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Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights
Juan Méndez has experienced human rights abuse first hand. As a result of his work with political prisoners in the late 1970s, the Argentinean military dictatorship arrested, tortured, and held him for more than a year. During that time, Amnesty International adopted him as a “Prisoner of Conscience.” After his release, he moved to the United States and continued his lifelong fight for the rights of others, and the lessons he has gleaned over the decades can help us with our current struggles. Here, he sets forth an authoritative and incisive examination of torture, detention, exile, armed conflict, and genocide, whose urgency is even greater in the wake of America's recent disastrous policies. Méndez offers a new strategy for holding governments accountable for their actions, providing an essential blueprint for different human rights groups to be able to work together to effect change.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 27, 2011
About the author
Juan E. Méndez
23 books4 followersJuan Méndez is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Previously, he served as the first Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations on the Prevention of Genocide and is the former president of the International Center for Transitional Justice. He spent 15 years at Human Rights Watch, then served as executive director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica and was president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. He is currently a visiting professor of Law at Washington College of Law.
His latest book TAKING A STAND will be published 9/27 by Palgrave Macmillan. Stay tuned for giveaways, author events and more promos!
His latest book TAKING A STAND will be published 9/27 by Palgrave Macmillan. Stay tuned for giveaways, author events and more promos!
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 9, 2012
Horace Mann, one of the giants of public education in the early United States, said in his final commencement address at Antioch College, a school he founded, "treasure up in your hearts these my final words - be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity"
Juan Méndez is one who has worked tirelessly toward such a victory. This book follows his life and career from the time he was abducted, imprisoned and tortured in Argentina in the 1970's on through his service at Human Rights Watch and the UN up until the present (2011).
I give the book five stars because it achieves it's goal, providing a clear explanation of how the effort to claim human rights for all has blossomed in the last 50 years due to the efforts of people like the author who are relentless about ending the kind of injustice that allows the powerful to detain, injure and kill the powerless with impunity.
Méndez' writing style is simple, direct and easy to follow. Identifying the various agencies and organizations and what they do, he brought me to an understanding of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the procedures that allow even one individual to have a method for at least attempting to formally bring the high and mighty to account.
How is it possible that a war criminal in one country can be arrested and tried in another? You may have read in the news of how, for example, some Israeli government officials including Tzipi Livni, have been fearful of travel to London because of the risk of arrest for what happened in Operation Cast Lead in 2009/10 in Gaza. This book explains why that fear was well founded.
The fact that there is some way, no matter how unevenly effective at present, that people at the top may be held accountable for what they do, is a breath of fresh air in our world of gross injustice, one where US presidents may start wars of their own choosing, causing the death of thousands, and retire in comfort free from all responsibility.
This book follows a very logical course, that of the life of the author, under the headings of detention, torture, disappearances, immigration, solidarity, law, war, accountability and justice. Far from getting lost in detail, the chapters are lucid and brief.
Taking a Stand would be a wonderful text around which to build a course on human rights either at the high school or college level. Yet even a student in middle school could benefit from reading this book.
A regrettable fact is that the United States has fallen from the effort it put into human rights during the Carter presidency to the contempt for those rights evident in the George W. Bush presidency. I close with Méndez' words:
"At present, the human rights movement is still trying to adjust to the loss of the U.S. government as a partner in the pursuit of more effective means of promoting freedoms and protecting the vulnerable. The so-called global war on terror has placed the United States among the nations that choose to see themselves as exceptional and thus exempt from the rules of international behavior (including respect for human rights). The Bush-Cheney years eroded respect for law everywhere while not making the United States more secure. Unilateral decisions to use force and, worse, the pretense that there were human-rights-related justifications for the invasion of Iraq have made the world more cynical about civil liberties and the promotion of freedom. It is easy to see how rogue governments can claim that they are only doing what the U.S. government got away with."
Juan Méndez is one who has worked tirelessly toward such a victory. This book follows his life and career from the time he was abducted, imprisoned and tortured in Argentina in the 1970's on through his service at Human Rights Watch and the UN up until the present (2011).
I give the book five stars because it achieves it's goal, providing a clear explanation of how the effort to claim human rights for all has blossomed in the last 50 years due to the efforts of people like the author who are relentless about ending the kind of injustice that allows the powerful to detain, injure and kill the powerless with impunity.
Méndez' writing style is simple, direct and easy to follow. Identifying the various agencies and organizations and what they do, he brought me to an understanding of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the procedures that allow even one individual to have a method for at least attempting to formally bring the high and mighty to account.
How is it possible that a war criminal in one country can be arrested and tried in another? You may have read in the news of how, for example, some Israeli government officials including Tzipi Livni, have been fearful of travel to London because of the risk of arrest for what happened in Operation Cast Lead in 2009/10 in Gaza. This book explains why that fear was well founded.
The fact that there is some way, no matter how unevenly effective at present, that people at the top may be held accountable for what they do, is a breath of fresh air in our world of gross injustice, one where US presidents may start wars of their own choosing, causing the death of thousands, and retire in comfort free from all responsibility.
This book follows a very logical course, that of the life of the author, under the headings of detention, torture, disappearances, immigration, solidarity, law, war, accountability and justice. Far from getting lost in detail, the chapters are lucid and brief.
Taking a Stand would be a wonderful text around which to build a course on human rights either at the high school or college level. Yet even a student in middle school could benefit from reading this book.
A regrettable fact is that the United States has fallen from the effort it put into human rights during the Carter presidency to the contempt for those rights evident in the George W. Bush presidency. I close with Méndez' words:
"At present, the human rights movement is still trying to adjust to the loss of the U.S. government as a partner in the pursuit of more effective means of promoting freedoms and protecting the vulnerable. The so-called global war on terror has placed the United States among the nations that choose to see themselves as exceptional and thus exempt from the rules of international behavior (including respect for human rights). The Bush-Cheney years eroded respect for law everywhere while not making the United States more secure. Unilateral decisions to use force and, worse, the pretense that there were human-rights-related justifications for the invasion of Iraq have made the world more cynical about civil liberties and the promotion of freedom. It is easy to see how rogue governments can claim that they are only doing what the U.S. government got away with."
Want to Read
November 18, 2011Won this book but have yet to receive it, anyone get theirs?
July 8, 2012
Essentially everything William F. Buckley got wrong when he asserted that the Coup was a good thing for Argentina.
June 12, 2012
Excellent book, easy to read, but left me discouraged.
Want to Read
September 11, 2017Proposal Human Rights
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews