Political Science 141:
Winter 2004
THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Professor Terry Karl
"Diligite
iustitiam qui iudicatis terram" (Love Justice, You Who Govern the World).
Lines taken from Dante's Paradise, which frame the gigantic figure
of Justice painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena
"Recordar.
To remember; from the Latin word re-cordis, to pass back through the
heart."
Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces
"How
wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to
improve the world."
Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Progress in human rights is one of the Twentieth
Century's hallmark achievements. One hundred years ago, more than half the
world lived under colonial rule; no country permitted all of its citizens to
vote; and state terrorists operated with impunity, protected by the norm of
non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Discrimination on
the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender were accepted official
practices. A mere fifty years ago, the systematic mass murder of European Jewry
by the Nazis was met with virtual silence while it was occurring. There were no
strong pressures for humanitarian intervention to stop genocide, and even
neutral states refused to open their borders to fleeing refugees. But today, a
half century after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
there has been a profound
transformation in the way that governments are expected to treat their people
and each other – even if they often do not comply.
Expanding the scope of human rights protections has not
been easy. While some important changes emerged out of religious belief and
duty, compassion, or a sense of responsibility to others, most were the outcome
from war, persecution, slavery, territorial conquest, state terror, torture,
the exploitation of women and children, ethnic cleansings, and the mass
exterminations of genocide. Furthermore, each attempt to create new visions of
rights has been met with powerful opposition and enormous resistance. Sixty-five
countries, for example, have not ratified the Convention Against Torture,
including Angola, the Congo, Liberia, Pakistan, Iraq, Nicaragua, Thailand and
Syria. And although 191 countries (including all major European allies) have
ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United States has still
not done so. Winning the protection of rights continues to be a major global
struggle – in a race against war and oppression.
This course examines the gradual construction of an
international human rights regime and a universal culture of rights. This
international regime is characterized by widely accepted norms, binding
treaties with implementation mechanisms, access by individual victims to global
and regional machinery, and transnational networks of activists who are both
better informed through new communications and less willing to accept the
limitations of traditional claims of national sovereignty. The course seeks to
understand how and why human rights standards have come into being and how they
change over time. While it makes use of legal cases and understands the
importance of technological change in fostering new notions of rights, it
focuses primarily on understanding the political
forces both propelling and opposing this rights regime.
A number of key questions will be addressed: Are human
rights universal, or are they culturally bound? Are they individual or
collective? Should civil and political rights take precedence over basic human
needs? What should be the relationship between rights and national sovereignty?
What is the role of non-governmental organizations and social movements in
changing conceptions of rights and human protections? How should new
democracies cope with the legacies of authoritarian rule, especially with
murderers and torturers? When is humanitarian intervention justified, and when
is it necessary? What are the human rights responsibilities of multinational
corporations? How should conflicts
between rights be resolved, for example, property rights versus environmental
protections or religious freedom versus discrimination against women? What role
should human rights play in U.S. foreign policy? These and other questions will
be the focus of this class.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS/
INFORMATION
The course will meet on Monday and Wednesday from 1:15
to 3:05 in 550-550A in the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering
Building. Regular participation in section is required and will contribute to
the determination of your grade.
Requirements
for undergraduates
include: an in-class mid-term exam, an in-section debate (oral) and debate memo
(written), and a take-home final essay/paper, which will draw on all of the
readings and lectures in the course and at least one issue/case of
special interest to you. Final grades will be based on an assessment of all of
these requirements and will be given, approximately, the following weighting
unless other wise specified: final paper/essay (40% of grade), mid-term (20%),
debate (20%, combined written and oral), and participation and attendance in
section (20%).
Requirements
for Ph.D.students or students preparing a written MA thesis
include class participation and research paper. The topic should be discussed
and approved by the instructor.
Dates
to Remember:
Contacting Instructors:
COURSE MATERIALS
The following books are required and can be purchased at the bookstore or found on reserve:
Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann
in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
(Penguin: 1994).
