Explaining Amnesty International.

This can be found on the Amnesty International Web Site:

"Amnesty International is a worldwide campaigning movement that works to promote all the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards. In particular, Amnesty International campaigns to free all prisoners of conscience; ensure fair and prompt trials for political prisoners; abolish the death penalty, torture and other cruel treatment of prisoners; end political killings and "disappearances"; and oppose human rights abuses by opposition groups."

Amnesty International and Social Justice

One of the most frequent issues to come up in every discussion of human rights is what those rights and what their attendant responsibilities are. This is one arena in which metanarrative has been difficult to achieve. You can see that in the development of international law.

We have ultimately agreed, and at that, only tentatively, on the idea that both torture and piracy are crimes. But we can't agree on the fine points of what torture includes, or on how to cope with these crimes internationally. Trials in Belgium of war crimes and crimes against humanity still lead to endless debate and confusion. The official communique of the Catholic Church calls the present prosecution of members of that institution misguided.

I haven't really focussed on this since my work at UCLAW when I studied the Law of the Sea Treaty. And that was a good fifteen years ago. I hope that some of you will follow through with discussions on how we conduct discourse on rights and values and responsibilities.

More to come . . .

• Declarations or Statements upon United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea ratification

  Scroll down the list of signatory nations. Has the United States made a statement or declaration on the treaty?

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