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Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy (1833–1918) was one of the most significant pioneers of the British women's emancipation movement, though her importance is little recognised. Wolstenholme Elmy referred to herself as an ‘initiator’ of movements, and she was at the heart of every campaign Victorian feminists conducted — her most well-known position being that of secretary of the Married Women's Property Committee from 1867–82. A fierce advocate of human rights, as the secretary of the Vigilance Association for the Defence of Personal Rights, Wolstenholme Elmy earned the nickname of the ‘parliamentary watch-dog’ from Members of Parliament anxious to escape her persistent lobbying. Also a feminist theorist, she believed wholeheartedly in the rights of women to freedom of their person, and was the first woman ever to speak from a British stage on the sensitive topic of conjugal rape. Wolstenholme Elmy engaged theoretically with the rights of the disenfranchised to exert force in pursuit of the vote, and Emmeline Pankhurst lauded her as ‘first’ among the infamous suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union. As a lifelong pacifist, however, she resigned from the WSPU Executive in the wake of increasingly violent activity from 1912. A prolific correspondent, journalist, speaker and political critic, Wolstenholme Elmy left significant resources, believing they ‘might be of value’ to historians. This book draws on a great deal of this documentation to produce a portrait that does justice to her achievements as a lifelong ‘Insurgent woman’.
a child soldier so that when he rapes women in the villages he pillages they won’t get HIV ( Lepora and Goodin, 2015 )? What is the human rights answer to this question? Don’t rape, of course. Okay, now given that rape is likely to occur regardless, what’s the answer? In the here and now, humanitarians have one, and must have one, whereas human rights advocates do not. They must remain silent, restate the law or compromise their principles, which for them looks like the legitimation of a crime. Isn’t the humane thing to do to hand over
, human rights advocates and immigrant rights activists in the US and Spain have invoked international agreements to argue for the inclusion of immigrants and migrants in definitions of ‘the public’. Migrants and international health rights After the Second World War, several international agreements established that health care should be defined as a fundamental human right. The
being the feeling that one “cannot look on coolly as others suffer.” It is this emotion – this sense of sympathy with suffering, or indeed the sense that suffering ought not to be tolerated – which is held in common by human rights advocates, whether in practice or academia, and it is this shared feeling in which we find the roots of the regime’s “directing idea.” This calls us, of course, to human rights’ roots in the Enlightenment – that era in which, as Arendt put it, the “age-old indifference [to human misery] was about to disappear.” 125 For Arendt
The politics of cyberspace is of importance both for the future use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and within traditional political arenas, commerce and society itself. Within Britain there are many different political groups that have a presence online and utilise CMC, including for example members of the far right, human rights advocates, religious groups and environmental activists. This book examines the relationship between the strategies of environmental activist movements in Britain and their use of CMC. It explores how environmental activists negotiate the tensions and embrace the opportunities of CMC, and analyses the consequences of their actions for the forms and processes of environmental politics. It serves as a disjuncture from some broader critiques of the implications of CMC for society as a whole, concentrating on unpacking what CMC means for activists engaged in social change. Within this broad aim there are three specific objectives. It first evaluates how CMC provides opportunities for political expression and mobilization. Second, the book examines whether CMC use has different implications for established environmental lobbying organisations than it does for the non-hierarchical fluid networks of direct action groups. Third, it elucidates the influence of CMC on campaign strategies and consequently on business, government and regulatory responses to environmental activism.
China’s responses to terrorism since around 2008 have been seen in the West as an attempt to jump on the bandwagon to justify Beijing’s long-term religious, cultural and political suppression of the Uyghur community, both internationally and domestically. Uyghur activists and human rights advocates have long decried the liberal use of the term ‘terrorist’ by the Chinese authorities as well as their tendency to conflate ethnic, religious and violent activities. On the other hand, China has often criticized Western approaches to counterterrorism and attempted to promote its own measures as a better alternative. This chapter seeks to address the questions raised by such issues as China’s definition of terrorism and how China’s resistance to and criticism of the US-led counterterrorism campaign has reshaped the domestic conceptualization of terrorism and the subsequent implementation of countermeasures.
legal and political strategies to mobilise the right to science. By ‘legal mobilisation’ we mean the use of courts and tribunals (i.e. judicial remedies) to seek vindication of the right to science for violation of this right. We identify international judicial and quasi-judicial institutions that have jurisdiction over violations of this right, and discuss the procedural requirements and some of the challenges claimants face. With regard to ‘political mobilisation’, we identify venues where human rights advocates, scientific societies and other civil society
governed quite so much” – regardless of the fact that it is being done for their own supposed good. Koskenniemi’s recipe for remedying the apparent crisis is to stop insisting on global governance’s “truths” and instead shift to “truthfulness” – “to insist on the best available scientific – and legal – knowledge but also on its limits and its vulnerability” so as to “inject political contestation.” 12 My own suggestion is that it may be best for human rights advocates to consider the possibility of, in short, simply governing a little less. Notes 1 S
Given the significant similarities and differences between the welfare states of Northern Europe and their reactions to the perceived 'refugee crisis' of 2015, the book focuses primarily on the three main cases of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Placed in a wider Northern European context – and illustrated by those chapters that also discuss refugee experiences in Norway and the UK – the Danish, Swedish and German cases are the largest case studies of this edited volume. Thus, the book contributes to debates on the governance of non-citizens and the meaning of displacement, mobility and seeking asylum by providing interdisciplinary analyses of a largely overlooked region of the world, with two specific aims. First, we scrutinize the construction of the 2015 crisis as a response to the large influx of refugees, paying particular attention to the disciplinary discourses and bureaucratic structures that are associated with it. Second, we investigate refugees’ encounters with these bureaucratic structures and consider how these encounters shape hopes for building a new life after displacement. This allows us to show that the mobility of specific segments of the world’s population continues to be seen as a threat and a risk that has to be governed and controlled. Focusing on the Northern European context, our volume interrogates emerging policies and discourses as well as the lived experiences of bureaucratization from the perspective of individuals who find themselves the very objects of bureaucracies.
This book explores the evolving African security paradigm in light of the multitude of diverse threats facing the continent and the international community today and in the decades ahead. It challenges current thinking and traditional security constructs as woefully inadequate to meet the real security concerns and needs of African governments in a globalized world. The continent has becoming increasingly integrated into an international security architecture, whereby Africans are just as vulnerable to threats emanating from outside the continent as they are from home-grown ones. Thus, Africa and what happens there, matters more than ever. Through an in-depth examination and analysis of the continent’s most pressing traditional and non-traditional security challenges—from failing states and identity and resource conflict to terrorism, health, and the environment—it provides a solid intellectual foundation, as well as practical examples of the complexities of the modern African security environment. Not only does it assess current progress at the local, regional, and international level in meeting these challenges, it also explores new strategies and tools for more effectively engaging Africans and the global community through the human security approach.