All posts filed under: Unit 4d

Is international aid effective?

Published by Editor

Although International aid rapidly increased from the 1980s onwards, its origins can be traced back to just after the Second World War, when the Marshall Plan (1947) was first introduced. A US initiative, comprising of $13 billion (around $130 billion today),the Marshall Plan aimed to improve Europe’s economic performance through boosting trade and the production of goods, and later was implemented in other parts of the developing world, due to its success in Europe, where GNP was at an all time high. This today has been the basis for all international aid, the aim of improving stability and increasing peace and prosperity in other nations to ensure security. However, international aid has sparked an ongoing debate with two antithetical positions towards it. On the one hand, many believe that foreign aid has led to more prosperous lives in LEDCs and has improve social welfare, whereas others disagree and believe it creates a dependency culture and creates a cycle of poverty. Thus, the issue of international aid has never been easy to resolve.

Was the Paris Agreement on Climate Change a success?

Published by Contributor

The Paris Climate Change Summit, also known as COP21, took place from November to December 2015. The deal unites nearly all the world’s nations in a single agreement on tackling climate change for the first time in history. The Paris Climate Change Summit is a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Conference and is currently being seen as the most appropriate response to date. However, to be able to assess whether Paris is a success or failure would depend upon what the aim was, for example, some view the Summit merely as a step in a longer process, whereas others may view the Summit as an agreement which should bring about radical change and solve the unprecedented levels of global warming the world is experiencing.

The War on Terror and Human Rights

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The relationship between human rights and combatting terrorism is increasingly prominent, especially since the ‘war on terror’. Human rights are rights which people are entitled by virtue of being human. It could be argued that an infringement on human rights is acceptable as it is the lesser of two evils compared to terrorism. However, others may argue that an infringement is simply unacceptable and can never be justified. It is also argued to be counterproductive in terms of countering terrorism. There is often much debate regarding human rights and terrorism as it is often seen as a government’s responsibility to protect the right to life of citizens therefore suggesting that both human rights and combatting terrorism should complement one another, in reality however, this is not the case. This essay will explore the ways in which terrorism is combatted, for example through: military, state security and ideological approaches, and the ways in which they do and don’t undermine human rights.

To what extent are Human rights protected in the modern world?

Published by Contributor

Human rights are rights to which people are entitled by virtue of being human, and it is thought to be universal, fundamental and indivisible. There has been increasing efforts within the international community to enforce more mechanisms and laws to ensure that human rights are protected around the world, this includes the International Criminal Court and UN Human Rights Council etc… There are also thousands of NGO’s around the world which now have a crucial role in protecting and promoting human rights, particularly through their use of the media. However, human rights can only be protected to an extent because these organisations and institutions are limited by their lack of authority to enforce action upon a state. Therefore, state sovereignty and national interest are fundamental within global politics, which impedes attempts to protect human rights.

Audio/Video : A Conversation With Ambassador Nikki Haley on Human Rights, Peace Keeping and the Security Council

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Nikki Haley discusses the United States’ goals for its term as president of the UN Security Council in April. US Ambassador Haley outlines her plans to highlight human rights and to assess current UN peacekeeping missions. A very good insight into human rights and global governance under the Trump administration.   http://alevelpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/A-Conversation-With-Nikki-Haley.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

To what extent has combatting terrorism undermined human rights?

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The overt and unapologetic violation of human rights frameworks has been an integral element of the West’s ‘war on terror’ across the last 16 years. Rooted in the attack on American soil of September 11th 2001, American interventions across the Islamic world have aimed to eradicate the threat that terrorism supposedly poses to the Western world, with little regard for the rights of both civilians and combatants in the implicated states. Meanwhile, questionable domestic policy decisions have been driven by such an assumed threat, manifesting both in security measures and in legislation applied to citizens, often entailing the violation of civil liberties in one realm or another. To many, these are ‘necessary evils’ – former Vice President Dick Cheney proclaiming that in the war on terror, the USA ‘had to work sort of on the dark side’, using ‘any means at its disposal’ – there is, at the least, an acknowledgement of the harm measures could cause. However, a more ignorant view is that these violations of human rights have not occurred whatsoever. This essay …

