Making the Highlands Safe for Business

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
National Security ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Social Suffering ◽  
Security Measures ◽  
Indigenous Law

The fifth chapter of the book is devoted to the topic of security. It draw on framings from medical, legal, and economic anthropology to understand how Maya apparel workshops owners and other highland residents alternatively take up or contest the language of human rights and rule of law in a context of everyday violence and widespread social suffering. Amidst rising violent crime rates, extortion rings, and government corruption, workshop owners have recently adopted private security measures that are sometimes characterized by scholars, journalists, and activists in terms of “indigenous law.” This characterization implies a relationship to the past and tradition and can obscure the complex relationship between enterprising forms of security evident in Maya communities and neoliberal ideologies of entrepreneurial freedom, discourses of national security, and deep histories of state violence and discrimination against indigenous people. The chapter analyzes community-level security measures and the discourses of blame that circulate among Maya apparel workshop owners to also reveal the importance of space and scale for how people make sense of insecurity and lay claim to forms of work, membership, and belonging that they understand as decidedly not criminal or immoral, including the work of brand piracy.

scholarly journals Colombia’s Gallery of Memory

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 78-98
Author(s):  
Erika Márquez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
National Security ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Security Measures ◽  
Derechos Humanos ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
Systemic Violence ◽  
Movimientos Sociales

The Gallery of Memory, a street exhibit organized by Colombian activists affiliated with the Victims of State Crimes Movement to memorialize human rights violations, connects individual cases of human rights abuse with a larger critique of state violence. Through this exercise, activists bring together earlier and current violations of human rights and provide a framework that situates present undemocratic currents within the trajectory of the state’s politics of exception and its correlates, national security and the internal enemy. Critical reflection on the potential for place-based, coproduced resignification of security measures in a context of systemic violence suggests that the Gallery has become part of the movement-based human rights repertoire for democratizing citizenship in Colombia.La Galería de la Memoria, una exhibición callejera organizada por un grupo de activistas colombianos afiliado al Movimiento de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado para conmemorar violaciones a los derechos humanos, conecta casos individuales de abusos a derechos humanos con una crítica más amplia de la violencia del Estado. Por medio de esta práctica, los activistas sitúan las corrientes antidemocráticas actuales dentro de la trayectoria de las políticas de excepción del estado y sus correlatos de la seguridad nacional y el enemigo interno. Al promover una reflexión crítica sobre el potencial para una resignificación específica y coproducida de las medidas de seguridad en un contexto de violencia sistémica, la Galería se ha convertido en parte de un repertorio de derechos humanos para la democratización ciudadana en Colombia con base en los movimientos sociales.

The Politics of Plausible Legality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Global War

After 9/11, the Bush administration and, to a lesser degree, the Obama administration authorized controversial interrogation, detention, trial, lethal targeting, and surveillance practices. At the same time, American officials frequently invoked legal norms to justify these policies. This chapter introduces the book’s central questions: how can we make sense of these attempts to legalize human rights abuses and how does law influence state violence? As initially outlined in this chapter, the book argues that national security legal cultures shape how political actors interpret, enact, and evade legal rules. In the global war on terror, a culture of legal rationalization pushed American authorities to construct plausible legality, or legal cover for contentious counterterrorism policies. This culture contrasts with cultures of exception and cultures of secrecy, which have shaped American national security practice in the past, as well as a culture of human rights favored by many international law and human rights advocates.

The Court of Justice and the Ban on Bulk Data Retention: Expansive Potential and Future Scenarios

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edoardo Celeste
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Data Processing ◽  
National Security ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
Security Measures ◽  
Domino Effect ◽  
Data Retention ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
European Court ◽  
Bulk Data

Data retention saga – Interpretative strategy of the Court of Justice – Expansive potential of the principles set by the Court of Justice – ‘Reverse’ effet utile and conflict of competence – EU acts under threat – Domino effect on national security measures – Future scenarios – Twilight of the model of bulk data retention – Modulation of the ban on bulk data retention according to the vulnerability of data processing or depending on the prior unknowability of the threats – Divergence from the European Court of Human Rights – Legitimisation of bulk data retention‘Equo ne credite, Teucri!Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’— Virgil, Aeneid, II, 48-49

scholarly journals Decolonizing Indigenous Law: Self-Determination and Vulnerability in the Mapuche Case

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Aillapán Quinteros
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
Mapuche People ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Right

In the present essay, the author—and Mapuche, at the same time—critically analyzes the construction of the Mapuche people as a “vulnerable human group” under the International Human Rights Law and then, according to decolonial option, proposes a hypothesis: if the indigenous people are vulnerable, by definition, to claim the right to self-determination, in the Mapuche case, it is an oxymoron.

