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decision-making on the type of intervention required in the east of Congo, thereby ensuring the FDLR’s survival. This was achieved discursively by appropriating externally created ‘strategic narratives’ about human insecurity and human rights abuses, including rape and sexual violence in the east of Congo and then, through the appropriation of these narratives, by weakening the legitimacy of FDLR enemies. There is a broad consensus in academia and international policy that armed groups use public relations (PR) to present themselves as legitimate
This book provides a critical exposition of the international law concerning child soldiers. It starts by looking at the situation of child soldiers in the world today, examining why children are recruited into armed forces and groups; why they volunteer for military service; and, once recruited, what treatment they receive. The book explores how perceptions of childhood and children's rights have changed, and how this has affected the ways in which child soldiers have been treated. It describes the activities of the United Nations with regard to the child soldier phenomenon. The book examines the legal regulation of the recruitment and use of children in hostilities. It shows that although international law comprehensively regulates the recruitment and use of child soldiers, owing to the plethora of treaties on the subject, states' obligations continue to differ and children can still lawfully be recruited and used to participate in armed conflict. The book discusses how, once recruited into armed forces and groups, international law treats child soldiers. It considers the status of child soldiers as combatants and as persons in the power of an adverse party in both international and internal armed conflicts, and states' obligations with regard the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of child soldiers. An unusual feature of how child soldiers are viewed is that they are often seen as both victims of human rights abuses and as human rights violators. Finally, the book examines the extent to which the recruitment and use of child soldiers is an international crime.
This book addresses some of the neglected problems, people and vulnerabilities of the Asia-Pacific region. It talks about emancipation, human security, 'security politics', language and threat-construction. The book is divided into three sections: agents; strategies and contexts; and futures. The first section outlines a range of possible agents or actors potentially capable of redressing individual suffering and vulnerability in the region. It examines East Asian regional institutions and dynamics of regionalism as potential sources of 'progressive' security discourses and practices. There is focus on the progressive security potential of regional institutions and regionalism has become increasingly prominent in literature on security in the Asia-Pacific. Two common interpretations of the role of epistemic communities in the construction of security are contested: that they are either passive sources of governmental legitimacy, or autonomous agents with the capacity of constructing or creating state interests. The second section reviews strategies and contexts, outlining a range of different sites of insecurity in the region, the ways in which dominant security discourses and practices emerge, and the extent to which such discourses are contested in different contexts. Indonesian government's approach to minority groups and separatism, the issue of civil unrest and human rights abuses in Burma, and the Australian government's attitude towards refugees and asylum-seekers are discussed. The third section deals with security futures, specifically discussing the question of what alternative security discourses and practices might look like. Finally, the book outlines a feminist critical security discourse and examines its applicability to the Asia-Pacific region.
This article presents an account of the involvement of forensic anthropology in the investigation of human rights abuses in the modern era, and the difficulties it faces with respect to lack of adequate funding, volatile settings, the presence of unexploded ordnance, corruption in governmental agencies and a lack of good will, absence of support for NGOs and the curtailment of formal judicial proceedings to effect transitional justice. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Spain, Mexico and the Northern Triangle are provided as regional examples of the problems encountered when attempting to conduct forensic anthropological investigations to locate mass graves, retrieve victims and obtain proper identifications. Interventions by various organisations are highlighted to illustrate their assistance to forensic and non-forensic individuals through technical support, training and mentoring in the areas of crime-scene management and identification techniques. Interventions in mass-grave processing when state agencies have failed, the importance of DNA banks and information from family members and witnesses are also presented.
journalists and opposition politicians and violent attacks against Tutsi. In January 1993, both Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) participated in a ten-member panel of international experts that investigated human rights abuses in Rwanda and published a devastating report that linked the government to all recent cases of anti-Tutsi ethnic violence and considered, given their nature, whether they might constitute genocide, though they suggested that the numbers killed might not reach the threshold to be labelled genocide
to sow doubt and misinformation. More so, today’s conflicts are extremely fragmented and are largely conducted via proxies, which often results in multiple narratives about a single incident. And in most places today, humanitarians are rarely the only witness present. Transnational human rights networks are playing a crucial role in spotlighting attention on human rights abuses. And above all, people themselves have access to technologies that enable
talk of ‘atrocity’ from talk of ‘human rights abuses’ since, during the late nineteenth century period that is her focus, ‘atrocity’ was the dominant term for discussing ‘the violation of the human body in the context of war and colonialism’ (48). If we want to understand how Western viewers interpreted such photos in the nineteenth century, we need to understand their interpretive frame (more recently, the term ‘atrocity’ has seen a comeback in discussions of, for example
the condoms? But are you then complicit in a human rights abuse? This points to an important distinction – a political not a foundational distinction – between humanitarianism and human rights. It is difficult to see what value human rights have for states as a whole at the systemic level (beyond those narrow areas of reciprocity). They can be useful as a foreign-policy tool to apply soft-power pressure to other governments, but all states find them more or less irksome when they demand accountability or behavioural change. Human rights
security. According to GPR, the ‘pursuit and preservation of acceptance may require that agencies stay silent about humanitarian or human rights abuses’ ( Humanitarian Practice Network, 2010 : 68). The same arguments can be made about staff, and yet we consistently see public statements made in response to the killing of aid workers and not in response to the killing of other civilians. Negotiations with armed actors tell a similar story: they are
Italy and the EU are discussed in detail in Heller and Pezzani (2018) . 6 For the events unfolding on the Sea-Watch 3 , see, for example, the account of the ship’s captain ( Rackete and Weiss, 2019 ) and a documentary made for German television by two journalists who were on board the ship for the entire duration of its mission ( Kailouli and Schreijäg, 2019 ). 7 Human rights abuses suffered by migrants in Libya have been well documented by Human Rights Watch (2019) , Global Detention Project (2018) and others. 8 On 7 July 2019 ( L