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Hard Talk Forum (Winter 2008 Preview) Should the U.S. government close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility? . YES: Guantanamo Isn't Accomplishing Its Alleged Aims. It has also damaged U.S. hopes to build a global anti-terror alliance. —By Joanne Mariner* . Given Guantanamo’s appalling record, the best way that the U.S. government could mark its sixth anniversary would be to close it. Guantanamo is not just a location; it is an approach to a culture of lawlessness that should end. . Guantanamo’s remaining defenders label the detainees “combatants,” and argue that they can and should be held until the conflict they were fighting is over. The truth, however, is that most detainees were picked up far from any battlefield. Many of them were arrested by police, just like other criminal suspects, in places ranging from Karachi, Pakistan, and Cairo, Egypt, to Bangkok, Thailand. They were not wearing uniforms; nor were they carrying weapons. How can they be deemed combatants without being granted a fair opportunity to challenge the evidence against them? . The tribunals that purported to... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue. Already a subscriber? Login Now. . *Joanne Mariner is director of Human Rights Watch's Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program. She is based in New York. _____________________________________________________________________ . NO: Americans Need Guantanamo to Stay Safe. The traditional law of war guarantees that prisoners will be treated humanely. —By Lee Casey* .
Closing the United States’ detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, would be a mistake. Since the first al-Qaeda and Taliban
prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay in 2002, modern detention
facilities (Camp Delta) have been constructed there. An elaborate
status review system has been established to ensure that individuals
held at the base are indeed enemy combatants lawfully subject to
detention. Closing Guantanamo would require construction of similar
facilities capable of housing several hundred dangerous prisoners, .
Guantanamo Bay is only a location. The real debate over detaining
captured al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives there involves the war on terror
itself. Guantanamo Bay is, in fact, only part of the broader
controversy over how the United States should respond to the threat
posed by al-Qaeda and its allied jihadist entities. In 2001, the
Bush Administration . Although this law enforcement... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue. Already a subscriber? Login Now. . *Lee Casey is a partner of Baker & Hostetler LLP and a former member of the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion of Human Rights from 2004-2006. The views expressed are his own. __________________________________________ Policy Updates (Winter 2008 Preview) . Digital Divide: Educating For Cyberspace —By Jorge Werthein . In today’s technology-driven global economy, failure to address the growing gap between those who have access to computer technologies and those who don’t—the so-called digital divide—perpetuates the inequities that are already endemic to many developing societies. . As in other areas of modern economic life, income, race and geography determine whether someone will have access to the digital world. . In Latin America, most technological expertise is still concentrated... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue. Already a subscriber? Login Now. . *Jorge Werthein is the Executive Director of LATIN and holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. . _____________________________________________________________________ . Human Rights: Advances in the Americas —By Santiago A. Cantón .
Amnesty laws are often justified on the grounds that they will
protect new and fragile democracies. Amnesties, according to this
reasoning, avoid reopening painful wounds from the past and, when
they are applied to former military leaders, ensure that the
military will not be provoked again into extra-constitutional
actions. But permitting those who may have been responsible for
widespread killing to walk the streets without punishment ultimately . If the massive and systematic violations of the past are not to be repeated, impunity must no longer rule. That message has been forcefully delivered in Argentina and Peru, two countries which suffered some of the most egregious human rights violations in recent years, thanks to trail-blazing actions by the hemispheric human rights process under the Organization of American States (OAS). Under the OAS system, newly elected governments have been bolstered in their efforts to seek redress for past crimes. The military regime that held power in Argentina between 1976 and 1983 was responsible for the deaths and disappearances of an estimated 9,000 to 30,000 people. Nevertheless, two laws, passed in 1986 and 1987, protected military officers and civilians from prosecution. . But those laws are now effectively... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue. Already a subscriber? Login Now. . *Santiago A. Cantón is the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS). The opinions expressed here do not represent the views of the OAS or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. . _____________________________________________________________________ . Adoption: Making It Transparent But Keeping It Transparent —By Karen Smith Rotabi . Later marriages and lower fertility rates in the United States have led to an increase in demand for international as well as domestic adoptions. With increasing red tape and government sensitivities tying up the adoption process in regions like Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia, American couples have looked to Guatemala as another primary source. Since 2000, approximately 25,000 Guatemalan children have been adopted abroad, over 90 percent of them in the U.S. .