Risk, Desire and Adaptation: The Paradox of Queer Solidarity and the Political Possibility of Death Under Neoliberalism and Homonationalism

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Strategy I

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.

“As Slow as a Tortoise, and as Clever as a Hare.” Folktales as Lessons on Democracy, Equal Opportunities, and Human Rights among the Ndebele

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindiwe Ndlovu ◽  
Faith Sibanda
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Animal Community ◽  
Do So

Indigenous African societies have, for a long time, been using their knowledge for the betterment of their lives. They have also demonstrated an ability to manipulate their immediate or remote surroundings to live sustainably. Those who claim to fight for equal and human rights in Africa do so under the misconception that they, and the developing world, have historically and inherently violated, and continue to violate, human rights in numerous ways. While this might not be completely dismissed, there is a plethora of evidence from African folktales to demonstrate that Africans have not only respected human rights, but have also encouraged equal opportunities for every member of their society. This article cross-examines Ndebele folktales with the intention of demonstrating that African indigenous knowledge exhibited through folktales was a well-organised system, which ensured respect for human rights for all members, regardless of their physical or social stature. Central to this discussion are the folktales which focus on the role played by the vulnerable members of the animal community, who replicate their human counterparts. Folktales are unarguably a creation by the indigenes and emanate from their socio-political experiences, as well as their observations of the surroundings. This suggests that indigenous people already had an idea about human rights as well as the need for equal opportunities since time immemorial. 

Plausible Legality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Global War ◽  
Enhanced Interrogation

After 9/11, American officials authorized numerous contentious counterterrorism practices including torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, trial by military commission, targeted killing, and mass surveillance. While these policies sparked global outrage, the Bush administration defended them as legally legitimate. Government lawyers produced memoranda deeming enhanced interrogation techniques, denial of habeas corpus, drone strikes, and warrantless wiretapping lawful. Although it rejected torture, the Obama administration made similar claims and declined to prosecute abuses. This book seeks to understand how and why Americans repeatedly legally justified seemingly illegal security policies and what this tells us about the capacity of law to constrain state violence. It argues that legal cultures shape how political actors interpret, enact, and evade legal norms. In the global war on terror, a culture of legal rationalization encouraged authorities to seek legal cover—to construct the plausible legality of human rights violations—in order to ensure impunity for wrongdoing. In this context, law served as a permissive constraint, enabling abuses while imposing some limits on what could be plausibly legalized. Cultures of legal rationalization stand in contrast with other cultures prevalent in American history, including cultures of exception, which rely on logics of necessity and racial exclusion, and cultures of secrecy, which employ plausible deniability. Looking forward, legal norms remain vulnerable to manipulation and evasion. Despite the efforts of human rights advocates to encourage deeper compliance, the normalization of post-9/11 policy has created space for the Trump administration to promote a renewed culture of exception and launch bolder attacks on the rule of law.

Contemporary Developments Relating to the Inviolability of Mission Premises

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan E Falconi Puig
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
National Security ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Domestic Legislation

This chapter addresses some of the controversial issues relating to the inviolability of mission premises. The Yvonne Fletcher incident of 1984 led to debates about the need to upgrade or reform the VCDR in that regard; and the United Kingdom, as a direct consequence of the incident, adopted the ‘Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987’ to be able to adopt unilateral measures to remove premises immunity where threats to national security, to public integrity and/or the need of urban planning exist. Domestic legislation of this kind, however, also provides ground for conflicts with the VCDR. This chapter explores conflicts between property immunity and issues such as access to justice, human rights, and terrorism and examines ways of overcoming such difficulties through mechanisms which safeguard diplomatic privileges and immunity to allow the pursuit of diplomatic functions.

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