"Endangered life is often used to justify humanitarian media intervention, but what if suffering humanity is both the fuel and outcome of such media representations? Pooja Rangan argues that this vicious circle is the result of immediation, a prevailing documentary ethos that seeks to render human s
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uffering urgent and immediate at all costs. Rangan interrogates this ethos in films seeking to "give a voice to the voiceless," an established method of validating the humanity of marginalized subjects, including children, refugees, autistics, and animals. She focuses on multiple examples of documentary subjects being invited to demonstrate their humanity: photography workshops for the children of sex workers in Calcutta; live eyewitness reporting by Hurricane Katrina survivors; attempts to facilitate speech in nonverbal autistics; and painting lessons for elephants. These subjects are obliged to represent themselves using immediations-tropes that reinforce their status as the "other" and reproduce definitions of the human that exclude non-normative modes of thinking, being, and doing. To counter these effects, Rangan calls for an approach to media that aims not to humanize but to realize the full, radical potential of giving the camera to the other." (Publisher description)
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"The Balkan Wars of the 1990s, the Rwandan genocide and the Darfur conflict served as catalysts for debates which significantly changed the character and institutional frameworks of international politics and international law after the end of the Cold War. Humanitarian emergencies and grave human r
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ights violations came to range among the most powerful arguments to justify military interventions abroad. In the course of these debates international norms and principles as those of sovereignty and the prohibition of the use of force were renegotiated. This volume situates the history of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention within the larger history of the twentieth century by looking at political and cultural shifts that preceded the end of the bipolar world order. At the same time, it seeks to elucidate the specificities of interventionism during the 1990s - a moment when, for the first time, military interventions were being justified on the basis of the protection of human rights. The authors examine the role of a wide range of actors like governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental actors like NGOs, the media, and public intellectuals." (Publisher description)
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"The current study explores the influence of communication variables on human rights protection. The effects of international and domestic mass communication and digital media were assessed among global social, economic, and political factors. The statistical analyses on a sample of 101 nation state
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s over the most recent decade reveal several important findings: (a) top-down, internationally initiated human rights discourse and monitoring were not as effective as bottom-up, domestically initiated human rights dialogues; (b) access to the Internet and access to a mobile phone have different effects on human rights performance, and Internet availability played an especially important role; (c) economic development, political system, and population size are powerful predictors of nations' human rights performance, but a large population size diminishes the effect of economic development; and (d) economic development can moderate the effect of political context on human rights performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed." (Abstract)
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"This book focuses on the construction of the human rights discourse inside two religiously affiliated organizations: The Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) and Pax Romana (IMCS / ICMICA). These organizations have been formally accredited as NGOs by the UN, label themselves a
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s religious, and look back upon a long and intense cooperation with the UN. Lehmann presents material from the archives of those two organizations that has so far rarely been used for academic analysis. In doing so, as well as documenting the encounters between those organizations and the UN, and looking at the Protestant and Catholic spectrum, the book provides new insights into the very construction of the notions of 'the religious' and the 'secular' inside those organizations." (Publisher description)
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"This guide aims to help correct the imbalance in capacity and expertise between human rights defenders and cybersecurity professionals and policy-makers. At the heart of the guide is an attempt to address perhaps the fundamental barrier: the absence of clear definitions and agreed terms. It will do
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this by closely examining three separate policy areas which are often conflated under the umbrella of cybersecurity – information security, cybercrime, and cyber conflict – unpacking their policy and legal dimensions, mapping relevant stakeholders, and outlining the issues at stake. It is hoped this will help human rights defenders engage effectively in cyber policy debates at the domestic, regional and international levels." (Overview, page 6)
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"This report outlines the international human rights standards and processes related the protection of freedom of expression and religious belief, and discusses regional trends and challenges. The nine country case studies include the stories of many people across the region struggling to defend fre
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edom of expression and promote an understanding of free expression that this is consistent with the expression of religious views. Some of the stories are horrifying – people are being killed for what they believe and say while exercising their rights to express that belief. It also provides an overview of the relevant laws and standards which impinge on people’s rights in each of these countries. It is a challenge to governments in the region to recognise their responsibility to protect the rights of their own citizens. The Jakarta Declaration set out in this report is a stirring declaration of the responsibilities, not just of governments but of all the relevant actors. It set out a clear path to the essential task of protecting rights to free expression in the region and ultimately, to the protection of religious belief itself." (Andrew Puddephatt, page 8)
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"Revelations on mass online surveillance and regular reports on abuses of the rights to privacy and free expression clearly show the need to effectively protect human rights on the net. The Council of Europe works with governments, the private sector, civil society and other actors to shape the Inte
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rnet as a safe and open environment where freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, diversity, culture and education can flourish. In line with its overall mission, the ultimate aim of its Internet-related action is to protect and promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law." (Page 2)
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"This report provides a crucial and in depth look at ICT initiatives and trends across the key human rights practices of prevention, fact-finding, and advocacy, identifying both risks and opportunities. In prevention, ICTs can be harnessed to protect human rights defenders, to prevent violations in
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police-civilian interactions, and in data-driven early warning systems and communication-based conflict prevention. That said, ICTs also create new security risks for human rights defenders and can violate the right to privacy. In fact-finding, ICTs afford the spontaneous and solicited participation of civilian witnesses in the production of human rights evidence. Of course, a greater volume and variety of information from unknown and untrained sources creates problems of misinformation and verification, which technology only goes so far to mitigate. In advocacy, ICTs provide new channels for quickly and visibly mobilizing publics, for directly engaging with advocacy targets, and for spreading awareness of human rights. That said, the effects of these new advocacy channels are unclear, and they may imperil categories of human rights and the reputations of human rights organizations. The report also considers how digital divides and the political economy of ICTs influence the nature, extent, and distribution of these opportunities and risks. In doing so, it outlines a research framework for understanding ICTs and human rights practice to underpin academics’ and practitioners’ assessment, development, and deployment of ICTs for and in the spirit of human rights." (Executive summary)
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"The Guidelines explain the international human rights standards on freedom of opinion and expression and provide political and operational guidance to officials and staff of the EU Institutions and EU Member States for their work in third countries and in multilateral fora as well as in contacts wi
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th international organisations, civil society and other stakeholders. The Guidelines also provide officials and staff with practical guidance on how to contribute to preventing potential violations of freedom of opinion and expression, how to analyse concrete cases and to react effectively when violations occur in order to protect and promote freedom of opinion and expression in the EU’s external action. They also outline how and in what strictly prescribed circumstances the freedom of opinion and expression can be limited." (Page 2)
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"El Manual tiene el propósito de presentar los contenidos principales de las recientes reformas normativas en estos temas con el objetivo de que las y los comunicadores cuenten con una herramienta de apoyo para su labor comunicativa y de difusión [...] La reforma constitucional en materia de derec
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hos humanos, que entró en vigor el 11 de junio del 2011, es un hecho trascendente en tanto reconoce y aporta al sistema de fuentes legales federales y nacionales, un sistema enriquecido con todas los intrumentos internacionales de protección de los derechos humanos, todas las disposiciones y los estándares que México ha firmado. La Ley para la Protección de Personas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos y Periodistas que dio origen al Mecanismo de Protección para Periodistas y Personas Defensoras de los Derechos Humanos, que entró en vigor el 26 de junio de 2012, es de suma relevancia en el contexto nacional actual, dado que crea un dispositivo especializado para que el Estado atienda su responsabilidad fundamental de proteger, promover y garantizar los derechos humanos de periodistas, comunicadores y defensores que se encuentran en situación de riesgo como consecuencia de su labor en la defensa y promoción de los derechos humanos, del ejercicio de la libertad de expresión y el periodismo [...] Los contenidos de este manual están organizados en cinco apartados: el primero se refiere a la Reforma constitucional en materia de derechos Humanos; el segundo a la Ley de protección para Periodistas y Personas Defensoras de los Derechos Humanos y al Mecanismo que originó; el tercero corresponde a la Reforma Constitucional en materia de Telecomunicaciones. El cuarto apartado contiene referencias de utilidad relacionadas con los temas y posteriormente de incluyen las versiones en mixe, zapoteco, mazateco y purépecha, a fin de que comunicadores/as indígenas tengan acceso a la información legislativa." (Presentación, página -6-7)
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"In step with United Nations efforts to further promote universal standards and better protect people against human rights violations, this publication of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights provides practical guidance for the development of quantitative and qualitati
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ve indicators to strengthen the measurement and implementation of human rights, including the right to development. It contains a detailed description of the conceptual and methodological framework for human rights indicators recommended by international and national human rights mechanisms and used by a growing number of governmental and non-governmental actors. Concrete examples of indicators identified for a number of human rights—all stemming from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—and other practical tools and illustrations are provided to support processes and stakeholders that aim to improve the realization of human rights on the ground." (Back cover)
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"Considerable attention has been focused on the opportunities presented by new information and communication technologies for development (“ICT4D”) and for government (“ICT4GOV”). The purpose of this report is to analyze their impact on human rights (“ICT4HR”). As Philip Alston, the form
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er Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, explained in a report to the General Assembly: “New technologies offer a great many potential solutions to some of [the] problems [in human rights fact-inding], and offer signiicant improvements in existing factinding methodologies.” He notes, however, that there has been “[l]ittle sustained work . . . by the human rights community as a whole to apply existing technologies or to study their potential uses and problems.” This report aims to remedy that gap. Using case studies largely from three countries, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Dominican Republic, the report considers both the opportunities and risks presented by new technologies for human rights. The report concludes there are beneits that can be realized through the deployment of new technologies in human rights projects. New technologies offer the potential to reduce the cost of collecting information about human rights issues and to increase participation in human rights advocacy efforts. Each of these possible beneits, however, gives rise to new risks and challenges. Although new technologies can reduce the cost of information gathering, it can be dificult to ensure the accuracy of the information generated, and the associated volume can make it challenging and expensive to identify relevant data. There is also no guarantee that increased participation or information will be translated into action or concrete outcomes for the community." (Executive summary)
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Examines the impact that the rise of digital communications is having on the media, and on human rights activism. The report goes on to explore the main policy issues which must be addressed at the national and international levels to shape an enabling environment. The report combines global level a
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nalysis with a specific focus on eight countries: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Kenya, India, Indonesia, South Africa and the United States of America.
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"This toolkit has been assembled to provide the first few stepping stones for practitioners of participatory video to begin introducing a rights-based approach into their practice. We intend this toolkit to be particularly useful for those already undertaking participatory video work in all its guis
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es. However, we hope the methods, ideas, tools, checklists and additional resources cited will mean its contents are useful and relevant to a broad community of practitioners of participatory communications and media." (Introduction, page 3)
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"This collection of essays by those engaged in using mobile phone technologies for social change provides an analysis of the socio-economic, political and media contexts faced by activists in Africa today. The essays address a broad range of issues including inequalities in access to technology base
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d on gender, rural and urban usage, as well as offering practical examples of how activists are using mobile technology to organise and document their experiences. They provide an overview of the lessons learned in making effective use of mobile phone technologies without any of the romanticism so often associated with the use of new technologies for social change. The examples are shared in a way that makes them easy to replicate. The intention is that the experiences described within the book will lead to greater reflection about the real potential and limitations of mobile technologies." (Radio for Peacebuilding Africa Update July 6, 2010)
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