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Giorgio Agamben and the Current State of Affairs in Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Policy
Abstract
A number of recent voices in contemporary political and legal philosophy have suggested that something is wrong with international humanitarian relief and human rights advocacy. Such a critique no longer seems to be motivated by ideologies of Social Darwinism or by beliefs in the unconditional primacy of a raison d'État over the needs and rights of individuals. Rather, it derives from a perspective that sees humanitarian activism as an ill-conceived, often merely compensatory gesture.
... (Agamben, 1998, pp. 175-176) So, even if the nation state is in crisis in today's global world, Agamben reminds us of its lingering presence and the fact that we continue to live under the auspices of a classic state similar to that of early modern Europe (Heins, 2005;Kalyvas, 2005). 20 He concludes that the third thesis (that the camp is the biopolitical camp of the West): ...
... 186-187) and camps based on military interventions and/or humanitarian grounds (ibid., p. 187). Even so, the separation between humanitarianism and politics today and the sell-out of independent humanitarianism have been identified as the extreme phase of the separation of the rights of the citizen and the rights of man (Agamben, 1998, see also Heins, 2005): ...
The Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben's conclusion that the camp has replaced the city as the biopolitical paradigm of the West is as difficult to digest as it is easy to see how it responds to contemporary political tendencies in the world today. In this introduction to this theme issue on Giorgio Agamben and the spatialities of the camp, a detailed exposition, emulating the structure of Agamben's seminal book Homo Sacer, is conducted, tracing the genealogies of Agamben's ideas and commenting on his swiftly enhanced importance in the social sciences and humanities. The introduction concludes by outlining some possible research fields in human geogrphy where much insight could be gained if Agamben's work is given more detailed consideration.
... Como destaca Volker Heins (2005), esta afirmación supone cuatro proposiciones que son cuestionables tanto desde un plano empírico cuanto desde un registro conceptual: a) que la distinción entre lo humanitario y lo político es una expresión de la oposición entre derechos humanos y derechos ciudadanos; b) que el objetivo de las organizaciones humanitarias es la identificación y la preservación de la nuda vida; c) que a causa de su dependencia con la división entre lo político y lo humanitario, las organizaciones humanitarias se vuelven, inmovilidad) del ciudadano» (ibid., p 29). Es en esta misma línea que en el marco de un debate acaecido luego de una conferencia pronunciada por Zygmunt Bauman en el Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona el 11 de noviembre de 2005, afirmaba que la categoría de ciudadanía le parecía desesperanzada y desesperada, y entonces «la del refugiado -y pensaba en la concepción original del término como alguien que busca y encuentra refugiose me antoja una condición menos desesperada» (Agamben, 2008, p. 130). ...
Tanto en el breve artículo titulado «Más allá de los derechos del hombre» como en Homo sacer I , Giorgio Agamben tematizó sobre la decadencia de los derechos del hombre retomando algunas de las líneas mecanografiadas por Hannah Arendt. En el presente trabajo, mi intención es dar cuenta de las aproximaciones de Arendt sobre la temática de los derechos del hombre a partir de la angustiante situación que aquejaba tanto a apátridas como a refugiados durante la primera parte del siglo xx. Luego, reseñaré el modo en que Agamben se apropia de estas argumentaciones y propone la figura del refugiado como matriz para una renovación categorial. Finalmente, a partir de algunas sospechas delineadas en la obra de Karl Marx, me interesará destacar los límites que presenta esta tan apremiante renovación categorial predicada por el autor italiano.
... 35 This suggests that 'human rights are deeply intertwined with the forces of inhumanity against which they are being invoked'. 36 Furthermore, human rights are imbued with the idea that the liberal capitalist global North is 'modern' and 'civilised' and the South is 'traditional'. This has consequences for disabled people living in the global South who have different interpretations of disability and of their needs: ...
This article seeks to examine the politics of human rights and disability in light of the recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which has been central to the struggle for recognition of disabled people. Northern discourses of disability rights have strongly influenced the UNCRPD. We argue that many of the everyday experiences of disabled people in the global South lie outside the reach of human rights instruments. So we ask what, if anything, can these instruments contribute to the struggle for disability justice in the South? While Northern discourses promote an examination of disabled bodies in social dynamics, we argue that the politics of impairment in the global South must understand social dynamics in bodies.
Following the Sack of Rome in 410 CE, African Christians like Augustine welcomed migrants from Italy. This was part of a trend of catastrophic human displacement that anticipated – albeit in an inverted manner – the Mediterranean migrant crisis of the twenty-first century. It was in this context that Augustine wrote, in his City of God, of a civitas made up of peregrini – not merely “pilgrims,” but “migrants” or “refugees.” The vision of community corresponding to Augustine’s sense of peregrinatio was not the city, but the camp: the civitas that plays host to the migrant. As Agamben has reminded us, the prevalence of camps tells us something about the regime of law conditioning even those who supposedly live “outside the walls.” In light of Agamben’s insight, this article makes the case that Augustine’s political theology of peregrinatio and civitas is best understood in terms of migrancy and the refugee camp.
