Human Rights Digital Library - Academic Info

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Digital Library

UN Commission on Human Rights

  • Situation of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay - (dead link) (February 2006)[.pdf]
Academy of European Law
 European University Institute

Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

Amnesty International

Atlantic Monthly

Bayefsky.com
The United Nations Human Rights Treaties
"...was designed for the purpose of enhancing the implementation of the human rights legal standards of the United Nations. Accessibility to UN human rights norms by individuals everywhere is fundamental to their successful realization. The information provided herein encompasses a range of data concerning the application of the UN human rights treaty system by its monitoring treaty bodies since their inauguration in the 1970's."
Sections include: Texts of the Treaties ; Amendments to the Treaties ; Documents By State - By Category - By Theme ; How to Complain About Violations ; Reform of the UN Human Rights Treaty System.
By Professor A.F. Bayefsky, York University, Toronto Canada.

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
"...is a public interest, not-for-profit environmental law firm founded in 1989 to strengthen international and comparative environmental law and policy around the world."
Publication subjects include: Biodiversity & Wildlife ; Climate Change ; Human Rights and the Environment ; International Financial Institutions ; Law & Communities ; Persistent Organic Pollutants ; State of the Environmental Law Series ; Trade.

Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism
California State University, San Bernardino
"...is a nonpartisan domestic research and policy center that serves the region and nation by examining the ways that bigotry, advocacy of extreme methods, or the use of terrorism deny civil or human rights to people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or other relevant status characteristic. The center seeks to aid scholars, community activists, government officials, law enforcement, the media and others with objective information to aid them in their examination and implementation of law and policy.
Includes case law, state and federal anti-hate laws, legislative proposals, and other countries laws.

European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE)
"ECRE is an umbrella organisation of 78 refugee-assisting agencies in 31 countries working towards fair and humane policies for the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees."

Facing History & Ourselves
"For 30 years, Facing History has been engaging students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development and lessons of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the choices they confront in their own lives."

  • Preventing Genocide: Podcasts and Online Discussions [March 2007]
    "...In an exciting collaboration with the award-winning interview program and podcast series Voices on Genocide Prevention from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, we present three new podcasts [March 2007] featuring experts in the field of genocide prevention. The podcasts will consider the legacy of Raphael Lemkin, the individual who coined the word "genocide" in 1944; the politics of intervention; and the inspiring work of young anti-genocide activists today...Following each podcast, we will facilitate an online discussion with the expert featured in the most recent podcast. Online discussions are open to the public; you may participate in one or all of the sessions."

FindLaw's Legal Commentary

Florida State University - Center for the Advancement of Human Rights

Forced Migration Online (FMO)
"Forced Migration Online (FMO) provides instant access to a wide variety of online resources dealing with the situation of forced migrants worldwide. Designed for use by practitioners, policy makers, researchers, students or anyone interested in the field, FMO aims to give comprehensive information in an impartial environment and to promote increased awareness of human displacement issues to an international community of users."
Sections include: Digital Library ; Web Catalogue ; Regional Resources ; Thematic Resources ; Handbooks & Guidelines ; Image Database.

  • Lessons Learned Report
    Children and Adolescents in Palestinian Households: Living with Effects of Prolonged Conflict and Forced Migration - A Regional Study
    - Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

George Washington University - The National Security Archive
"...an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

  • Official Report Released on Mexico's "Dirty War"
    Government Acknowledges Responsibility for Massacres, Torture, Disappearances and Genocide
    Report by the Office of Special Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto.
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 209, November 2006.
  • Prisoner Abuse: Patterns From the Past
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122, May 2004.
    "CIA interrogation manuals written in the 1960s and 1980s described 'coercive techniques' such as those used to mistreat detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to the declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive."
  • The Pentagon and the CIA Send Mixed Message to the Argentine Military
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 85.
    "The Argentine Generals were 'told by U.S. government officials' that Washington was 'not serious and committed' to human rights."
  • US Declassified Documents: Argentine Junta Security Forces Killed, Disappeared Activists, Mothers and Nuns
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 77.
    "The following 16 documents were selected from the 4,700 declassified last August by the US Department of State on human rights violations in Argentina."
  • State Department Opens Files on Argentina's Dirty War (English or Spanish)
    "New Documents Describe Key Death Squad Under Former Army Chief Galtieri."
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 73 - Part 1.
    Edited by Carlos Osorio
  • Argentine Military Believed U.S. Gave Go-Ahead for Dirty War
    "New State Department documents show conflict between Washington and US Embassy in Buenos Aires over signals to the military dictatorship at height of repression in 1976."
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book NO. 73 - Part II.
    Edited by Carlos Osorio
  • "Montesinos: Blind Ambition"
    The Peruvian Townsend Commission Report and Declassified U.S. Documentation
    Electronic Briefing Book No. 72, June 26, 2002
    Edited by Tamara Feinstein
    Also includes U.S. State Dept. Human Rights Reports on Peru and independent Peruvian Human Rights Links.
  • Peru in "The Eye of the Storm"
    Declassified U.S. Documentation on Human Rights Abuses and Political Violence
    Edited by Tamara Feinstein
  • War in Colombia
    Guerrillas, Drugs and Human Rights in U.S.-Columbia Policy, 1988-2002
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 69
    Edited by Michael Evans
  • Peru in "The Eye of the Storm"
    Declassified U.S. Documentation on Human Rights Abuses and Political Violence
    Edited by Tamara Feinstein
  • The US and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994
    Evidence of Inaction
    Edited by William Ferroggiaro
    "...detailing how US policymakers chose to be ìbystandersî during the genocide that decimated Rwanda in 1994."

