The Hearts and Minds of the Citizens

If the US contributes increased military support to Guatemala under the premise of curtailing the drug trade, it could inadvertently further destabilize this already politically unstable country. It certainly will not contribute to developing a sense of political alliance in the hearts and minds of its citizens. Concerns about destabilization in Guatemala (and Central America more generally) and the role of this destabilization in facilitating the drug trade have led the Economist to suggest that the solution is to increase military foreign aid to Guatemala

A Rights-Based Approach to Global Injustice

Is reflection on global injustice part of the everyday lives of those who live in global privilege? Or does privilege let us wait to raise concerns about justice only when the media bring the graphic images of genocide and tragedy to our family rooms

The Right Side of the Coin: Focus on the Human Rights of People, Not the Failure of States

US policy toward failed states should focus on strengthening civil society and social movements so that people are better able to hold their leaders accountable. The language of “failed states” disassociates foreign policy from international dialogue about human rights. Instead, “failed states” is a contemporary sound bite that connotes a lack of sovereignty, suggesting that intervention would not violate national sovereignty because in a failed state, there is none. Of course, we could have a similar cynicism about the use of human rights concerns to justify invasion. Certainly, states have tried to choose when to reference international human rights norms to justify their foreign policy. But the contemporary reference to “failed states” is no less prone to political manipulation and introduces a misleadingly simplistic narrative to discuss complex political circumstances

Transnational feminism: political strategies and theoretical resources

Despite sharing many successes at promoting international collaboration, enabling effective responses to politically powerful states, increasing awareness of formerly invisible violations of the human rights of women, and gaining ground in many countries and in international law, women’s human rights activists have many differences among them—in resources, location, issue-focus and strategies. It is appropriate to pay attention to these differences, particularly as they create challenges to the movement for women’s rights. However, we argue that the women’s human rights discourse—as developed and deployed by women’s human rights activists—can be a resource for addressing these challenges internal to the movement while facing current challenges from outside the movement. Attentive to the politics of defining a movement and its spokespeople, the article includes an extensive methodological discussion. We arrive at our conclusions after observing a broad range of women’s activism and interpreting the reflections of a wide range of activists. Taken together, they offer a view of human rights as indivisible and of the rights of all humans as interrelated. This view is useful for self-reflection within women’s movements and for the ability of participants of various women’s movements to use the women’s human rights framework for meeting contemporary challenges.This report was commisioned by International Relation

Climate Change: The Equity Problem

A substantial proportion of the United States population is at or below the poverty level, yet many of the greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures proposed or adopted to date will increase the costs of energy, motor vehicles, and other consumer goods. This essay suggests that although scholarship and policymaking to date have focused on the disproportionate impact of these increased costs on the low-income population, the costs will have two important additional effects. First, the anticipated costs will generate political opposition from social justice groups, reducing the likelihood that aggressive measures will be adopted. Second, to the extent aggressive measures are adopted, they will miss large potential emissions reductions because the low-income population will be unable to respond by purchasing less greenhouse gas-intensive, but more expensive, consumer goods. The essay proposes a novel remedy to address this problem: equity offsets. These offsets will allow other individuals and organizations to subsidize low-income individuals\u27 purchase of less greenhouse gas-intensive goods, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the political opposition to emissions reduction measures, and the hardships caused by the higher costs of consumer goods. The essay suggests that the creation of a private or public equity offset program along these lines is feasible and will begin to address all three implications of the climate change equity problem

Testing the Tools of Development: Credit Programmes, Loan Involvement, and Women's Empowerment

Summary The effectiveness of a credit programme at empowering women depends on the success with which it defines for itself and its workers ways to challenge, while working within, the constraints on women's empowerment that may exist in the borrower's country. Support for this argument is found in the case of rural Bangladesh. Statistical evidence demonstrates the importance of a borrower's involvement in the labour, selling and accounting for the activity funded by her loan for increasing the likelihood that credit leads to empowerment. For organizations that choose to make women's empowerment their guiding goal, borrower involvement in the loan?funded activity is an understandable and measurable goal that has demonstrated impact on women's empowerment. RESUME Tester les outils du développement: les programmes de crédit, la participation aux prêts, et l'habilitation des femmes En termes de l'habilitation des femmes, l'efficacité des programmes de crédit dépend de la mesure dans laquelle ces programmes sont capables de définir, pour eux?mêmes et pour leurs travailleurs, des moyens de contester les contraintes sur l'habilitation des femmes qui existeraient dans le pays emprunteur, tout en évitant ces contraintes au niveau de la pratique. Le cas du Bangladesh rural milite en faveur de cet argument. L'évidence statistique démontre l'importance de la participation d'une emprunteuse dans le travail, les ventes et la comptabilisation même des activités financées par son prêt afin de maximaliser les chances que les crédits mèneront à l'habilitation de cette femme. Chez les organisations qui décident que leur but directeur est effectivement l'habilitation des femmes, la participation des emprunteuses dans l'activité financée par ce prêt représente un objectif à la fois compréhensible et mesurable, dont l'impact sur l'habilitation des femmes ne reste plus à démontrer. RESUMEN Los instrumentos de desarrollo puestos a prueba; programas de crédito, desarrollo y poder de decisión en la mujer La efectividad con que un programa de crédito confiere poder a la mujer depende del éxito con el cual este programa enfrenta, desde adentro, las restricciones que puedan existir en este aspecto en el país prestatario. Una prueba de este argumento se encuentra en la zona rural de Bangladesh. La evidencia estadística demuestra la importancia de la participación de prestatario/a en el proceso de trabajo, venta y contabilización para la actividad respaldada por el préstamo, ya que incrementa la posibilidad de que el otorgamiento de crédito lleve al otorgamiento de poder. Para las organizaciones que tienen como meta principal el otorgamiento de poder a la mujer, esta participación prestataria es un objetivo posible y ha demostrado tener una gran importancia en el proceso

Micro-Offsets and Macro-Transformation: An Inconvenient View of Climate Change Justice

We have been asked to examine climate change justice by discussing the methods of allocating the costs of addressing climate change among nations. Our analysis suggests that climate and justice goals cannot be achieved by better allocating the emissions reduction burdens of current carbon mitigation proposals — there may be no allocation of burdens using current approaches that achieves both climate and justice goals. Instead, achieving just the climate goal without exacerbating justice concerns, much less improving global justice, will require focusing on increasing well-being and inducing fundamental changes in development patterns to generate greater levels of well-being with reduced levels of material throughput. We identify several core characteristics of the public and private policy architectures and initiatives necessary to accomplish this task. We also propose examples of short- and long-term initiatives. Our near-term approach recognizes that a focus on public law remedies and nation-states is necessary but not sufficient. We suggest a feasible new mechanism, equity micro-offsets, that could reduce emissions while improving well-being among the poor. Equity micro-offsets can harness altruistic preferences, market mechanisms, and private oversight to reduce emissions and increase well-being in poor countries. Equity micro-offsets also suggest the nature of the long-term political, social, and economic macro-transformation that may be necessary. From household cook stove initiatives to policy architectures that include forestry, agriculture, and other overlooked sectors, achieving climate and justice goals will require transformative approaches, not just improved cost allocations

Exploring Universal Rights: A Symposium

A review of: Which Rights Should Be Universal? by William J. Talbott. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. 232pp

Grounding the political theory of global injustice in the actions of poor-led movements: a comment on Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements, Monique Deveaux, Oxford University Press, 2021

ABSTRACTIn Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements, Monique Deveaux builds a political theory of poverty as relational and responsibility for injustice as solidaristic. Identifying the ways that poor-led movements have politically theorized and acted, Deveaux develops a theory of relational poverty that entails politicizing poverty which requires local-level organizing, consciousness-raising, resisting injustice and developing and demanding alternatives, and engaging in public debate and discourse. She goes on to argue that the praxis of poor-led movements reveals normative commitments to mutuality, deference and deep listening, and risk taking. These enable movements of people in poverty to take on the injustice of poverty together across difference, privilege, and other obstacles to transformative (solidaristic) politics. Deveaux provides a mode for doing grounded normative theory (GNT) by relying on secondary literature. GNT is a methodology for doing political theory that destabilizes the epistemological authority of the political theory of the academy by treating lived experience – words and actions – as providing relevant text for analysis. The methodology is particularly important for theories related to justice. Deveaux demonstrates how this can be done with secondary sources thus enabling comprehensive engagement without avoiding burdening social movement actors with interviews or other modes of accommodating researchers