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5 - Civil Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Beth A. Simmons
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

I promise you this: everyone who lives on a dollar a day in Zimbabwe will be able to afford a PalmPilot in five years. Will I be able to get a fair trial in Zimbabwe in five years? If I can get a fair trial in Zimbabwe in five years, I can assure you – even if nobody there has a PalmPilot – Zimbabwe will do just fine. If I cannot get a fair trial in Zimbabwe in five years, they can give everyone there a PalmPilot and all the bandwidth they can consume and it will not make a dime's worth of difference.

Thomas L. Friedman, “Foreign Affairs” columnist for the New York Times, UCLA, 17 January 2001

Civil rights are those personal rights granted by governments that individuals enjoy as a matter of citizenship within their state's territorial jurisdiction. The UDHR (1948) and the legally binding ICCPR (1966) define a set of such liberties that are well accepted in Western political culture and assert their connection with “the inherent dignity of the human person.” As discussed in Chapter 2, the preamble of the ICCPR itself echoes the language – “freedom from fear and want” – that rallied the Allies and much of the world to oppose fascism during World War II. Though many people believe that governments ratified the ICCPR and other agreements with little intention of actually implementing the treaty's provisions at the time of ratification, the central argument of this book is that treaties can affect rights outcomes by influencing the nature of political or social demands citizens are willing to make, the legal framework within which courts make decisions, and the agenda of governments themselves.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mobilizing for Human Rights
International Law in Domestic Politics
, pp. 159 - 201
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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  • Civil Rights
  • Beth A. Simmons, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Mobilizing for Human Rights
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511811340.005
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  • Civil Rights
  • Beth A. Simmons, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Mobilizing for Human Rights
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511811340.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Civil Rights
  • Beth A. Simmons, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Mobilizing for Human Rights
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511811340.005
Available formats
×