Beginning with the Nixon administration, this book offers a detailed historical overview of U.S. human rights policy, highlighting the complex interplay between human rights issues and foreign policy across different administrations. The author reveals how paradoxes in policy have not hindered but rather facilitated advancements in human rights protections over the years. Readers will gain insights into the evolution of U.S. human rights policy over 35 years, illustrating how these concerns increasingly influenced foreign policy decisions.
Focusing on children's rights, the book examines the obligation of states to address hunger through a human rights lens. It investigates the impact of both national and international policies on chronic child hunger, offering a comparative analysis of various governmental approaches. Through this exploration, it highlights the critical need for effective legal frameworks to ensure that children are protected from hunger and advocates for policy improvements to uphold their rights.
"Human Rights and US Foreign Policy provides a comprehensive historical overview and analysis of the complex and often vexing problem of understanding the formation of U.S. human rights policy. The proper place of human rights and fundamental freedoms in U.S. foreign policy has long been debated among scholars, politicians, and the American public. The history of United States human rights policy unfolds as a series of prevarications that are the result of presidential preferences, along with the conflict and cooperation among bureaucratic actors. Since the inception of U.S. human rights policy, presidents have attempted to tell only part of the truth or to reformulate the truth by redefining the meaning of the terms human rights, democracy, or torture, for example. In this way, human rights policy has been about prevarication. While Human Rights and US Foreign Policy is a key text for students, it will appeal to all readers who will find in a single volume a historically informed, argument driven, account of the erratic evolution of U.S. human rights policy since the Nixon administration"--
"A natural hazard is a physical event but a disaster is a social and political phenomenon. Natural hazards are, for the most part, unavoidable and apolitical. However, they carry with them serious political, economic, and social consequences. Disasters also have adverse consequences on human rights standards. An understanding of the relationship between disasters and human rights outcomes requires knowledge of how disasters increase grievance and frustration, and impact the probability of contentious political behavior. To date, there has been little empirical or theoretical research on the specific circumstances under which disasters impact antigovernment political behavior, and even less is known of the causal chain between a natural disaster, protest activity, and human rights violations. In this book, Clair Apodaca maps a comprehensive causal model of the complex interactions between disasters and human rights violations. She claims that pre-existing inequalities and societal grievances turn a natural hazard into a disaster. A grievance-based theory of protests suggests that the underlying structural causes are social and economic group disparities, political exclusion, along with population pressures. To turn these all too common conditions into active political behavior requires a triggering event. When a damage-loss is the primary consequence of a disaster, the government and international community can compensate victims by providing rebuilding and reconstruction aid. However, when the disaster results in high numbers of fatalities, the government and international community cannot adequately compensate survivors for their losses. Grievances cannot be easily or effectively eliminated, and survivors and their supporters mobilize for change even if they are likely to face state repression. Clair Apodaca offers a unique contribution to our understanding of human rights violations. She effectively shows that there is a causal process between hazard events, protest activities, and government repression, a finding that is key to scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers working in this field" (ed.)
