scholarly journals Privatizing Refugees’ Human Rights in Hamid’s Exit West, Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, and Hosseini’s Sea Prayer

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Narrative Thread ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Adjustment Programs

The contemporary novel seems to be complicit with neoliberalized and economized human rights. It is, time and again, a narrative that attempts to structurally adjust humans’ emotions to further the elitism and exclusiveness of human rights to citizens of Western countries. I argue that some modern neoliberal novels are a part of sentimental adjustment programs that strip refugees of their basic human rights, while at the same time celebrate Western societies and their aggressive and negative attitudes towards displaced individuals as equitable. Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, J. M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, and Khaled Hosseini’s Sea Prayer are novels that function as examples of sentimental adjustment programs in which the narrative thread and structure elucidate how refugees struggle to maintain autonomy as they are excluded from human rights discourses as non-citizens. Namely, the aforementioned novels shed light on the failure of human rights ever being established in their storylines because human rights are being obliterated through the introduction of Western compassion as a rectitudinous result.

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Shed Light

This volume reframes the debate around Islam and women’s rights within a broader comparative literature. It examines the complex and contingent historical relationships between religion, secularism, democracy, law, and gender equality. Part I addresses the nexus of religion, law, gender, and democracy through different disciplinary perspectives (sociology, anthropology, political science, law). Part II localizes the implementation of this nexus between law, gender, and democracy, and provides contextualized responses to questions raised in Part I. The contributors explore the situation of Muslim women’s rights vis-à-vis human rights to shed light on gender politics in the modernization of the nation and to ponder over the role of Islam in gender inequality across different Muslim countries.

Contributory Fault under International Law: A Gateway for Human Rights in ISDS?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farouk El-Hosseny ◽  
Patrick Devine
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Investment Treaty ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Government ◽  
Bear Creek ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The intersection between foreign investment and human rights is gaining attention, as is evident from an increasing number of investment treaty awards analysing legal issues relating to human rights. In the recent International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) arbitration of Bear Creek v Peru, Philippe Sands QC posited, in a dissenting opinion, that the investor’s contribution to events—ie protests against its allegedly adverse environmental impact and disregard of indigenous rights, namely resulting from its ‘inability to obtain a “social licence”’—which led to the unlawful expropriation of its investment, was ‘significant and material’. He further noted that the investor’s ‘responsibilities are no less than those of the government’ and found that damages should thus be reduced. Last year, the Netherlands adopted a new model bilateral investment treaty (BIT), which allows tribunals to ‘take into account non-compliance by the investor with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’ when assessing damages. These recent developments shed light on how states and tribunals, as part of their decision-making process, can take into account human rights in practice, and crucially in respect of damages analyses. By first dissecting the concept of contributory fault, then shedding light on the intersection of investment treaty law and human rights, as elucidated in recent jurisprudence, this article questions whether there now exists a gateway for human rights obligations (soft or hard) in the investment treaty arbitration realm through the concept of contributory fault.

LAW, RELIGION, AND THE POLITICIZATION OF SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP IN KENYA

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-129
Author(s):  
Damaris Seleina Parsitau
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
Before And After

AbstractIn Kenya, debates about sexual orientation have assumed center stage at several points in recent years, but particularly before and after the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya in 2010. These debates have been fueled by religious clergy and by politicians who want to align themselves with religious organizations for respectability and legitimation, particularly by seeking to influence the nation's legal norms around sexuality. I argue that through their responses and attempts to influence legal norms, the religious and political leaders are not only responsible for the nonacceptance of same-sex relationships in Africa, but have also ensured that sexuality and embodiment have become a cultural and religious battleground. These same clergy and politicians seek to frame homosexuality as un-African, unacceptable, a threat to African moral and cultural sensibilities and sensitivities, and an affront to African moral and family values. Consequently, the perception is that homosexuals do not belong in Africa—that they cannot be entertained, accommodated, tolerated, or even understood. Ultimately, I argue that the politicization and religionization of same-sex relationships in Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, has masked human rights debates and stifled serious academic and pragmatic engagements with important issues around sexual difference and sexual orientation while fueling negative attitudes toward people with different sexual orientations.

scholarly journals Current Explanations for the Variation in Same-Sex Marriage Policies in Western Countries

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pettinicchio
Keyword(s):  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Heterosexual Couples ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Gay Couples ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
National Comparison ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Cross National

Abstract Over the last ten years, several western countries have recognized gay marriage either by providing gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, or by allowing civil unions. Other western countries have not. What accounts for this variation? This paper reviews and analyzes the key demographic, institutional and cultural arguments found in the literature on the legalization of gay marriage – especially as these pertain to cross-national comparison – and raises questions about assumptions regarding the extent to which there is variation on these variables across western countries. I argue that institutional and cultural explanations are only meaningful in explaining legalization when their combinations are specified in order to shed light on favorable (or unfavorable) circumstances for policy outcomes.

scholarly journals Intertwined but Different. The Heterologous In Vitro Fertilization Case before the European Court of Human Rights and the Italian Constitutional Court

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-67
Author(s):  
Antonia Baraggia ◽  
Maria Elena Gennusa
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
In Vitro Fertilization ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Vitro Fertilization ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
European Court ◽  
Protection Systems ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract International and constitutional law, originally distinct realms with limited areas of intersection, are getting closer and closer, particularly in the European landscape within the human rights protection field, where these mere contacts between the two systems have become intersections and overlaps. The present article will try to shed light on the still unsolved and problematic issues to which overlapping human rights protection systems give rise, by focusing on an analysis of the heterologous in vitro fertilization case, where both the Strasbourg Court and the Italian Constitutional Court delivered relevant judgments on very similar matters (ECtHR’s S.H. Judgment; Judgment No. 162/2014 from the Italian CC). Such analysis revealed useful in highlighting connections and disconnections between the different levels of protection of rights, and led us to argue that the development of a multilevel protection of rights is also, at least partially, a tale of Courts, each competing to have the last word on human rights adjudication.

