The nationalisation of the human rights debate in Egypt

ABSTRACT. The study of nationalism in Egypt has often focused on Arab nationalism and its relevance to the post‐colonial state building process. The current article shifts the focus to the Egyptian state's strategic use of nationalism as a mechanism for survival and for shoring up its failing legitimacy. In particular, the case of the human rights debate is chosen to show the regime's most recent attempt to ‘nationalise’ a rising movement which promotes universalism and poses a threat to the notion of the nation's homogeneity. By misrepresenting human rights organisations as mouthpieces of Western imperialist powers, the regime has managed to create an image of these organisations as posing a threat to Egypt's national security and undermining its international ‘reputation’. More recently, however, the state has refined its discourse on human rights by promoting an image whereby it is the ‘official agent’ of a more nationalistically defined human rights movement.     

The dark side of human rights1

Edmund Burke argued that abstract or universal rights to food and medicine were less valuable than the aid of ‘the farmer and the physician’. His point remains unanswered. Human rights receive universal lip service, but their status and justification remain murky. From one view they are universal requirements matched by counterpart universal obligations: but if so they cannot be defined or created by international Covenants. From another view they are defined by convention and have force only when states ratify international Covenants: but if so, they are not universal. This matters particularly for rights to goods and services, such as rights to food and health care. These rights require the active collaboration of those who are to deliver needed goods and services: yet this active engagement is endangered by imposing overly complex requirements in the name of compliance with human rights. Excessive demands for compliance, and excessive emphasis on complaint, compensation and blame as remedies for non‐compliance, endanger the effective contribution of the farmer and the physician, and of others on whom the provision of needed goods and services most depends.     

Legal realism and human rights

This essay uses Schmitt's work to cast new light on the relevance of the American legal tradition known as ‘legal realism’ for the history and analysis of human rights. It does so by exploring several of Schmitt's most famous criticisms of international law and human rights, and then suggests how they might correspond with a widespread critical legal tradition in the 1920s and 1930s. This essay describes in detail two fundamental features of this tradition: historicism and realism. It concludes by suggesting that a return to some of these earlier law writers and texts might be a more substantive way to develop a constructive critical position in the fields of human rights and international law than an overreliance on the politically provocative (and problematic) rhetorical flourishes of Carl Schmitt.     

谈新形势下散居少数民族合法权益法制保障问题

散居少数民族包括居住在民族自治地方以外的少数民族和居住在民族自治地方以内但不实行区域自治的少数民族.随着城市化、工业化进程的加快.少数民族人口日益散居化已经成为我国社会转型和发展的一小新趋势.当前我国散居少数民族权益法制保障建设相对滞后,侵害散居少数民族公民权益的现象和矛盾时有发生,迫切需要加强散居少数民族权益的立法保障、行政保障、司法保障、监督保障等保障机制建设,切实维护散居少数民族的合法权益.     

Transitional justice and human rights in Afghanistan

Like other societies emerging from protracted conflict, Afghanistan confronts a legacy of past crimes and violence. Communist rulers, Soviet occupiers, rural resistance fighters, Islamist parties, the Taleban movement, Pakistani volunteers, al-Qaeda members, power-seeking warlords, and the anti-Taliban coalition all contributed more or less to the litany of abuses since 1978. Almost no one in the society has been untouched, and almost no one with any power has clean hands. For these very reasons, caution and care are necessary. Demobilizing and reintegrating tens of thousands of irregular militia, as well as creating new security forces are the necessary conditions for the rest of the peace-building agenda, and, as shown by the author's first-hand experience in the Bonn negotiations over the post-Taleban succession, raising the issue of past crimes prematurely may lead fighters to revert to previous modes of behaviour. He argues for a careful start that emphasizes documenting the scale of the abuses with an emphasis on the suffering of the victims rather than the guilt of the perpetrators, in order gradually to support an Afghan debate on how to reconcile the society with its history.     

金属文物的腐蚀结构及文物保护相关问题

一、金属腐蚀概述 金属腐蚀指金属材料受到环境介质的化学作用或电化学作用而引起的变质和破坏,其中也包括上述作用与机械因素或生物因素的共同作用.某些物理作用(例如合金在某些液态金属中的物理溶解现象)也可以归入金属腐蚀范畴①.     

The HIV/AIDS pandemic: human rights,societal, and developmental issues

Abstract

This paper quotes examples from the long list of past and contemporary national accords that have linked health to human rights. It describes the dimensions and urgency of the global threat posed by the current HIV/AIDS pandemic and its continuing global acceleration, and suggests that it is failure to address the associated societal, human rights, educational, poverty, and related issues that accounts for the failure to contain it. Stressing the essential nexus between these issues and the pandemic, it is pointed out that they are most pressing in those countries in which the pandemic is spreading most rapidly, that concurrent national or international strategies to deal with them would be essential prerequisites for the success of any HIV/AIDS control programme, and that success will call for wide international collaboration and response. Recent international action on HIV/AIDS is reviewed, including the Geneva (1998) and Durban (2000) meetings of international health planners and drug manufacturers, the Cologne (1999) and Okinawa (2000) meetings of leaders of the G8 countries, and the enactment by President Clinton (2000) of the Global AIDS and Tuberculosis Relief Act. In conclusion it is stated that in spite of the urgency of the need for such international action, there are still roles for special interest community groups and for governmental and non-governmental organisations. And, while it is recognised that educational campaigns by such groups are liable to run up against entrenched taboos or conflicting cultural norms, it is acknowledged that the significant drops in infection rates recently achieved in Senegal and Uganda are evidence that such campaigns, appropriately structured, vigorously administered, and promoting the appropriate societal transformations, can work. Finally, likely roles for youth led, peer directed educational initiatives are recognised.     

国民党统治时期自由主义人权运动评析

人权为评估一国政治统治的合法性和正当性提供道德上的判断基准。只有当公民不再需要经常用人权与本国政府抗争时,此政府才被认为是合法的。鉴于史学界对国民党统治时期中国人权运动尚缺乏系统剖析,本文以介于国共之间的中间党派为历史考察对象,通过对其主导的人权运动作认真梳理,试图阐明中间党派的宪政思想及其新自由主义人权观的理论意蕴。