Mid Term Flashcards
Ethnic entrepreneurs
Ethnic entrepreneurs are understood to be those “using ethnicity” (usually their own) to advance personal or group issues or desires … we viewed violent leadership cases in Rwanda and the Balkans, but other cases are certainly widespread, and currently increasing in many global areas (Modi in India, Putin in Russia, Proud Boys in US, etc…) we will consider more cases, and human rights alternatives later in class,
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages. The UDHR is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties, applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels (all containing references to it in their preambles).
Proscriptive (or “negative”) rights
“Stop doing something” or “Do not interfere.”
Prescriptive (or “positive”) rights
“Do something you are not doing” or “Provide services.”
Genocide
Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (March 200)
… any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Millet (Non-Muslim community– Ottoman)
A system used by the Ottomans whereby subjects were divided into religious communities, with each millet (nation) enjoying autonomous self-government under its religious leaders.
Treaty of Westphalia
Signed in 1648 after the Thirty Years’ War, the treaty established the following: Religious tolerance; disputes to be settled by bilateral agreement; and state sovereignty (territories and boundaries that people have drawn through negotiation; no foreign interference in internal affairs)
International Committee for the Red Cross
Together with the Geneva Convention of 1864, the ICRC introduced “humanitarian law”. The three together codified a new law of war pertaining to the treatment of injured combatants
Atlantic Charter
1941-Pledge signed by US president FDR and British prime minister Winston Churchill not to acquire new territory as a result of WWII amid to work for peace after the war. Defined the Allied goals for the post-war world, including self
“Asian Values”
Values that are embedded in traditional Asian cultures of which they claim are incompatible with the core values of liberal democracy. Tatsuo argues in his piece that the concept of Asian values does not convey Asian voices in their full complexity and diversity, nor does it represent genuine Asian initiatives.
Boomerang Effect
NGO in state A encounters blockage, so provides information on Human Rights Violations to an NGO in state B, which provides pressure on an intergovernmental oorganization or pressure on state A, circumventing the inital internal blockage
Imagined Communities
Benedict Anderson’s conception of nationhood; nations are imagined because nobody will ever meet everyone else, nations are sovereign in the Westphalian sense, and nations are a community because members perceive comeradeship; nationalism arose from the rise of common vernaculars and print-capitalism.
Chetnik
Serbian nationalists (related to Milosovic & Tito below)
Chetnik were Serbian nationalists and a military organization that were ultra-nationalists and were hostile to Muslims. They primarily fought a civil war against the Partisans
Ustasha
Croatian nationalists (related to Milosovic & Tito below)
Partisans
Yugoslav) partisans: National Liberation Army
Communist anti-fascist resistance to the axis powers led by Tito
Slobodan Milosovic
Serbian nationalist leader (Chetnik)
Promoted division of ethnic groups
First sitting head of state indicted for war crimes
Josep Broz Tito
Croat-Partisan Balkan leader
Ran from a unified platform that intentionally ignored ethnic groups for the sake of unification
Cultural Relativism
The philosophical notion that all cultural beliefs are equally valid and that truth itself is relative depending on the cultural environment
Established by Franz Boas in the first decades of the 20th century
Ren
Benevolence, human-heartedness; Confucian ideal of generosity of leaders, can be used used to justify ‘Asian’ human rights, in opposition to conceptions of “asian values”.
Overlapping consensus
Refers to the idea of supporters of various doctrines agreeing on certain principles of justice regardless of their varied backgrounds. This can apply to people of different religions, political ideologies, and moralities. Important because implies the potential for universality of conceptions of rights, and universality of gross violations thereof.
Human Rights Council
Formed 2006, no more commissions; members are elected by the General Assembly; can be discussed; candidacy undergoes a vetting process; reviewed.
Universal periodic review and special procedures
Vienna Conference on Human Rights
1993, post-Cold-War; introduces Special Rapporteurs, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a moment when human rights was “front and center”
Natural Law
Before 1648, legal scholars (De Las Casas, Vitoria, Grotius) debated treatment of newly discovered peoples and what sorts of “Just Wars” could be waged against them
Positive Law
After 1648 most international law related to relations between states – treaties and trade agreements. International rules rarely talked bout anything “internal”, which might violate sovereignty.
International Humanitarian Law
A body of international law developed from the Geneva and Hague conventions that deals with the conduct of states and individuals during armed conflict
Ethnic Nationalism
Ethnicity, natural, primordial inferiority or superiority. I am better than you because I am X ethnicity and you are not.
Civic Nationalism
Imperialism, nationalism around values, law, and territory. My nationalism (or country, or civic system, or government) is better than yours.
buhare
Dyadic person to person relations, client that stated allegience to a patron; relevant for Anth and HR because Buhare/Ganwa relations fed much ofo the histrical Hutu/Tutsi rivalries.
Ganwa lineage
Higher class patron of Buhare; relevant for Anth and HR because Buhare/Ganwa relations fed much ofo the histrical Hutu/Tutsi rivalries.
