Case study: The Netherlands’ inclusive and human rights-based approach with civil society

Author(s):  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Olcott

This chapter examines the organizational and geopolitical rivalries that gave rise to IWY. It considers how long-simmering ideological tensions between the International Council of Women (ICW) and the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)—dubbed WINGOs (women’s international non-governmental organizations)—fostered competing visions for IWY. While the WIDF and its allies saw IWY as linking women’s issues with human rights, their Cold War rivals linked IWY humanitarian concerns and development strategies. Australia provides a case study of the growing rift in civil society between WINGOs and feminists and the tensions between those working within the rules of the game to those who wanted to change the game entirely. The chapter examines the Australian case to demonstrate the ways that IWY highlighted generational differences, particularly between younger women’s liberationists and older, more establishmentarian activists.


Author(s):  
Christine (Cricket) Keating ◽  
Cynthia Burack

This chapter examines the issue of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people (LGBTI). In recent years, LGBTI groups have used the language and frameworks of human rights to organize against state, civil society, religious, and interpersonal violence and discrimination. The broadening of the human rights framework to address issues of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) has been an important development in both the human rights and the LGBTI movements. The chapter begins with a discussion of SOGI rights as human rights, focusing on questions such as the central human rights issues for LGBTI people; how these groups have organized to address these challenges through a human rights framework; and the challenges faced by LGBTI human rights advocates and what successes they have had. It also considers critiques of SOGI human rights activism and concludes with a case study of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill.


2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelique J.W.M. van Zeeland

This article analyses the challenges for the strategies and practices of transformational development in a changing context. This reflection is based on contributions received during the process of dialogues and regional consultations, realised from August 2012 until March 2014, of the ACT Alliance, an international coalition of churches and faith-based organisations (FBOs) working in the areas of humanitarian response, development and advocacy. The main processes that affect the changing development context are addressed, such as the ongoing globalisation as well as the consequences, mainly regarding the shrinking space for civil society. It discusses the concepts of human development and of transformational development, based on a people-centred development vision, a human rights-based approach and advocacy, which addresses the root causes and effects of poverty, inequality and injustice. Transformational development practices, from Latin America, are presented and analysed. The article concludes that the changing development context also offers opportunities, especially regarding regional and global alliances of FBOs, civil society organisations and of social movements.


Author(s):  
Kari Steen-Johnsen ◽  
Bernard Enjolras

This qualitative case study describes and analyzes the use of social media by Amnesty International Norway (AIN), a medium-sized human rights organization. Specifically, the case looks at how and to what extent AIN fulfilled its aims of enhancing information, public debate, and mobilization for campaigns through the use of Facebook and the organization's own website blog. While AIN saw great potentials in using social media, a core question was whether opening up for more lateral communication would lead to a loss of trustworthiness and organizational identity. Although AIN experienced an initial lack of success in using social media to generate response and mobilization in 2011, it was able to develop a powerful social media strategy resulting in high degrees of activity and exchange in 2014. Findings indicated that this change seemed to rely both on the ability of AIN to reflect upon its own governance structures and on the organization's ability to learn from experience.


The book identifies a new human rights phenomenon. While disappearances have tended to be associated with authoritarian state and armed conflict periods, the study looks at these acts carried out in procedural democracies where democratic institutions prevail. Specifically, the book manuscript analyses disappearances in four Latin American countries (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and El Salvador) which provide insights into the dimensions of this contemporary social problem. The theoretical framing for the volume links contemporary disappearances with certain logics that emerged in the authoritarian and armed conflict periods and continue today. It also covers the evolution of legal instruments addressing past disappearances and the current phenomenon. Each case study is introduced by a personal story of disappearance, followed by analyses. The following ‘Tools’ section sets out ‘best practices’ used by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations to address the rights of victims for truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-125
Author(s):  
Michael Gyan Nyarko

Using a human rights-based approach and Ghana as a case study, this article examines the scope and content of the right to property in relation to compulsory land acquisition under international law. It argues that while the exact frontiers of the right to property remain quite uncharted at the global level the vacuum has been filled by the regional human rights systems and soft law. In the context of Ghana, the Constitutional protection of the right to property and quite elaborate rules to be followed during compulsory acquisition have not translated into revision of the compulsory acquisition laws, which remain largely incoherent and inconsistent with the requirements of the Constitution and international human rights law.


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