POL SCI 123S Study Guide - Final Guide: Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Reproductive Health, Social Inequality
10 May 2018
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Department
Course
Professor
LHRW: Report on Women Property Rights in Kenya
Customary law, statutory law
Summary: customary laws and practices have detrimental consequences of women,
because of state complicity and sympathy to powerful men.
- Customary laws and practices
- Wife inheritance (by relatives)
- Wife cleansing (sex by other man)
- Unequal inheritance between unmarried women and brothers
- Married women treated badly by husbands’ family
- Dowry: commodification of women
- No legal recognition to use land/ agricultural right: men can sell land freely while
women work the land without remuneration
- Consequences to women
- Economic: poverty, damage to larger Kenyan economy
- Health: physical and emotional violence, HIV/AIDs
- Low representation of women in government
- Lack of education for children
- Recommendation
- Protections in new constitution and support donors and organizations
Nickels: Ch2
Summary: characteristics of rights and approaches to real rights
- Rights good for setting min standards of decent gov conduct
- Problem of claiming: frowned on in non West
- Entitlement plus approach good because
- (1) emphasizes burdens and duties that come along with rights
- (2) distinguishes rights and HPG
- Legal approach arguments
- Enforceability important, non legal rights are phony without the determination of
the right
- This protects the status quo and the powerful men!
Nickels: Ch3
Summary: elements of a right
- HR as min standards for government, good because
- (1) ensure priority and universality of very severe problems
- (2) leave room for democracy
- (3) HR acceptable to independent countries
- (4) HR feasible in vast majority of countries
- Rightholders: adults
- Responsibility for HR: addresses - world gov and int community, citizens
- Scope, weight, tradeoff
- Mandatory and high priority HR
- Not absolute: can be restricted to coexist with other rights
- Scope: benefit/ freedom/ power/ immunity conferred on rightholders
- Inalienability (even though people can voluntary give up, or forfeited because of
imprisonment)
Nickels: Ch5
Nickels’ 6 part test for HR
Summary: justifying a human right, taking into account the corresponding
burdens/duties
- 6 steps to justify HR [79]
- 1. Regular experience of threats and danger in areas of right
- 2. Right important or high in priority
- 3. Universal in nature
- 4. No weaker yet effective norm
- 5. Justifiable burdens
- 6. Feasible in majority of countries
- Costs of rights - hard to estimate!
- Conflict costs: conflict with other norms or rights [82]
- Cost of using weaker means: costs of inaction (not preventing torture)
- Implementation costs: expensive often!
- Questions Shue’s claim that subsistence/basic rights cannot be sacrificed for other rights
- Replace with weaker language: they strongly support others
Nickels Ch6 - List Question?
List question, Rawls’ Ultraminimalism
Summary: The Universal Declaration’s list of HR is plausible and does not need to
shortened to accommodate cultural diversity despite Rawls’ protests, since these rights
are unified by sources such as protection of human dignity and the guarantee of a
minimally good life.
- Is the UN list of HR plausible
- 7 categories: security, due process, liberty, political participation, equality, social,
group rights
- Worry about rights expansion and inflation
- Rawls’ ultraminimalism
- Short list: life, emigration, freedom from slavery, conscience, property, equality
- Disagree with political rights
- Should have formal equality (but ok to subordinate women and minorities)
- Based on (1) doctrine of tolerance, respect of different countries (2) HR specifies
when interventions are okay
- Despite Rawls, there is no need to shorten the list to accommodate cultural diversity!
- There are many sources of unity among the HR
- Protection of dignity
- Families of rights form an inter supportive/ interdependent system
- Minimally good life
- Harmony
Singer, All Animals are equal
Speciesism, capacity to suffer
Singer condemns speciesism, pointing out that it is akin to racism. The focus on human
equality and dignity without consideration of cruel practices against animals by the
human rights regime is problematic. He exhorts us to challenge our own accepted beliefs
about proper treatment of animals
- To understand demands of liberation movements, need to see how their assumptions
are hypocritical and aim to extend basic equality to those most disadvantaged
- Basic principle of equality should be equality of consideration
- The animal’s capacity to suffer gives them right to equal consideration
- Speciesism: eat, rear, kill animals to benefit ourselves, but hurt them!
- Notion of dignity is problematic: not a characteristic shared by all human beings
(mentally inferior)
Mutua
Savior-Victim-Savage construction
Mutua critiques the SVS for being a overall Western imperialist project, insensitive to
race and culture, and viewing non-Western people as victims that are helpless, inferior,
and must be saved, while non-Western governments are savages that have no regard for
human life. Instead, he proposed a new theory that takes into account cross-cultural
contamination to create a truly universal human rights corpus
- SVS construction is problematic because
- Racial discrimination
- Eurocentric ideas
- Failure to address Western atrocities
- Redemption and imperialist project
- Excuse to conduct foreign policy
- Draw a superiority inferiority distinction
- Image of helpless, innocent nonwhites
- Displace cultures
- Need new theory that responds to diverse cultures
- Need genuine cross-cultural contamination to create universal HR corpus
Abu, Do Muslim women need saving?
Document Summary
Lhrw: report on women property rights in kenya. Summary: customary laws and practices have detrimental consequences of women, because of state complicity and sympathy to powerful men. Unequal inheritance between unmarried women and brothers. Married women treated badly by husbands" family. No legal recognition to use land/ agricultural right: men can sell land freely while women work the land without remuneration. Economic: poverty, damage to larger kenyan economy. Protections in new constitution and support donors and organizations. Summary: characteristics of rights and approaches to real rights. Rights good for setting min standards of decent gov conduct. Problem of claiming: frowned on in non west. Entitlement plus approach good because (1) emphasizes burdens and duties that come along with rights (2) distinguishes rights and hpg. Enforceability important, non legal rights are phony without the determination of the right. This protects the status quo and the powerful men!