Hamitic myth
White supremacy theory regarding Africa. Hamites (Caucasian) being a biblical reference (remember the etching from the pptx with the fallen father and some sons helping him up) migrated to Africa, used to justify colonization and slave trade
Amina Lawal
Amina Lawal was a 30-year old Muslim woman from the Katsina State of Nigeria who received a death sentence as a punishment for bearing a child out of wedlock. The local Sharia court commuted the sentence when it found that the offense couldn’t be proven, since the man involved denied having sex with Lawal. The case is significant because it highlights the dangers of foreign information operations (such as letter campaigns) in local affairs. A more widespread letter campaign could have incensed the court to the point of upholding the sentence
Franz Boas
Founded American anthropology at Columbia
Critic of psychology for reducing complex historical and cultural factors to a few basics
Cultural relativist, dedicated his life’s work to prove that the mentality of “primitive” and “civilized” peoples were comparable among other characteristics such as biology, history, culture, and language
Castigated early psychological anthro for being racist
Historical Particularism
The idea, attributed to Franz Boas, that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories.
Orthogenetic Evolution
Orthogenetic Evolution, now obsolete, posited that all living organisms (including humans) tend to evolve in a linear direction towards some goal, due to some driving force. It rejected natural selection in its position that all organisms (not just the fittest) are evolutionarily equipped to persevere. This rejection also included social Darwinism, which Boas debunked in the early twentieth century.
Ethical loneliness
“Ethical loneliness is the isolation one feels when one, as a violated person or as one member of a persecuted group, has been abandoned by humanity, or by those who have power over one’s life possibilities.”
Transitional Justice
Truth commissions and local settings Establishing the truth Providing victims with public platform Holding perpetrators accountable Strengthening the rule of law Providing victims with compensation Effectuating institutional reform Promoting reconciliation Promoting public deliberation
Oral history
Oral History is the story of a culture as told by its members, or of a particular event as the storyteller experienced it. In this context, it usually involves victims of human rights violations telling their stories. It can take three forms: 1) life narratives where the story can illustrate the complex way in which myth, ideology, culture, and memory meet; 2) community narratives where identity is invested in the stories that are told, and those that must not be told, and where the identity of the community more primary than the life story; and 3) cultural memories in which the form of the telling, whether as song, poetry, jokes, performances, or ritual. The third is critical to understanding the multiple ways that people remember the past. Oral history is critical to transitional justice, especially to truth recovery/reconciliation commissions.
International Humanitarian Law
International humanitarian law (IHL) is a set of rules that seek to limit the effects of armed conflict. It lays out the responsibilities of states and non-state armed groups during an armed conflict.
It defines, among others:
the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid in armed conflict
the freedom of movement of humanitarian workers
the protection of civilians (including medical and humanitarian workers)
the protection of refugees, prisoners, the wounded and sick.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
It is one of two international treaties that make the ‘International Bill of Human Rights’ (along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), the ICESCR provides the legal framework to protect and preserve the most basic economic, social and cultural rights, including rights relating to work in just and favorable environment
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
The ICCPR recognizes the inherent dignity of each individual and undertakes to promote conditions within states to allow the enjoyment of civil and political rights.
People have the right to self-determination. Due to that right, they are free to determine their political status and to pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.
In accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved when conditions are created that permit everyone to enjoy their civil and political rights, as well as their economic, social, and cultural rights,
“thick description”
In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider.
What is a thick description example?
Thick description includes voices, feelings, actions and meanings (Ponterotto, 2006). The example most commonly used to explain ‘Thick description’ comes from Ryle. He argued that if someone winks at us without a context, we don’t know what it means. We can report on the wink (thin description).
Geertz introduced the concept of thick description into the parlance of the discipline; this term can be described as “the detailed account of field experiences in which the researcher makes explicit the patterns of cultural and social relationships and puts them in context”
The three boys—the winker, the twitcher, and the parodist—are all doing the same physical action (as Geertz’s says “rapidly contracting [their] right eyelids”), but given the socio-cultural context that each boy finds himself in, the exact same behavior can mean vastly different things. Geertz argues that it is this detailed context—this je ne sais quoi—that the ethnographer must dig into and discover if one wants to adequately explain behavior and by extension culture.
ethnic cleansing
“Ethnic cleansing” refers to the process of getting rid of (through deportation, displacement or even mass killing) members of unwanted ethnic groups in order to establish an ethnically homogeneous region.
Although ethnic or religious cleansing campaigns have existed throughout history, the rise of extreme nationalist movements during the 20th century led to an unprecedented level of ethnically motivated brutality, including the Turkish massacre of Armenians during World War I; the annihilation of some 6 million European Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust; and the forced displacement and mass killings carried out by the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda during the 1990s.
