Bøker utgitt av Institute of Commonwealth Studies

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights offered at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, we are pleased to publish a commemorative edited volume on human rights themes authored by distinguished alumni and faculty. The chapters reflect on cutting-edge challenges in the field of human rights. Topics include refugee protection, women's human rights, business and human rights, the role of national and international legal mechanisms and emerging themes such as tax justice, rights in the digital age, theories of change, and poetry. It is a credit to the MA programme that the chapters are rich with critical analysis, diverse expertise and innovative approaches.This book will be essential reading for students of human rights and practitioners who can benefit from the insights into theory and practice offered here. Dr Corinne Lennox is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Associate Director of the Human Rights Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

An analysis of the laws determining indigenous land ownership in eastern Canada. Based on extensive fieldwork and oral history, The Terms of Our Surrender is a powerful critical appraisal of unceded indigenous land ownership in eastern Canada. Set against an ethnographic, historical, and legal framework, this book traces the myriad ways the Canadian state has evaded the 1763 Royal Proclamation that guaranteed First Nations people a right to their land and way of life. Focusing on the Innu of Quebec and Labrador, whose land has been taken for resource extraction and development, this book strips back the law of fiduciary duty to its origins. The Terms of Our Surrender argues for the preservation of land ownership and positions First Nations people as natural land defenders amidst a devastating climate crisis. This volume offers a voice to the Innu people, detailing the spirituality practices, culture, and values that make it impossible for them to willingly cede their land. This book is intended to bridge the gap in knowledge between legal practitioners and those working at the intersections of human rights, social work, and public policy. It offers a potent template for using the law to fight back against the indignities suffered by indigenous communities.

In July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) set out to stabilise and secure Rwanda, a country decimated by genocide. This mandate was later extended to include the herculean task of promoting unity and reconciliation to a population torn apart by violence. More than two decades later, these goals appear to have been achieved. Beneath the veneer of reconciliation lies myriad programmes and legislation that do more than seek to unite the population - they keep the RPF in power. In Reconciling Rwanda: Unity, Nationality and State Control, Jennifer Melvin analyses the highly controversial RPF and its vision of reconciliation to determine who truly benefits from the construction of the new post-genocide Rwanda.

Human rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are at last reaching the heart of global debates. Yet 78 states worldwide continue to criminalise same-sex sexual behaviour, and due to the legal legacies of the British Empire, 42 of these - more than half - are in The Commonwealth of Nations. In recent years many states have seen the emergence of new sexual nationalisms, leading to increased enforcement of colonial sodomy laws against men, new criminalisations of sex between women and discrimination against transgender people. Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change challenges these developments as the first book to focus on experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) and all non-heterosexual people in the Commonwealth. The volume offers the most internationally extensive analysis to date of the global struggle for decriminalisation of same-sex sexual behaviour and relationships.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals initiative has the potential to set the direction for a future world that works for everyone. Approved by 193 United Nations member countries in September 2016 to help guide global and national development policies through the year 2030, the seventeen goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, but also include new priority areas, such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace, and justice. Assessed against commonly agreed targets and indicators, the goals should facilitate inter-governmental cooperation and the development of regional and even global development strategies. This book explores, through a series of case studies, the substantial challenges for assembling reliable data and statistics to address pressing development challenges, particularly in Africa. By highlighting the enormous potential value of creating and using high quality data, statistics, and records as an interconnected resource and describing how this can be achieved, the book will contribute to defining meaningful and realistic global and national development policies in the critical period to 2030.

What is 'cultural oblivion' and 'psychological colonialism', and how are they affecting the capacity of Indigenous Peoples in Canada to actively resist systematic and territorial oppression by the state?Following a decade-long research project, this book examines the production of oblivion among the author's own community, the Essipiunnuat ['People of the Brook Shells River'] and the relationship between a colonial imperative to forget. The book illustrates how the 'cultural oblivion' of vulnerable minority communities is a critical human rights issue but also asks us to reflect upon both the role of the state and the local elite in creating and warping our perception and understanding of history.

The digital age throws questions of representation, participation, and humanitarianism back to the fore, as machine learning, algorithms, and big data centers take over the process of mapping the subjugated and subaltern. Mapping Crisis questions whether it is the map itself that is in crisis. This book brings together critical perspectives on the role that mapping people, knowledges, and data now plays in humanitarian work, both in cartographic terms and through data visualizations. Since the rise of Google Earth in 2005, there has been an explosion in the use of mapping tools to quantify and assess the needs of the poor, including those affected by climate change and the wider neo-liberal agenda. Yet, while there has been a huge upsurge in the data produced around these issues, the representation of people remains questionable. Some have argued that representation has diminished as people are increasingly reduced to data points. In turn, this data has become ever more difficult to analyze without vast computing power, leading to a dependency on the old colonial powers to refine the data of the poor, before selling it back to them.

