Human Rights Politics

In 2016, a United Nations report found the UK government culpable for ‘grave and systematic violations’ of disabled people’s rights. Since then, driven by the Tory government’s obsessive drive to slash public spending whilst scapegoating the most disadvantaged in society, the situation for disabled people in Britain has continued to deteriorate. Punitive welfare regimes, the removal of essential support and services and an ideological regime that seeks to deny disability has resulted in a situation described by the UN as a ‘human catastrophe’.

Jackie Speier was twenty-eight when she joined Congressman Leo Ryan’s delegation to rescue defectors from cult leader Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. Ryan was killed on the airstrip tarmac. Jackie was shot five times at point-blank range. While recovering from what would become one of the most harrowing tragedies in recent history, Jackie had to choose: Would she become a victim or a fighter? The choice to survive against unfathomable odds empowered her with a resolve to become a vocal proponent for human rights.

This book reveals how China has used the US-led Global War on Terror as cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghur people. China’s actions, it argues, have emboldened states around the globe to persecute ethnic minorities and severely repress domestic opposition in the name of combatting terrorism. Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government announced that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its largely Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority.

In The Forever Prisoner, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy recount dramatic scenes inside multiple black sites around the world through the eyes of those who were there, trace the twisted legal justifications, and chart how enhanced interrogation, a key “weapon” in the global “War on Terror,” metastasized over seven years, encompassing dozens of detainees in multiple locations, some of whom died. Ultimately that war has cost 8 trillion dollars and 900,000 lives, while the U.S. Senate judged enhanced interrogation was torture and had produced zero high-value intelligence.

Nonie Darwish lived for thirty years in a majority Muslim nation. Everything about her life was dictated by the Islamic law code known as Sharia. But Sharia isn't staying in majority Muslim nations. Darwish now lives in the West and brings a warning; the goal of radical Islam is to bring Sharia law to your country. If that happens, the fabric of Western law and liberty will be ripped in two. Weaving personal experience together with extensive documentation and research, Darwish exposes the facts and reveals the global threat posed by Sharia law.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Transgender Rights vs. Women’s Rights from Conflicts to Co-Existence and learn about basic human rights.

The weekly column Ask a North Korean, published by NK News, invites readers from around the world to pose questions to North Korean defectors. By way of these fascinating interviews, the North Koreans themselves provide authentic firsthand testimonies about what is happening inside the "Hermit Kingdom." This book sheds critical light on all aspects of North Korean politics and society and shows that even in the world's most authoritarian regime, life goes on in ways that are very different from what you may think.

A obra, que nasce clássica, corresponde à versão revista e atualizada da tese de doutorado que o autor defendeu na Faculdade de Direito da Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main e que lhe rendeu o prêmio Walter Kolb de melhor tese de doutorado da Universidade de Frankfurt e a medalha Otto Hahn de destaque científico da Sociedade Max Planck.

Throughout history, periods have been hidden from the public. They’re taboo. They’re embarrassing. They’re gross. And due to a crumbling or nonexistent national sex ed program, they are misunderstood. Because of these stigmas, a status quo has been established to exclude people who menstruate from the seat at the decision-making table, creating discriminations like the tampon tax, medicines that favor male biology, and more. Period Power aims to explain what menstruation is, shed light on the stigmas and resulting biases, and create a strategy to end the silence and prompt conversation about periods.

Many Americans have condemned the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government.

Ottobah Cugoano’s tumultuous life put him in a unique position to testify to the horrors of slavery on many important levels. Though some of the details of his biography remain obscure (he disappeared from public record in 1791), he provides vivid testimony here about his own kidnapping on the Gold Coast at the age of thirteen; his repeated sale and transport across Africa, and eventually across the Atlantic Ocean; his experiences as part of a chain gang in the West Indies; and the way in which he managed to purchase his freedom.

Pamela Olson, a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma, had what she always wanted: a physics degree from Stanford University. But instead of feeling excited for what came next, she felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistible memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.

In Xinjiang, the large northwest region of China, the government has imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in reeducation camps. One of the incarcerated-whose sentence, unlike most others, has no end date-is Ilham Tohti, an intellectual and economist, a prolific writer, and formerly the host of a website, Uyghur Online. Here are Tohti's own words, a collection of his plain-spoken calls for justice, scholarly explanations of the history of Xinjiang, and poignant personal reflections.

Solomon Northup was born in the early 1800s in New York as a free man. He lived as a free man for over 30 years, until he was tricked into moving to Washington, DC, by men offering him a job as a musician. Once he made it to DC, he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana, where he was forced to work on a plantation until he could make his escape. 12 Years a Slave was a fast best-seller when it was published just eight years before the Civil War, and is an integral text from the time period.

On July 17, 2018, starting an unjust war became a prosecutable international crime alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Crime of Aggression is Noah Weisbord's riveting insider's account of the high-stakes legal fight to enact this historic legislation and hold politicians accountable for the wars they start. Weisbord, a key drafter of the law for the International Criminal Court, takes listeners behind the scenes of one of the most consequential legal dramas in modern international diplomacy.

Written in 1791 as a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man is a seminal work on human freedom and equality. Using the French Revolution and its ideals as an example, he demonstrates his belief that any government must put the inherent rights of its citizens above all else, especially politics. After its publication, Paine left England for France and was tried in his absence for libel against the crown.

Beyond the Sand and Sea is an extraordinary and inspiring book for anyone searching for pinpricks of light in the darkness. Meticulously reported over three years, it reveals the strength of a family of Somali refugees who never lost faith in America - and exposes the broken refugee resettlement system that kept that family trapped for more than two decades and has turned millions into permanent exiles.

In Dare to Speak, Suzanne Nossel, a leading voice in support of free expression, delivers a vital, necessary guide to maintaining democratic debate that is open, freewheeling but at the same time respectful of the rich diversity of backgrounds and opinions in a changing country. Centered on practical principles, Nossel’s primer equips listeners with the tools needed to speak one’s mind in today’s diverse, digitized, and highly divided society without resorting to curbs on free expression.

The enormous sense of optimism unleashed by the Arab Spring in 2011 soon gave way to widespread suffering and despair. Of the many popular uprisings against autocratic regimes, Tunisia's now stands alone as a beacon of hope for sustainable human rights progress. Challenging the widely shared pessimism among regional experts, Micheline Ishay charts bold and realistic pathways for human rights in a region beset by political repression, economic distress, sectarian conflict, a refugee crisis, and violence against women.

A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.