Human Rights in International Relations

Abstract

This new edition of David Forsythe's successful textbook provides an authoritative overview of the place of human rights in international politics in an age of terrorism. The book focuses on four central themes: the resilience of human rights norms, the importance of 'soft' law, the key role of non-governmental organizations, and the changing nature of state sovereignty. Human rights standards are examined according to global, regional, and national levels of analysis with a separate chapter dedicated to transnational corporations. This second edition has been updated to reflect recent events, notably the creation of the ICC and events in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, and new sections have been added on subjects such as the correlation between world conditions and the fate of universal human rights. Containing chapter-by-chapter guides to further reading and discussion questions, this book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of human rights, and their teachers. David Forsythe received the Distinguished Scholar Award for 2007 from the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.

The Domestic Politics of Humanitarian Intervention: Public Opinion, Partisanship, and Ideology

“…political instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and repression in Syria. Yet, time and again, the moral imperative of addressing and mitigating mass human rights violations comes up against the political and legal realities of state sovereignty (Forsythe 2006). In the wake of the humanitarian crises of the 1990s, an international norm emerged in the form of the responsibility to protect (R2P; Evans and Sahnoun 2002;.…”

Do Victims of War Need International Law? Human Rights Education Programs in Authoritarian Sudan

“…Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (2004) called on all UN agencies to adopt such an approach, one that current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon continues to implement, based on a 2003 interagency statement of common understanding of the rights-based approach (UNICEF 2004 theologically rooted in individual human dignity, they demand the state's protection and should be made relevant to and consistent with the world's major religions (An-Na'im 2005;Baderin 2005;Cassese 2005). The promotion and maintenance of human rights is a normative good and a fundamental means for societies to achieve human dignity, freedom, and development (Donnelly 2003;Forsythe 2006;Nussbaum 2006;Sen 1999).…”

Between Aid and Politics: diagnosing the challenge of humanitarian advocacy in politically complex environments—the case of Darfur, Sudan

“…31 As Samantha Power observes, no US government has ever experienced a sustained domestic push from its public to intervene decisively in genocide or near-genocide abroad. 32 Likewise, none has ever been held to account for failing to do so. And so the notion of international human rights becomes, as contemporary realist Henry Kissinger terms it, 'mostly an unfortunate and sentimental intrusion into the real stuff of international relations-interstate power calculations'.…”