Now the
process may slow down in Guatemala as well, where the rising volume
of adoptions has been accompanied by local controversy . At first glance, the new standards are... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue.Already a subscriber? Login Now.. *Karen Smith Rotabi is an assistant professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work and a Hague Evaluator for the Council on Accreditation of inter-country adoption agencies. __________________________________________ Fresh Look Reviews (Winter 2008 Preview) . Argentina 2020: Propuestas para profundizar la transformación — Edited by Nicolás Trotta [Reviewed by Philip Oxhorn*].
Argentina
has achieved a remarkable turnaround since the devastating crisis of
2001-2002. Economic growth has resumed at unprecedented rates, and
both poverty and unemployment have declined markedly. Even the
country’s notoriously fragile democratic . Given the country’s history over the past three decades, a celebration would certainly seem to be in order. But Argentina 2020’s ambitious effort to identify the lessons of the country’s remarkable economic and political recovery makes clear that the celebration will be short-lived unless Argentine leaders use those lessons as a basis for building a more just and equitable society. . The work is structured around four... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue.Already a subscriber? Login Now.. *Philip Oxhorn is the Director for the Centre for Developing-Area Studies at McGill University. His latest book, Sustaining Civil Society: Economic Change, Democracy and the Social Construction of Citizenship in Latin America, is forthcoming. . _____________________________________________________________________ . Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America— By Kurt Weyland [Reviewed by Luigi Manzetti*]. Kurt Weyland, a Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of the leading experts on Latin American political economy. In his latest book, Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America, he challenges established theories on why and how similar social policies spread so quickly among governments in the 1990s. .
Looking
in detail at the pension and health care reforms in Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, El Salvador, and Peru, Weyland argues that Latin American . Those models came mostly, if not... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue.Already a subscriber? Login Now.. *Luigi Manzetti is an associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. . _____________________________________________________________________ . El estado de las reformas del Estado en América Latina— Edited by Eduardo Lora [Reviewed by Nancy Neiman Auerbach*].
Market
reforms in Latin America since the 1980s have focused overwhelmingly . These reforms are the subject of El estado de las reformas del Estado en América Latina, the newly released Spanish-language version of The State of State Reforms in Latin America, edited by Eduardo Lora, Principal Advisor in the Research Department at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Documenting these reforms constitutes an ambitious project, impressive in both scope and detail. Lora and his contributors provide a key to understanding the impetus behind reform movements. Although the book may not go far enough toward unraveling the politics behind reform, it does answer two important questions: What is the scope and nature of second-generation reforms? What are the political obstacles to implementing broad-based socially equitable reforms?
Lora’s work offers important insights... . To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue.Already a subscriber? Login Now... *Nancy Neiman Auerbach is an associate professor of international political economy at Scripps College. . _____________________________________________________________________ . Del otro lado del río: Ambientalismo y política entre uruguayos y argentinos— Edited by Vicente Palermo and Carlos Reboratti [Reviewed by Joshua Newton*]. The “coronation of a monument to collective stupidity” is Argentine political analyst Vicente Palermo’s description of how a dispute over pulp mills between Argentina and Uruguay was allowed to reach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. . The lack of common sense displayed by the two nations and their sub-national actors is the message of Palermo and Carlos Reboratti’s, both researchers at Argentina’s prestigious CONICET research institute, edited volume Del otro lado del río: Ambientalismo y política entre uruguayos y argentinos (From the Other Side of the River: Environmentalism and Politics Between Uruguayans and Argentines). While the other authors do not state this point as sharply, the book illustrates the almost senseless escalation of the dispute. . In 2002, after having suffered economic... .. To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue.Already a subscriber? Login Now... *Joshua Newton is a Ph.D. candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a consultant at the UNESCO Division of Water Sciences. . _____________________________________________________________________ . Mujer, sexualidad, internet y política: Los nuevos electores latinoamericanos— By Jaime Durán Barba and Santiago Nieto [Reviewed by Steven Griner*]. Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s electoral victory was the latest example of the rising political importance of Latin American women. Like their male counterparts, female politicians have learned to exploit modern technology as well as to pursue innovative campaign strategies. . In Mujer, sexualidad, internet y política: Los nuevos electores latinoamericanos (Women, Sexuality, Internet and Politics: The New Latin American Voters), Jaime Durán Barba and Santiago Nieto, political consultants from Ecuador, shed new light on the influence of women in Latin American politics and how the Internet has contributed to it. The authors cover a lot of ground, which proves to be both the strength and, to a lesser extent, the weakness of this book. . In the first and most compelling... .. To read more, subscribe and receive an instant digital copy of the Winter issue.Already a subscriber? Login Now. .. *Steven Griner is a specialist in political parties at the Organization of American States (OAS).
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