Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Human rights – History – 21th century'

This dissertation is a cross-national, empirical study of human rights conditions in a dynamic international political economy. The scope of the examination covers 176 developed and developing countries from 1980 through 1993. Through evaluating the numerous theoretical aspects of human rights conceptualization, I draw upon Shue's framework and consider whether there are indeed "basic rights" and which rights should fit into this category. Further, I address the debate between those who claim that these rights are truly universal (applying to all nations and individuals) and those who argue that the validity of a moral right is relative to indigenous cultures. In a similar vein, I empirically investigate whether various human rights are interdependent and indivisible, as some scholars argue, or whether there are inherent trade-offs between various rights provisions. In going beyond the fixation on a single aspect of human rights, I broadly investigate subsistence rights, security rights and political and economic freedom. While these have previously been addressed separately, there are virtually no studies that consider them together and the subsequent linkages between them. Ultimately, a pooled time-series cross-section model is developed that moves beyond the traditional concentration on security rights (also know as integrity of the person rights) and focuses on the more controversial subsistence rights (also known as basic human needs). By addressing both subsistence and security rights, I consider whether certain aspects of the changing international political economy affect these two groups of rights in different ways. A further delineation is made between OECD and non-OECD countries. The primary international focus is on the effects of global integration and the end of the Cold War. Domestic explanations that are connected with globalization include economic freedom, income inequality and democratization. These variables are subjected to bivariate and multivariate hypothesis testing including bivariate correlations, analysis of variance, and multiple OLS regression with robust standard errors.

The duality of the United States’ relationship with international criminal law and human rights atrocities is a fascinating theme that weaves through all of American history, but most distinctly demonstrates the contradictory nature of American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century. America is both protector of human rights and perpetrator of human rights atrocities, global police force and aggressor. The Cold War exacerbated the tensions caused by American military dominance. The international political and physical power of the American military allowed the United States to do as it pleased in the 20th century with few consequences, but that power also brought watchfulness from the global community and an expectation that the United States would intervene when rogue states or leaders committed crimes against humanity. The international legal community has expected the United States to act and illegally intervene in some situations, but to pursue policy changes peacefully through diplomatic channels on other occasions.

The life of Elisha P. Hurlbut (1807-1889) has been mostly forgotten since his death. This examination of his personal journal, which he wrote from 1858 to 1887, brings back to the forefront an influential figure that lived most of his life in and around Albany, New York. Prior to beginning the journal, Hurlbut was a lawyer and then a Supreme Court justice in New York. Seven years after retiring from public life in 1851, he commenced work on the journal that provided a detailed social and political commentary on New York, the United States, and the world as a whole. While the journal offers detailed insight into many specific subjects, this thesis focuses on Hurlbut’s views and expertise in civil rights, religion, and phrenology. This body of work will demonstrate how he shaped arguments for equality for all people, despised the influence of organized religion, and was a leader in phrenological studies.

The present thesis suggests that judicial interaction can benefit constructive solutions of concrete human rights problems as a specific way of integrating European human rights protection. This affirmation is substantiated by case studies examining the interaction of the European Court of Human Rights with the UK House of Lords and Supreme Court on the one hand and with the German Federal Constitutional Court on the other. Yet, the manner in which the courts proceed in their interaction, notably in view of their potentially conflictual stances, can deflect from the concentration on constructively solving the substantive human rights problem with which the courts are confronted. Accordingly, the courts might be inclined to preserve the status quo of their initial positions and to resort to a mere compromise between the different interests involved.

This thesis identifies two major factors in the courts’ reasoning that inhibit the fruitful discussion of the substantive human rights questions brought up by the cases: the reference to “culture” and the focus on their institutional relationship with the balancing of possibly conflicting interests. By way of analysing practical cases against a legal- and political-theoretical backdrop, this work develops how these two factors contribute to the obstruction of a constructive interaction between the courts and to the shielding of controversial views from being discussed and challenged. In response, also by reference to the concrete practice of the courts, this thesis puts forward an approach to the interaction which avoids this inhibiting effect and therefore allows for a comprehensive, deep and critical discussion on how to solve the specific human rights problems raised by the cases./La présente thèse soutient que l’interaction judiciaire peut bénéficier à des solutions constructives des problèmes concrets de droits de l’homme comme une forme spécifique d’intégration de la protection européenne des droits de l’homme. Cette affirmation est corroborée par des études de cas qui examinent l’interaction de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme avec la House of Lords et la Cour suprême du Royaume-Uni d’un côté et avec la Cour constitutionnelle fédérale de l’Allemagne de l’autre. Pourtant, la manière dont les cours procèdent dans leur interaction, notamment au vu de leurs points de vue potentiellement conflictuels, peut détourner l’attention de la solution constructive des problèmes substantiels des droits de l’homme auxquels les cours font face. En conséquence, il se peut que les cours soient susceptibles de préserver le statu quo de leurs positions initiales et d’avoir recours à un simple compromis entre les différents intérêts en cause.

Cette thèse identifie deux facteurs majeurs dans le raisonnement des cours qui entravent la discussion fructueuse des questions substantielles soulevées par les cas :la référence à la « culture » et la concentration sur leur relation institutionnelle avec le balancement des intérêts possiblement conflictuels. Au moyen de l’analyse des cas pratiques sur le fond de la théorie juridique et politique, ce travail fait ressortir comment ces deux facteurs contribuent à l’obstruction d’une interaction constructive entre les cours et à la protection des opinions controversées contre leur discussion et défi. En réponse, également en se fondant sur la pratique concrète des cours, cette thèse avance une approche quant à l’interaction qui évite cet effet inhibant et, par conséquent, permet une discussion complète, profonde et critique de comment résoudre les problèmes spécifiques de droits de l’homme posés par les cas.

Doctorat en Sciences juridiques
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Within the research field of colonial violence, scholars focused on wars of conquest or independence and tended to picture counterinsurgency campaigns as an exceptional deployment of state violence in the face of peculiar threats. In colonial Kenya, the British repression of the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s has been the object of extensive and thorough analysis, contrasting with the lack of research on colonial punishment during the preceding decades. Yet the unleashing of state violence during the 1950s actually has a much longer history, lurking in the shadows of the criminal justice system that British powers introduced in the colony in the late nineteenth century. In contrast to previous scholarship, this study shows how ordinary colonial violence - although massively scaled up during the 1950s - was progressively normalised, institutionalised and intensified throughout the colonial experience of the 1930s and 1940s, laying the ground for the deployment of a counterinsurgency campaign against Mau Mau fighters.

La consolidation des droits de l'Homme comme principe politique du processus d'intégration européenne fut articulée par les relations entre la Communauté économique européenne et les dictatures franquiste en Espagne et des colonels en Grèce. Ces deux régimes aspiraient à maintenir un statut d'États associés à la CEE :les débats politiques qui furent tenus à leur égard contribuèrent à la fixation d'une conditionnalité politique pour la participation au processus d'intégration européenne.
Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie
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This thesis explores the late-eighteenth-century movement to end Britain’s transatlantic slave trade through recovering one of the major discourses in favour of abolition, namely that of the evangelical Anglicans. This important intellectual milieu has often been ignored in academia and is discovered through examining the sermons, hymns, and prayers of three influential leaders in this movement: Member of Parliament William Wilberforce, pastor and hymn writer John Newton, and pastor and professor Charles Simeon. Their oral texts reveal that at the heart of their discourse lies the doctrine of Atonement. On this foundation these abolitionists primarily built a vocabulary not of human rights, but of public duty. This duty was both to care for the destitute as individuals and to protect their nation as a whole because they believed that God was the defender of the enslaved and that he would bring providential judgement on those nations that ignored their plight. For the British evangelicals, abolishing the slave trade was not merely a means to avoid impending judgement, but also part of a broader project to prepare the way for Jesus’s imminent return through advancing the work of reconciliation between humankind and God as they believed themselves to be confronting evil in all of its forms. By reconfiguring the evangelical abolitionist arguments within their religious framework and social contexts, this thesis helps overcome the dissonance that separates our world from theirs and makes accessible the eighteenth-century abolitionist discourse of a campaign that continues to resonate with human rights activists and scholars of social change in the twenty-first-century.

Les droits individuels consacrés en France par les déclarations des droits de la période révolutionnaire ont engendré tout au long du XIXe siècle un corps de droit positif destiné à organiser leur exercice légal. La doctrine de droit public a fourni à cette époque, par le biais des ouvrages, des revues et de l’enseignement, un important effort de théorisation de ce corps de droit inédit. Or il est frappant de constater le peu de souvenirs qui ont été conservés aujourd’hui de cet effort théorique. Les divers discours sur les droits individuels qui ont émaillé la période révolutionnaire nous demeurent en réalité bien mieux connus que la doctrine du siècle suivant : la pensée contemporaine reste par exemple en terrain connu lorsqu’elle démêle au sein des discours de la fin du XVIIIe siècle les influences croisées de Locke, de l’École moderne du droit naturel ou de l’Encyclopédie. En revanche, la réflexion menée par la doctrine publiciste du XIXe siècle sur les droits individuels est tombée dans l’oubli parce qu’elle nous est devenue culturellement étrangère. Le cadre intellectuel et moral au sein duquel la théorie des droits individuels a pu être élaborée à cette époque s’est en effet désagrégé définitivement au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles, pour laisser la place à une domination sans partage du positivisme juridique. Le but de la présente thèse est de rouvrir l’accès à un moment bien déterminé de la réflexion française sur les droits individuels, en replaçant le travail mené par la doctrine publiciste du XIXe siècle dans le cadre de la culture juridique de l’époque. Elle adopte à cette fin une perspective large incluant l’apport,d’une part, de l’histoire de la philosophie, et, d’autre part, de l’histoire de la doctrine juridique et de l’enseignement du droit. La théorie publiciste des droits individuels au XIXe siècle ne devient en effet pleinement intelligible que mise en rapport avec la doctrine très particulière du droit naturel qui a dominé durant un siècle dans l’université française, et qui a profondément imprégné la culture juridique du temps
The individual rights which were consecrated in France by the declarations of rights from the revolutionary era brought about all through Nineteenth century a body of law which aimed at organizing the legal exercise of these rights. Public law professors made an important effort at that time to theorize this novel body of law through books, scholarly reviews and teaching. It is striking thus to notice that very few memories were kept of this effort. We have far better knowledge today of the several discourses on individual rights which marked the revolutionary era than of the Nineteenth century thinking on these same rights. For instance,contemporary thought remains familiar with intellectual influences on French revolutionaries such as Locke’s, the Modern School of natural law’s or theFrench Encyclopedia’s. On the contrary, the reflection led by Nineteenth century public law scholars on individual rights has been forgotten because it has become estranged from us from a cultural point of view. Indeed, the intellectual and moral framework within which the theory of individual rights was developed at that time collapsed by the turn of the Twentieth century, thus opening the way tothe unrivaled domination of legal positivism. The aim of this doctoral dissertation is to allow a renewed access to this specific moment of the French thinking on individual rights, by setting the theory of individual rights developed by Nineteenth century public law scholars within the wider framework of the legal culture of their time. To this end, the dissertation adopts a wide perspective which includes contributions of both history of philosophy and history of legal science. Indeed, the Nineteenth century legal theory of individual rights becomes fully intelligible only when related to the very specific doctrine of natural law which dominated during a century within French universities, a doctrine which deeply marked the legal culture of that time

Awarded the Mauro Cappelletti Prize for the best comparative law doctoral thesis, 2005.
Defence date: 26 January 2004
Supervisor: Wojciech Sadurski (EUI)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

The adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 has shifted the attention of Indigenous rights scholars from norm elaboration to norm implementation. Yet, the influence of the United Nations Human Rights Council's special procedures in actualising Indigenous rights norm implementation remains under-researched. I investigate how the non-coercive and resource-poor special procedures regulate - or influence - state behaviour towards Indigenous peoples. I depart from the existing international law corpus by drawing on regulatory literature. Contrary to rationalist theories, I find that the apparently weak international mechanism of the special procedures regulates state behaviour towards Indigenous peoples imperfectly but appreciably. However, I argue that ritualism is states' dominant response: states outwardly agree with the special procedures' recommendations while inwardly developing techniques to avoid them. I conclude that the special procedures mechanism is capable of exerting enhanced influence over state behaviour towards Indigenous peoples and propose strategies to that end. The findings are based on case studies regarding the special procedures' influence in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Republic of Guatemala. The special procedures mechanism enjoys a broad mandate to advance the realisation of international Indigenous rights norms. In fulfilling this mandate the special procedures experts leverage a mixed dialogic tool-set; principally engaging techniques of shaming, in addition to dialogue-building and capacity-building. The experts' influence on state behaviour towards Indigenous peoples is perceptible in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Republic of Guatemala. But each state engages in ritualism both to disguise its inward resistance to recommendations regarding 'hard' rights to self-determination and land and its failure to fully commit to recommendations concerning the 'soft' cultural right to education. A complex collection of factors explain the experts' imperfect influence: key actors are not engaged, the core principles underlying states' responses to the experts' recommendations are not contested and important regulatory mechanisms are under-exploited. The analysis indicates that, by harnessing dialogic 'webs of influence', comparatively weak actors like the special procedures can influence powerful actors, such as states. It also reveals that, to counter states' rights ritualism, the special procedures should simultaneously shame and praise states, fostering continuous improvement in observing Indigenous rights.

The dissertation examines African American Freemasons throughout the South during the Jim Crow era. The secret nature of Prince Hall Affiliated Freemasonry (PHA) has hidden the contribution and activism of the organization and its members. I argue the organization is part of a web of networks that fought for civil and human rights for African Americans. Through PHA, members are cultivated into leaders, activists, businessmen; over the years, the members have created an initiatic identity that connected them to the African American community and humanity. The significance of my study is that I analyze PHA through a womanist lens and argue the organization has a diarchal gender relationship that allows women and men to take on leadership and activist roles that differed from the normative gender relationship of their time.

In June 1968 students at the University of Belgrade occupied their Faculties for a week in protest at social inequalities. They denounced the Yugoslav bureaucracy and proclaimed their solidarity with the working class. Three decades later, in the winter of 1996-97, the University of Belgrade was once again on strike, as students took to the streets daily for five months, protesting the annulment of the Serbian election results by Slobodan Milošević. Their discourse of democracy was far removed from that of 1968. This thesis seeks to examine the changes in these discourses of democracy and the exclusions they implied.

Text in English with summaries in English and Afrikaans
Bibliography: leaves 89-108
Democracy in South Africa came at a price. The apartheid era did not accommodate or incorporate democratic and constitutional principles. The year 1996 saw a democratic Constitution being adopted, having been certified by the Constitutional Court. The Bill of Rights in the Constitution guarantees the rights and freedoms of all South Africans. The apartheid era ensured that the rights which are enjoyed today were reserved for only a portion of the South African population. This study emphasises the importance of the Constitution and the role and responsibility of every citizen to defend it. In defending the Constitution, the rights and freedoms of all South Africans are defended. The Bill of Rights promotes social development for all South Africans, as opposed to disparate social development under the divisive apartheid era. The Constitution is a powerful enabler for democracy and social cohesion and unity. This study depended on secondary sources which are vital to keeping historical facts alive and truthful. Desktop research is qualitative and, while less expensive, produces acceptable results and findings.
Demokrasie in Suid-Afrika het met 'n prys gekom. Die apartheidsera het nie demokratiese en grondwetlike beginsels geakkommodeer of opgeneem nie. In 1996 word 'n demokratiese Grondwet aanvaar, wat deur die Grondwet Hof gesertifiseer was. Die Handves van Menseregte in die Grondwet waarborg die regte en vryhede van alle Suid-Afrikaners. Die apartheidsera het verseker dat die regte wat vandag geniet word, slegs vir 'n gedeelte van die Suid-Afrikaanse bevolking gereserveer is. Hierdie studie beklemtoon die belangrikheid van die Grondwet en die rol en verantwoordelikheid van elke burger om dit te verdedig. Deur die Grondwet te verdedig word die regte en vryhede van alle Suid-Afrikaners verdedig. Die Handves van Menseregte bevorder sosiale ontwikkeling vir alle Suid-Afrikaners, in teenstelling met uiteenlopende sosiale ontwikkeling onder die verdelende apartheidsera. Die Grondwet is 'n kragtige instaatsteller vir demokrasie, sosiale samehorigheid en eenheid. Hierdie studie was afhanklik van sekondêre bronne wat noodsaaklik is om historiese feite lewendig en waaragtig te hou. Desktop-navorsing (boek) is kwalitatief en hoewel dit goedkoper is, lewer dit aanvaarbare resultate en bevindings op.
Development Studies
M.A. (Development Studies)