More than three decades have passed since the United Nations' adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, yet children's rights and dignity still confront profound challenges worldwide.... Show moreMore than three decades have passed since the United Nations' adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, yet children's rights and dignity still confront profound challenges worldwide. This book delves deep into this complex issue, meticulously examining the causes and consequences of contemporary crises in children's rights and welfare. Distinguishing itself from conventional literature and public discourse on human rights, this multidisciplinary volume offers an unparalleled global and interdisciplinary perspective. It defies traditional disciplinary boundaries, embracing an analytically eclectic and interdisciplinary approach to comprehending the intricate challenges faced by children today. This book wholeheartedly acknowledges that the issues affecting children are intricately interwoven within an intricate web of social, cultural, and historical factors, thereby requiring a holistic and problem-centric viewpoint. Far from the mainstream narrative, this anthology spotlights the frequently overlooked crises in children's rights, bringing to light those thematic and policy blind spots that have languished in obscurity. It champions an unyielding global and transnational outlook, recognizing that the contemporary predicaments confronting children are not solely products of local or national influences but are profoundly shaped by the forces and interactions of a global scale. This book uniquely contributes to children's rights scholarship by exploring children's rights and dignity through a broader lens, emphasizing the impact of politics, culture, social conflicts, and geographic variations. This timely and indispensable work serves as an invaluable resource for scholars, policymakers, and advocates dedicated to advancing the cause of children's rights on the grand stage of global governance. Show less
Why is contemporary United States foreign policy systemically hypocritical? This essay offers a legal realist perspective, which considers human rights and democracy-oriented narratives as morally... Show moreWhy is contemporary United States foreign policy systemically hypocritical? This essay offers a legal realist perspective, which considers human rights and democracy-oriented narratives as morally appealing meta-discourses that are subject to reframing, weaponisation, and instrumentalisation by a wide variety of contending political actors in pursuit of concrete material or policy objectives. The perspective of legal realism is used in the case of post-Cold War United States foreign policy to understand how normative discourses are used across various geographies of geopolitical contestations in which state-initiated violence and death are prevalent. This commentary suggests that in pursuit of its geostrategic and economic objectives, the United States government’s human rights rhetoric abroad did not match the actual consequences of its domestic and foreign policies, thereby showing systemic hypocrisy. Show less
This reflection piece sheds light on expanded state violence in global narcotic governance, offering valuable insights to perpetrator studies. It expands the focus by acknowledging the state as a... Show moreThis reflection piece sheds light on expanded state violence in global narcotic governance, offering valuable insights to perpetrator studies. It expands the focus by acknowledging the state as a collective perpetrator within the framework of global narcotic regulation. With its near-monopoly on the use of force, the state possesses significant resources to inflict violence on citizens, leading to increased number of civilian fatalities, suffering, and other forms of physical integrity rights abuses. Additionally, this piece highlights the role of structural factors in facilitating state violence and the spread of narcotic drugs, emphasizing socioeconomic inequalities and systemic discrimination perpetuated by a militaristic approach to narcotic politics. Lastly, it emphasizes the disproportionate impact of state violence and drug policies on marginalized communities, urging an examination of how coercive state agencies deliberately target minoritized groups. Show less
This paper reflects on the justifications and impacts of militarism in contemporary global narcotic governance, focusing on the interrelated questions on how state leaders and elites justify state... Show moreThis paper reflects on the justifications and impacts of militarism in contemporary global narcotic governance, focusing on the interrelated questions on how state leaders and elites justify state-perpetrated violence by invoking seemingly anti-violence concepts such as peace, security, human rights, justice, democracy, and development, and how drug war perpetrators justify their actions within and outside the state apparatus. The paper demonstrates that the war-on-drugs approach institutionalizes death and militarism as the default state policy, which represses marginalized groups based on material endowments, race, and gender, while highlighting the mechanisms of justification and implementation of a war on drugs policy approach. The paper maintains that state leaders actualize a war-on-drugs approach through intensified state violence and the perpetration of an impunity culture that protects state agents from any sort of legal prosecution for their human rights abuses. Show less
What is the relationship between constitutional order and the emergence of oligarchic politics in contemporary democratic societies? How and to what extent does constitutional design contribute to... Show moreWhat is the relationship between constitutional order and the emergence of oligarchic politics in contemporary democratic societies? How and to what extent does constitutional design contribute to oligarchic politics in contemporary liberal democratic states? Focusing on constitutional discourses, rather than the legal positivist interpretation of the constitution (or constitutions as text), I maintain that state constitutions should be understood as an ideational-discursive realm of competing discourses, paradigms, and interpretations of an ideal state. My main argument states that oligarchic democracies emerge because a coalition of stakeholders that promote neoliberal understanding of the constitution has taken hold of this discursive realm of constitutional interpretation both within the state apparatus and the public sphere. Thus, the crisis of democratic representation and its relationship to constitutional design represents ideational and materialist aspects: oligarchs promote, reinforce, and sustain self-serving constitutional interpretations and discourses that reinforce the political logic of oligarchic wealth accumulation while suppressing the politics of peaceful dissent and distributive justice. Show less
The literature on dignity in international politics can be analytically evaluated based on three key themes: (a) historical, conceptual, and political underpinnings; (b) international law and... Show moreThe literature on dignity in international politics can be analytically evaluated based on three key themes: (a) historical, conceptual, and political underpinnings; (b) international law and global governance; and (c) the global political economy. Although discussions of human dignity within these three themes draw on varied disciplines (philosophy, political theory, political science, law, and history), they demonstrate a shared purpose in investigating the nature of human dignity and its implications to understanding individuals and political orders amid increasing global interdependence. Human rights scholarship has been a firmly established research agenda in international relations (IR) since the end of the Cold War, but the notion of human dignity has yet to gain traction as a key research topic on its own beyond its peripheral association with the human rights literature. Dignity may be a highly contested concept, but its mere invocation in policy and scholarly debates attracts so much moral appeal and intellectual curiosity. If the core normative task of IR research pertains to the improvement of the human condition (and its relationship to global humanity and the ecosystem), then human dignity should feature as a core object of analytic inquiry in the future. Show less