Global Jurist Frontiers

Human Rights Archives on the Genocide in Bosnia (and the attempted genocide in Kosovo
Supplementary Documentation for Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia.

Human Rights Internet (HRI) - (dead link)
"HRI is dedicated to the empowerment of human rights activists and organizations, and to the education of governmental and intergovernmental agencies and officials and other actors in the public and private sphere, on human rights issues and the role of civil society. HRI seeks to accomplish the above by."

  • Human Rights Databank - E-Doc Centre - (dead link)
    "An eclectic set of electronic human rights documentation unavailable elsewhere on the Web."

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch Reports

IDEA
"...is an electronic journal created for the exchange of ideas related mainly, to cults, mass movements, autocratic power, war, genocide, democide, holocaust, and murder."

Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS)

  • HIV/AIDS
    • Gender, HIV/AIDS and Rights (English or Spanish)
      "Recognising that gender is a key factor in understanding and tackling the causes and the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, IPS undertook a multi-media programme on these themes from June 2001 - December 2002...Find a full archive of stories, radio news briefs, publications, links and training materials."
    • Shaan online
      "IPS e-zine on Gender and Human Rights"
      Re: HIV/AIDS
    • Training Manual for the Media: Gender, HIV/AIDS and Rights (2003)
      "The manual has three modules: A Gender Analysis Framework for the Media; Gender and HIV/AIDS - The Missing Story; and Improved Knowledge and Skills. Hands on exercises and examples from the media offer a practical feel to the content of the modules."

International Court of Justice

  • Unpublished Pleadings - (dead link) "The written and oral pleadings of the cases listed below are currently being prepared for printed publication. To make them available to the general public they are nowpublished on the ICJ website as electronic documents in a early, not corrected version. Most documents are PDF files..."
  • Lagrand Case (Germany v. United States of America) - (dead link) (June 28, 2001)

International Labour Organization

  • NATLEX Database
    "...is a continuously-updated database containing references to over 55,000 national laws on labour, social security, and related human rights, and over 300 laws in full text. Records and texts in NATLEX are in either English, French, or Spanish

International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg
The Nizkor Project

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

International Victimology Website (IVW)
 "...a resource for all those interested in improving justice for victims of crime and abuse of power. Through IVW, the UN Center for International Crime Prevention, the Research and Documentation Center of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice and the World Society of Victimology aim to promote the UN Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power."

[Iraq] Human and Constitutional Rights
Sections include: Hot Topics ; Country Reports ; International Links ; Regional Links ; Web Resources ; National Links ; Documents.
Maintained by the Arthur W. Diamond Law Library at Columbia Law School.

JURIST - Milosevic Trial

Karen Parker Page for Humanitarian Law
Archive of downloadable files. Providing attorneys, journalists, researchers, diplomats and advocates with documents and analyses pertaining to current armed conflicts and human rights violations worldwide. This collection includes briefs, memorandums, affidavits, petitions, speeches and country reports

Lost Art Internet Database
"...a project of both, the Federal Government of Germany and its Federal States ("L‰nder"). It registers cultural goods which were transported or stolen because of persecution, especially of Jewish citizens, as a result of World War II or as a result of National Socialism...The project is realized in co-operation of the Coordination Office and the Institute for Technical and Business Information Systems of the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg."

Michigan Refugee Case Law Site
"The site currently collects, indexes, and publishes selected recent court decisions that interpret the legal definition of a "refugee." It presently contains cases from the highest national courts of Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
University of Michigan Law School

Milosevic on Trial - Video Archive
"This Internet video archive of the proceedings of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague is a joint effort of the Human Rights Project at Bard College and the International Center for Transitional Justice."