From the Millennium to Sustainable Development Goals: A New Paradigm

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Approaches to development rely on a particular world view. Understanding development in terms of wealth can lead to different practices and different results as understanding development in terms of freedom. The UN has taken the ‘alternative’ view on development, focusing on human development, rather than focusing on national wealth. However, even within this one organisation, changes in their ‘world view’ can be seen, affecting their development programmes.

New Patterns of Neocolonialism? Economic Relations between China and Africa

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  Neocolonialism involves a country using political, economic or other resources in other countries to gain influence or control. It has commonly been understood as a relationship between the Western core and its Southern and Eastern counterparts. However, with the identity of the ‘core’ transforming as new emerging countries increase their share of global wealth, this pattern of neocolonialism might also be changing.

Audio: The Fusion of Civilisations not A Clash of Civilisations

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The mood of much of the world is grim these days. Turmoil in the Middle East, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees; random terrorist attacks across the globe; geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe and Asia; the end of the commodity supercycle; slowing growth in China; and economic stagnation in many countries—all have combined to feed a deep pessimism about the present and, worse, the future. Historians looking back on this age from the vantage point of later generations, however, are likely to be puzzled by the widespread contemporary feelings of gloom and doom. By most objective measures of human well-being, the past three decades have been the best in history. More and more people in more and more places are enjoying better lives than ever before. Nor is this an accident— because despite Samuel Huntington’s foreboding, what has occurred over recent generations is not a clash of civilizations but a fusion of civilizations. http://alevelpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/pe_fore_010812_Article-12.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

Why global warming sharply divides political opinion

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  Climate change through global warming has become one of the most prominent issues in global politics. While there has been growing agreement that climate change is happening and that it is anthropogenic or human-induced, there continues to be a major debate about how pressing or serious the problem of global warming is. However, although there have been a variety of global conferences and meetings and the environment has been placed highly on the agenda of politicians hoping to come to office, very little has been addressed and few pledges have materialised never mind achieved. Even the Paris Climate Change commitments seem to be recently unraveling. This is mostly due to the ‘great powers’ complacent attitude towards climate change and the perception that it is of lesser importance than domestic national interests and growth.

To what extent are Human Rights globally accepted?

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The concept of human right including principles such as freedom of expression and the freedom of religion became a popular concept, adopted by many nations following the end of the Second World War in 1945. Today, the principles of Human Rights are promoted by many non-governmental organisations who survey abuses of Human Rights globally; many states also act on the international stage in a way to promote the ideas of Human Rights, an approach often criticised by Realist thinkers. However to say Human Rights are globally accepted is wrong as many non-westerners see Human Rights simply as a form of western imperialism and argue organisations such as the International Criminal Court are flawed. Therefore Human Rights is accepted as a fundamental doctrine primarily in western nations.

Evaluating different measurements of poverty.

Published by Theo Cox Dodgson

In attempting to assess the policies, namely the neoliberal policies of the last thirty years on the poor, three different ways of measuring poverty have been put forward, all with their own merits and disadvantages The first way of measuring it is the absolute income approach. The World Bank currently measures poverty in terms of people living on less than $1.90 a day. This approach has shown poverty to decrease from 50% of the world’s population in 1980 to 10% today. Peter Edwards criticizes the $1.90 figure for being too low, himself proposing $7.60. That to shows poverty to have gone down from 73% in 1980 to 60% today (as a % of world population). These absolute income approaches all show poverty to have gone in % of people down since 1980, and so are deemed inadequate by critical theorists who insist poverty is more than just how much someone is making. The next way of measuring poverty is the relative approach. Those advocating this approach insist that poverty is relative- Adam Smith himself saying …

