Routledge Research in Human Rights – serie

This book analyzes the role of human rights in the foreign policy of the George W. Bush Administrations. References to human rights, freedom and democracy became prominent explanations for post-9/11 foreign policy, yet human rights have been neither impartially nor universally integrated into decision-making. Jan Hancock addresses this apparent paradox by considering three distinct explanations. The first position holds that human rights form a constitutive foreign policy goal, the second that evident double standards refute the first perspective. This book seeks to progress beyond this familiar discussion by employing a Foucaultian method of discourse analysis to suggest a third explanation. Through this analysis, the author examines how a discourse of human rights has been artificially produced and implemented in the presentation of US foreign policy. This illuminating study builds on a wealth of primary source evidence from human rights organizations to document the contradictions between the claims and practice of human rights made by the Bush Administrations, as well as the political significance of denying this disjuncture.Human Rights and US Foreign Policy will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of US foreign policy, human rights, international relations and security studies.

This book analyzes the role of human rights in the foreign policy of the George W. Bush Administrations. References to human rights, freedom and democracy became prominent explanations for post-9/11 foreign policy, yet human rights have been neither impartially nor universally integrated into decision-making. Jan Hancock addresses this apparent paradox by considering three distinct explanations. The first position holds that human rights form a constitutive foreign policy goal, the second that evident double standards refute the first perspective. This book seeks to progress beyond this familiar discussion by employing a Foucaultian method of discourse analysis to suggest a third explanation. Through this analysis, the author examines how a discourse of human rights has been artificially produced and implemented in the presentation of US foreign policy. This illuminating study builds on a wealth of primary source evidence from human rights organizations to document the contradictions between the claims and practice of human rights made by the Bush Administrations, as well as the political significance of denying this disjuncture.Human Rights and US Foreign Policy will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of US foreign policy, human rights, international relations and security studies.

By trying to alleviate poverty abroad, foreign development assistance tries to meet, among other things, basic human needs, which some schools of thought classify as basic human rights. However, because development abroad has often been treated as a tool for the pursuit of donor interests, rather than as an end to itself, it often ends up not only neglecting basic human rights, but making them worse. Bethany Barratt develops this argument by presenting a systematic external examination of the internal documentation of aid rationale in three major donor countries (Britain, Canada and Australia). The book sets the discussion of these documents in the context of the foreign policy process and structure of each donor, and contrasts it with the results of statistical analyses of key factors in aid. It shows that different criteria are applied to the various categories of recipient states, resulting in an inconsistent treatment of recipient rights as an aid criterion. While the book demonstrates important gulfs between rhetoric and reality, between elected policymakers and aid implementing agencies, and between the donors themselves, it comes to relatively optimistic conclusions about the general direction of foreign assistance and its increasingly pure focus on poverty alleviation.This substantive and important book will be invaluable to students, researchers and policymakers in the fields of politics, economics and development.

Child Hunger and Human Rights: International Governance applies the human rights theory of legal obligation to the problem of child malnutrition and investigates whether duty-bearers have fulfilled their obligations to protect, respect and provide.This book includes moral, economic, political and legal components to the research on the child’s right to be free from hunger. Using two methods of investigation; the first a historical comparative method based on the systematic analysis of the content of historical materials, government documents, policy statements, state budgets, newspaper reports and other public records, and the second is statistical analysis. Apodaca investigates beyond the suffering, deformities, and deaths of children, to child malnutrition resulting in reduced physical and mental development threatening the child’s life opportunities, the prospects of further generations, and the growth of the economy.Examining the connection between governmental agricultural, economic and financial policies, international donor policies, and transnational corporate voluntary codes of conduct affecting child malnutrition rates, this book will be of interest to policy-makers, activists, students and scholars of human rights, social justice, international ethics, development, international relations and law.

The recognition of women’s human rights to migrate and work as sex workers is disregarded and dismissed by anti-trafficking discourses of rescue in the latest United Nation’s definition of trafficking.This volume explores the life experiences, agency, and human rights of trafficked women in order to shed light on the complicated processes in which anti-trafficking, human rights and social justice are intersected. In these articles, the authors critically analyze not only the conflation of trafficking with sex work in international and national discourses and its effects on migrant women, but also the global anti-trafficking policy and the root causes for the undocumented migration and employment. Featuring case studies on eleven countries including the US, Iran, Denmark, Paris, Hong Kong, and south east Asia and offering perspectives from transnational migrant population, the contributors rearticulate the trafficking discourses away from the state control of immigration and the global policing of borders, and reassert the social justice and the needs, agency, and human rights of migrant and working communities. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, gender studies, human rights, migration, sociology and anthropology.