National Academy Press (free online versions)

Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG)

Physicians for Human Rights: Afghanistan Campaign - (dead link)

  • Maternal Mortality in Herat Province, Afghanistan - (dead link) (September 2002)
    The Need to Protect Women's Rights
  • Women's Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan - (dead link)
    A Population-Based Assessment (Full Report)
  • The Taliban's War on Women - (dead link)
    1998 Executive Summary with Photo Gallery
  • Afghanistan Senate Testimony - (dead link) (March 1999)

Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March-May 1999
Online article by Patrick Ball
"A new AAAS report shows that the most plausible explanation for the exodus was a deliberate Yugoslav policy of cleansing. The report, written by Patrick Ball, deputy director of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program, uses border registries, surveys of residents of refugee camps, and other data with innovative statistical methods."

Preliminary Bibliography: Crimes of Honour
"This bibliography has been prepared under the auspices of the Project on Strategies of Response to Crimes of 'Honour' a joint project between CIMEL (Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law) and INTERIGHTS (International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights). It includes annotations of published material from books and journals followed by case summaries."

Privacy International

  • "Privacy & Human Rights"
     "This survey, by EPIC and Privacy International, reviews the state of privacy in over fifty countries around the world. The survey examines a wide range of privacy issues including, data protection, telephone tapping, genetic databases, ID systems and freedom of information laws.

Project Diana
The international archive of human rights legal documentation. This site is maintained under the guidance of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School.

The Sphere Project

Slavery Era Insurance Registry
"[I]nsurance policies from the slavery era have been discovered in the archives of several insurance companies, documenting insurance coverage for slaveholders for damage to or death of their slaves, issued by a predecessor insurance firm. These documents provide the first evidence of ill-gotten profits from slavery, which profits in part capitalized insurers whose successors remain in existence today." SB2199 Sec. 1(a).
Gov. Davis signed the bill into law in September 2000.
"...links to the Departmentís report to the California Legislature describing the information received from insurers in response to this statute, including the database of slave and slaveholder names and identifying information."
- California Dept. of Insurance

[Sudan] Human Rights Watch

TIMEasia.com: Child Slavery
"As the gap between rich and poor grows wider, destitute Asians are increasing selling their most valuable property: their children."
Sections include: Anatomy of a Deal ; Cover Story ; Camel Jockeys ; Fisher Boys ; Domestics ; Conscripts ; Related Links

[Torture] NPR - The Question of Torture
The line between interrogation and torture can be a fine one. How is torture defined, and is there ever a case to be made for it, say when national security is at stake? In a series of discussions, we examine how the U.S. government interrogates its prisoners, and the question."
- National Public Radio

Traumatology
The International Journal of Innovations in the Study of the Traumatization Process and Methods for Reducing, Preventing, and Eliminating Related Human Suffering.

United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office

United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (Habitat)

United Nations Human Rights

U.S. Department of Labor

  • Bureau of International Labor Affairs - (dead link)
    • International Child Labor Program - (dead link)

U.S. Department of State

U.S. DefenseLink

  • Department of Defense Directive 2310.01E: Detainee Program (September 2006)
    "This directive describes policy on handling international detainee operations. Regardless of the nature of detainees' conflict, the policy mandates that the US government meet a "humane standard" of treatment, incorporating Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

  • Description from Counsel of Foreign Affairs website.

United States Institute of Peace

  • Truth Commissions Digital Collection
    "...truth commissions are bodies established to research and report on human rights abuses over a certain period of time in a particular country or in relation to a particular conflict. Truth commissions allow victims, their relatives and perpetrators to give evidence of human rights abuses, providing an official forum for their accounts."

University of Minnesota Human Rights Library
"...the nation's largest collection of human rights books, monographs, periodicals and other published materials from around the world."
From the web site you can access UN documents, Treaties and other Instruments, Asylum and Refugee Materials, Human Rights Education, Bibliographies, Regional Materials, The Inter-American Human Rights System

War Crimes in Stolac
"The Complete Text of Crimes in Stolac Municipality (1992-1994). 84 pp. : ill., maps [no date of publication indicated;acquired in Sarajevo in 1996]."
"This volume records in careful and detailed fashion the human rights violations inflicted on civilians from Stolac municipality, lists of those killed and imprisoned, details the allegations against more than 150 suspected criminals against humanity, and offers an item-by-item details on the systematic destruction of non-Croat cultural property in Stolac - including all Islamic and Orthodox Christian houses of worship - by the Bosnian Croat nationalist militia (HVO)."

Women's Human Rights Resources
 "Click on the links on the right to locate diverse, quality information on women's international human rights law. Each subject is divided into: Articles: annotated bibliographic references to scholarly articles with links to full text where available...Documents: annotated references to conventions and UN Reports, NGO reports, case law and legislation with links to full text where available...Links to other websites with annotations."
Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto

Academic Email Discussion Lists

Genocide_Studies
"...is a new mailing list that seeks to broaden the discussion of genocide with an open forum on genocides past and present. Some of the themes to be addressed are: the causes of genocide; genocide scholars and scholarship; definitional debates; and current or potential genocides around the world."

*See also our Death Penalty page*

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