Since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes--mass atrocities--have been explicitly illegal. When such crimes are committed, the international community has an obligation to respond: the human rights of the victims outweigh the sovereignty claims of states that engage in or allow such human rights violations. This obligation has come to be known as the responsibility to protect. Yet, parallel to this responsibility, two other, related responsibilities have developed: to prosecute those responsible for the crimes, and to provide humanitarian relief to the victims--what the author calls the responsibility to palliate. Even though this rhetoric of protecting those in need is well used by the international community, its application in practice has been erratic at best.In International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa, Kurt Mills develops a typology of responses to mass atrocities, investigates the limitations of these responses, and calls for such responses to be implemented in a more timely and thoughtful manner. Mills considers four cases of international responses to mass atrocities--in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Darfur--putting the cases into historical context and analyzing them according to the typology, showing how the responses interact. Although all are intended to address human suffering, they are very different types of actions and accomplish different things, over different timescales, on different orders of magnitude, and by very different types of actors. But the critical question is whether they accomplish their objectives in a mutually supportive way - and what the trade-offs in using one or more of these responses may be. By expanding the understanding of international responsibilities, Mills provides critical analysis of the possibilities for the international community to respond to humanitarian crises in the future.

The countries of the global north and west that have enjoyed hegemonic preponderance in international affairs over the last two centuries are seeing their relative influence on the world stage decline in favour of rising powers of other regions. As the ability of the global north and west to project normative standards with regards to social organisation, international relations and the role of the state is waning, what emerging norms might guide future trajectories for global society? As human rights is a highly politicised and contentious area of discourse and practice, what future might there be for human rights in a non-western world? The London Debates 2011 workshop sought to bring together established academics and early career researchers from a variety of disciplines to reflect upon possible futures for world order and the implications for human rights. In this edited volume, nuanced analysis covers the ongoing debate on the universality of human rights, the outlook for human rights in an Islamic context, the role of civil society in the future of human rights, and human rights in China. The London Debates are a series of discussion workshops convened by the School of Advanced Study that bring together outstanding early career researchers to consider a subject of broad concern within the humanities and social sciences. The workshops are attended by a small group of invited senior academics and early-career researchers - in their final year of doctoral study or up to ten years beyond the award of their doctorate - selected by an international open competition. The Debates include lectures, plenary seminars and small-group discussions. The School of Advanced Study at the University of London is the UK's national centre for the facilitation and promotion of research in the humanities and social sciences. The School brings together the specialised scholarship and resources of ten prestigious research institutes to offer academic opportunities, facilities and stimulation across a wide range of subjects for the benefit of the national and international scholarly community.

By the end of the 20th century the once great modern European empires had gone - well, almost! Today, scattered around the world, there are small territories, remnants of empire that for one reason and another have eschewed independence and retain links of various kinds with the former imperial power. This edited collection focuses primarily on those territories in the Caribbean and Pacific which retain these 'colonial' ties. The issues affecting them such as constitutional reform, the maintenance of good governance, economic development, and the risks of economic vulnerability are important concerns for all territories both independent and non-independent. However, the ways in which these issues are addressed are somewhat different in small sub-national jurisdictions because of the particular regimes in place and the tensions inherent between the territories and their respective metropoles. The book brings together academics, policy-makers, constitutional lawyers, and civil servants to provide an insight into the complexities, contradictions, challenges and opportunities that help to define the non-independent territories of the Caribbean and Pacific, and their long-standing but sometimes awkward ties with their metropolitan powers.

This book offers multidisciplinary perspective on contemporary development discussions in Latin America, marked on the one hand by the pursuit of economic growth, technological improvement and poverty reduction, and on the other hand by the growing concern over the preservation of the environment and human rights. It analyses some of the crucial challenges, contradictions and promises within current development, environmental and human rights practices in Latin America. Taking a multi-level perspective that links the local, national, regional and transnational levels of inquiry, the collection approaches questions concerned with the interaction of state and non-state actors in the promotion and opposition to natural resource development and how development policies have impacted on communities in the region and the promotion and protection of human rights. By focusing on the different, though interrelated levels of interaction (local, national, transnational), as well as actors and roles, the book contemplates the complex panorama of competing visions, concepts and interests grounded in mutual influences and dependencies that are shaping the contemporary arena of social-environmental conflicts in Latin America. The multi-dimensional scope of the book demonstrates the complexity of socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America and the mutual influences and interdependencies that are shaping the contemporary arena of social-environmental conflicts in Latin America.

Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance and Hope is an outcome of a five-year international collaboration among partners that share a common legacy of British colonial laws that criminalise same-sex intimacy and gender identity/expression. The project sought to facilitate learning from each other and to create outcomes that would advance knowledge and social justice. The project was unique, combining research and writing with participatory documentary filmmaking. This visionary politics infuses the pages of the anthology.The chapters are bursting with invaluable first hand insights from leading activists at the forefront of some of the most fiercely fought battlegrounds of contemporary sexual politics in India, the Caribbean and Africa. As well, authors from Canada, Botswana and Kenya examine key turning points in the advancement of SOGI issues at the United Nations, and provide critical insights on LGBT asylum in Canada. Authors also speak to a need to reorient and decolonise queer studies, and turn a critical gaze northwards from the Global South. It is a book for activists and academics in a range of disciplines from postcolonial and sexualities studies to filmmaking, as well as for policy-makers and practitioners committed to envisioning, and working for, a better future.