Human Rights, Power and Civic Action examines the interrelationship between struggles for human rights and the dynamics of power, focusing on situations of poverty and oppression in developing countries. It is argued that the concept of power is a relatively neglected one in the study of rights-based approaches to development, especially the ways in which structures and relations of power can limit human rights advocacy. Therefore this book focuses on how local and national struggles for rights have been constrained by power relations and structural inequalities, as well as the extent to which civic action has been able to challenge, alter or transform such power structures, and simultaneously to enhance protection of people’s basic human rights. Contributors examine and compare struggles to advance human rights by non-governmental actors in Cambodia, China, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The country case-studies analyse structures of power responsible for the negation and denial of human rights, as well as how rights-promoting organisations challenge such structures. Utilising a comparative approach, the book provides empirically grounded studies leading to new theoretical understanding of the interrelationships between human rights struggles, power and poverty reduction. Human Rights, Power and Civic Action will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights politics, power, development, and governance.

The European Union uses a confidential, institutionalized Dialogue to raise human rights concerns with China, but little is publicly known about its set-up, its substance, its development over time and its impact.This book provides the first detailed reconstruction and assessment of the EU’s responses to human rights violations in China from 1995 to the present day. Using classified documents in the EU’s historical archives and interviews with diplomats, officials and human rights experts in Europe, China and the United States, Kinzelbach lifts the veil of secrecy on the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue and provides a rare insight into how the European Union and China conduct quiet diplomacy on human rights. The book reconstructs the evolution of the Dialogue and the EU’s internal debate on the merits of quiet diplomacy, and draws comparisons with the approach of other actors, notably that of the United States. In doing so, the EU’s relative impact is concluded to be tenuous if not counter-productive. The book also chronicles and analyzes numerous human rights concerns that were raised in the period, ranging from structural issues to individual cases.This ground-breaking, in-depth case study will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics, human rights, international law, EU politics, especially the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Chinese politics.

The book investigates the beliefs about governance that determine that state structures are the most appropriate venue for international human rights actors and activists to operate. Helen Delfeld argues that those beliefs rely on a normative perception of a nation-state, not necessarily applicable to most of the post-colonial world. While most post-colonial states may appear to demonstrate the trappings of modern nation-statehood, these projects are mostly spurred by and benefit an elite class. At the same time, there may be little identification with their government among the grassroots polity. Delfeld focuses on the Philippines as an example of a post-colonial state, using nested case studies to show how people think differently about the state at different scales. Following a two-pronged approach, she investigates key moments of state action or inaction, and then asks people at the grassroots about their perspectives on governance, their engagement with the state, and their views of human rights. Her findings indicate that people at the grassroots rely on alternative forms of governance, often in the form of NGOs, INGOs, local cooperatives, informal networks, or structures that pre-date both colonization and independence. Her research also indicates the possibility that some of the most effective human rights actors do not rely on the state, as demonstrated by comparing locally-generated campaigns aimed at promoting environmental rights with state campaigns that address violence against women.The Hollow State and Human Rights shows that rights initiatives misdirected through a "hollow state" might strengthen the mechanisms of the state, but might not actually create a more attentive nation-state. Human rights activists and actors may be far more effective by accessing local structures directly, the practical implications of which go beyond the Philippines to other post-colonial states.

By trying to alleviate poverty abroad, foreign development assistance tries to meet, among other things, basic human needs, which some schools of thought classify as basic human rights. However, because development abroad has often been treated as a tool for the pursuit of donor interests, rather than as an end to itself, it often ends up not only neglecting basic human rights, but making them worse. Bethany Barratt develops this argument by presenting a systematic external examination of the internal documentation of aid rationale in three major donor countries (Britain, Canada and Australia). The book sets the discussion of these documents in the context of the foreign policy process and structure of each donor, and contrasts it with the results of statistical analyses of key factors in aid. It shows that different criteria are applied to the various categories of recipient states, resulting in an inconsistent treatment of recipient rights as an aid criterion. While the book demonstrates important gulfs between rhetoric and reality, between elected policymakers and aid implementing agencies, and between the donors themselves, it comes to relatively optimistic conclusions about the general direction of foreign assistance and its increasingly pure focus on poverty alleviation.This substantive and important book will be invaluable to students, researchers and policymakers in the fields of politics, economics and development.

