In a troubled world where millions die at the hands of their own governments and societies, some states risk their citizens' lives, considerable portions of their national budgets, and repercussions from opposing states to protect helpless foreigners. Dozens of Canadian peacekeepers have died in Afghanistan defending humanitarian reconstruction in a shattered faraway land with no ties to their own. Each year, Sweden contributes over $3 billion to aid the world's poorest citizens and struggling democracies, asking nothing in return. And, a generation ago, Costa Rica defied U.S. power to broker a peace accord that ended civil wars in three neighboring countries--and has now joined with principled peers like South Africa to support the United Nations' International Criminal Court, despite U.S. pressure and aid cuts. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are alive today because they have been sheltered by one of these nations. Global Good Samaritans looks at the reasons why and how some states promote human rights internationally, arguing that humanitarian internationalism is more than episodic altruism--it is a pattern of persistent principled politics. Human rights as a principled foreign policy defies the realist prediction of untrammeled pursuit of national interest, and suggests the utility of constructivist approaches that investigate the role of ideas, identities, and influences on state action. Brysk shows how a diverse set of democratic middle powers, inspired by visionary leaders and strong civil societies, came to see the linkage between their long-term interest and the common good. She concludes that state promotion of global human rights may be an option for many more members of the international community and that the international human rights regime can be strengthened at the interstate level, alongside social movement campaigns and the struggle for the democratization of global governance.

Learn to live the message of the Good Samaritan and make a global impact, using the resources already at your disposal. If there were a popularity contest among all the parables of Jesus, the Good Samaritan would probably win. Nobody is against the Good Samaritan because being against the Good Samaritan is like being against Mother Theresa or Oskar Schindler or the firefighters who ran into the World Trade Center. In that same popularity contest, the Shrewd Manager would probably finish last. The Shrewd Manager is lazy, deceitful, and double-crossing. Yet in this alluringly freakish parable, Jesus actually holds up the Shrewd Manager as an example, as he does with the Good Samaritan. This book is about learning to live the message of the Good Samaritan in the context of the globalized world of the twenty-first century. This means learning to love our global neighbor wisely by harnessing the resources at our disposal—our time, talents, opportunities, and money—on behalf of those who are victims of injustice, disease, violence, and poverty. The early disciples were pretty clueless about worldly resources such as time, talent, and money—and unfortunately today we still don’t really get it. There are too many kind, well-intentioned twenty-first-century people with indisputably good intentions but whose impact on the needy is hampered by their inability to diagnose problems properly, harness the resources available to them to solve the right problems, and understand cause-and-effect relationships. Shrewd Samaritan will help develop a framework to better love and care for our neighbors in an age of globalization, when the people in our neighborhoods, or at least those in our potential sphere of influence, has expanded dramatically. Increasingly it will become our global neighbor who takes us out of our comfort zone and challenges us with the needs of a broken world.

Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan is about the organization of refugee relief programs. It describes the practical, political, and moral assumptions of the ?international refugee relief regime.? Tony Waters emphasizes that the agencies delivering humanitarian relief are embedded in rationalized bureaucracies whose values are determined by their institutional frameworks. The demand for ?victims? is observed in the close relation between the interests of the popular press and the decisions made by bureaucracies.This presents a paradox in all humanitarian relief organizations, but perhaps no more so than in the Rwanda Relief Operations (1994-96) which ended in the largest mass forced repatriation since the end of World War II. This crisis is analyzed with an assumption that there is a basic contradiction between the demands of the bureaucratized organization and the need of relief agencies to generate the emotional publicity to sustain the interest of northern donors. The book concludes by noting that if refugee relief programs are to become more effective, the connection between the press's emotional demands for ?victims? and the bureaucratic organizations's decision processes need to be identified and reassessed.

From Pariah to Priority gives a unique, insider perspective that explains the unexpected incorporation of LGBTI rights into the United States and Swedish foreign policies. From original data, case study analysis, and interviews with high-level officials within the State Department, Swedish Foreign Ministry and international institutions, former diplomat Elise Carlson Rainer provides insights from leaders responsible for shaping emerging global LGBTI policies. The research findings highlight the advocacy process of reforming US and Swedish foreign policy priorities to include LGBTI rights, shedding light on how normative values evolve in foreign affairs. The book examines Sweden as the first country to implement a feminist foreign policy and commence formal LGBTI diplomacy. Through this lens, Rainer contextualizes the diplomatic precedent of revamping foreign assistance to Uganda when lawmakers there proposed a death penalty law for homosexuality. Scrutinizing effective tactics for advocacy to influence foreign policy, From Pariah to Priority explores not only current debates in the area of gender and sexuality in foreign affairs, but also offers pragmatic policy recommendations for civil society organizations, foreign policy leaders, and human rights practitioners.

South Africa is the most industrialized power in Africa. It was rated the continent's largest economy in 2016 and is the only African member of the G20. It is also the only strategic partner of the EU in Africa. Yet despite being so strategically and economically significant, there is little scholarship that focuses on South Africa as a regional hegemon. This book provides the first comprehensive assessment of South Africa's post-Apartheid foreign policy. Over its 23 chapters - -and with contributions from established Africa, Western, Asian and American scholars, as well as diplomats and analysts - the book examines the current pattern of the country's foreign relations in impressive detail. The geographic and thematic coverage is extensive, including chapters on: the domestic imperatives of South Africa's foreign policy; peace-making; defence and security; bilateral relations in Southern, Central, West, Eastern and North Africa; bilateral relations with the US, China, Britain, France and Japan; the country's key external multilateral relations with the UN; the BRICS economic grouping; the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP); as well as the EU and the World Trade Organization (WTO). An essential resource for researchers, the book will be relevant to the fields of area studies, foreign policy, history, international relations, international law, security studies, political economy and development studies.

If we want to genuinely help people living in poverty rather than just feel good about believing we've helped, we are not meant to be just Good Samaritans. We must be Shrewd Samaritans.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

This book provides the first book-length, English-language account of the political ethics of large-scale, Western-based humanitarian INGOs, such as Oxfam, CARE, and Doctors Without Borders. These INGOs are often either celebrated as heroes or do-going machines or maligned as incompetents 'on the road to hell'. In contrast, this book suggests the picture is more complicated. Drawing on political theory, philosophy, and ethics, along with original fieldwork, this book shows that while humanitarian INGOs are often perceived as non-governmental and apolitical, they are in fact sometimes somewhat governmental, highly political, and often 'second-best' actors. As a result, they face four central ethical predicaments: the problem of spattered hands, the quandary of the second-best, the cost-effectiveness conundrum, and the moral motivation trade-off. This book considers what it would look like for INGOs to navigate these predicaments in ways that are as consistent as possible with democratic, egalitarian, humanitarian and justice-based norms. It argues that humanitarian INGOs must regularly make deep moral compromises. In choosing which compromises to make, they should focus primarily on their overall consequences, as opposed to their intentions or the intrinsic value of their activities. But they should interpret consequences expansively, and not limit themselves to those that are amenable to precise measurements of cost-effectiveness. The book concludes by explaining the implications of its 'map' of humanitarian INGO political ethics for individual donors to INGOs, and for how we all should conceive of INGOs' role in addressing pressing global problems.

"The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn't want them to hope. She wants them to die. Laura hasn't had it easy: she's survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn't love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it. But now someone's on to her -- Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger. Who was this man, and why did they choose to die together? The sinister truth is within Ryan's grasp, but he has no idea of the desperate lengths Laura will go to ... Because the best thing about being a Good Samaritan is that you can get away with murder."--Page 4 of cover.