“In YouTube We Trust”

2014 ◽  
pp. 57-71
Author(s):  
Aziz Douai
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Exchange Site ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
Arab Societies ◽  
Shed Light

YouTube has enabled new forms of political dissent in Arab societies. This chapter examines the development and rise of YouTube in the Arab world. In particular, it looks at how this video exchange site is invigorating the online public sphere’s vigorous demand for political reform and respect for human rights. Specifically, this investigation explores how social networking capabilities have made YouTube an effective asset in dissidents’ arsenal among Arab activists. To examine the vibrancy of this fledgling online public sphere, the chapter scrutinizes how activists incorporated YouTube videos to shed light on human rights abuses, specifically police abuse, corruption, and brutality in two Arab countries, Egypt and Morocco. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the new campaigning modes that the Internet and YouTube have facilitated.

The Electronic Surveillance of Public Assemblies

2011 ◽  
pp. 59-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haralambos Anthopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Electronic Surveillance ◽  
Combined Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
European Court ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Protection Legislation ◽  
The Right ◽  
Shed Light

The electronic surveillance of public assemblies has been an issue highly debated in the Greek public arena. The circumstances that brought this internationally contested topic in the public focus were the parliamentary introduction of Law 3625/2007 in Greece and the legislative enactment of an exemption from the data protection legislation for all police activities involving data processing during public assemblies. This paper will argue that the electronic surveillance of public assemblies affects both the privacy of political views (political privacy) and the activism (public anonymity) of a citizen. Along this line, the paper offers a combined analysis of the right to data protection [Art. 9A] and the right to free assembly [Art. 11] as acknowledged in the Greek Constitution (1975/86/01/08). As underlined, both rights constitute the basis for the protection of political privacy and public anonymity and preclude any legislatively posed limitations to their enjoyment. In the end, three key cases of the European Court of Human Rights shed light to the legitimacy of such a ‘panoptic’ surveillance of public assemblies.

Whose Rights Are Human Rights? The Gender Gap between Russian Feminist, LGBT, and Human Rights Networks

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-134
Author(s):  
Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom ◽  
Valerie Sperling ◽  
Melike Sayoglu
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Two Sectors ◽  
Shed Light

Chapter 4 explores the inter-network dynamics between the human rights and women’s rights communities in Russia, and how the uneasy relationship between these two sectors of civil society helps keep Russian women’s sex-based discrimination claims from percolating up to the ECtHR. We draw upon our interviews with feminist activists and human rights activists in Russia to shed light on the experiences of feminist activists within the human rights and international litigation communities in Russia. We find that the separation between women’s rights and traditional human rights networks in Russia has until recently excluded feminist lawyers from learning how to take cases successfully to the ECtHR through legal training. We compare the experiences of feminist activists and the reception of Russian human rights NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to gender-based claims of human rights violations to the strikingly different experiences of LGBT rights activists who have found common cause with human rights organizations in Russia in trying to contest hate crimes and other rights violations in court.

Activistes féministes: Francophone Women Writers and International Human Rights

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 318-328
Author(s):  
Alison Rice
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
African Immigrants ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Writing Workshops ◽  
International Human ◽  
Business Acumen ◽  
Shed Light

Several prominent contemporary Francophone women writers have embraced activism in compelling forms. In her written creations, Maïssa Bey from Algeria has continually called attention to the lack of women’s rights in her homeland; she has also initiated writing workshops for women to reflect and express themselves. Fatou Diome, who left Senegal for Strasbourg, has shed light in her work on racism and sexism that African immigrants often face in Europe, and she has created an association in her homeland to help individuals become financially solvent. Yanick Lahens from Haiti has similarly devoted herself to activist endeavours on her island, including co-founding a library and working with youth after the earthquake. As these authors seek to create compassion through writing, they also promote empathy through their engagement outside the text, empowering people of various backgrounds by providing them with literacy skills, business acumen, and a sense that their story matters.

The Role of Human Rights in Long-Term Sentencing

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 281-293
Author(s):  
Marieke Liem ◽  
Jan Maarten Elbers
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Shed Light

In recent decades, the number of long-term detainees held worldwide has increased significantly. Academics and policy makers have begun to challenge the widespread use and effectiveness of such severe sentences, however. This article aims to shed light on the role of human rights in imposing and executing long-term custodial sentences. There appears to be tension between ensuring that human rights are respected and provision of security through the incapacitation of offenders. This tension can only be understood properly in the context of contemporary risk-management associated with increased punitiveness.

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