Danner Mark, The
Massacre at El Mozote (Vintage Books: 1994).
Freeman, Michael, Human Rights (Polity: 2002).
Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold’s Ghost (Mariner
Books: 1998).
Keck, Margaret and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders (Cornell University Press: 1998).
Minow, Martha, Between
Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence
(Beacon Press: 1999).
Powers, Samantha, A Problem from Hell: America and
the Age of Genocide (Basic Books: 2003).
A Reader is also required and may be purchased
(in-class) from Field Copy and Printing.
If you do not wish to purchase the reader, readings can be downloaded on
a restricted course website at http://coursework.stanford.edu
Other useful
sources of information are appended
at the end of the syllabus.
PART
I: THE EVOLUTION OF RIGHTS
Week
1: WHY HUMAN RIGHTS MATTER:
EXAMINING THE CASE OF EL SALVADOR
January 7: The Trial of Romagoza et al versus Garcia
et al.
An Introduction to the Course
Movie: Justice and the Generals
Required
Readings:
Danner, Mark, The Massacre
of El Mozote.
Portions of trial transcript, Romagoza v Garcia.
·
The entire trial transcript is available on the El
Salvador: Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and Jose Guillermo Garcia page of the
Center for Justice and Accountability at http://www.cja.org/cases/romagoza.shtml.
Click on the trial transcript link.
·
Read the testimony
of Terry Karl (Skip the credentials, if you like, and begin around 1108). http://www.cja.org/cases/Romagoza_Docs/Romagoza_Trial_Transcripts/RomagozaTrans7.8.htm
Recommended:
Read the testimony of either of the generals. You may also choose to read the testimony of
one of the plaintiffs, Juan Romagoza, Carlos Mauricio, or Neris Gonzalez, but
you will see some of this testimony on film. Be forewarned that the testimony
of these three survivors is graphic and disturbing.
Ackerman and Duvall, A
Force More Powerful, (El Salvador 1944)
Dunkerley, James, The Long War
Pearce, Jenny, Promised Land
Week
2: CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF RIGHTS
January 12: What are Human Rights? Are They Universal?
January 14: From
Colonialism to Genocide: How Rights Change
Required
Readings:
Shestack, Jerome, “The Philosophic Foundations of Human
Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 20 (May
1998): 201-234, Reader and course website.
Hochschild, King Leopold’s
Ghost. (Note: This is a gripping
book, but you do not need to know every detail of this story. Use your skimming
skills!).
Recommended:
Steiner, Henry and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context (Note that this is the most
important single sourcebook on human rights from a legal perspective).
Claude and Weston, Human
Rights in the World Community.
Twenty-Five
Human Rights Documents
Brownlie, Ian, Basic
Documents on Human Rights
Donnelly, Jack, Universal Human Rights
Henkin, Louis, The
Age of Rights
Lacquer, Walter and Barry Rubin, ed., The Human Rights Reader
Vasek, Karel, ed., The
International Dimensions of Human Rights
Nickel, James, Making
Sense of Human Rights
Week
3: WARS, HOLOCAUSTS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A RIGHTS REGIME: SOVEREIGNTY
VERSUS DOMESTIC JURISDICTION
January 19: No class for Martin Luther King Day (speaking of rights!)
January 21: World War II and the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights
Required
Readings:
Freeman, Michael, Human Rights, 14-54.
Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 3-55, 83-113 234-252.
Powers, Samantha, A Problem from Hell, pp. 1-86.
Recommended:
Nino, Carlos Santiago, Radical Evil on Trial
Taylor, Telford, The
Anatomy of the Nuremburg Trials
Persico, Joseph, Nuremburg
Tutorow, Norman, War
Crimes, War Criminals, and War Crimes Trials
Roling and Cassese, The
Tokyo Trial and Beyond
Andreopoulos, George, Genocide: The Conceptual and Historical Dimensions
Bix,
Herbert, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan.
