Defying Communism

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-160
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Communist Countries

This chapter examines the rise of the international human rights movement as significant force in world affairs. It draws attention to the Cold War, in which the context of international human rights took place. It also talks about the “Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch” as one of the leading non-governmental human rights organizations operating globally that was established at different stages of the Cold War era. The chapter focuses on the emergence of the human rights movement in the communist countries, as well as its development on the other side of the Cold War divide. It illustrates the demonstration over the arrests of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel in 1965, which marked the beginning of the emergence of a human rights movement in the Soviet bloc countries.

Defying Communism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
International Human ◽  
Extra Weight ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
East West

This chapter details how the rise of the international human rights movement as a significant force in world affairs cannot be separated from the Cold War context in which it took place. The Cold War magnified the importance of citizen efforts to promote rights and, though many of those involved in the movement during the Cold War era took significant risks and suffered severe consequences, it was the circumstances of the East–West conflict that attracted many of them to the cause in the first place. Rights activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain became aware that calling attention to abuses of rights by their own governments carried extra weight in an era when a global competition was underway for people's hearts and minds.

Co-Optation: The Moroccan Cold War, Israel, and Human Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-223
Author(s):  
Alma Rachel Heckman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Cold War

Chapter 5 analyzes the infamous Years of Lead and how Moroccan Jewish Communists diverged in their responses. Morocco began to publicly embrace its Jewish past while imprisoning its most well-known Jewish Communists in horrendous conditions. Some prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists worked with the state, notably supporting the 1975 Green March. Others supported Sahrawi independence and faced decades of imprisonment. This chapter examines the development of the state’s narrative of Moroccan Jewish tolerance alongside King Hassan II’s relationship with Israel and the United States. Meanwhile, international human rights organizations militated on behalf of prominent Moroccan political prisoners, among them Jews, pressuring the monarchy to release them. With the end of the Cold War and the death of King Hassan II, the state embraced the previously marginalized and reviled Moroccan Jewish Communists as national heroes, upheld as symbols of Moroccan Jewish exceptionalism within the region.

The International Human Rights Movement

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
International Importance ◽  
International Human ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Cold War

During the past several decades, the international human rights movement has had a crucial hand in the struggle against totalitarian regimes, cruelties in wars, and crimes against humanity. Today, it grapples with the war against terror and subsequent abuses of government power. This book offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of this global force, from its beginnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to its essential place in world affairs today. The book combines analysis with personal experience, and gives a unique insider's perspective on the movement's goals, the disputes about its mission, and its rise to international importance. Discussing the movement's origins, the book looks at the dissenters who fought for religious freedoms in seventeenth-century England and the abolitionists who opposed slavery before the Civil War era. It pays special attention to the period from the 1970s onward, and describes the growth of the human rights movement after the Helsinki Accords, the roles played by American presidential administrations, and the astonishing Arab revolutions of 2011. The book argues that the contemporary human rights movement was, to a large extent, an outgrowth of the Cold War, and it demonstrates how it became the driving influence in international law, institutions, and rights. Throughout, the book highlights key figures, controversies, and organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and considers the challenges to come.

Nongovernmental International Human Rights Organizations: The Case of Hong Kong

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (03) ◽  
pp. 642-653
Author(s):  
Wai-man Lam
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
Hybrid Regimes ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
International Human ◽  
Developed World

ABSTRACTThis article examines the contributions of nongovernmental international human rights organizations (NGIHRO) in promoting a broad sense of human rights in hybrid regimes using the cases of Amnesty International Hong Kong (AIHK), Green Peace Hong Kong (GPHK), and Oxfam Hong Kong (OHK). It contends that NGIHROs have made significant contributions to public education and fund-raising in Hong Kong. However, with regard to the human rights conditions, it is erroneous to consider Hong Kong as part of the developed world. Together with other probable political considerations, doing so may have led to gaps in the organizations’ roles and functions as advocates for human rights in Hong Kong. In the final analysis, this article uses the political protests in Hong Kong to illustrate the importance of addressing the implications of demands for preserving the local identity and alternative lifestyles in the broader understanding of human rights.

Amnesty International

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-203
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter centers on Amnesty International, the best-known and largest human rights organization in the world that was established in London in 1961. It highlights how the creation of Amnesty was a major milestone in the emergence of an enduring human rights movement. It also discusses the Cold War context that played a crucial role in shaping Amnesty. The chapter explores the intention of Amnesty to operate worldwide and address the abuses of rights committed by those on all sides of the global struggle. It also talks about the principal founder of Amnesty, Peter Benenson, who was active in the efforts to promote civil liberties several years prior to taking the lead in the formation of Amnesty.

Cul-de-sac to the West: Human Rights and Hypocrisy between Turkey and Europe in the 1980s

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 177-192
Author(s):  
Bennett G. Sherry
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
The West ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
International Human

Abstract In the 1980s, over a million Iranian asylum seekers transited through Turkey on their way west, most moving through irregular migration channels. While much has been made of Turkey’s evolving role in more recent refugee crises, this literature neglects the importance of the 1980s Iranian refugee migrations in shaping the global refugee system. By connecting the story of the international human rights movement to the Ankara office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), this paper emphasizes the role of non-state actors. Based on research in the archives of the UNHCR, this paper argues that the UNHCR and Amnesty International used human rights as a tool to pressure Turkey to open its doors to Iranian refugees in the early 1980s, and that this tactic backfired when the West closed its own doors on refugees later in the decade. The result was the increased forcible return of refugees by Turkish authorities to Iran and newly restrictive asylum policies, which would shape refugee migrations through Turkey for decades. For millions of refugees, Turkey has served as transit hub on their journey west; in the 1980s, human rights hypocrisy made it a cul-de-sac.

Post-Cold War Reflections on the Study of International Human Rights

1994 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 97-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Donnelly
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The University

The 1993 World Human Rights Conference, only the second UN-sponsored global conference on human rights ever held, provides an appropriate occasion to reflect on the state of the study of international human rights. The first global human rights conference, held in Tehran in 1968, came on the heels of the rise of the Third World to a position of international prominence. The Tehran Conference helped to initiate an era in which issues of economic, social, and cultural rights and development received steadily increasing attention in international human rights discussions. The 1993 Vienna Conference reflected the new international context characterized by the end of the Cold War and the global trend toward political liberalization and democratization. Substantively, the Vienna Conference was perhaps most notable for its emphasis on the university of international human rights—an emphasis, as I will argue below, that is reflected in the development of the academic human rights literature as well.

The Future of the Human Rights Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth A. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Fading Memory ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Western Values ◽  
The Cold War

The modern human rights movement is at a critical juncture in its history. It has been nearly seventy years since the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and some of the oldest and most active human rights organizations have been operating around the world for about forty years. More than twenty years have passed since the end of the cold war, and the time when people spoke in triumphal terms of the global success of Western values is now a fading memory. International human rights are ensconced as firmly as ever in international law and institutions, but what about the future of the “human rights movement”?

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