Criticisms of Humanitarian intervention

Published by Theo Cox Dodgson

Since its intellectual ascendancy in the 1990’s, the concept of humanitarian intervention, that is, military intervention to protect human rights, has been criticized for a number of different reasons by a number of different theorists of international relations. The realist school of thinking holds that states should only act in their own self-interest, and that excessive and prolonged interventions overseas for “humanitarian” purposes only causes to weaken you as a state. Running as a realist in his 2000 election campaign, George W Bush alleged that President Bill Clinton was engaging in “social work” in areas such as the Balkans between 1995-1999 and Haiti, as well as the failed US troop deployment in Somalia and Rwanda, all of which were billed as humanitarian interventions. This caused imperial overstretch and a vulnerability at home to a possible attack. Additionally the various deployments cost billions of dollars, which should have been spent on decaying US infrastructure. Clinton’s troop deployment, Bush alleged, was not in the US national interest and so should not have been done. Such realist criticisms …

Is terrorism is a major threat to Global security?

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  Terrorism is the use of violence for furthering political ends; it seeks to create a climate of fear, apprehension and uncertainty. Global terrorism is aimed at inflicting damage and humiliation on a global power or at transforming global civilisational relations with the key example being 9/11 and al-Qaeda. The significance of terrorism has increased as its impact has become more threatening on global security, for instance 9/11 demonstrated how a global hegemon could still be struck by terrorism – the idea that no country is exempt from terror. However, this argument is limited, while America was attacked, it only happened once, proving that terrorism does not pose a ‘major threat’ to global security as it it is quite rare compared to other global disasters such as famine. However, it is undeniable to ignore that terrorism has acquired a truly global reach. Mass fear has been prompted by terrorism, attacks has quadrupled since 9/11. The Global Terrorist Index showed that in 2002 there were 982 separate attacks. By 2011 that had risen to 4,564.

Is Combatting terrorism compatible with human rights?

Published by Theo Cox Dodgson

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 30 fundamental rights and freedoms were asserted by the delegates to the United Nations. In recent years, three of these rights, right to privacy, right to not be tortured and right to not be held without charge are considered to be under threat due to the policies the Bush and Obama administrations have employed in combatting terrorism. Some attempts have been made to reconcile anti-terror policies with human rights, but so far none have stood up to scrutiny. One of the articles of the UN Declaration was a declaration of right to privacy. Attempts to combat terrorism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks have resulted in increased reliance on mass surveillance in order to catch potential terrorists. Though the American public were under the impression the NSA’s surveillance was targeted, in reality the 2013 Edward Snowden leaks revealed there was no discrimination or oversight in NSA mass surveillance, with millions of people having their right to privacy combatted for no good reason other than they may turn out …

To what extent is there a clash of civilisations?

Published by Theo Cox Dodgson

In 1993 Samuel Huntington wrote an article titled “Is there a clash of civilisations” in which he disputed Francis Fukuyama’s thesis that the end of the Cold War would not herald the end of conflict but rather a conflict that would revert to cultural or “civilizational” lines. Huntingdon furthermore argued that the world was split into 9 different civilizational orders, and the West would clash with all of them, but in particular it would clash with the Islamic world, Japan and Russia. Many attempts to refute Huntingtons thesis have been made but none stand up to scrutiny, and there is very much a clash of civilisations.

Assessing the Iran Nuclear Accord – John Kerry (Video and Audio)

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    U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry joins CFR President Richard N. Haass to discuss the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program. Kerry begins by outlining the technical restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, claiming that they considerably lengthen the amount of time it would take for the country to amass enough fissile material for a single nuclear bomb. He notes that given the alternative, which almost certainly entails war, this deal is in the best interest of the United States and countries in the region, including Israel. Over the course of the conversation, Kerry rebuts arguments commonly put forward by critics of the JCPOA and emphasizes why U.S. legislators should vote in support of the deal, allowing implementation to move forward. http://edge.media.cfr.org/content/publications/media/meetings/2015/20150724KerryGBNew.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS