accepted it exemplifies the conduct of international relations in which human dignity compels nations to accommodate one another even within the boundaries of their mutual antagonism.

Violation of Treaties by Adverse National Action

1918 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denys P. Myers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Practical Point ◽  
Adverse Action ◽  
Vital Interest ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Character

The shade of distinction sought to be shown by the title of this paper may require explanation. Imperfect wording involves either carelessness or ignorance; bad faith indicates dishonesty; nonexecution or disregard implies laxness in the government, if not carelessness; adverse or hostile municipal or judicial action connotes lack of coordination between the internal and external affairs of the State. It follows that such adverse action may be considered from a practical point of view as almost a normal kind of violence against international contracts. It is not to be excused on that account, but it may be considered as a frictional incident almost inseparable under some conditions from the existence of a State. Given either a government of definitely separated elements, such as the United States, or a government without much stability, or a State founded on a type of civilization different from the European order, and this sort of violation of treaty may be forecasted with certainty. Fortunately, however, the instances that cause contractual friction of this sort are of the grosser kinds of personal violence, or are commercial; they are not of a political character, cannot be said to involve policy, and only by a stretch of the imagination involve the tweedledum and tweedledee of international relations, “national honor and vital interest.” They are consequently extremely susceptible to simple and orderly solution.

Qaddafi and Africa's International Relations

1986 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oye Ogunbadejo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Third World ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
The United States ◽  
Irish Republican Army ◽  
Air Space ◽  
The Government ◽  
Definition Of

By any standard, no other third-world leader in recent times has earned as much notoriety for foreign adventurist policies as Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. The Libyan President has on different occasions embarked on a militant course of confrontation with the United States in defence of his controversial definition of territorial air space over the Gulf of Sidra. Gulf of Sidra. During the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina, Qaddafi shipped more than $100 million worth of weapons, including 120 Soviet-made SAM-7 missiles, to Buenos Aires.1 His name has since been linked with bombing and shooting incidents in Britain, which eventually led the Government there to sever Anglo-Libyan diplomatic links in April 1984;2 with arms supplies to Nicaragua, the Irish Republican Army, and several secessionist movements in Africa; with coup plots in a number of countries, including Pakistan;3 and he has openly assaulted some of his neighbours, notably the Sudan and Chad.4 Then, in December 1985, the Libyan President was linked to the daring attacks by P.L.O. gunmen on the Israeli Airline's check-in counters at the Vienna and Rome airports, in which at least 16 people lost their lives and 120 were injured.5

scholarly journals When US Scholars Speak of ‘Sovereignty’, what do they Mean?

2007 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Sinclair ◽  
Michael Byers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Academic

The term ‘sovereignty’ figures prominently in international affairs and academic analysis. But does ‘sovereignty’ mean the same thing in different countries and political cultures? In this article, we examine conceptions of sovereignty as they appear in the writings of US scholars of international law and those international relations scholars who deal with international law, in order to obtain a clearer picture of what ‘sovereignty’ means in American academic discourse. At first glance, the US literature is dominated by two distinct conceptions of sovereignty: (1) a statist conception that privileges the territorial integrity and political independence of governments regardless of their democratic or undemocratic character; (2) a popular conception that privileges the rights of peoples rather than governments, especially when widespread human rights violations are committed by a totalitarian regime. On closer examination, what seem to be two conceptions are in fact different manifestations of a single, uniquely American conception of sovereignty which elevates the United States above other countries and protects it against outside influences while concurrently maximising its ability to intervene overseas.

United States Foreign Policy in Southern Africa: Third-World Perspectives

1983 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davidson Nicol
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Third World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Importance ◽  
United States Foreign Policy ◽  
Multilateral Aid ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government

The past decade has seen an increase in the scope of relationships, both political and economic, between Africa and the United States. These vary with the complexion of the government in power, though some would say that this was more in emphasis than in substance, others definitely not. It is felt by many Africans, nevertheless, that the Carter Administration's emphasis on human rights has now been downgraded by the present Reagan Administration and that, instead, the geopolitics of U.S.–U.S.S.R. rivalry, and the economic importance of developing the private sector at the expense of bilateral or multilateral aid, have been moved to the fore.

scholarly journals George Floyd’s Murder

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-66
Author(s):  
Farnaz Raees Kazemi ◽  
Moosa Akefi Ghaziani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Political Agitation ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Government

George Floyd’s murder by the police in Minneapolis provoked widespread political agitation across the country. It once again highlighted the problematic racial dimension of policing and eggregious violation of human rights commitments on the part of the government. In this article we explore how the human rights law and racism in the United States interact with each other? We employ qualitative research based on descriptive-analytical method and divide the article in four parts: a brief introduction, a historical background of racism, a conceptual comprehension of racial discrimination and a brief survey of the international human rights instruments against racism, and the onground situation of racial discrimination in the country. We conclude that the process of negotiation between human rights law and racism in the United States is far from settled yet.