There are many ways to theorize transnational law. As always, there is a mainstream, and there are “sidestreams.” However, it may be more interesting to consider from which direction such theories develop. Here, in appreciation of what the German Law Journal did to transnational legal conversations, I suggest to consider three directions in transnational legal studies: (1) theorizing from above; (2) theorizing from below; and (3) theorizing from inside. As you will see, much of the theories are in the German Law Journal (GLJ).
This article explores the uneasy co-existence between two different pressing needs in post-apartheid South Africa: the urgency to reform the South African Police and the urgency to address the crime wave. Both imply a logic of exceptionality in that both are perceived to require extraordinary measures in exceptional times. On an abstract and ideal level, each of these logics of exceptionality envisages a new beginning, namely a democratic, prosperous and safe South Africa. On the level of everyday practices, however, they oppose each other radically. Indeed, they seem to conflict to the extent that the fulfilment of one is premised on the disavowal of the other. Through an exploration of how transitional justice through institutional reform fared in relation to the imperative to deal with crime, the police emerge as a central player — as the problem in relation to the first logic of exceptionality and the solution in addressing the second. The notions of conflicting logics of exceptionality and diverging new beginnings offer a useful framework for analysing and understanding the complexities at play. Empirically, the article explores police reform from 1994 until the present through ethnographic material in rural and urban South Africa as well as a media archive of police violence.
Based on a case study of the so-called ‘Kafferskraal’ land claim, this article scrutinizes the ongoing land restitution process in post-apartheid South Africa with regard to its capacity to provide a transition towards ‘justice’. After sketching the legal and institutional set-up of land restitution, the justice of the actual restitution process is explored with reference to conflicting interpretations by various actors involved in this exemplary case. Here, a focus on divergent understandings of what historically constituted valid rights in land as well as forms of past compensation reveals continuing discrepancies regarding the legitimacy of various property regimes. These differences, leading to divergent evaluations of ‘the justice’ of this claim's final outcome, are shown to be ultimately rooted in incompatible logics of exceptionality and the ordinary, which conceive of land restitution in terms of either ‘law making’ or ‘law preserving’. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of such a configuration of land restitution as a measure of transitional justice.
In the battle for political space in postconflict Guatemala, protective accompaniment presents prospects for actualizing citizenship rights. I use the term proxy citizenship to refer to the potential for limited rights transfer between citizen bodies, privileged and bare. Foreign accompaniment volunteers can influence the dynamics of conflict by being present and bearing witness, therein supporting the (re)placement of local human rights defenders in the politico-juridical sphere as rights-bearing citizens empowered to testify against impunity. I situate my own experiences in Guatemala within the broader literature on radical democratic theory and geographies of citizenship, examining the possibilities and problems associated with exploiting the differential worth of citizen bodies. Taking up the claim that presence signals the possibility of a politics, I argue that putting citizenship in the line of fire may open modest but strategic pathways in transnational solidarity.
Do countries comply with the requirements of human rights treaties that they join? Are these treaties effective in changing states' behavior for the better? This Article addresses these questions through a large-scale quantitative analysis of the relationship between human rights treaties and countries' human rights practices. The analysis relies on a database encompassing 166 nations over a nearly forty-year period in five areas of human rights law. The analysis finds that although the practices of countries that have ratified human rights treaties are generally better than those of countries that have not, noncompliance with treaty obligations appears common. More paradoxically, controlling for other factors that affect practices, it appears that treaty ratification is not infrequently associated with worse practices than otherwise expected. These findings can be explained in part, the Article contends, by the dual nature of treaties as both instrumental and expressive instruments. Treaties not only create binding law, but also declare or express the position of countries that ratify them. Because human rights treaties tend to be weakly monitored and enforced, countries that ratify may enjoy the benefits of this expression-including, perhaps, reduced pressure for improvements in practices-without bearing significant costs. This does not mean that human rights treaties do not have any positive influence, but simply that these positive effects may sometimes be offset or even outweighed by treaties' less beneficial effects. The Article concludes by considering better ways to help ensure that human rights treaties improve the lives of those they are meant to help.
In the crusade against organized crime, it has become more and more accepted that the often trans-border crime cannot sufficiently be tackled by enhanced enforcement and cooperation between states alone. An alternative tool may be what can be termed the instrumentalization of the victims to enable the prosecution of organized criminals. This brings to the fore the dilemma that the victims are often themselves offenders, as a rule, breaching provisions of immigration law. Therefore, it is typically not in their interest to bring offences of trafficking and smuggling, of which they are the victims, to the attention of the authorities. Initiatives at the international and EU/EC level, which grant limited residence rights to those victims who collaborate in the prosecution of the offenders, attempt to deal with this conflict of interest. This implies at least a partial recognition of the status of the victim.