The book investigates the beliefs about governance that determine that state structures are the most appropriate venue for international human rights actors and activists to operate. Helen Delfeld argues that those beliefs rely on a normative perception of a nation-state, not necessarily applicable to most of the post-colonial world. While most post-colonial states may appear to demonstrate the trappings of modern nation-statehood, these projects are mostly spurred by and benefit an elite class. At the same time, there may be little identification with their government among the grassroots polity. Delfeld focuses on the Philippines as an example of a post-colonial state, using nested case studies to show how people think differently about the state at different scales. Following a two-pronged approach, she investigates key moments of state action or inaction, and then asks people at the grassroots about their perspectives on governance, their engagement with the state, and their views of human rights. Her findings indicate that people at the grassroots rely on alternative forms of governance, often in the form of NGOs, INGOs, local cooperatives, informal networks, or structures that pre-date both colonization and independence. Her research also indicates the possibility that some of the most effective human rights actors do not rely on the state, as demonstrated by comparing locally-generated campaigns aimed at promoting environmental rights with state campaigns that address violence against women.The Hollow State and Human Rights shows that rights initiatives misdirected through a "hollow state" might strengthen the mechanisms of the state, but might not actually create a more attentive nation-state. Human rights activists and actors may be far more effective by accessing local structures directly, the practical implications of which go beyond the Philippines to other post-colonial states.

The European Union uses a confidential, institutionalized Dialogue to raise human rights concerns with China, but little is publicly known about its set-up, its substance, its development over time and its impact.This book provides the first detailed reconstruction and assessment of the EU’s responses to human rights violations in China from 1995 to the present day. Using classified documents in the EU’s historical archives and interviews with diplomats, officials and human rights experts in Europe, China and the United States, Kinzelbach lifts the veil of secrecy on the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue and provides a rare insight into how the European Union and China conduct quiet diplomacy on human rights. The book reconstructs the evolution of the Dialogue and the EU’s internal debate on the merits of quiet diplomacy, and draws comparisons with the approach of other actors, notably that of the United States. In doing so, the EU’s relative impact is concluded to be tenuous if not counter-productive. The book also chronicles and analyzes numerous human rights concerns that were raised in the period, ranging from structural issues to individual cases.This ground-breaking, in-depth case study will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics, human rights, international law, EU politics, especially the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Chinese politics.

Human Rights, Power and Civic Action examines the interrelationship between struggles for human rights and the dynamics of power, focusing on situations of poverty and oppression in developing countries. It is argued that the concept of power is a relatively neglected one in the study of rights-based approaches to development, especially the ways in which structures and relations of power can limit human rights advocacy. Therefore this book focuses on how local and national struggles for rights have been constrained by power relations and structural inequalities, as well as the extent to which civic action has been able to challenge, alter or transform such power structures, and simultaneously to enhance protection of people’s basic human rights. Contributors examine and compare struggles to advance human rights by non-governmental actors in Cambodia, China, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The country case-studies analyse structures of power responsible for the negation and denial of human rights, as well as how rights-promoting organisations challenge such structures. Utilising a comparative approach, the book provides empirically grounded studies leading to new theoretical understanding of the interrelationships between human rights struggles, power and poverty reduction. Human Rights, Power and Civic Action will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights politics, power, development, and governance.

Child Hunger and Human Rights: International Governance applies the human rights theory of legal obligation to the problem of child malnutrition and investigates whether duty-bearers have fulfilled their obligations to protect, respect and provide.This book includes moral, economic, political and legal components to the research on the child’s right to be free from hunger. Using two methods of investigation; the first a historical comparative method based on the systematic analysis of the content of historical materials, government documents, policy statements, state budgets, newspaper reports and other public records, and the second is statistical analysis. Apodaca investigates beyond the suffering, deformities, and deaths of children, to child malnutrition resulting in reduced physical and mental development threatening the child’s life opportunities, the prospects of further generations, and the growth of the economy.Examining the connection between governmental agricultural, economic and financial policies, international donor policies, and transnational corporate voluntary codes of conduct affecting child malnutrition rates, this book will be of interest to policy-makers, activists, students and scholars of human rights, social justice, international ethics, development, international relations and law.