scholarly journals Human Rights: Setting the Stage for Protecting Refugee Women

Refuge ◽  
1998 ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Maryanna Schmuki
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Women Refugees ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Women's Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper explores the social construction of women refugees from the perspective of the human rights regime with an eye to revealing whether the voices of refugee women are reflected. To this end the paper examines the development of women refugees as a category within human rights discourse and how this category has been bolstered by the concept of women's human rights within the last decade.

Wartime sexual violence: women’s human rights and questions of masculinity

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIRANDA ALISON
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Male Victims ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Women's Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Further Development

This article examines wartime sexual violence, one of the most recurring wartime human rights abuses. It asserts that our theorisations need further development, particularly in regard to the way that masculinities and the intersections with constructions of ethnicity feature in wartime sexual violence. The article also argues that although women and girls are the predominant victims of sexual violence and men and boys the predominant agents, we must also be able to account for the presence of male victims and female agents. This, however, engenders a problem; much of the women’s human rights discourse and existing international mechanisms for addressing wartime sexual violence tend to reify the male-perpetrator/female-victim paradigm. This is a problem which feminist human rights theorists and activists need to address.

scholarly journals The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the social model of health: new perspectives

2014 ◽  
pp. 74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Weller
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
People With Mental Illness ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Health Laws

Contemporary mental health laws are embedded in basic human rights principle, and their ongoing evolution is influenced by contemporary human rights discourse, international declarations and conventions, and the authoritative jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECrtHR). The<em> Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities</em> (CRPD) is the most recent expression of international human rights applicable to people with disability including people with mental illness.3 It provides a fresh benchmark against which to assess the human rights compatibility of domestic mental health laws.

Globalization and Multi-cultural Knowledge of Human Rights

1998 ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Jay Drydyk
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Responding to a call by Pierre Sané, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, for a worldwide political movement to overcome the social damage that has been wrought by economic globalization, this paper asks whether such a movement can invoke current conceptions of human rights. In particular, if human rights are Euro-centric, how well would they serve the self-understanding of a movement that is to be global, culturally pluralistic and counterhegemonic to Northern capital? I argue that it is not human rights that are Eurocentric, but only certain conceptions of human rights. Properly understood, human rights are justifiable from within all cultures. Moreover, current conceptions of human rights are not as narrow as they were in 1948, when the Universal Declaration was drafted. Nearly five decades of international dialogue have transformed human rights discourse in ways that are profoundly anti-Eurocentric, and further transformations are already underway. There are resources of moral and political experience, within all cultures, which argue strongly in favor of these transformations. Therefore, a more consistent and more complete knowledge of human rights can emerge cross-culturally if the dialogue is not abused and if the relevant moral and political experience is let into the dialogue from all quarters.

Culture Re-introduced: Contestation of Human Rights in Contemporary Russia

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 173-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petr Preclik
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
National Identity Formation

AbstractThis article explores the current human-rights discourse in the Russian Federation through its relationship with the Council of Europe, the strongest human-rights regime that Russia has signed up for. Against the background of current international-relations theories, the article argues that human-rights scholarship should re-introduce the concept of culture into its research designs in order to be able to explain the interaction between cultural groupings and globally dominant discourses, such as human rights. The article further argues that human rights ought to be conceptualized as symbolic technologies and studied as discursive variables that enter the cycle of national-identity formation. To that end, I use the contestation thesis proposed by Andrei Tsygankov. The article concludes that Russia is currently actively securing itself against the dominant and universal human-rights discourse, which is perceived as hindering independent societal development in Russia. This state of securization is illustrated in the current debates within PACE on topics connected with human rights and Russia.

Genetic Determinism and Discrimination: A Call to Re-Orient Prevailing Human Rights Discourse to Better Comport with the Public Implications of Individual Genetic Testing

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Eltis
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

“Privacy considerations no longer arise out of particular individual problems; rather, they express conflicts affecting everyone.”Along with the promise of assuaging the scourge of disease, the so-called genetic revolution unquestioningly imports a slew of thorny human rights issues that touch on matters such as dignity, disclosure, and the subject of this article – genetic testing and the social stigma potentially deriving therefrom.It is now rather evident that certain otherwise therapeutically promising forms of research can inadvertently involve social risks exceeding the individual preoccupations of eclectic study participants. With that as the case, the following proposes to examine the peculiar stigma attached to genetic information and its potential human rights implications extending beyond the insurance and employment context. In so doing, it raises the intersection of interests between self-identified members of historically vulnerable groups and the group itself, which the law seems to take for granted in the genetics context.

Cultural Relativism and Human Rights: Reconsidering the Africanist Discourse

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonny Ibhawoh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Cultural Legitimacy ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Discussions about cultural relativism and the cross-cultural legitimacy of human rights have been central to contemporary human rights discourse. Much of this discussion has focussed on non-Western societies where scholars have advanced, from a variety of standpoints, arguments for and against the cultural relativism of human rights. Arguments for ‘Asian Values’ and lately, ‘African values’ in the construction of human rights have defined this debate. This paper reviews some of the major arguments and trends in the Africanist discourse on the cultural relativism of human rights. It argues the need to go beyond the polarities that have characterised the debate. It argues that while an Afrocentric conception of human rights is a valid worldview, it need not become the basis for the abrogation of the emerging Universal human rights regime. Rather, it should provide the philosophical foundation for the legitimisation of Universal human rights in the African context and inform the cross-fertilisation of ideas between Africa and the rest of the world.

scholarly journals Globalisation, Human Rights and Islam: Competing Narratives and Discursive Practices in The Muslim World

ICR Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-361
Author(s):  
Asif Mohiuddin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
International Norm ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Globalisation the growing interpenetration of ideas, states, and markets across borders has not only fostered the very blurring of distances but also growing avenues of appeal for citizens suppressed by their own states. There is no doubt that, in contemporary times, international norms and institutions for the protection of human rights are more developed than at any previous point in history. However, assaults on basic human rights continue, and the emergence of a global human rights regime may also be engendering new sources of human rights abuse. This paper examines how these developments have transformed the complex and mutable relationship between human rights and Islam and how this relationship is readjusting in response to the changing global situation. Focusing on the dramatic expansion of human rights discourse in the Muslim world, the paper argues that, for critics of Islam, the position on the incompatibility of Islam and human rights, which assumes two settled entities in an unstable relationship, is becoming hard to sustain as is the position on the Western origin of human rights. The main implication of this study is that human rights principles can be a binding international norm in a globalised world and that many normative conventions can play a pioneering role in promoting these rights and contribute to the emergence of a multicultural society.

scholarly journals The social context of widowhood rites and women’s human rights in Cameroon

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1234671
Author(s):  
Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta ◽  
Mathias Fubah Alubafi ◽  
Jamie Halsall
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
Women's Human Rights
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