Many believe that multinational enterprises insensitively ignore political rights and civil liberties in the countries of their investments. Frequently, non-governmental organisations accuse multinationals of fostering repressive regimes in developing countries and consider foreign direct investment (FDI) as a tool of exploitation. This paper tries to examine empirically the complex relationship between democracy and FDI in a systematic way, using cross-sectional and panel data analysis. The results indicate that - on average - investments by multinationals are significantly higher in democratic countries, thereby refuting the hypothesis that political repression fosters FDI. Yet this positive link does not hold for the 1970s, when a considerable share of FDI flowed to countries with repressive regimes.
For all its achievements in integrating Europe, the EU lacks a human rights policy which is coherent, balanced and professionally administered. Whether in relation to access to Community justice, sex equality, race and disability discrimination, or policing, or in its external policies from Kosovo to China, the Union needs new principles, procedures and institutions to design and implement an effective set of human rights policies. The introduction of a single currency, the problems of racism and xenophobia, the need for a humane refugee policy, the growing powers of the EU in many fields, and the Unions imminent eastward expansion, all make it urgent to adopt such policies. In this volume the leading experts in the field, including individuals from every EU country, provide an insightful critique of current policies and detailed recommendations for the future. The volume includes comprehensive analyses of: the competencies of the EU in human rights, access to justice, the Third Pillar.
Considerable confusion has surrounded the question of whether there exists a hierarchy of human rights in contemporary international law. Most human rights studies do not recognize such a hierarchy, mainly because of their emphasis on the indivisibility of human rights. This paper provides a possible coherent understanding of this issue from the perspective of non-derogable rights, which demonstrate the existence of a hierarchy of human rights most clearly in international law concepts. It is a serious mistake to regard non-derogable rights as a unitary concept. Rather, the concept may be identified in at least three different ways: by means of value-oriented, function-oriented and consent-oriented criteria. Within this analytical framework, and particularly with respect to the first two criteria, non-derogable rights need to be distinguished from similar concepts such as core human rights, jus cogens and obligations erga omnes. These concepts display the same character when identified by the value-oriented criterion, but this is not the case when they are identified by the function-oriented criterion. Throughout this discussion, it is argued that non-derogable rights provide the key to understanding hierarchy in international law in general.
This article is a critical evaluation of Giorgio Agamben's recent thought in the field of political philosophy, with a particular focus on the Italian philosopher's representation of Auschwitz, mostly incarnated through the metaphorical figure of the muselmann. The main argument is that Agamben's theory of negativity, which is the logical outcome of a considerable philosophical quest spanning over three decades, largely fails the test of temporality. Thus, Agamben openly denies any validity to history and his fascination for the cadaveric figure of the muselmann occults the complexity of life, survival and death inside or outside the concentration camp, a complexity which is portrayed in many historical accounts and eyewitness testimonies of Auschwitz .The conclusion is that Agamben's abstract aesthetics of disaster is quite symptomatic of contemporary philosophical representations of victims of violence, which tend to be detached from any socio‐historical framework of analysis.
L'auteur constate que les acteurs politiques sur la scène internationale portent un intérêt croissant à «l'humanitaire» et, notamment, à ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler «l'espace humanitaire», un espace qui serait clairement séparé du «politique». Cette distinction entre l'humanitaire (qui est «bon») et le politique (qui est «mauvais») est-elle justifiée? — D'une part, il n'est guère possible de poursuivre une activité humanitaire sans affronter des problèmes éminemment politiques. D'autre part, tout en soulignant l'importance du rôle des organisations humanitaires — apporter protection et assistance aux victimes de conflits —, l'auteur rappelle les limites de leurs activités. Il déplore que l'attention du public et des milieux politiques pour l'action humanitaire affaiblisse la volonté de s'occuper des causes du conflit. Le postulat d'une séparation rigide entre l'humanitaire et le politique doit être revu.
The word “neutral” comes from the Latin ne-uter and means: neither one thing nor the other. An institution or a movement is neutral when it refrains from participating in a conflict or altercation and abstains from any interference. Refraining from participation and abstaining from interference can be for various reasons: it may be a question of self-preservation and self-assertion, of the judgement that good and bad, true and false are to be found on both sides, of holding back in the interests of a higher purpose or a special task. Neutrality may however have its origin in indifference, fear and cowardice. Neutrality in itself is therefore not a virtue.