Movie: Judgement at Nuremburg, TBA
Week
4: CONFRONTING VIOLATIONS OF RIGHTS
January 26: The Construction of a Human Rights Regime
Movie:
Generations of Resistance (chronicle of the South
African quest for freedom), March 26, 12-1, History Corner, 105.
Required
Readings:
Universal Declaration of
Human Rights http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Sikkink, Kathryn,
“Transnational Politics, International Relations Theory, and Human Rights,”
Reader and course website.
Donnelly, Jack, “International Human Rights: A Regime
Analysis,” Reader and course website.
Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, pp.
1-78.
Freeman, Human Rights, pp. 131-142.
Taylor, Charles, “Human Rights: The Legal Culture,”
Reader and course website.
Bell, Daniel, “The East Asian Challenge to Human Rights:
Reflections on an East West Dialogue,” Reader and course website.
Recommended:
Alston, Philip, ed., The
United Nations and Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal
Renteln, Alison, International
Human Rights: Universalism versus Relativism
Sieghart, Paul,
The Lawful Rights of Mankind
Falk, Richard et al., The United Nations and a Just World Order
Buergenthal, Thomas, ed., Human Rights, International Law and the Helsinki Accord
Mower, Alfred, Regional
Human Rights
Falk, Richard, Human
Rights Horizons
Beddard, R., Human
Rights in Europe
Waltz, Susan, Human
Rights and Reform: Changing the Face of North Africa
An-Na'im, Ahmed, and Francis Deng, Human Rights in Africa
Davidson, Scott, The
Inter-American Human Rights System
Forsythe, David, Human
Rights in International Relations
Smith, Jackie et al, Eds. Transnational Social Movements and Global
Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State
Khagram, Sanjeev, James V.
Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, Eds, Restructuring
World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms
PART
II: STATES AS PERPETRATORS: CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS
Week
5: Government Repression And Resistance: South Africa, Latin America, Eastern
Europe
February 2: Governments, Transnational Actors, and the
Politics of Change: Civil Rights in the US and South Africa.
February 4: From Latin America to Eastern Europe
Required
Readings:
International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_ccpr.htm
Gibson, James T. and Mika Haritos-Fatouros, “The
Education of a Torturer,” Psychology
Today, November 1986, 50-58. Reader and course website.
Keck and Sikkink, Activists
Beyond Borders, 79-120.
Klotz, Audie, “Norms Reconstituting Interests: Global
Racial Equality and U.S. Sanctions Against South Africa,” Reader and course
website.
Hawkins, Darren, “Human Rights Norms and Networks in
Authoritarian Chile,” Reader and course website.
See the National Security Archives: Chile www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/latin_america/chile.htm
Thomas, Daniel C., “The Helsinki Accords and Political
Change in Eastern Europe,” Reader and course website.
Recommended:
Willets, Peter, ed., "The Conscience of the World:" The
Influence of Non-Governmental Organizations in the UN System
Brysk, Alison, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina
Klotz, Audie, Norms in International Relations: The
Struggle Against Apartheid
Harvey, Neil, The Chiapas Rebellion
Mandela, Nelson, Long Walk to Freedom
Special issue of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review (1997)
Risse, Thomas, Stephen Ropp,
and Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human
Rights
Bushnell, P.T., State Organized Terror: The Case of Violent
Repression
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973
U.S. Senate, Administration
Review of U.S. Policy Toward the Philippines (1985)
February 9: International Criminal Strategies for
Accountability
Mid-term
Required
Readings:
Minow, Martha, Between
Vengeance and Forgiveness.
Recommended:
For an examination of the moral and political dilemmas
involved in transitional truth and justice policies, see the 1997 issues of The Hamline Law Review and Law and Contemporary Problems and the
1995 Journal of International Affairs. Also
see the excellent play by Ariel Dorfman (and the movie), Death and the Maiden.
