Colonialism

The Instrumentalization of Human Rights is the Most Serious Threat to Human Rights

Prof. Souaiaia Journal Colonialism, Supremacism, Woman Rights 0

Abstract: Generally, human rights are claims made by disempowered social groups that those with power over them must do for them or must not do to them. As such, these rights can be universal. But so is the abuse of such rights because of the universality of power systems—all human societies, throughout history and across culture, have been under some form of governing entities that enjoyed and exerted power over those under their rule. Subsequently, no government can be beyond reproach when it comes to human rights abuse. Yet, when human rights abuses take place in Muslim-majority countries, Western governments impose sanctions and Western media provide extensive coverage of instances of abuse. But when similar or even more egregious or persistent human rights abuses take place in a Western country, Western governments and media outlets ignore the event or treated it like an isolated secondary event. What is behind the difference in reactions and what is the effect of ignoring human rights abuses when they happen in Western societies on human rights?

What is in the “Sacheen Littlefeather with ‘Long Overdue’ Apology After Mistreatment at 1973 Oscars” News?

Research Assistants Arts, In The News Colonialism, Exploitation, Indigenous peoples Rights, Remedial Justice, Supremacism 0

Reports of the “Academy” attempting to right a wrong are circulating widely. Headlines like this, Academy Honors Sacheen Littlefeather with ‘Long Overdue’ Apology After Mistreatment at 1973 Oscars, cover all mainstream media. A sample of the coverage can be sampled here:

Study: Britain used one of its medical schools as a colonial institution

Research Assistants Medicine, Public Health, Reports Colonialism, Eugenics, Exploitation, Supremacism 0

A recent study confirms that Britain used the London School of Tropical Medicine as an institution serving its colonial goals between 1899 and 1960; essentially confirming the use of science and medicine to further the system of colonialism, recognized by many scholars now as a crime. According to the study by Leuba Hirsch, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, “The London School of Tropical Medicine was established as a colonial institution that benefited and contributed to British colonialism in a variety of ways between 1899 and 1960.” He pointed out that the school was established by the colonial office of the British Empire, which ran the British colonies, as the funds needed to establish and operate it came from colonial contributions, which were derived from the exploitation of resources and labor in the colonies. He pointed out that the school played an active role during the two world wars, in protecting British forces from tropical diseases and protecting imperial property. He added that students and members of the school team traveled and did research on colonial populations throughout the empire. In at least one case, a British doctor deliberately infected Chinese “Hen Lu” with malaria, to test his theory about the role of mosquitoes in transmitting the disease. He explained that some of the school’s lecturers and staff were also dedicated to ethnic sciences such as eugenics, which promote the improvement of a nation’s genetic quality through selective procreation. It is noteworthy that the London School of Read more

Towards a global alliance to compensate for colonialism and its crimes

Research Assistants Comments on Rights Colonialism, Exploitation, Human Rights 0

by Muhammed Khalil Al-Mousa * The idea of colonialism has historically been based on the practice of imposing political, economic, social, cultural and legal domination by a foreign state, often a Western state, over a foreign territory and its inhabitants. Colonialism, which extended from the sixteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century, was a practice not prohibited under traditional international law, but it became prohibited since the middle of the twentieth century, when the United Nations decolonized the world. Colonial practices and policies were built on plundering the wealth of the colonial peoples, accumulating wealth and capital at their expense, impoverishing, marginalizing, enslaving and trading them, destroying their industries and agricultural and commercial activities, as well as the oppression, oppression and brutality practiced by the colonial powers in the lands under their control. Those colonial policies and practices led to structural imbalances between colonial and colonial states, manifested in historical injustice and inequality.

Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa

Editorial Team Colonialism, Economics, Poverty, Property rights 0

In Property, Institutions and Social Stratification in Africa, Franklin Obeng-Odoom offers a new comprehensive exploration of inequalities within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world, drawing on stratification economics. The book offers compelling and crucial insight into the deficiencies of mainstream economics when it comes to addressing the roots of poverty and inequality in African countries and provides new evidence of neocolonialism and exploitation of African resources across the continent, yet the challenge remains of how to bring African countries the rewards of their past, present and future property.

For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq

Review Editors Aggression, Colonialism, Legitimacy 0

Why is the use of international law becoming increasingly prevalent in global affairs? What are the consequences of the widespread use of such an incoherent, colonial and imperial law as the lingua franca? In For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, Ayça Çubukçu asks these highly important questions and reveals the ambivalent role of international law in legitimising and/or delegitimising human rights violations. The book illustrates how different and sometimes colliding understandings of justice, human rights, legitimacy and international law co-existed in response to the Iraq occupation through the case of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) (6). The WTI was organised from 2003 to 2005 by a transnational network of anti-war activists (eyewitnesses, lawyers, journalists, scholars and so forth) in Barcelona, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Genoa, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Mumbai, New York, Rome, Seoul, Stockholm and several cities in Japan in order ‘to tell and disseminate the truth about the Iraq war’ (3-4). Çubukçu defines herself as ‘a participant observer during the conceptualisation and practical formation of the WTI, committed as an activist and anthropologist at once’ (3). In addition to creating ‘an ethnographically grounded critical analysis of the politics of human rights, international law, and cosmopolitanism in the early twenty-first century’ (12), with this book Çubukçu forges a space where the politics of human rights and international law can be discussed in relation to other cases too: after all, there are other victims of empire. Read more