No name
Includes chapters on student activism in 1960 and 1971.
Takes Chile as case study of Christian response to torture. The Catholic Church’s Vicaria de la Solidaridad (pp. 264-7) was the major human rights monitoring body in the country, while the more ecumenical Sebastian Acevedo Movement against Torture (pp. 273-7) organized lightning protests to hightlight places or institutions implicated in torture.
Benefits from firsthand research in Western Sahara. For links to other writing by Zunes and Mundy, see http://wsahara.stephenzunes.org.
This is an interesting critical look at 'civil society' in an African context, in particular the role of international donors in promoting 'civil society', which can be seen as a continuing form of imperial control. However, the author suggests that since Malawi became a multi-party democracy in 1994 civil society groups generally played a constructive democratic role, especially in the 2011 protests against the increasingly authoritarian President Bingu wa Mutharika.
Collections of essays: Part 1 comprises Turkish experience and viewpoints; Part 2 examines conscientious objection from gender perspectives; Part 3 examines C.O. struggles in different parts of the world and Part 4 looks at conscientious objection and the law.
Study of both feminist and Islamist organizations in Morocco showing how two have influenced each other’s agendas through decades of activism.
Marxist analysis of the political and economic factors leading to a resurgence of national consciousness in the constituent parts of the UK. In a chapter on Ireland, he rejects what he sees as the oversimplified imperialist analysis of Ireland’s situation by Irish nationalists and some fellow Marxists from Connolly to Farrell. Argues the case for an independent Northern Ireland.
Martine Dufour is a member of the Movement for a Non-violent Alternative. She took part in several civil missions to Kosovo between 1993 and 2011. This book relates a pioneering experiment in civil intervention and includes elements of analysis, appreciation and assesment of the Civil Peace Intervention in a post-conflict area.
This paper identifies the impact of rampant sexual harassment on Egypt’s legal culture. As it had been vaguely defined in Egyptian laws and largely condoned by the society and justice system, sexual harassment increased over the years in both the frequency and in the intensity of its violence. As a result, legal initiatives and grassroots movements arose attempting to criminalise sexual harassment and end its social acceptability. With the fall of Mubarak, the human rights movements optimistically continued to call for an anti-sexual harassment law, but due to the continuing political turmoil, the struggle was more arduous than expected. Three years after the uprising, sexual harassment was finally criminalised and efforts to change public attitudes towards it continue, but the will of the state to enforce the law, beyond statements and promises, is yet to be proven.
Feminist legal scholar, writer, teacher, and activist Catharine A. MacKinnon discusses the #MeToo movement with Durba Mitra, professor of women, gender and sexualities studies. They discuss the origins of sexual harassment law and the relationship between the law and social movements. Other topics include the particular vulnerabilities faced by women of colour, immigrant women and trans people, and harassment in international law.
Through detailed analysis of Gandhi's campaigns from 1915 to 1922 the author illuminates the evolution of Gandhi's thinking and strategy. Overy stresses the importance of Gandhi's constructive programme, promoting local empowerment, and its interconnectedness with resistance campaigns against imperial rule.
The article argues that the Hirak is a revolutionary movement that connects with the 1954-62 independence struggle, uniting diverse social groups in a movement seen as 'the People' versus 'the System'. It also combines nationalist themes with the strategy of nonviolent resistance. The analysis draws parallels with 2011 in Tunisia, and notes the attempts to launch a similar nonviolent resistance movement in Algeria in January 2011 were successfully deflected by the regime. It then examines the record of the Boutifleka government over 20 years, which led to the Hirak.
Focuses on the lack of institutional channels to resolve the crisis and politicisation of the judiciary, and argues that the violence used strenghtened the role of the far right.
This paper analyses conceptual and tactical approaches adopted by Las Fuertes, a feminist organization that campaign for abortion rights in the conservative Mexican state of Guanajuato. Since a series of United Nations agreements throughout the 1990s enshrined reproductive rights as universal human rights, Mexican feminists have adopted the human rights platform as the basis for lobbying the government to reform restrictive abortion laws. This strategy has been successful in Mexico City in 2007 when abortion was legalised. Rather than seeking to implement abortion laws through legalistic channels, Las Fuertes has effectively challenged Mexican reproductive governance in an adversarial political environment.
Distinguished British economist Vicky Pryce examines how discrimination against women is built into the free market system, both in terms of the pay gap, glass ceiling and obstacles to entering work; and also in the implications of the growing role of robots. She argues that equality for women requires ‘radical changes to contemporary capitalism’.
This brief history of opposition to nuclear weapons has a global focus, though from a US perspective, and covers the evolution of the movement up to 1991. It starts in 1944 with the opposition of nuclear scientists. The author argues that the movement included an array of tactics, from radical dissent to public protest to opposition within the government, and succeeded in constraining the arms race and helping to make the use of nuclear weapons politically unacceptable.
Examines thwarting attempted coup by the right against Hugo Chavez in 2002. (See also the works under Venezuela in E IV.12)
Includes material on 1976-79 and 1986-87.
Prominent Maoist contributors.
Examines what can be learned from social movement activists, focusing on community, labour, feminist, gay and lesbian, peace and anti-racist groups in Hartford Connecticut.
On the 1980s revived movement against nuclear weapons, in particular Australia’s People for Nuclear Disarmament.