(Im)possible universalism: reading human rights in world politics

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
VÉRONIQUE PIN-FAT
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Large Role ◽  
Universal Human Rights

Tony Evans (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998)Robin Holt, Wittgenstein, Politics and Human Rights (London: LSE/Routledge, 1997)Peter Van Ness (ed.), Debating Human Rights: Critical Essays from the United States and Asia (London: Routledge, 1999)Questions concerning the linkage, or lack of it, between theory and practice are perennial in International Relations (IR). This is particularly acute in the case of studies of universal human rights in world politics. Problems associated with universal human rights are familiar; what are their foundations?, what are their origins?, do they exist in all cultures?, why, when it comes to implementation, do we see such failure and inconsistency across the globe and the persistence of human wrongs?, why does power seem to play such a large role in stifling ‘progress’? All these questions appear in one form or another in the books under review here and readers will, perhaps, take comfort from their familiarity as old, difficult friends.

Fully Human

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey N. Kingston
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
Inalienable Rights ◽  
Political Membership

Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights critically considers how inequalities related to citizenship and recognition impact one’s ability to claim so-called universal and inalienable rights. Today, citizenship itself serves to recognize an individual as fully human or worthy of fundamental human rights—yet this robust form of political membership is limited or missing entirely for some vulnerable groups. These protection gaps are central to hierarchies of personhood—inequalities that render some people more “worthy” than others for protections and political membership—that lead to gross violations of the rights to place and purpose that are essential for a person to live a life of human dignity. This book presents various manifestations of hierarchies of personhood, beginning with statelessness (the most direct and obvious lack of functioning citizenship) and progressing through the forcibly displaced, irregular migrants, nomadic peoples, indigenous nations, and “second-class” citizens in the United States. It challenges the binary construct between citizen and noncitizen, arguing that rights to place and purpose are routinely violated in the space between. To resist hierarchies of personhood, functioning citizenship necessitates the opening of political space for those who cannot be neatly categorized. Only by recognizing that all people are inherently worthy of full personhood—and by advocating expanded forms of political membership and voice—can the ideals of modern human rights be realized.

International Human Rights and Domestic Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory S. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Press ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Government ◽  
Domestic Law

In light of the compelling empirical connection between hate speech and atrocity, what laws, if any, criminalize the dissemination of such rhetoric? Chapter 2 begins to answer that question by examining international human rights instruments and domestic laws covering speech and violence. It notes there is an inbuilt clash in the principal human rights documents between free expression and freedom from invidious discrimination. Most of the world’s liberal democracies protect dignity against discrimination. The United States does not. The world’s most speech-protective jurisdiction, its Constitution’s First Amendment stipulates that the government may “make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” As the United States plays a prominent role in developing the criminalization of atrocity speech on the global stage, and as its Supreme Court has often held forth on issues of speech liberty, its domestic jurisprudence is a particular focus of this chapter.

Pope's Mexico visit will highlight unresolved problems

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
The Government

Significance The visit will be his fourth to the Americas (following trips to Brazil in 2013, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay in July 2015 and Cuba and the United States in September 2015) and will include stops in Mexico City, the neighbouring state of Mexico, and the states of Chihuahua, Chiapas, and Michoacan -- all of which suffer from serious problems of corruption, violent crime, poverty, inequality and human rights abuses. Impacts While the Pope is popular with most Mexicans, his visit is unlikely to reverse the country's trend towards secularism. Nevertheless, it may help to improve the Church's image, especially amongst indigenous groups, and slow the progress of Protestantism. Neither the government nor the opposition -- both tainted by corruption -- will derive any direct political benefit from the visit.

Organization of American States

1960 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 360-361 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Basic Function ◽  
Organization Of American States ◽  
American System ◽  
American States ◽  
The Government

It was reported that during a meeting of the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) on February 8, 1960, a debate took place on the alleged violations of human rights perpetuated by the government of General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina of the Dominican Republic. Dr. Falcon-Briceno, Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, who had brought the charge on instructions of his government, contended that a concern for human rights was a basic function of the inter-American system and called upon the Council to investigate the situation. He was challenged by the Dominican ambassador, Mr. Diaz Ordoñez, who insisted that the prevailing situation was a matter of exclusively domestic concern to his government and stressed the fact that non-intervention in internal affairs was a basic principle of the inter-American system. The delegates were urged to action by the delegate of Honduras, who expressed the view that the principle of non-intervention should not close the door to action deemed to be necessary for the preservation of human rights and liberties. After a threehour debate, the Council reportedly decided, by a vote of 20 to none, with 1 abstention (the Dominican Republic), to initiate an inquiry into the matter. To this end, five nations—Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Peru, and the United States—were appointed as a working group to consider whether and how the organization could conduct an investigation in the case.

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