Abstract: The essay analyses the role of human rights for the population control movement from the 1940s to the 1970s. It is based on records from the Population Council, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations. It shows that rights-based language was introduced by advocates of population control and not by its critics and argues that portraying overpopulation as a problem for the realization of human rights became a successful political strategy in building alliances with states and the UN’s leadership. Both were key factors for the financial support and widespread implementation of population control programmes from the 1960s onwards.
Current Issue
Our latest issue is out! Featuring a dossier on cultural renditions of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center twenty years after it opened, including two essays from former detainees, our Winter 2022 issue also includes an essay on a resilience approach to human rights in contemporary Syria and Lebanon, and two essays on the International Committee of the Red Cross: one considers the organization's attempts to be neutral in early 1950s Korea, and the other presents the ICRC's managerial engagement with armed violence in Rio de Janeiro.
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International Law: A Novel, by G. (reviewed by a protagonist)
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. [I]rony [is employed] as a defense, . . . especially against the expression of intense affect . . . – M.H. Stein (1985) G.’s aspiration in his splendid new book[1] appears to be to rewrite international law as a vast novel, much as (another) G. sought to rewrite world history as a vast novel two centuries ago, in his Continue reading →
Barbarian International Law
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. Gerry Simpson has written what he is pleased to describe—tongue firmly placed in cheek—in the alternative as “the most useless book in the history of international law,” presumably saving any timid would-be-readers the trouble of checking for themselves. What the intrepid rest of us do get instead are six chapters showcasing in typical Simpsonian fashion what is possible in writing Continue reading →
Excited to share that my article, Barring Judicial Review, will be published in @VandLRev! Many thanks to everyone who provided comments on earlier drafts. More comments are welcome! https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4368442
Our new issue of @HumanityJ is out!
Among other articles, @MohamedouOuld reflects in a hauntingly beautiful piece on how fifteen years of indefinite detention, torture, and abuse in the war on terror contributed to his development as a writer.
http://humanityjournal.org/current-issue/
21 years and counting... Special dossier in Humanity on Cultural Renditions of Guantanamo and the War on Terror: http://humanityjournal.org
@HumanityJ @BingHumanRts @MansoorAdayfi @MohamedouOuld @knadimintea
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