Confucianism
Emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness and sincerety
Confucianism is an ancient Chinese belief system, which focuses on the importance of personal ethics and morality. Whether it is only or a philosophy or also a religion is debated. Mencius (or Meng Ke who lived from 372 to 289 B.C.E.) is the best-known Confucian philosopher after Confucius himself
The core idea is ren (“humaneness,” “benevolence”), signifying excellent character in accord with li (ritual norms), zhong (loyalty to one’s true nature), shu (reciprocity), and xiao (filial piety). Together these constitute de (virtue)
Confucius
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is a political concept that refers to dominant power or supreme authority. In a monarchy, supreme power resides in the “sovereign”, or king. In modern democracies, sovereign power rests with the people and is exercised through representative bodies such as Congress or Parliament.
Non-Governmental Organization
A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a non-profit group that functions independently of any government. NGOs, sometimes called civil societies, are organized on community, national and international levels to serve a social or political goal such as humanitarian causes or the environment
Many large international NGOs, such as Amnesty International, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Oxfam International, CARE, Save the Children, and the World Wildlife Fund, are transnational federations of national groups.
Human Rights Commission
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights was established in 1946 to weave the international legal fabric that protects our fundamental rights and freedoms.
If you feel you were discriminated against in any of the ways described above, you should quickly file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission
Human Rights Committee
a treaty body composed of 18 experts, established by a 1966 human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Universal Periodic Review
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council (HRC) aimed at improving the human rights situation on the ground of each of the 193 United Nations (UN) Member States. Under this mechanism, the human rights situation of all UN Member States is reviewed every 5 years.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
The IACHR is a principal and autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (“OAS”) whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere. It is composed of seven independent members who serve in a personal capacity. Created by the OAS in 1959, the Commission has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Together with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“the Court” or “the I/A Court H.R.), installed in 1979, the Commission is one of the institutions within the inter-American system for the protection of human rights (“IAHRS”).
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution whose purpose is the application and interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights. The Court exercises its functions in accordance with the provisions of the aforementioned Convention and the present Statute.
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a court of last resort for the prosecution of serious international crimes, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Impetus for the court came from the ad hoc international tribunals set up in the 1990s to address the atrocity crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Geneva Protocols
The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. The Protocol was drawn up and signed at a conference which was held in Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations from 4 May to 17 June 1925, and it entered into force on 8 February 1928.
Customary Law
An established pattern of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting is known as a legal custom. It is possible to assert a claim based on “what has always been done and accepted by law”.
Special Tribunal for Rwanda
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda[a was an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994.[1] The court eventually convicted 85 individuals at a cost of $1.3 billion.[2]
Hutu
Hutus are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region of Africa. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the principal ethnic groups alongside the Tutsi and the Great Lakes Twa.
Tutsi
The Tutsi, or Abatutsi, are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi. Historically, the Tutsi were pastoralists and filled the ranks of the warriors’ caste.
a member of a people forming a minority of the population of Rwanda and Burundi, who formerly dominated the Hutu majority. Historical antagonism between the peoples led in 1994 to large-scale ethnic violence, especially in Rwanda.
George Herbert Spencer
Social Darwinists held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by “survival of the fittest,” a phrase proposed by the British philosopher and scientist Herbert Spencer.
Orientalism
Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world
Said’s central concern in Orientalism is the multiple relationships between the act of writing and cultural politics, language, and power. He attempts to show how Western journalists, fiction writers, and scholars helped to build up a prevalent and hostile image of the Eastern cultures as inferior, stagnant, and degenerate. He also attempts to show the extent to which these representations permeate the Western culture. The West exploited these representations to justify their imperialist policies in the Middle East. .
In his study entitled Orientalism, Said reminds us, “The orient was almost a European invention … a European representation of the Orient, [which was] the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilization and language, its cultural contestation, and one of its deepest and most …Apr 1, 2019
Special Procedures
The UN Special Procedures are independent human rights experts that investigate and report on human rights violations around the world. They also provide advice and recommendations on how to enforce those rights.
Special Rapporteur
The Special Rapporteur’s responsibility to monitor, promote, raise awareness of, and facilitate a global discussion - and ultimately, action - on a particular human right all over the world is a demanding duty for even a small team of experts.
Individuals working on behalf of the United Nations (UN) within the scope of “special procedure” mechanisms who have a specific country or theme mandate from the United Nations Human Rights Council are called special rapporteurs, independent experts, and working group members. In French, “rapporteur” means a member of a deliberative body who reports to an investigator.
High Commissioner for Human Rights
The UN Human Rights Office protects and defends the full range of Human Rights & freedoms. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights) is the leading UN entity on human rights. We represent the world’s commitment to the promotion and protection of the full range of human rights and freedoms set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Special Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a United Nations court of law that dealt with war crimes that took place during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s. During its mandate, which lasted from 1993 - 2017, it irreversibly changed the landscape of international humanitarian law, provided victims an opportunity to voice the horrors they witnessed and experienced, and proved that those suspected of bearing the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed during armed conflicts can be called to account.
Duško Tadic - first indictment
Slobodan Milošević - first sitting head of state indicted for war crimes
