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Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) PDF

204 Pages·2007·11.76 MB·English
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Andrew Clapham HUMAN RIGHTS A Very Short Introduction OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXTORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ©Andrew Clapham 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as a Very Short Introduction 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978-0-19-920552-3 13579 10 8642 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press Ltd., Gosport, Hampshire Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix List of illustrations xi 1 Looking at rights 1 2 The historical development of international human rights 23 3 Human rights foreign policy and the role of the United Nations 57 4 The international crime of torture 81 5 Legitimate restrictions on freedom 96 6 Balancing rights - the issue of privacy 108 7 Food, education, health, housing, and work 119 8 Discrimination and equality 143 9 The death penalty 152 Final remarks 159 References 164 Further reading 174 Annex: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 182 Index 190 Preface The aim of this book is to provide the reader with some entry points into the worlds of human rights thinking, activism, and law. This book concentrates on the power of ideas to mobilize people against injustice and indignities. Human rights do not really resolve the tension between competing interests and various visions of how the world should be; rather, human rights ideas provide the vocabulary for arguing about which interests should prevail and how best to achieve the ends we have chosen. This short introduction actually looks at the content of a number of rights rather than simply telling the human rights story of revolutions, proclamations, and continuing struggles. Calling for a world based on respect for human rights is easy; adjusting current arrangements to achieve full respect for human rights is a never- ending process when we consider that there are human rights to life, equality, free speech, privacy, health, food, and housing. Human rights are about each of us living in dignity, and we are a long way from achieving that on a global scale. We shall see that the human rights project is not simply about implementing a set of obligations fixed in history; rather, the human rights movement is about people standing up to injustice and showing solidarity in the face of oppression. In order to allow readers to discover for themselves some of the texts and organizations referred to in this introduction, we have provided a website with internet links at http://hei.unige.ch/human-rights-vsi. References marked with an asterisk* in this book can be found on the website. Acknowledgements I should like to thank all those at Oxford University Press who worked to bring this project to fruition. Special thanks go to Marsha Filion, who saw through the initial ideas and lent her support at an important stage. I must also thank James Thompson, Alyson Silverwood and Zoe Spilberg for their hard work in the production of the book. In addition, I very much appreciated the constructive comments and encouragement I received from Susan Marks and the anonymous reviewers. Their enthusiasm, dedication, and suggestions certainly shaped the final product for the better. Thanks also go to Louise Petre for designing an elegant companion website for the book. Here at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, I have been fortunate to have access to assistance from excellent graduate students, who have posed pertinent questions and provided marvellous editorial help. I should like particularly to thank Michelle Healy and Claire Mahon for their help on this project. Lastly, let me express my gratitude to two people from my family: my mother, Margaret Clapham, who nourished the project and read the manuscript with a critical eye to keeping it jargon-free, and my wife, Mona Rishmawi, who not only offered unwavering support, but also helped to shape the ideas and was happy to 'think aloud' with me on many occasions. A.B.C. Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva List of illustrations 1 'Criminals' Rights Act': 8 Mary Robinson on a Sunday Telegraph, mission in Afghanistan 79 14 May 2006 4 www.peacebuild.ca 2 Thomas Paine stamp 8 9 Guy Fawkes's confession 82 National Postage Museum, The National Archives Smithsonian Institution, Washington 10 'Resign, Rumsfeld': front cover of The Economist, 3 Rights of Man book 8 May 2004 84 cover 30 © The Economist © Penguin Books 11 'Human rights law is now 4 Radislav Krstic 38 officially a joke': cartoon in 'before': © Getty Images; The Economist, 'after': © Reuters/Ranko Cukovic 10 June 2006 94 © Kevin Kallaugher 5 Child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of 12 Launch of the Appeal for Congo 39 Amnesty, 1961 102 © Roger LeMoyne © The Guardian Newspapers Ltd 1961 6 Demonstration in Berne 64 © Amnesty International (Suisse) 13 Princess Caroline of 2003 Monaco 117 © Getty Images 7 Mothers of the 'disappeared', Buenos Aires 74 14 Union rights 139 © J. Etchart/Exile Images © Getty Images

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