The Use of Human Rights?

Although human rights are commonly glorified in North America, they do have a less publicized negativity associated with them.  Starting this course off in September, I had only ever been taught about the inherent goodness of the concept of human rights.  After all, how could bad be associated with something everyone strives to defend?  Slowly throughout the course I have come to realize that human rights are a relatively new concept written in charters by developed nations of the West.  More importantly, human rights declared in international documents seem to mostly be the result of abuses rather than preventative of said abuses.  Human rights have even been manipulated by developed nations as an excuse to hypocritically invade a nation in the name of human rights.  However, intervening nations often have other agendas. 

Even with all of these ways in which human rights are limited and can be manipulated, I still believe human rights are needed.  Human rights declared on an international level publicly acknowledge that all members of the human race are equal with equal rights.  Although the enforcement and realization of these rights may not be equivalent based on the political rule one lives under, there is still the necessity of having human rights as a tangible, real thing to potentially claim or refer to.  Human rights unify us in our hope for better treatment for all.  They provide guideline, or “golden rule,” for how people should be treated.  They serve as a claim for a marginalized individual or a group to address the international press and community for help when governments are not protecting the rights of its citizens.  Internationally declared human rights also support social justice activists on a global level.  Overall, human rights discourse does have its limitations, but the hope and the promise these rights provide make them far from useless.

No Justice for Mexican Women

"The National Citizens' Observatory for Femicide (OCNF), which groups 43 human rights and women's organisations, documented around 7,000 cases of rape in 10 of Mexico's 32 states in 2010. However, the real total is assumed to be much higher as rape is considered one of the most underreported crimes.

The average age of the victims was 26, the report adds.

In cities with high crime rates like Ciudad Juárez, invaded by drug cartels, the police and army troops, groups of men frequently seize girls and women from the streets, rape them, and release them – or toss their bodies in the desert or garbage dumps."

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105941

Workers Cooperatives: A Means to Reduce Discrimination?

In Argentina, workers cooperatives are becoming an empowering method to achieve women's rights in equal labour treatment.  These worker cooperatives are not only providing easier routes to employment for women but also sexual minorities traditionally excluded from the workplace.  Cooperatives seem to be an effective way for helping the marginalized and reducing poverty so far where they have been implemented.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105940

Guatemala Week Two

The second set of Guatemala readings really put me to shame.  America’s intense involvement and murderous meddling in Guatemala depressed me and made me ashamed as an American.  The C.I.A. colluded with Guatemalan army officers who worked in narcotics smuggling in order to maintain leverage over the Guatemalan army.  It is so ludicrous that the American Drugs Enforcement Agency was at the same time working to prevent narcotics trafficking while the C.I.A. was not only undermining its efforts but much worse enabling the murder of U.S. citizens in Guatemala.  The C.I.A.  supported army officials who were responsible for vast human rights abuses.  I was even more horrified that when eventually an investigation was initiated to uncover who was behind the human rights abuses, America never fully finished or publicized it.  Overall, what happened in Guatemala and the U.S.’s involvement is appalling.

SOPA: All Your Internets Belong to the U.S.

"The U.S. Congress is currently embroiled in a heated debated over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed legislation that supporters argue is needed combat online infringement, but critics fear would create the "great firewall of the United States.""

"Since every dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domain is managed by a domain name registry in the U.S., the law effectively asserts jurisdiction over tens of millions of domain names regardless of where the registrant actually resides."

Basically, this act, although perhaps well-intentioned in its attempt to stop piracy, gives the U.S. a greater amount of censorship power and will affect not only American internet users but anyone using U.S. domain based sites worldwide.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michael-geist/stop-online-piracy-act_b_1097623.html

GLBT Rights and the Cuban 2012 Census

"HAVANA, Nov 11, 2011 (IPS) - Communist Party militant, gay rights activist, journalist and blogger Francisco Rodríguez has triggered an online debate in Cuba by calling for sexual diversity to be identified in the next census, due in September 2012.

Better known by the name of his blog, Paquito el de Cuba, Rodríguez has urged the national statistics office, ONEI, to follow the lead of other countries that have begun to identify same-sex couples and families in the 2010 round of global censuses approved by the United Nations."

This article outlines the need to recognize Cuba's GLBT population in the next census in order to discredit the myth that there are few GLBT in Cuba.  The hope in recognizing this population through a census is to promote rights and prevent discrimination of GLBT and to persuade parliament to approve a bill recognizing equal rights for heterosexual and homosexual couples.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105805

Guatemala Week One

Before reading this week’s selection on the United Fruit Company, I knew of its dominating power over Guatemala.  However, I did not in fact realize the extent to which the United Fruit Company treated Guatemala in a colonizing fashion.  United Fruit Company obtained a monopoly on banana production and trade and enormous economic control over the country.  By owning and controlling every mile of railroad and the only Atlantic port, Guatemalan exports were reliant on the United Fruit Company.  Thus Guatemala’s economic independence was prevented by this United States run company.  Even American politics shaped Guatemala’s state of economic freedom. 

Most terrible of all to me is the United Fruit Company’s denial of labour rights.  By establishing low wages and preventing labour unions from forming, farm workers were kept in a poor state.  The discrimination against indigenous people and people of color contributed to unequal conditions.  As is referenced in the reading, “nobody could dispute the fact that the United Fruit Company had taken out of Guatemala far more in excessive profits than it had ever put into that poverty-stricken nation.”  The United Fruit Company amplified impoverished conditions, and the company’s past involvement in Guatemala’s food production and land use has contributed to Guatemala’s state of insecurity and childhood malnutrition today.