The most valuable single source on transitional justice
is Neil Kritz’s three-volume compilation, Transitional
Justice: How Emerging Democracies
Reckon with Former Regimes, published by the United States Institute for
Peace, which includes extracts of books and articles as well as original
documents. This includes country studies
of Europe after World War II, South Korea, Spain, Portugal, South America,
Uganda, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe.
This is an excellent place to begin country-based research. On the
conditions shaping transitional truth and justice, Jon Elster, "On Doing
What One Can: An Argument against Restitution and Retribution as a Means of
Overcoming the Communist Legacy," East
European Constitutional Review, February 2000 and McAdams, James, Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in
New Democracies.
For those interested in exploring the Argentine case
more completely, see Horacio Verbitsky, The
Flight, Diana Taylor, Disappearing
Acts, and the CONADEP report Nunca
Mas. For Latin America, see Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling accounts with Torturers. On Eastern Europe, see Timothy Garton
Ash’s The File and Tina Rosenberg’s The Haunted Land.
Human Rights Watch, “The International Criminal Court,”
especially analysis of US, Online Only, http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/
February 16: No Class (President’s Day)
February 18: Women’s Rights as Human Rights
Required
Reading:
Convention on Elimination of
Discrimination against Women
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cdw.html
Keck and Sikkink, Activists
Beyond Borders,165-end
Charlesworth, Hilary, “What are Women’s International
Human Rights?” Reader and course
website.
Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, “Cultural Particularism as a Bar
to Women’s Rights: Reflections on the Middle Eastern Experience,” Reader and
course website.
Steiner, Henry and Philip Alston, “Universalism and
Cultural Relativism: Comment on the Universalist-Relativist Debate” Reader and
course website.
An Na’im, “Human Rights in the Muslim World,” Reader and
course website.
Steiner and
Alston, “The Debate over Female Circumcision” and “Comment
on Women’s Social and Economic Conditions,” Reader and course website.
Sen, Amartya, “More than 100 Million Women are
Missing,” Reader and course website.
Recommended:
Peters, Julia and Andrea Wolper, ed., Women's Rights as Human Rights
Cook, Rebecca, The
Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives
Neft, Naomi and Ann Levine, Where Women Stand: An International Report on the Status of Women in
140 Countries, 1997-1998.
Sen, Gita and Caren Grown, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s
Perspectives
Brysk, Alison, From
Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in
Latin America
Yashar, Deborah, "Contesting Citizenship:
Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America," Comparative Politics, October 1998
Salzman, Todd, “Rape
Camps as a means of Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural and Ethical Responses
to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia,” Human
Rights Quarterly, 20 (1998), 348-378
Week 8: DEVELOPMENT,
RESOURCES AND RIGHTS I
February 23: The Right to Development
February 25: The Oil Trap
Required
Readings:
Declaration on the Right to
Development
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/74.htm
Freeman, Human Rights, 148-167.
Sen, Amartya, “Freedom and
Needs” and “Is There an Obligation to Assist.” Reader and course website.
Keck and Sikkink, Activists
Beyond Borders, pp.121-165.
Khagram, Sanjeev, “Transnational Struggles for Power and
Water over Big Dams and the Changing Political Economy of Development,” Reader
and course website.
UN World Commission on Dams, “Executive Summary” and
“Enhancing Human Development: Rights, Risks and Negotiated Outcomes,” from Dams and Development: A New Framework for
Decision-Making, Reader and course website.
Karl, Terry, “The Social Consequences of Oil-Led
Development.” Reader and course website. (Note that these are Uncorrected
Proofs).
McMillan, John, “Angola’s Mislaid Billions,” Reader and
course website.
Movie: Trinkets and Beads
Recommended:
Karl, Terry, The
Paradox of Plenty
Klare, Michael, Resource
Wars
Gedicks, Al, Resource
Rebels
Travis, Lee, Power
and Responsibility
Barnet, Richard and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order
Week
9: DEVELOPMENT, RESOURCES AND RIGHTS II
March 1: Multinationals, International Financial
Institutions, and Human Rights
March 3: Health as a Right: Intellectual Property versus
Access to Essential Medicines
Required:
Useem, Jerry, “Exxon’s African Adventure,” Fortune Magazine, Reader and course
website.
