{"title":"Build Forward Fairer: Covid-19, Lessons Learned","authors":"Morten Kjaerum","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad051","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article discusses the importance of adopting a human rights-based approach in addressing the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic. The article highlights the case of a human rights-based hospital in Sweden that actively reached out to vulnerable individuals in the community during the pandemic, emphasizing how the human rights-based approach contributes to building trust and thereby realizing the right to life and health. Based on this example it explores the need for a human rights-based approach in crisis management including climate-induced disasters. The article emphasizes the interconnectedness of all human rights and the need for economic prioritizations that align with social justice commitments. It highlights the role of institutions, legal frameworks, and collaborative efforts at various levels to ensure the realization of human rights and the principle of ‘leave no one behind’. The article concludes by advocating for the integration of human rights principles into legislation, policies, and actions to build a fairer and more resilient society.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"81 11","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135266148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"<i>A Listening Device</i>: Colombia’s Truth Commission and the Politics of the Audible","authors":"Alejandro Castillejo-Cuéllar","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this brief text I want to offer a personal reflection on my work as a former Commissioner in Colombia’s Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-repetition. What is of interest to me is the idea that truth-seeking commission models are complex “listening devices” that render certain forms of violence intelligible while other more systemic types, remain elusive. In contexts of deeply rooted historical and endemic racial and economic inequalities, this is not a minor issue as these material inequalities are at the heart of conflict itself. In fact, what I call the “transitional promise of transformation” often falls short of changing the structures of quotidian experience of people and communities scarred by such historical injuries. Rather, those “transformations” are deferred to a future “liberal peace building” or development-oriented agenda. I examine this way of listening through a particular theoretical lens and aspire not only to contribute with an empathic and a reflexive distance from our work as a Commission but also to posit wider questions.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"8 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135265704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking the Human Right to Food from a Single Perspective to a Four-Fold Legal Interpretation","authors":"Jorge Freddy Milian Gómez","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad047","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The human right to food is a fundamental pillar for guaranteeing human dignity and the existence of human beings. It is configured in the international legal system as the possibility of supplying a minimum amount of food necessary to avoid death by hunger, as well as healthy and adequate food for all people. The path to its recognition and conceptualization has been hazardous and is currently not free of real problems that affect its realization. Protection of the right at the national level has taken different forms: express or indirect recognition, recognition of the validity of international law norms in national law, jurisprudence or through the principles of the State. Nevertheless, the hunger problem persists, and the problems associated with nutrition continue to increase. Issues of nutritional security and food sovereignty are linked to the human right to food and are not incompatible with that right. In this regard, conceptual currents define the right from various perspectives, but they are insufficient to meet today’s demands. This research aims to support the four-fold legal interpretation thesis with a legal-theoretical approach to contextualize the right to food in the current circumstances. This article is structured in the first part to analyse the different definitions that shape the right to food. It then briefly presents the four-fold legal interpretation thesis and, finally, some arguments for reconfiguring the human right to food. The research methods used are legal-theoretical, legal-analytical and document analysis.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136062634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘What Are You Going Through?’ Reflections on Lyndsey Stonebridge’s <i>Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees</i>—in memory of David Petrasek","authors":"Brian Phillips","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad043","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This review (in memory of David Petrasek) considers Lyndsey Stonebridge’s Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees and explores the book’s key implications for human rights practitioners and their organizations. The review is one of three contributions to this Fifteenth Anniversary Issue’s Review Section from members of the JHRP Editorial Team and JHRP Editorial Board—highlighting a book of particular significance to human rights practitioners and educators published between 2008 and 2023.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135407261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Power of Personal Archives in Witnessing, Teaching, and Visual Storytelling: The Armenian Memory Project","authors":"Catherine Masud, Armen T Marsoobian","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Armenian Memory Project (AMP) is a collaborative effort designed to harness the energy and resources of the University of Connecticut and the New England Armenian community for the goal of fostering greater understanding of the region’s Armenian cultural heritage and the impact human rights crimes had on the Armenian community. In 2019, students and faculty from the university worked with Armenian American institutions and individuals on an initial component of the AMP, employing digital media technology to tell the story of one immigrant Armenian family, the Dildilians. A unique course was created to produce a documentary film centring around this family’s experiences in Ottoman Turkey before, during, and after the Armenian Genocide. Designed and taught by a documentary filmmaker with support from a family archivist/historian, the course brought students together in a collaborative learning experience. By immersing themselves in the family’s extensive photograph archive, these students came to understand the important role that the past continues to play in the lives of present-day Armenians. Furthermore, by taking on the responsibility as storytellers of the Dildilian narrative, students developed a deeper identification with this distant history and, in a wider sense, an appreciation for the ethical value of memory in bearing witness to the past. This collaborative and participatory framework for teaching using archival collections can serve as a model for creating a transformative learning experience in the study of human rights, war, and genocide.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136280094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward a Truly Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Talking Cultural Transformation with Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim","authors":"Brian Phillips","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad044","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This review considers Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim’s Decolonizing Human Rights and explores the book’s key implications for human rights practitioners and their organizations. The review also includes An-Naim’s reflections on the book as shared in an interview with Brian Phillips, Journal of Human Rights Practice Reviews Editor, in November 2022. The piece inaugurates a series of essays which will appear in the journal’s Review Section in the year ahead marking the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136342198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question","authors":"Richard Carver","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad045","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This review considers Robert Fine and Philip Spencer’s Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question and explores the book’s key implications for human rights practitioners and their organizations. The review is one of three contributions to this 15th Anniversary Issue’s Review Section from members of the Journal of Human Rights Practice Editorial Team and Editorial Board—highlighting a book of particular significance to human rights practitioners and educators published between 2008 and 2023.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136342387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Larger ‘We’; Identity, Spirituality and Social Change in Pluralistic Societies","authors":"Dustin N Sharp","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad041","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Over the last decade, in the United States in particular, there has been an increasingly acute awareness of historic and ongoing social, racial, gender, and other disparities, and the frequent deployment of categories (for example BIPOC, LGBTQQIA2SP+, Latinx) and concepts (for example ‘cultural appropriation’, ‘white privilege’, ‘intersectionality’) that centre thinking and conversations around various axes of difference. For some critics, the hyper-focus on questions of difference is dismissed as ‘wokeness’, and its seeming ascendency across elite spaces—academic, cultural, and corporate—is viewed with alarm, particularly insofar as its advocates are seen to champion a type of illiberalism. Others have raised concerns that hyper-identitarianism may diminish possibilities for worker and class solidarity, or that it represents only an attenuated form of social justice. This article adds to this conversation by asking whether the energetic foregrounding of difference typical of ‘wokeness’ does not also pose a spiritual conundrum. To explore this question, it outlines what is here called the ‘connective worldview’, which draws from deep ecology, spiritual practices, and mystical insights common to many religious traditions to understand humans and their identities as interdependent, ephemeral and, ultimately, subject to transcendence. The article contrasts this with the ‘particularistic worldview’, which tends to set both individual and group identities in sharp relief, emphasizing the need to honour and manage difference. It argues that an ‘integrated’ perspective—one that strikes a balance between both worldviews—will be key for activists looking to foment social change while forging a larger ‘we’ in diverse, pluralistic societies.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135734684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Using Climate Litigation to Strengthen Advocacy Strategies: The Life After Coal Campaign in South Africa","authors":"Lisa Chamberlain, Melissa Fourie","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Activists in South Africa have a long history of using public interest litigation to realize human rights. The use of litigation is nevertheless contested and has produced rich scholarship exploring how its impact can be understood. This practice note will examine the use of litigation by the Life After Coal campaign in Earthlife Africa Johannesburg v. Minister of Environmental Affairs 2017, 2 All SA 519 (GP) (Thabametsi case). With the ultimate goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Life After Coal has been campaigning since 2015 to thwart investment in new coal-fired power in South Africa. They successfully used the Thabametsi case to strengthen the use of a variety of other strategies, including protest, media advocacy, economic modelling, and pressure on investors and financial institutions. Although litigation can be painfully slow and resource intensive, in this campaign it was instrumental. Litigation delayed the regulatory approvals required for commercial close. While this was not the purpose of the litigation, its effect was to delay the flow of funds and the start of construction on the project. This in turn created time and space for an advocacy campaign to persuade financiers and investors to withdraw their backing for the project; to undertake the modelling and research required to back up the advocacy campaigns and litigation; and for clean renewable energy to become cheap enough to present a viable alternative pathway to coal. This practice note documents this rare success story and suggests what lessons concerning the use of multiple interweaving strategies it provides for climate activists in the global South.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136362663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Markus Krajewski, W. Vandenhole
{"title":"Beyond ‘Global Good Samaritans’: Transnational Human Rights Obligations","authors":"Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Markus Krajewski, W. Vandenhole","doi":"10.1093/jhuman/huad027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 What we mean by human rights remains perhaps too anchored in the international legal frameworks that took shape after the Second World War. Those legal frameworks tend to take a myopic view on human rights duty-bearers. If human rights are to remain relevant for core societal challenges, such as climate change, exploitation of natural resources, or increasing inequalities, we need a better understanding of how human rights can engage more explicitly and effectively with power and inequitable and unjust global socioeconomic and political structures. Over the last 15 years, an ever increasing number of scholars and practitioners of human rights have been seeking to identify other duty-bearers beyond the territorial state, ranging from foreign states and international organizations to companies, in an effort to expand the relevance of human rights law in the quest towards global justice. This article identifies key challenges, takes stock of the current state of affairs, and suggests future directions for human rights law in tackling global structural inequities and injustices.","PeriodicalId":45407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Human Rights Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41500539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}