Online Exclusive
Historic Wins for Democracy and Rights in El Salvador
Recently there have been two giant wins for democracy, human rights, and the environment in an unlikely spot: the small, embattled nation of El Salvador. What lessons can be learned, and can nations and activists build on these two victories?
Responsibility While Protecting (RwP) and the Intervention in Yemen
The Saudi-led coalition justified its intervention in Yemen with reference to its “responsibility” to protect the people of Yemen, yet the intervention has put more civilians at risk. Drew Thompson argues that RwP, if it were an established norm, may have led to a different outcome.
Is the EU Gradually Renouncing its Fundamental Values in Order to Better Protect its External Borders?
Given the EU’s increasing outsourcing of its border security strategy to third countries, Solon Ardittis calls for “a fully fledged set of fundamental rights guidelines and monitoring mechanisms” to ensure the bloc does not abandon its fundamental values in favor of protecting its external borders.
Clustering Countries, Changing Climates: An NGO Review to Close the Ambition Gap
The bottom-up element of the Paris Agreement has led to a substantial mismatch between the sum of individual countries’ proposed emissions cuts and the collective goal to hold global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. In this online exclusive, Ewan Kingston proposes a new NGO review of climate contributions that will encourage countries to do more to close the so-called ambition gap.
Autonomous Weapon Diplomacy: The Geneva Debates
The third and most recent informal experts’ meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) took place in April 2016 at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva. In this paper, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer addresses the procedure, negotiations, the balance of power, and diplomatic dimension of the last round of Geneva debates.
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Climate Change: A Test of American Leadership
Climate change is urgent, and it commands a moral dimension. The dry, strategic terminology about competition, conflict and instability shrouds a terrible toll of simple human suffering. At the top of the economic pile, upper-income societies will likely pay a greater share of their wealth for food; marginal societies will go without.
Choosing Among Alternative Responses to Mass Atrocity: Between the Individual and the Collectivity
MARK OSIEL
When a country pursues only a single mode of atrocity response, it will over-individualize or over-collectivize its treatment of wrongdoer and victim, in turn imposing additional injustices.
Response to “Against Moral Absolutism: Surveillance and Disclosure After Snowden”
WILLIAM E. SCHEUERMAN
U.S. officials have acted irresponsibly, and because of thoughtful critics like Greenwald and Snowden, they may finally pay a modest price for their actions.
