The first three chapters of this dissertation critique the findings and recommendations of the February 2014 report of the United Nations Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea). They contend the report is grounded in hyperreal representational practices and functions as an instrument of securitization. It thereby reifies the asymmetrical state of war that is a root cause of DPRK human rights violations. These three chapters then function as a vehicle for the final two chapters that locate the primary origins of the Western understanding of North Korea within American/Western liberal ideology. North Korea’s ideological position makes appropriate the framing of DPRK human rights violations as extraordinary by contrast to other comparable countries. The Introduction asserts the relevance of the asymmetrical conflict between the DPRK and its adversaries and introduces the theories of Thierry Balzacq, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jean Baudrillard. Chapter One critiques the selectivity and methodology of the report, particularly the de-temporalization, de-localization and extrapolation of allegations as representative of the experiences of ordinary North Koreans. Chapter Two demonstrates the indeterminacy and hyperreal representational practices of the report’s findings of extraordinary crimes against humanity against hostile, starving and ‘abducted’ populations. Chapter Three challenges the lack of DPRK objectivity in the report’s presentation of historical and geopolitical context, particularly the neglect of the consequences of the asymmetrical state of war. Chapter Four introduces the philosophy of Slavoj Žižek and asserts its relevance to identifying North Korea as an abjected, gendered and racialized fantasy-space of American/Western liberalism (objet petit a). Chapter Five considers the consequences of ideology for empirical critique and DPRK agency, advocating unconditional normalization and investment as the most ethical American DPRK policy. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The first three chapters of this dissertation critique the findings and recommendations of the February 2014 report of the United Nations Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea). They contend the report is grounded in hyperreal representational practices and functions as an instrument of securitization. It thereby reifies the asymmetrical state of war that is a root cause of DPRK human rights violations. These three chapters then function as a vehicle for the final two chapters that locate the primary origins of the Western understanding of North Korea within American/Western liberal ideology. North Korea’s ideological position makes appropriate the framing of DPRK human rights violations as extraordinary by contrast to other comparable countries.

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The United Nations declared the years 1995 to 2004 as the Decade for Human Rights Education. The principles of human rights education promote dignity, tolerance, and peace by educating individuals and groups to respect, defend, and advocate for their rights. These rights are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948 making human rights a global responsibility. During this decade nations are called upon to promote and implement human rights education in all sectors of their society. In 1992 Amnesty International Norway developed a human rights education program called Teaching for Freedom (TFF). This program was implemented in 26 countries worldwide including all ten administrative regions in Ghana, West Africa. The purposes of the TFF program were to educate the youth and train final year teachers in the principles of human rights. These programs are based on the notion of universal human rights that are sometimes criticized as Western and non-applicable to the African context. Human rights education programs are tasked with not only making these universal principles meaningful and participatory in the lives of the people on the ground, but also implementing culturally legitimate programs in local contexts with few resources. This study attempted to understand how the Teaching for Freedom program accomplished these aims and the barriers that impeded it. Using qualitative analysis and the grounded theory approach, I conducted a case study of one TFF program located in one school in one region of Ghana. This human rights education program operated as a club and was studied within the context of the school and society in which it operated. Grounded theory analysis revealed that the TFF club was a conflicted organization whose operation was greatly shaped by forces within the school that were also present in larger society. I describe the operation of the club in terms of awareness, empowerment, and implementation. Barriers to the operation of the TFF club were identified within these three areas of operation and were closely related to the conflicting cultural forces within the school and Ghanaian society / Ph. D.

No / The human right to water offers a strong legal tool for empowering millions of people living without safe drinking water around the world by creating legal obligations and standards for universal access to safe drinking water. The human right to sanitation creates legal obligations and standards for progressive improvement of access for the bil lions of people living without a basic level of sanitation services and the millions depending on open defecation. Both rights have evolved through closely linked processes at the international level, with implications for water and sanitation governance processes at the national level. This chapter analyses the co-evolution of the human rights to water and sanitation and the legal foundations of the rights at the international level, while highlighting the relationship between the rights and discussing the unique developments which each right has experienced. The chapter also considers the implementation chal- lenges and justiciability issues that will shape the future development of both rights at the international and national levels.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Law School, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [1]-[47]).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 9, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 248-272).

