This thesis will focus on the recent increase in the number of Mexican nationals applying for asylum in the United States and the disproportionate denial of their claims. It will help clarify national debates regarding asylum, shed light on bi-national socio-political conditions, and raise important questions about the human rights of asylum seekers, including the United States’ obligations regarding those rights. It is also work that adds a rarely considered perspective to the scholarship on Mexican migration by focusing on migrants who are motivated by violence rather than economic factors. / text

The issue of divergence in human rights protection (adjudication) between the law of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and European Community/Union (EC/EU) law has been in the centre of academic attention for decades. The position that there are instances of divergence and there is a risk of divergence between the two legal orders has gained authority in academic discourse despite the fact that its premises were subject to challenges on numerous occasions. The claim that human rights protection in EC law is divergent from that under the ECHR appears to suffer from certain shortcomings. First, it is not clear how the divergence claim addresses the question of incommensurability that unavoidably emerges in a comparison of judgments originating from different jurisdictions. Second, the divergence claim has largely eluded to address the quality of flexibility possessed by ECHR and EC human rights law. Both legal orders operate mechanisms of flexibility that enable a treatment of differing human rights solutions other than rejection. In reaction to these problems the present thesis advances the arguments of flexibility and similarity. The flexibility argument holds that the issue of divergence is largely neutralised by the ability of ECHR law (and to a lesser extent of EC law) to react to the problem of divergence flexibly. This entails that the human rights solutions of Community courts could often be accommodated within the flexible framework of ECHR law. The similarity argument provides that the style of human rights protection in ECHR and EC law is similar. The comparison of styles is based on a general system of analysis that aims to avoid the problem of incommensurability. The two arguments are not independent - the success of each argument depends on the availability of the other. The limits of flexibility are found in the requirement of similarity and the impreciseness of the similarity argument is corrected by the potentials inherent in the flexibility argument. On this basis, the relationship between ECHR and EC law could be described as a flexible status of non-divergence.

Building on research conducted over the last ten years, this dissertation explores how local understandings and manifestations of gender violence are changing as women and men learn about human rights and gain access to state-based forms of justice. Wife abuse in coastal Ecuador is often explained as a result of machismo and an enduring culture of violence. I challenge this conception by demonstrating how political, economic and social processes normalize gender violence, and by showing how transnational human rights discourses are reshaping gender relations, structures of impunity, and the visibility of particular forms of violence. Inhabitants in this historically marginalized region are using alliances with transnational NGOs to negotiate their relationship to the state. Human rights, transnational alliances, and improved access to justice offer powerful openings for local women and families, but their empowering potential is delimited by growing social and economic vulnerability and the discrepancies between rights-based subjectivities and preexisting understandings of the self. Ultimately, I argue that human rights - as concept, as practice, and as discourse - reorganize power in ways that warrant both optimism and critique.

The central goal of this project is to better understand the relationship between civil war and repression at each phase of the "civil-war life-cycle," which is composed of the escalation and onset of civil war, the war itself, and the post-war period. The project then seeks to understand the role of repression in civil war onset, where repression is argued to be either a permissive condition or a direct cause of civil war, where the role of repression is tied to what type of civil war occurs. As a permissive condition, repression essentially provides the opportunity for a group to carry out an attack, invasion, mutiny, and the like. During other conflicts, repression may be a direct cause of the war. The repression of protest movements may lead those groups to view "normal," non-violent political channels as closed, while also increasing grievances and therefore their willingness to fight. This direct mechanism along with the escalation process that leads to civil war is explored in depth, using data from the 2011 Arab Spring. This project also seeks to explain when conflicts are likely to be accompanied by harsh repression and the targeting of civilians, and to address whether that strategy is effective. It is argued that insurgencies rely on civilian populations for material and non-material support; if the government targets this resource pool then it may be able to undercut that lifeline and thus the military effectiveness of the group. Yet, as repression is costly this is only a strategy likely to be employed when the rebels are gaining ground, when they are relatively strong and militarily effective. As such, governments that employ repression as a war-time strategy are likely beginning from a point of weakness or disadvantage. It is thus further argued that the "gamble" of repression is not likely to reverse the government's fortunes; rather, wars marked by high levels of repression are most likely to end in stalemate. Finally, the use of, or the restraint from using, repression in post-war periods is also explored. Little attention has thus far been paid to the use of repression in post-conflict states, despite the growing literature on the consequences of conflict and the importance of this time for rebuilding and establishing peace. Here, the transformation of the war-time threat, together with various constraints against using repression in the post-war period, are considered.

