Search results

This practitioner article uses human rights education (HRE) to frame issues of social justice, particularly anti-Black racism, depicted in the film Till. Teachers cognizant of the need to address racism in American history often struggle to find resources that are accessible and meaningful for their students (Howard and Navarro, 2017; Vickery and Rodriguez, 2022). Furthermore, the use of film in social studies instruction can be an engaging way for students to develop conceptual knowledge and grapple with sensitive issues in history education (Stoddard, 2012).

Till (2022) is a powerful film that teachers can use to pursue anti-racist goals in their classrooms, and HRE provides an approach to analyze a horrible manifestation of racism in American history as well as frame larger systems of injustice. By using widely accepted standards of human dignity, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, teachers can address dimensions of oppression and inequality with a more “neutral” or objective approach.

Given the current political climate that instills fear in educators who teach about racism, HRE can empower social studies teachers to engage students in analysis of a dominant force in American life.

The lesson plan offered in this article includes a film viewing guide, enrichment opportunities and an activity that connects themes in Till and the Civil Rights Movement to human rights concepts.

This study investigates (1) whether democratization drives sovereign credit ratings (SCR) changes (the “democratic advantage”) or whether SCR changes affect democratization, (2) whether the degree of democratization in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries affects the associations and (3) whether the associations are significantly affected by resource dependence.

This study investigates the effects of SCR changes on democracy in 22 SSA countries over the period of 2000–2020 VEC Granger causality/block exogeneity Wald tests, and impulse responses and variance decomposition analyses with Cholesky ordering and Monte Carlo standard errors in a panel VECM framework.

The full sample impulse responses find that a SCR shock has a long-run detrimental effect on the democracy and political rights but only a short-run positive impact on civil liberties. Among the sub-samples, it is found that the extent of natural resource dependence does not affect the magnitude of SCR shocks on democratization mentioned above but it is found that a SCR shock affects long-run democracy in SSA countries that are relatively more democratic but is more likely to drive democratic deepening in less democratic SSA countries. The full sample variance decompositions further finds that the variance of SCR to a political rights shock outweighs the effects of all the macroeconomic factors, whereas in more diversified SSA countries, the variances of SCR are much greater for democracy and political rights shocks, which suggests that democratization and political rights in diversified SSA economies are severely affected by SCR changes. In the case of the high and low democracy sub-samples, it is found that the variance of SCR in the relatively higher democracy sub-sample is greater than in the low democracy sub-sample.

These results have three implications for democratization in SSA. First, the effect of a SCR change is not a democratically agnostic and impacts political rights to a greater extent than civil liberties. Second, SCR changes have the potential to spark a negative cycle in SSA countries whereby a downgrade leads to a deterioration in socio-political stability coupled with increased financial economic constraints that in turn drive further downgrades and macroeconomic hardship. Finally, SCR changes are potentially detrimental for democracy in more democratic SSA countries but democratically supportive in less democratic SSA countries. Thus, SSA countries that are relatively politically sophisticated are more exposed to the effects of SCR changes, whereas less politically sophisticated SSA countries can proactively shape their SCRs by undertaking political reforms.

This study is the first to examine the associations between SCR and democracy in SSA. This is critical literature for the Africa’s scholarly work given that the debate on unfair rating actions and claims of subjective rating methods is ongoing.

Since 2015, China has made efforts to reform its intellectual property rights (IPR) system to better protect and stimulate innovation. These reforms are a result of the demand for more stringent intellectual property (IP) protection from China’s domestic, innovative industries and a measure to ease the pressure exerted by its foreign trading partners, particularly against the background of the US-China trade dispute that started at the beginning of 2018. This paper summarizes these reforms and their implications.

This paper combines a variety of sources, including academic articles, government websites, news reports, industry surveys and expert opinions, to offer insights in China’s IPR system and its recent reforms.

This paper summarizes and discusses (1) the state’s law amendments, including the 2015 amendment of the “Law on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements”, the second amendment of the “Anti-Unfair Competition Law” with regard to trade secret protection, the fourth amendment of the “Patent Law”, and the legislations and regulations addressing the criticisms of the US administration over China’s so-called “forced” technology transfer policies; (2) the establishment of the specialized IP courts and tribunals since 2014; (3) the restructuring of the State IP Office; and (4) the issuing of an “Outline for Building an IPR Powerhouse (2021–2035)”.

This paper highlights China’s efforts to make its IPR system stronger and more just. It also discusses international observers’ reactions and pinpoints specific areas for further improvement.

Indonesia subscribes to rights-based principles of family planning. However, a chasm between principles and practice has long been noted on a global basis, and progress has not been well-documented. This paper aims to assess the extent to which the Indonesian national family planning program has evolved in a manner that is consistent with rights-based principles.

The primary source of data was five Indonesian Demographic Health Surveys undertaken from 1997 to 2017. The analyses were organized around three major categories of family planning-related human rights. Trend analysis and logistic regression were used in analyzing the data.

Indonesian women have considerable autonomy in family planning decision, reporting that family planning decisions were mainly made by themselves or jointly with their spouse. Although contraceptive method awareness and demand for family planning are high, Indonesia fares poorly with regard to informed choice in contraceptive method selection. Access to family planning services is comparatively high as judged by contraceptive prevalence, family planning demand satisfaction and unmet need for family planning. However, significant geographic and socioeconomic inequity were observed on many indicators, with eastern Indonesian provinces consistently lagging behind.