This thesis focuses on the establishment and operation of the latest regional Human Rights Court: The African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. For the development of human rights protection mechanisms within regional organizations the governments of the member states are of special relevance. They pull the strings to either foster and develop a system or to disrupt it. Therefore, following a brief historical introduction, the first chapter gives an overview of the regional African organization, the former Organization of African Unity (OAU) and today's African Union (AU) which was instrumental in the establishment of the African Human Rights System and has now enhanced it by adding a judicial authority. However, it will become clear that is has taken a long time for the OAU to put human rights violations within the borders of its own member states on its agenda: Not until there was increasing international pressure due to never-ending excrescences of violence in the dictatorial regimes in Africa did the OAU carefully attend to this matter in the late 1970s. Its efforts culminated in the adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (the eponymous Banjul Charter) which entered into force in 1981. The body for the protection created by the Charter was the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights which took up its function in 1987. Since the newly established African Court is not supposed to replace the Commission but rather to strengthen it, the Court operates in concert with the Commission. Therefore the old protection system will still be applicable which deems a portrayal of the system in the following chapter necessary. Here, it will be outlined, that the competences of the Commission remain very limited and that its judicial impact on the State parties involved in its protection procedures has been nearly nil up to this very day. Against this background the next chapter focuses on the Protocol to the Banjul-Charter establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. First, the historical-political background and the protocol's juridical formulation process are examined. Here it will be shown that the end of global bipolarity has had a remarkable impact on the political protagonists in Africa with the effect that the increasing demands for a human rights Court within the OAU no longer remained completely unheard. It will also be outlined that the path towards the adoption of the protocol has been long and difficult. After a short survey of the organisational structure of the Court it will become clear that the protocol follows to a large extend its Inter-American counterpart concerning the institutional embodiment. However, a remarkable and, in international comparison, a unique achievement has also been achieved by the institutional regulations by making gender equality has one of the key issues to encompass when it comes to the nomination and election of judges. The following chapters outline the jurisdiction of the Court and the judicial process before the Court. In this connection the admissibility criteria will be highlighted in which two remarkable regulations stand out: First, it will become clear that in contrast to other regional human rights courts individuals and NGOs alike are entitled to file a complaint with the African Court (even though initially with the help of the Commission, since the protocol makes the complaint authority of individuals and NGOs dependent of a special declaration of acceptance of the State Parties concerned). Moreover, also unique compared to international two-tier human rights procedures, the protocol does not include a provision according to which a complainant would be obliged to go through a prior Commission procedure before filing a complaint with the Court. Individual complainants rather have direct access to the Court once a declaration of acceptance has been submitted by a State Party to the protocol. Following short remarks on the competence of the Court to issue provisional measures which, among other things, reveal that these measures have, in contrast to those of the ECtHR, binding effect the procedural termination of a complaint comes into focus. Here, the possible contents of the rulings and the control mechanisms for their implementation are being contemplated in a detailed fashion. This last aspect most probably will have great influence on the fate of the Court since the Commission for its part had to a large extent no success due to the fact that it had no conventional implementation procedures to rely on. Therefore, in the vast majority of cases the findings of the Commission trailed off without any State Party concerned paying any attention to it. The drafters of the protocol establishing the Court obviously have learned this lesson since the protocol provides for a quite remarkable implementation mechanism that may be able to impose political and legal pressure alike on State Parties if the Court deems that they have not properly complied with a Court's ruling. Even sanctions within the African Union against a recusant State come into question from a legal point of view - a quantum leap regarding the legal situation under the Banjul Charter. The last chapter rehearses the main findings of the thesis and concludes with a positive outlook on the future development of the African human rights system.

In this project a theory of adaptive differential insurgency growth by the mechanism of repression driven contagion is put forth to explain variation in the membership and spatial expansion of insurgencies from 1981 to 1999. As an alternative to the dominant structural approaches in the civil war literature, Part 1 of the study proposes an interactive model of insurgency growth based on Most and Starr's opportunity and willingness framework. The findings suggest that state capacity, via its impact on state repressive behavior, plays an important gatekeeping function in selecting which minor insurgencies can grow into civil war, but contributes little to insurgency growth directly. In Part 2 of the study, I directly examine variation in insurgency membership and geographical expansion as a function of repression driven contagion. I find that repression increases the overall magnitude of insurgency activity within states, while at the same time reducing the density of insurgency activity in any one place. Despite an abundance of low intensity armed struggles against a highly diverse group of regimes around the world, I find an extremely strong and robust regularity: where repression is low - insurgencies don't grow.

This thesis assesses the usefulness of the five phase spiral model as an explanation of the changes in the Chinese government's human rights practices from the time of the "antirightist" campaign in 1957-58 to the end of 2003. Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink's spiral model focuses on the constitutive relationship between a target state and international human rights norms by exploring the influence of a transnational network promoting these norms on the human rights practices of the target state. The thesis concludes that the spiral model has provided a valid explanation for many of the changes in the Chinese government's human rights practices, and its responses to its internal and external critics, from 1957 to 2003. Many of the responses of the transnational human rights network and the Chinese government by the end of this period indicate that the latter had progressed to phase three of the model. Some aspects of the Chinese government's practices and relationships with its more powerful state critics can be better explained by the alternative explanations examined here, neorealism and modernisation theories. However, constructivist approaches, and in particular the spiral model, are more effective in explaining the developing pattern of communication about the validity of human rights norms. This thesis also concludes that the spiral model only conceptualises part of the constitutive relationship between the target state and international human rights norms - the influence of these norms on the identities, interests and behaviours of a target state. / It does not conceptualise the influence of a target state on international human rights norms or the transnational human rights network. Therefore, the spiral model cannot explain why the Chinese government has had such a significant influence over the enforcement mechanisms of these norms. An explanation for this is found instead by combining elements of neorealism and constructivism.