Amnesty International, “Human Rights on the Line: The
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline Project.” Reader or online http://www.amnestyusa.org/business/humanrightsontheline.pdf
Ottaway, Marina, “Reluctant Missionaries,” Foreign Policy, Reader or on-line,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2001/ottaway.html
Hernandez Uriz, Genova, “To Lend or Not to Lend: Oil, Human Rights, and the
World Bank’s Internal Contradictions,” Reader and course website.
Extractive Industries Review of the World Bank, see Executive Summary of
the Final Report on the web:
Drahos, Peter, “Global
Property Rights in Information: The Story of TRIPS at the GATT,” Reader and
course website.
‘t Hoen, Ellen, “TRIPS, Pharmaceutical Patents, and
Access to Essential Medicines: A Long Way from Seattle to Doha,” Reader and
course website.
Recommended:
Gary and Karl, Bottom of the Barrel: Africa’s Oil
Boom and the Poor
Week
10: Human Rights in Domestic and Foreign
Policy
March 8: The U. S. and Human Rights
March 10: Some Final Thoughts: What a Difference a
Person Makes
Required
Readings:
Kissinger, Henry, “The
Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction,” Foreign
Affairs, Reader and course website.
Roth, Kenneth, “The Case for
Universal Jurisdiction,” Foreign Affairs,
Reader and course website.
Gordon, Joy, “Cool War:
Economic Sanctions as a Weapon of Mass Destruction,” Reader and course website.
Other debate materials TBA.
Powers, Samantha, pp. 87-517
(pages 475-516, plus 2 of the following cases: Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda,
Srebrenica, Kosovo)
Kiernan, Ben, ed., Genocide
and Democracy in Cambodia
Ignatieff, Michael, Blood
and Belonging: The New Nationalism
Gutman, Roy, A
Witness to Genocide
Allen, Beverly, Rape
Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina/Croatia
Gourevitch, Philip, We
Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories
from Rwanda.
Rieff, David, Slaughterhouse:
Bosnia and the Failure of the West
Holbrooke, Richard, To
End a War
Prunier, Gerard,
The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide
Goldstein, Joseph et al., The My Lai Massacre and Its Cover-Up
Mayall, James, The
New Interventionism: The United Nations Experience in Cambodia, the Former
Yugoslavia, and Somalia
Human Rights Watch
“Anti-Terrorism Measures in the U.S. http://www.hrw.org/wr2k2/us.html#Anti-Terrorism%20Measures%20in%20the%20United%20State
USEFUL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Websites: There are a growing
number of websites that should prove helpful to you in researching human rights
issues.
American Association for the
Advancement of Science Human Rights Program
American Civil Liberties
Union
Amnesty International
Anti-Slavery International
The Carter Center
The Center for Justice and
Accountability
Center for the Study of Human
Rights at Columbia University
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/humanrights/
Center for Women's Global
Leadership
The Coalition for
International Justice
Committee to Protect
Journalists
Freedom House
The Human Rights Internet
(Project of the Human Rights Center of the University of Ottawa)
Human
Rights Document Databank of the Human Rights Internet
United
Nations Processes and Documentation Pages of the Human Rights Internet http://www.hri.ca/uninfo/index.shtml
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Information and
Documentation Systems International (HURIDOCS)
HURISEARCH
is a new search engine provided by HURIDOCS
The International Commission
of Jurists
International Helsinki
Federation
The Internet Bibliography on
Transitional Justice
http://userpage.zedat.fu-berlin.de/~theissen/biblio/
Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights
Minnesota Human Rights
Library (an especially important site, including its section on Islam and Human
Rights)
Physicians for Human Rights
US Institute for Peace
Women's Human Rights Net
The Women’s Human Rights
Resources at the University of Toronto
http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/diana/
Sites focusing specifically on Latin America include:
The Argentine Forensic
Anthropology Team
Derechos Human Rights
and its sister organization
El Equipo Nizkor
http://www.derechos.org/nizkor
Fundación de Ayuda Social de
las Iglesias Cristianas (FASIC)
The Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo
On Eastern Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty
On South Africa
The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission
http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/index.html
Other important on-line
resources include the Human Rights Quarterly (available from Project Muse at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_rights_quarterly/
), the United Nations’ Human
Development reports (http://hdr.undp.org/),
Foreign Affairs (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/),
Foreign Policy (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/),
the UN Vienna World Conference on Human Rights and the Five Year Review of the
UN Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, which can both be found at http://www.earthsummit2002.org/toolkits/women/un-doku/un%20vienna.htm.
Key Human Rights Reports: See
especially the excellent annual reports of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International and the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights (links to these sites
are listed above). Also see the formal reports of governments, including the
U.S. Department of State’s Human Rights page (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/). The formal reports of Truth
Commissions and other commissions of inquiry are essential for various
cases. These include: Para Creer en Chile: Sintesis del Informe de
la Comision Verdad y Reconciliacion,;Las
Massacres en Rabinal (Forsensic Anthropology Team of Guatemala, 1997), The
Report of The Commission of Inquiry into violations of Human Rights: Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations (1994),
Argentina: Nunca Mas, Report of the
Argentine Commission of the Disappeared;. From
Madness to Hope: The Twelve Year War in
El Salvador, as well as many other reports that can be found in the
excellent three volume study, edited by Neil Kritz, on Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former
Regimes.
Films: All students are encouraged
to use films and novels in your papers and your exams. Some required
films will be shown for class. In addition to those required films, see the
Human Rights Film Guide (Facets Multimedia, Chicago) or some of the following
recommendations, most of which can be found in the Stanford library:
On the Holocaust: Memory of Justice, Night and Fog, Sophie's Choice,
Nuremburg, Legacy of Nuremburg, Schindler's List.
On Torture and State Terror: La Boca del Lobo (Peru), Interrogation (Poland), Missing (Chile), One of Us (Israel), Prisoner
without a Name, Cell without a Number (Argentina), Z (Greece), Who Will Cast the
First Stone (Pakistan), Cry the
Beloved Country and Biko (South Africa).
On MNCs, Development and
Rights: Bottle Babies, For
Export Only, The Face of Famine, The Big Village, Global Assembly, Silkwood, A
Civil Action.
On Civil Rights in the United
States: To Kill a
Mockingbird, Eyes on the Prize, The Long Walk Home, Mississippi Burning
On U.S. Foreign Policy: A Question of Conscience, Romero or The Situation (El
Salvador), Americas in Transition,
Banking on South Africa, .
On
Poverty and Rights: Pixote,
Central Station
On
Taking Action: Weapons of
the Spirit, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
Novels:
Read the plays of Peter Weiss, The
Investigation, and Richard Norton Taylor, Nuremburg. Or enjoy some of my favorites: Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Garcia Marquez (just
about anything), Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits, Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Vargas Llosa's Death in the Andes, Euclides da Cunha, Rebellion in the Backlands, Manlio
Argueta's One Day of Life. Anything
by Nadine Gordimer.
Human
Rights Organizations: Human Rights is not an abstract field of study.
One way to understand the politics of human rights is to familiarize yourselves
with the organizations that work in areas of your interest. The
Human Rights Internet Reporter details
the work of thousands of groups, and almost all groups can be found on the web.
A published copy of the latest Reporter
can be obtained by faxing a request to (613) 564-4054.
For those of you who want to become rights
practitioners, the Haas Public Service
Center is a good place to link up with both global and local organizations.
Your instructor also has a list of internships in the Bay Area.