Less Than a Roar

The Global Citizenship Commission was convened, under the leadership of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the auspices of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study, to re-examine the spirit and stirring words of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The result – this volume – offers a 21st-century commentary on the original document, furthering the work of human rights and illuminating the ideal of global citizenship. What does it mean for each of us to be members of a global community? Since 1948, the Declaration has stood as a beacon and a standard for a better world. Yet the work of making its ideals real is far from over. Hideous and systemic human rights abuses continue to be perpetrated at an alarming rate around the world. Too many people, particularly those in power, are hostile to human rights or indifferent to their claims. Meanwhile, our global interdependence deepens. Bringing together world leaders and thinkers in the fields of politics, ethics, and philosophy, the Commission set out to develop a common understanding of the meaning of global citizenship – one that arises from basic human rights and empowers every individual in the world. This landmark report affirms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seeks to renew the 1948 enterprise, and the very ideal of the human family, for our day and generation.

The book goes on to describe the rise of the first modern-style human rights statements, associated with the Enlightenment and contemporary antislavery and revolutionary fervour.

THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS combines uniquely strong coverage of human rights in relation to gender equity, feminist perspectives, and sexual orientation with the theme of a universal perspective on human rights that is sensitive to cultural differences and diversity among and within nations. The book is also comprehensive and accessible in its discussion of human rights law and the question of whether human rights are universal. DeLaet also addresses the tension between state sovereignty and human rights, genocide, economic rights, and various concepts of justice as they relate to the promotion of fundamental human rights.

Explores the fluctuating relationship between human rights and humanitarianism and the changing nature of the politics and practices of humanity.

"An expanded and updated edition of a classic work on human rights and global justice. Since its original publication, Basic Rights has proven increasingly influential to those working in political philosophy, human rights, global justice, and the ethics of international relations and foreign policy, particularly in debates regarding foreign policy's role in alleviating global poverty. Henry Shue asks: Which human rights ought to be the first honored and the last sacrificed? Shue argues that subsistence rights, along with security rights and liberty rights, serve as the ground of all other human rights. This classic work, now available in a thoroughly updated fortieth-anniversary edition, includes a substantial new chapter by the author examining how the accelerating transformation of our climate progressively undermines the bases of subsistence like sufficient water, affordable food, and housing safe from forest-fires and sea-level rise. Climate change threatens basic rights"--

Thomas Pogge tries to explain the attitude of affluent populations to world poverty. One or two per cent of the wealth of the richer nations could help in eradicating much of the poverty and Pogge presents a powerful moral argument.

By the 1980s the concept of internationally recognized human rights was being reinforced by a growing body of international law and by the multiplication of agencies concerned with such matters as torture in Paraguay, slavery in Mauritania, the British use of force in Northern Ireland, and starvation and malnutrition in EastøAfrica and Southeast Asia. No matter how much a national leader might find it more convenient to focus on other matters, some world organization or private group could be counted on to keep the issue of universal human rights alive. Because the subject is particularly timely, David P. Forsythe has revised Human Rights and World Politics, first published in 1983. For this second edition, Forsythe has updated all chapters and completely rewritten the one on U.S. foreign policy to include the second Reagan administration. After a brief history of the evolution of human rights in international law and diplomacy, he surveys human rights standards as developed by the United Nations and other official organizations. Moving from the definitive core of law, Forsythe turns to the interpretation and implementation of rights agreements; the role of private or unofficial organizations such as Amnesty International and the Red Cross; the relationship between civil-political and socio-economic rights; the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy, particularly under Carter and Reagan; and lobbying in Washington by human-rights interest groups. In all, Forsythe?s exhaustive research and careful analysis bring clarity and concreteness to a subject too often obscured by rhetoric.

In Human Rights Horizons, one of the world's foremost authorities on human rights and international relations maps out the way to a more just and human global society. Borders are being erased; democracy and capitalism are spreading. The world is rapidly changing, and these changes are opening the door for the promotion of human rights to become and integral part of worldwide politics and law.In his provocative new book, Falk discusses the borderline between the promotion of human rights and the promotion of interventionist and coercive diplomacy. Can the US and the UN find an acceptable balance between unnecessary, protracted violence (Somalia) and simply letting genocide spread (Rwanda)? While looking at specific cases, Falk also sheds important new light on non-Western attitudes toward human rights, the challenge of genocidal politics, the intersection of morality and global security, and the pursuit of international justice. Thoughtful and very accessibly written, Human Rights Horizons clearly presents a path to an original new humanitarian policy for the 21st century.

“No one has written with more penetrating skepticism about the history of human rights.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “Moyn breaks new ground in examining the relationship between human rights and economic fairness.” —George Soros The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. While state violations of political rights have garnered unprecedented attention in recent decades, a commitment to material equality has quietly disappeared. In its place, economic liberalization has emerged as the dominant force. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn considers how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of broader social and economic justice. Moyn places the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift and explores why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside exploding inequality. “Moyn asks whether human-rights theorists and advocates, in the quest to make the world better for all, have actually helped to make things worse... Sure to provoke a wider discussion.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “A sharpening interrogation of the liberal order and the institutions of global governance created by, and arguably for, Pax Americana... Consistently bracing.” —Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books “Moyn suggests that our current vocabularies of global justice—above all our belief in the emancipatory potential of human rights—need to be discarded if we are work to make our vastly unequal world more equal... [A] tour de force.” —Los Angeles Review of Books