No description available.

This case study documents the work of this researcher and others to transform oppressive ideologies and practices in an urban community college through human rights policy development and implementation. Analysis of policy processes examines how contestations of equity discourses by various organizational stakeholders influenced organizational constructions of equity as ideology, policy and practice. Policy struggles over the three administrations are examined using a typology of equity discourses defined as assimilationist (status quo: resisting human rights/equity), managing diversity (organizational benefits: liability protection, commodifying equity/human rights) and transformative (structural/curricular change). In this particular case study, a human rights crisis during the 1990’s led to substantive policy change as human rights was framed as organizational change. These changes were resisted and recuperated by the next cadre of change agents and senior and middle managers and human rights were administered as rights based complaints management. However, the large complaints bureaucracy was unable to contain underlying systemic issues and complaints increased dramatically. Management responded with neoliberal influenced managing diversity/cultural competency training, proposed as a customer service model to train faculty and staff how to deal with the Other - ‘culturally diverse’ clients/students. This discourse of equity was challenged by this researcher (who was seconded to develop institution wide cultural competencies for faculty). This curriculum project was used to recoup some of the transformative elements of the policy and refocus institutional efforts towards system wide organizational change. This attempt at tempered radicalism was recouped by senior management and the competencies developed were contained in a single course during the next administrative turnover. This research builds on the survey studies of equity practitioners by Westerman (2008) and Agocs (2004) that examine how the positionality of institutional change agents influences opportunities to advance equity in institutions (in areas of complaints management and/or employment equity). It differs from previous studies in three ways: first I expand the definition of equity as the totality of all institutional functions including curriculum. Second, in addition to examining the scope and impact of these ‘expert’ roles, this study examines the influence of larger societal discourses of equity, the motivations of managers and other important stakeholders such as unions in shaping what constitutes equity work, how this is embraced and/or resisted by change agents and others in spite of ‘official’ policy. And third, it is a historical case study examination of one institution over a sustained period of time. The conclusions drawn from this institution’s policy struggles suggest that transformative equity initiatives can shift organizational cultures by changing the conversation about was constitutes equity work, however their effectiveness in bringing about structural change remains tenuous. Neocolonial societies are premised on relations of inequality, and dominant neoliberal discourses have imposed business models of managerial efficiency, standardization and profitability on public institutions which ensures that managers will continue to translate the demands of equity-seeking groups into bureaucratic procedures.

Acknowledging a relationship between international human rights and international trade law adds to the legitimacy of economic, social and cultural rights already enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the central institution for international trade law and it has demonstrated a commitment to enhance human rights. This commitment has been realized through WTO efforts to enhance human dignity and eradicate poverty. These WTO efforts ought to be fostered and used to promote human rights. The purpose of this study was two fold – first, demonstrate that a relationship between international trade law and international human rights exists; and second, that this relationship is useful in promoting economic, social and cultural rights. This relationship will be examined through WTO initiatives, case studies and the Accession of the Republic of China in 2001.

The current situation regarding the accountabilty of transnational corporations, using the lawsuit of the Herero community of Namibia against two German corporations that were involved in the German colonial enterprise that killed approximately 80% of the Herero tribe was explored.

<p>Although the concept of human rights is very much accepted as part of human existence throughout the world today, there is still much controversy surrounding the idea of rights for children. The Constitution, however, not only recognises the fact that like all other members of society, children are capable of being bearers of human rights but emphasises also the special position of children in society by granting them specific rights in the Constitution. Health rights are particularly important for children as the entitlements and obligations created by such rights are necessary for children to realise their full potential. In this thesis the entitlements and obligations attached to children'shealth service rights in the COnstitution are explored.</p>

<p>Sub-Saharan Africa is a region where extreme poverty is prevalent in spite of the regions apparent commitment to the philosophy of human rights, in that all fifty-three countries in the region ratified the African Charter in addition to several international human rights instruments ratified by countries in the region. This state of affairs is traceable to the lack of or ineffective enforcement mechanism of the human rights obligations of countries in the region. Too much attention had been given to post facto intervention of human rights in form of judicial enforcement of these rights to the neglect of other effective methods of enforcement which can be employed in addition to curial enforcement of the rights for a more effective result. This neglect and the ensuing increase in poverty level prompted this research which was aimed at identifying additional methods of pro-active rights enforcement mechanism and the roles of human rights lawyers in their utilisation to reduce poverty in the region.</p>