This paper focuses on married couple, as Indonesia has a restrictive policy to limiting access and information of family planning for other groups, unmarried youth in particular.

This paper makes an important contribution to document how effectively the prohuman rights policy orientation toward family planning has been translated into services.

This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system.

The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse.

The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy.

Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical account of the hate crime (HC) paradigm by exploring its historical legal definition and the limitations in addressing the multiple and structural discriminations faced by minority groups. Specifically, the article focuses on the case of Italy, where in recent years a fierce debate over a proposed law on HC against LGBT+ and disabled people ended in its rejection due to neoconservative and Catholic opposition.

Drawing on critical socio-criminological literature on HC, the paper analyses the Italian debates and socio-legal context over the past two decades regarding discrimination against LGBT+ groups and its (lack of) criminalization. It also provides a secondary analysis of recent data on violence and discrimination against LGBT+ people, collected by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA).

The analysis of the debate and the data collected shows that the criminal definition of HC is insufficient to capture the wider range of social and cultural violence and discrimination against LGBT+ people. Indeed, data analysis shows the effect of the low level of recognition of rights on the propensity of people to denounce and of social practitioners to recognize, discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people. It is therefore argued that the discussion on HC should move beyond the criminalization of individual violence to be entrenched in a broader reflection over the lack of recognition of sexual citizenship rights which perpetuates the vulnerability of LGBT+ people.

This paper contributes to the international socio-criminological debate on HC. It argues for a comprehensive framework that recognizes the structural nature of discrimination and violence against vulnerable groups by framing discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people as a citizenship right rather than a criminal justice issue.

The purpose of the article is to show the regime of truth in the institutional commissions that have the objective of restoring history by establishing a democratic, equitable, comprehensive, inclusive and fair criterion against the attempts of re-victimization and suppression of memory that Western political and cultural traditions have installed through their mechanisms of power.

Based on the analysis of the cases of Inés Fernández Ortega and Valentina Rosendo Cantú, they establish the material conditions from which prejudices and hegemonic stereotypes are intertwined to reproduce serious violations of human rights in democratic political and epistemic frameworks. The colonial function of the truth commissions in Mexico is analyzed, which are presented as mechanisms for social development, political and colonial reproduction of liberal democracy.

The qualitative results allow considering the way in which the different truth commissions in Mexico have been strongly linked to epistemic mechanisms in which truth and justice favor the reproduction of established relationships based on race, social class and gender. Especially in the so-called democratic transition, violence, truth and justice come together to highlight power relations in situations that have been disavowed by the intelligentsia.

The limitations of the research are found in the historical configuration of the truth commissions in Mexico. The data, references and assessments are crossed by the initial function of the truth commissions and the establishment of apparatuses and mechanisms based on transitional justice. Based on this, it can be considered a methodological oversight to shift the analysis of truth commissions toward a critical assessment of the truth as a regime of government and hegemonic and colonization criteria from two very specific cases.

The originality of the work is found in the critical discernment of truth as a political category and the coloniality of power.

This paper aims to provide an overview of South African perspectives on preventing, monitoring and combating hate victimisation, towards informing international understandings.

Using a general review approach, this paper provides a historical examination of measures proposed by the South African Government and civil society since 1994, to prevent, monitor and combat hate crime, hate speech and intentional unfair discrimination.

Regardless of a constitutional commitment to social inclusion, diversity and minority rights, significant progress remains lacking after almost three decades of related advocacy, lobbying and limited government intervention. Findings of the South African Hate Crimes Working Group (HCWG) longitudinal Monitoring Project emphasise the need for decisive legal responses to hate victimisation.

A Bill, recognising hate crime and hate speech as distinct criminal offences, has been in development for almost 15 years and will soon serve before Parliament. Enactment of this legislation will be ground-breaking in Africa.

This paper contributes to the field of hate studies by providing an overview of the journey towards current conceptual understandings of hate in (South) Africa. It sets the stage for evaluating the potential of the redesigned HCWG monitoring tool, which holds promise for early identification and intervention in hate hotspots and targeted sectors. This instrument can establish trends not only in South Africa but also across the African continent.

Remuneration policies may differ from country to country, and their effect on bank stability could be due to the legal framework. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how the legal system impacts the relationship between CEO compensation and bank stability across countries.

To test the study hypotheses, the authors use panel data of 74 banks operating in ten OECD countries during the period 2009–2016 and apply the generalized moments method regression model to better remediate the endogeneity problem.

The findings confirm that a country’s banking regulations significantly affect its bank stability. Common law countries have less bank stability than civil law countries. This result can be interpreted by the fact that, in common-law countries, banks’ CEO are strongly protected by the law, so they allocate a large part of bank assets to risky loans to improve their variable remuneration.

The research can help policymakers understand bank stability in one country. Any legal reform would require prior knowledge of how risk-taking may arise in executive compensation.

The contribution is to explain the controversial effect of executive compensation on bank stability in the framework of legal theory. The authors argue that regulators should monitor compensation structures and that the country’s legal origin of law shapes the CEO compensation structure and is a determinant of bank stability. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no studies exploring this field. So, this study tries to shed more light on the dark side of CEOs’ behavior when undertaking risky projects to maximize their remuneration.

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.

It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.

Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.

The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.

Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.

To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.

Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.