Universal Human Rights Month (December 2023): Books

Women's Human Rights: Seeking Gender Justice in a Globalising Age explores the emergence of transnational, UN-oriented, feminist advocacy for womens human rights, especially over the past three decades. It identifies the main feminist influences that have shaped the movement liberal, radical, third world and cosmopolitan and exposes how the Western, legalist, state-centric, and liberal biases of mainstream human rights discourse impede the realisation of human rights in womens' lives everywhere.

Much political oratory has been devoted to safeguarding America's boundary with Mexico, but policies that militarize the border and criminalize immigrants have overshadowed the region's widespread violence against women, the increase in crossing deaths, and the lingering poverty that spurs people to set out on dangerous northward treks. This book addresses those concerns by focusing on gender-based violence, security, and human rights from the perspective of women who live with both violence and poverty.

The first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around the globe through her work as a human rights lawyer defending women and children against a brutal regime in Iran. Now Ebadi tells her story of courage and defiance in the face of a government out to destroy her, her family, and her mission: to bring justice to the people and the country she loves.

US

When British attorney Peter Beneson founded Amnesty International in 1961 to campaign for the release of political prisoners, his idea of bombarding offending governments with letters, postcards, and telegrams was sharply criticized as "one of the larger lunacies of our time." Forty years later, with more than one million members and supporters in over 160 countries and territories, London-based Amnesty has impacted individual lives and played a significant role in shaping public policy, if not always practice, of governments around the globe. Amnesty's extraordinary strategies to reduce human rights abuses are critically examined in this objective look at the successes and failures of the organization over the last four decades.

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize. I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

Through its specialized agencies, the UN plays a major role in the nuclear non-proliferation regime, coordinates worldwide research on AIDS, battles illicit drugs and provides massive refugee assistance. At the same time the UN is a seriously flawed institution, an arena of mischief wherein the PLO and radical Arab states seek to delegitimize Israel. It is rampant with waste and mismanagement. During the Reagan administration, Ambassador Williamson began to confront these problems as the United States permanent representative to the UN offices in Vienna and as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in charge of America's UN policy. In the articles collected here, he shows how the US has challenged the UN to live up to the ideals of its Charter.

Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan and brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations. His investigation of conditions in Mauritania, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, and India reveals the tragic emergence of a "new slavery," one intricately linked to the global economy. Bales offers suggestions for combating the new slavery and provides examples of very positive results from organizations such as Anti-Slavery International, the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil, and the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. He also calls for researchers to follow the flow of raw materials and products from slave to marketplace in order to effectively target campaigns of "naming and shaming" corporations linked to slavery. Disposable People is the first book to point the way to abolishing slavery in today's global economy. All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund anti-slavery projects around the world.

A memoir of an extraordinary life-poet, international human rights activist and founding member of Amnesty International USA,

Author Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times.

From the controversial incarceration of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, to the brutal ethnic cleansing being practiced in Darfur, to the widespread denial of equal rights to women in many areas of the world, human rights violations are a constant presence in the news and in our lives. Taking an international perspective, and focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, health, and discrimination, this Very Short Introduction will help readers to understand for themselves the controversies and complexities behind this vitally relevant issue.