Hypocrisy And Human Rights

Hypocrisy and Human Rights examines what human rights pressure does when it does not work. Repressive states with absolutely no intention of complying with their human rights obligations often change course dramatically in response to international pressure. They create toothless commissions, permit but then obstruct international observers' visits, and pass showpiece legislation while simultaneously bolstering their repressive capacity. Covering debates over transitional justice in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other countries, Kate Cronin-Furman investigates the diverse ways in which repressive states respond to calls for justice from human rights advocates, UN officials, and Western governments who add their voices to the victims of mass atrocities to demand accountability. She argues that although international pressure cannot elicit compliance in the absence of domestic motivations to comply, the complexity of the international system means that there are multiple audiences for both human rights behavior and advocacy and that pressure can produce valuable results through indirect paths.

In the dark says since the attack on the World Trade Center, the question that many Americans have asked is: Why? Why do 'they' hate us as they do? Is it, as our leaders would have us believe, because they hate our freedom? To understand what others find objectionable in us, we must take a long and brutally honest view of how we act, versus what we like to say about ourselves. The facts, as this book demonstrates, are incontrovertible: Our history is an unbroken progression of atrocities, betrayals of trust, and abuses of the rule of law, both to our global neighbors as well as our own citizens. Since the arrival of the first settlers, we have cheated and swindled, committed the most sweeping genocide in history (100,000,000 members of the indigenous populations), attacked civilian populations with nuclear weapons, promoted conflicts at home and abroad, supported brutal right-wing regimes, bullied those weaker than us, and performed gruesome experiments on the most defenseless of our own citizens: poor southern blacks, retarded teens, and pregnant women. These, sadly, are the facts, and are what others see when we say our proud slogans about peace and promoting democracy. But who among us is actually responsible for this ignominious state of affairs? As Perni argues, all of these iniquities can be traced to three sources: big business, fundamentalist, right-wing Christians, whom he characterizes as our own domestic Taliban, and a corrupt government that serves the corporations while manipulating the easily swayed voters.

In this masterful book, Professor Dolinger presents a scathing indictment of the United Nations.

The acceptance of human rights and minority rights, the increasing role of international financial institutions, and globalization have led many observers to question the continued viability of the sovereign state. Here a leading expert challenges this conclusion. Stephen Krasner contends that states have never been as sovereign as some have supposed. Throughout history, rulers have been motivated by a desire to stay in power, not by some abstract adherence to international principles. Organized hypocrisy--the presence of longstanding norms that are frequently violated--has been an enduring attribute of international relations. Political leaders have usually but not always honored international legal sovereignty, the principle that international recognition should be accorded only to juridically independent sovereign states, while treating Westphalian sovereignty, the principle that states have the right to exclude external authority from their own territory, in a much more provisional way. In some instances violations of the principles of sovereignty have been coercive, as in the imposition of minority rights on newly created states after the First World War or the successor states of Yugoslavia after 1990; at other times cooperative, as in the European Human Rights regime or conditionality agreements with the International Monetary Fund. The author looks at various issues areas to make his argument: minority rights, human rights, sovereign lending, and state creation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Differences in national power and interests, he concludes, not international norms, continue to be the most powerful explanation for the behavior of states.

The evolutionary psychology behind human inconsistency We're all hypocrites. Why? Hypocrisy is the natural state of the human mind. Robert Kurzban shows us that the key to understanding our behavioral inconsistencies lies in understanding the mind's design. The human mind consists of many specialized units designed by the process of evolution by natural selection. While these modules sometimes work together seamlessly, they don't always, resulting in impossibly contradictory beliefs, vacillations between patience and impulsiveness, violations of our supposed moral principles, and overinflated views of ourselves. This modular, evolutionary psychological view of the mind undermines deeply held intuitions about ourselves, as well as a range of scientific theories that require a "self" with consistent beliefs and preferences. Modularity suggests that there is no "I." Instead, each of us is a contentious "we"--a collection of discrete but interacting systems whose constant conflicts shape our interactions with one another and our experience of the world. In clear language, full of wit and rich in examples, Kurzban explains the roots and implications of our inconsistent minds, and why it is perfectly natural to believe that everyone else is a hypocrite.

Every year tens of millions of individuals suffer grave abuses of their human rights. These violations occur worldwide, in war-torn countries and in the wealthiest states. Despite many of the abuses being well-documented, little seems to be done to stop them from happening. The United Nations was established to safeguard world peace and security, development, and human rights yet it is undeniable that currently is it failing to protect the rights of a great many people from the victims of ethnic cleansing, to migrants, those displaced by war and women who suffer horrendous abuse. This book looks at the reasons for that failure. Using concrete examples intertwined with explanations of the law and politics of the UN, Rosa Freedman offers clear explanations of how and why the Organisation is unable, at best, or unwilling, at worst, to protect human rights. Written for a non-specialist audience, her book also seeks to explain why certain countries and political blocs manipulate and undermine the UN s human rights machinery. Failing to Protect demonstrates the urgent need for radical reform of the machinery of human rights protection at the international level.

Devil in the details : peace operations, civilian protection, and policy design -- Political will, organized hypocrisy, and ambitions-resources gaps -- Quantitative evidence -- France in Rwanda -- The United States in Darfur -- Australia in the Southwest Pacific

This book reviews the war on terror since 9/11 from a human rights perspective.