Amnesty

Abstract: According to indicators of political repression currently used by scholars, human rights practices have not improved over the past 35 years, despite the spread of human rights norms, better monitoring, and the increasing prevalence of electoral democracy. I argue that this empirical pattern is not an indication of stagnating human rights practices. Instead, it reflects a systematic change in the way monitors, like Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department, encounter and interpret information about abuses. The standard of accountability used to assess state behaviors becomes more stringent as monitors look harder for abuse, look in more places for abuse, and classify more acts as abuse. In this article, I present a new, theoretically informed measurement model, which generates unbiased estimates of repression using existing data. I then show that respect for human rights has improved over time and that the relationship between human rights respect and ratification of the UN Convention Against Torture is positive, which contradicts findings from existing research.

Abstract: This path-breaking book explores how solidarity towards vulnerable others is performed in our media environment. It argues that stories where famine is described through our own experience of dieting or or where solidarity with Africa translates into wearing a cool armband tell us about much more than the cause that they attempt to communicate. They tell us something about the ways in which we imagine the world outside ourselves. By showing historical change in Amnesty International and Oxfam appeals, in the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts, in the advocacy of Audrey Hepburn and Angelina Jolie as well as in earthquake news on the BBC, this far-reaching book shows how solidarity has today come to be not about conviction but choice, not vision but lifestyle, not others but ourselves – turning us into the ironic spectators of other people’s suffering.

Abstract: Acknowledgments vii I. Truth Commissions and the Provision of Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation by Robert I. Rotbtrg 3 II. The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson 22 III. Restoring Decency to Barbaric Societies by Rajeev Bhargava 45 IV Moral Ambition Within and Beyond Political Constraints: Reflections on Restorative Justice by Elizabeth Kiss 68 V Truth Commissions, Transitional Justice, and Civil Society by David A Crockcr 99 VI. The Moral Foundations of the South African TRC: Truth as Acknowledgment and Justice as Recognition by Andre du Toit 122 VII. Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: The Third Way by Alex Boraine 141 VIII. The Uses of Truth Commissions: Lessons for the World by Dumisa B. Ntsebexa 158 IX. Amnesty, Truth, and Reconciliation: Reflections on the South African Amnesty Process by Ronald C. Slye 170 X. Amnesty's Justice by Kent Greenawalt 189 XI. Trials, Commissions, and Investigating Committees: The Elusive Search for Norms of Due Process by Sanford Levinson 211 XII. The Hope for Healing: What Can Truth Commissions Do? by Martha Minow 235 XIII. Doing History, Doing Justice: The Narrative of the Historian and of the Truth Commission by Charles S. Mater 261 XIV Constructing a Report: Writing Up the "Truth" by Charles Villa-Yicencio and Wilhelm Yerwoerd 279 The Contributors 295 Index 299

Abstract: The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) granted amnesty to approximately 1.7 million long‐term unauthorized workers in an effort to bring them “out of the shadows” and improve their labor market opportunities. An analysis of wages using panel data for a sample of legalized men provides evidence that wage determinants are structurally different after amnesty for them but not for the comparison group as measured during the same time periods. The wage penalty for being unauthorized is estimated to range from 14% to 24%. The wage benefit of legalization under IRCA was approximately 6%.