4. 1-Racism and Ethnic Cleansing
2-Abuse in Custody: Prisoners, Torture, and
Police Brutality.
3. Armed Conflicts and International Violence: Arms
Trade, Child Soldiers, Land Mines, and Terrorism
4-Global Refugee Crisis.
5-Economic Crises: Globalization, Poverty, and
Debt.
6-Labor Rights, Child Labor, and Corporate
Accountability.
7-Gender Discrimination and Women’s Rights.
8-Environmental Protection and Rights.
5. • One of the most significant challenges to the
advancement of human rights or an important catalyst to
their violation has been racism.
• Racism, embedded in socio-cultural structures, exists in
all societies in various degrees in overt or subtle forms.
Racism is a contravention of human rights: while the
universalism of human rights calls for nondiscrimination,
racism uses mainly biological differences as markers to
collapse individuals and people into categories of superiors
and inferiors.
• Although modern genetic sciences have not been able to
sort people into racial groups, physical features of people
such as skin color or hair texture are continuously employed
to construct racial identities, and to discriminate against
people.
6. • As race is mainly a culturally constructed notion, racism and
racial discrimination can be extended to groups that are
biologically similar but demonstrate cultural differences
(e.g., language or religion).
• Then, ethnic differences come to the forefront and are used
as grounds for discrimination or even genocide, as in the
case of the ethnic conflicts observed in the 1990s in what
was then Yugoslavia.
• Racism can take the form of organized, hate groups such as
the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, discrimination in
housing and employment in Great Britain, social and ethnic
exclusion in France, xenophobic skinheads and neo-Nazis in
Germany, and outright genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda in
the 1990s and in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2003.
7. • When racism becomes extreme, it can take the
form of ethnic cleansing.
• the population cleansing can be defined as the planned,
deliberate removal from a certain territory of an undesirable
population distinguished by one or more characteristics such
as ethnicity, religion, race, class, or sexual preference.
• These characteristics must serve as the basis for removal for
the violence to be termed ethnic cleansing .
• Cleansing can involve forced migration, deportation, and
extermination, which may he used in different stages of the
conflict or simultaneously.
• Usually, racial pressures increase when there is political
instability. Looking to blame some other force, a government
losing popularity may incite racism and intolerance that then
leads to ethnic violence.
8. • In 1997, the UN General Assembly agreed to hold a World
Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and
Related Intolerance.
• The main objectives included reviewing the factors that lead
to racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia; assessing
the progress made in fighting against racism as well as the
obstacles to preventing racism; increasing the level of awareness
about racism and related intolerance; and formulating
recommendations.
• the developing country highly critical of Israel’s policies in the
occupied territories, condemning Zionism as racism. Developing
countries’ demands did not compel the powerful industrial
countries to elevate the message of the conference, and the
conference ended with a widely shared sense of disappointment.
9. Section 2
Abuse in Custody: Prisoners, Torture,
and Police Brutality
• Human rights apply to all human beings; even those who are
in custody or imprisoned for committing crimes are entitled
to the protection of their rights. Unfortunately, prison
conditions worldwide do not meet minimum standards, and
security forces in many countries commit abuses and engage
in torture. Perhaps the biggest challenge to improving prison
conditions is changing the pervasive view that prisoners
deserve what they get and that a prison should be a place
where offenders are thoroughly punished for their crimes.
10. • The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners is the
most widely known and accepted document regulating prison
conditions.
• Although these standards are known to prison administrators all over
the world, they are seldom Fully enforced.
• Human Rights Watch, one of the largest international human rights
organizations, reports that millions of prisoners are confined in filth
without adequate food or medical care, with little or nothing to do, and
in constant threat of violence either from other inmates or from their
guards .
• In addition to the overall low quality of care, many conditions represent
more extreme and unusually cruel treatment. Human Rights Watch has
documented excessive use of solitary confinement and overemphasis on
rules in Japan, often fatal assaults on inmates by guards in South Africa,
and sexual abuse of women prisoners in the United States. Children are
often abused and shackled in U.S. detention facilities, and super-
maximum security prisons, where prisoners face extreme social
isolation, enforced idleness, and extraordinarily limited recreational and
educational opportunities, are appearing all over the country.
11. • In addition to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
created to protect the physical integrity of people, the UN Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment was adopted in 1984 and entered into force on June 26,
1987.
• As of May 2005, 146 countries were party to this convention.
• Yet torture continues to be common and documented in many nations
around the world. Officials in some countries favor methods that leave
little evidence of torture, whereas others are unconcerned about
whether the procedure leaves marks.
• Torture is often part of a larger plan of terror designed to keep people
oppressed. Generally torturers view their victims as less than human.
When people are dehumanized, they are easier to maltreat.
More recently, the ill-treatment and torture of prisoners by U.S. Army
personnel in Afghanistan, the photographed and widely publicized abuse
of Iraqis held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and the various
allegations about the conditions and treatment of individuals accused of
terrorism by the United States and detained in Guantan Bay in Cuba have
led to protests invoking various human rights and humanitarian laws
(e.g., the Geneva Conventions).
12. • The UN Human Rights Commission investigates human
rights abuses, including claims of torture.
• Several human rights organizations, national or
international, also work to pressure governments to
make changes.
• Amnesty International is perhaps the most outspoken
against cruel punishments, prison conditions, and
torture.
• An organization in Minnesota, the Center for Victims of
Torture, helps victims recover from the physical and
emotional wounds they have sustained through torture.
13. Section3
Armed Conflicts and International Violence:
arms Trade, Child Soldiers, Land Mines, and
Terrorism
• The end of the Second World War marked not only
the birth of a human rights regime under the auspices
of the United Nations but also the beginning of a
major conflict.
• The period, roughly between 1945 and 1990, is
referred to as the Cold War. The term refers to the
state of conflict between the two superpowers, the
United States and the Soviet Union, and their military
allies, respectively organized in NATO and the Warsaw
Pact, which had military forces that were armed and
mobilized but did not actually fight.
14. • Wars and other forms of armed conflicts create conditions
that are definitely unsuitable for the protection of human
rights.
• They cause numerous deaths, disabilities, displacement of
people, and economic hardship. Spending money on arms
always means channeling resources away from important
services that would help meet people’s basic needs and
human rights, especially in developing countries.
• However, the arms trade is a big business, in which the
industrial countries are the main suppliers. Between 1993
and 2000, arms transfer agreements with developing
nations comprised 67.7 percent of all arms purchases
worldwide and reached 69 percent in 2000, with a value of
over $25.4 billion; the United States, Russia, and France
have dominated the arms market, and as the top ranking
country.
15. • A problem that has become more apparent in the recent military
conflicts is the dependence of rival armies and militias on child
soldiers.
• Arguably, some wars and armed conflicts are sustained by
recruiting the young. Although the majority of the child soldiers
around the world might have been recruited by private militia or
opposition groups, several states, including the United States,
routinely recruit children in their late teens.
• Younger ones, sometimes no more than seven or eight years of
age, are recruited in times of civil war. After studying recruitment
in 180 countries, Human Rights Watch reports that “more than
300,000 children are fighting with governments and armed groups
in more than 40 countries. The report also notes that child
soldiers “receive little or no training before being thrust into the
front lines,” are subject to brutal treatment and punishment “for
their mistakes or desertion,” and girls in particular are at risk of
rape and sexual slavery.
16. • In its effort to stop the recruitment and participation
of children younger than eighteen in armed conflicts,
• the UN adopted an optional protocol to the
Convention on the Rights of the Child in May 2000.
17. • The destruction caused by wars and armed
conflicts and their threat to human rights
continue even after the actual fighting is over.
Land mines have been particularly notorious for
having such an impact.
• Land mines kill or maim over 26,000 people
annually. Ninety percent of the casualties are
civilians going about normal activities—
gathering water, working in fields, and traveling
on rural roads. In the 1990s, experts estimated
that more than 100 million land mines were
dispersed across seventy countries.
18. • Maps of mine fields are seldom made and detection and demining
are extremely dangerous and expensive and it costs as much as
$1,000 to remove each mine, and many workers have been killed
in the mine-clearing attempts
• Mines are concentrated in Central America, Africa, the former
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq in the Middle East, and
Southeast Asia. Most of those affected by them live in rural areas
without the medical infrastructure to handle the types of injuries
sustained from land-mine explosions.
• The destructive impact of land mines is often felt in a country’s
economy as well, as these devices limit access to otherwise
productive land. Already scarce farmland or traditional grazing
lands become inaccessible because of land mines and there is a
negative effect on food production, income, and the economic
rights of people. Moreover, humanitarian efforts in heavily mined
areas are often curtailed because of the danger.
19. • The United Nations has worked hard to get a
universal ban on land mines.
• The United States declared a moratorium on the sale
of land mines in 1992.
• The most effective effort, however, has come from
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that banded
together to form the International Campaign to Ban
Land Mines. This unique effort started with six
organizations and eventually included over 1,000
NGOs from all over the world.
• The campaign lobbied governments to sign a treaty
banning land mines. For their efforts, the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its
director, Jody Williams, were awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1997.
20. • Another issue of violence that concerns human rights is terrorism,
domestic or international.
• International terrorism is not a new issue but began receiving
increased attention following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the
United States. Dictionary definitions of terrorism relate it to political
violence and define it as violence or the threat of violence carried out
for political purposes. This is a rather narrow definition that ignores
the violence and state of terror inflicted upon people, especially
women and children, in their immediate surroundings. Terrorist acts,
taking place in the private or public domain, involve a number of
human rights violations, ranging from the individual’s freedom of
movement to the right to life.
•
• In the public domain, political terrorism (or terrorism for political
purposes) is employed by both states and non- state actors. Terrorism
constitutes a human rights issue as it direcly involves human rights
violations; further, measures taken to prevent political terrorism may
infringe on people’s rights. In designing antiterrorism measures, the
challenge is to strike a balance between security concerns and the
protection of human rights.
21. • There has been a serious concern within the human rights
agencies and organizations, that the counterterrorism
measures taken after the September 11 attacks fail the
human rights tests.
• With the aim of assisting “policy makers and other
concerned parties in developing a vision of counter-
terrorism strategies that are fully respectful of human
rights,” the United Nations Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a
“compilation of findings of judicial and quasi-judicial
bodies of the United Nations and regional organizations
on the issue of the protection of human rights in the
struggle against terrorism” (OHCHR, 2003).
• The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, the UN
Secretary-General, and NGOs have repeatedly warned
that the fight against terrorism has been used by states to
restrict freedoms of citizens and repress political
opponents.
22. • even as many are rightly praising the unity
and the resolve of the international
community in this crucial struggle,
important and urgent questions are being
asked about what might be called the
‘collateral damage’ of the war on
terrorism— damage to the presumption of
innocence, to precious human rights, to the
rule of law, and to the very fabric of
democratic governance.