The thesis that, after September 11, 2001, there were categorical differences between Europe and the U.S. in their approaches to the dangers of terrorism, rests essentially on the claim that “Old Europe's” constitutional pacifism has failed. In this view, the global pax americana has a Hobbesian commitment to military power, and this is said to be the form adequate to realize the universal concept of peace. In principle, this is not an especially original notion. Robert Kagan, who nevertheless helped it gain a certain prominence, is merely the intellectual beneficiary of a series of classical theorists of realpolitik who agreed that conflicts could, “at the end of the day,” only be settled politically and not legally. Ironically, the prophets of this thesis were confessed Old Europeans. Carl Schmitt as well as Hans Morgenthau laid the cornerstone of these forms of cosmography, insisting that, on a global level, it is not law that rules but the free interplay of state-forces.
I have read in the newspapers that foreign citizens, when travelling to the United States on a Visa, will undergo a data registration and have their fingerprints taken. Not willing to submit myself to this treatment, I decided therefore to cancel my guest lectures at New York University for March 2004. At this time, I would like to provide reasons for my decision – a decision that I find necessary and unavoidable in spite of my sympathies for American students and professors with whom I have for many years felt connected both in friendship and professional life. This is a decision that I would hope to be adopted also by other European Intellectuals and Teachers.
The United Nations Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights unanimously approved the “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights” (the Norms) on 13 August 2003. Together with the interpretative Commentary, the Norms constitute an authoritative guide to corporate social responsibility. They are the first set of comprehensive international human rights norms specifically aimed at and applying to transnational corporations and other business entities (companies). They set out the responsibilities of companies with regard to human rights and labor rights, and provide guidelines for companies in conflict zones. They prohibit bribery and provide obligations with regard to consumer protection and the environment. General provisions of implementation include the obligation to provide reparation for a failure to comply with the Norms.
Diane Pretty died of natural causes on 11 May 2002 from motor neurone disease, a paralysing, degenerative and incurable illness. Her fight to choose the time and manner of her death assisted by her husband was a resounding legal failure. A unanimous body of judicial opinion in both the English Divisional Court and the House of Lords, followed by the European Court of Human Rights, denied that her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights had been infringed. Thus, the refusal of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to exempt Mrs. Pretty's husband from prosecution were he to undertake efforts to assist Mrs. Pretty in taking her own life was ultimately held to be lawful. At the same time, the domestic legal prohibition on assisting suicide, found in Section 2.1 of the Suicide Act of 1961 was found to be in conformity with the Convention.
As we rush around attending to the essentials of our lives (family, friends, clients, employers), what is left? Nursing Forum invites readers to engage in thoughts and activities that may awaken an untouched place. We hope these writings will kindle your personal involvement in something that was previously avoided--because of bias, fear, or uneasiness--in order to stretch your mind and spirit.
Across war-torn Iraq, Iraqis have begun to reveal the horrors of nearly
a quarter century of repressive rule. Former political prisoners have led
journalists and human rights investigators to prisons where torture and summary
executions reportedly were routine. Municipal grave diggers, shepherds, and
farmers have publicly disclosed the whereabouts of mass graves believed to
hold the bodies of those who disappeared during the rule of Saddam Hussein.1 Lacking adequate forensic expertise and in the absence
of international assistance, Iraqis have been exhuming some of these graves
in a manner that prevents forensic identification of most of the remains and
possibly brings greater mental anguish to the relatives of the deceased. For
example, in May 2003, at 2 sites located near the Mahawil military base just
north of the southern Iraqi city of Hilla, villagers used a backhoe to dig
up more than 2000 sets of remains, gouging and comingling countless skeletons
in the process, while some families used their hands to dig for bones and
shards of clothing and carted them away in wheelbarrows and buckets.1
Boomerangs and Superpowers: International Norms, Transnational Networks and US Foreign Policy, 15 Cambridge Review of International Affairs
- See Thomas
ATCA's Achilles Heel: Corporate Complicity, International Law and the Alien Tort Claims Act
- C Forcese
Expressive Law and Oppressive Norms, 86 Virginia Law Review
- See Wax
A Losing Strategy on War Crimes, International Herald Tribune
- See Giry
That's Interesting!, 1 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 309-44 (1971) (discussing why some texts are perceived as more interesting than others)
- See Davis
Der Begriff des Politischen. Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien
- See Schmitt
Review Essay: Why Do Nations Obey International Law?
- H H Koh
Regelverstöße und Verwandtes. Diskussion im Rahmen einer Vorlesung am 5.12
- . W Adorno Th
- Über Mitbestimmung
Germany: Schily criticises Cap Anamur over immigrant affair
- E G See
International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts (1996); B. Van Schaack, In Defense of Civil Redress: The Domestic Enforcement of Human Rights Norms in the Context of the Proposed Hague Judgements Convention
- See Stephens
- B Ratner
Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (1999); Z. Bauman, From Bystander to Actor
- E G See
- J Rancière
The investigation unit of the ad hoc tribunal in Sierra Leone does everything not to “jeopardize [its] future cooperation” with humanitarian organizations (personal communication from the Chief Prosecutor's office in