Daughters of Juarez (Las Hijas de Juarez)
Teresa Rodriguez, Diana Montané and Lisa Pulitzer;
Atria, Simon & Schuster 2008.
ISBN10: 0743292030; ISBN13: 9780743292030

Daughters of Juarez by Teresa Rodriguez, Diana Montané and Lisa Pulitzer

For over a decade Juárez, Mexico, a city adjacent to the Rio Grande El Paso, Texas continues to be the focal point for a sickening criminal offensive  towards the female population. Comprising of abductions, sexual assault, mutilation, mass murder, the majority of barbarous acts possess the same patterns or elements i.e.  females, youthful, slender, and victims of low socio-economic backgorunds – giving weight to one particular presumption: the fact that the murders are not haphazard or one-offs but by clearly by design. It is truly femicide on a mass scale.

Regardless of the countless police and military busts and raids throughout the previous decade or so, the homicides persist in occurrence and frequency and the perpetrators are increasinly becoming more daring, getting rid of corpses within the limits of the actual city as an alternative to hiding them outside in the desert (which was how and where the first bodies were initially found). There seems to be a sinister air of a probable expanding and generally mind boggling accord and possible co-operation in a dodgy atmosphere of hushing up and suspect intransigence by Mexican officials.

Picture of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

‘Daughters of Juarez’ is undoubtedly a good solid engaging read for it is an authentic account of this mass femicide. Rodriguez makes a difference to many of the people impacted and  indeed damaged by these atrocities by bringing the terrible incidents to light for all of us to see.

Despite the good this particular account may do,  the book ‘Daughters of Juarez’ is nevertheless afflicted with a shortfall in design. Rodriguez jumps between dates, men and women and happenings so often that it becomes very difficult to stay easily on track. She often endulges in going too far with what should be more simple explanations . The storytelling as good as it is in some parts seems like a waste at other times – I feel there could have been more time spent on humanizing many of the victims by telling part of their story. Perhaps Rodriguez could enlighten us on further background  in a follow up book.  Some citations should have also been utilized by the author  to assist the reader make headway of the depth of analysis and background investigatory work  that must have been devoted to this book. So much unnecessary material could have been left out and replaced with substance of a more poignant nature.

Many readers will most likely be terrified by the depth of violence that the hundreds of victims were subjected to. But let us not forget the suffering experienced in so many ways by their families that is equally  incomprehensibly terrifying. No matter how iron cast you think your stomach may be the story will shock you!

The account is riveting and should be required reading, however the drawn out  composition of thoughts and the explanation involving exactly what the family members endured as well as the over dramatized retelling of the specific events seems to block the natural flow – a flow that ordinarily would encourage you not to put such a book down.

Furthermore, a more concise assessment on the specifics as well as extra cultural evaluation is likely to have assisted one to gain a clearer picture more readily (eg.  the ongoing drug wars, the prevailing gang mentaliy, the  sex discrimination deeply seeded in Mexican way of life, the ubiquitous corruption in border towns.) Did they contribute in anyway to the mass and serial murders of the women of Juarez? Readers I am sure would like to know.

Such a kind of book as ‘Daughters of Juarez’ also casts light on the ironic fact that intelligent U.S citizens, many whom are uninformed, are consuming not just products and goods from exploited workers in Mexican sweatshops south of their border, but also consuming many of those goods stained with the blood of victims of mass femicide and the victims families tears. The facts remain – women continue to be second rate citizens in Mexico to this day, while only a stones throw away, across the border, life goes on as per usual in the US with taken for granted freedoms, justice and equality.  It is an unfortunate fact that the United States indirectly supports the ongoing repression because of their unquentionable thirst for consumerism.

Ciudad Juarez Crosses

Look over ‘Daughters of Juarez’ and then consider embarking on a getaway to Mexico. You will think about your lovely trip a whole lot more differently – guaranteed!

Even now, you can find little published regarding the issues raised in ‘Daughters of Juarez’. Perhaps if such a nightmarish situation occurred just north of the border, in El Paso, USA or within virtually any other developed or modern city anywhere else on the planet, we would certainly see it making headlines and causing mass public outcry. This is why this book is so very crucial. It brings the horrific events to the world’s attention.

But we must re-iterate despite the importance of the work bringing this topic to the world, the authors have done a diservice to the cause by their excessive dramatizing which can seem increasingly overdone and often contrived as one progresses through the book.

We do recommend reading the book but probably not purchasing it. Support your local library and ask them to get it in for you if they do not aleady have it on their shelves. Regardless of some of its minor flaws, Daughters of Juarez is still worth a read.

The Human Rights Book Review

On behalf of the Human Rights Book Review, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a wonderful festive season.

May you, your families and friends have much health, happiness  and success at whatever you do. If you are involed with human rights, may you have super duper extra success!

We hope to have you back here soon.

Cheers

Michael Simon, The Human Rights Book Review

Freshwater Access from a Human Rights Perspective: A Challenge to International Water Law and Human Rights (International Studies in Human Rights)

Dr Knut Bourquain

Brill Academic Publishers, 2008. ISBN: 9789004169548

Dr Bourquain's 'Freshwater Access from a Human Rights Perspective'

The subject matter of insufficient water access for the worlds population and how it pertains to human rights, has been a very hot topic with the advent and recent urgency of climate change policy. For decades, the global deliberation on facilitating drinking water accessiblility has been kept primarily to NGO’s. What has truly been difficult with water and how it applies to international law is the arrival at any form of unequivocal definition. Further, and most astonishingly is that there has been practically no broad legal breakdown and/or groundbreaking study of the international law relating to the existing agreements and security of access to water. This is a fissure which is most competently patched up in this book. One may regard this as one of the seminal works on the topic it so effectively thrash’s out the topic of water rights.

Dr. Knut Bourquain

The book, Freshwater Access from a Human Rights Perspective: A Challenge to International Water and Human Rights Law is authored by Dr Knut Bourquain, a lawyer and former lecturer at Germany’s Giessen University’s. He has become somewhat of a quasi water law expert over the past few years, having specialized in, taught in, and published what could be considered a respectable academic quantity on the topic of water law and how it applies to international human rights.

Dr Bourquain argues and makes a very clear distinction on the fundamentals of an exceedingly scattered area of law and human rights. He meticulously breaks the topic down into smaller and more easily understood parts which makes the work quite accessible to the lay reader but also brings clarity and definition to a seasoned human rights expert on a topic that has been quite foggy until now. He makes the interesting point that the inadequate accessibility to the vital supply of water is not an inescapable end result of water insufficiency. Surprisingly, arid countries have enough wherewithal to realize the necessary water requirements of their inhabitants and there are people in countries where water could be considered ubiquitous that put up with a form of water stress, too. Consequently, a lack in freshwater access can be seen as a dilemma of poor distribution and poor management.

The author analyses very closely the various shortfalls in the prevailing law of international water and human rights and argues for models that might go the distance in fortifying a human rights-based approach to freshwater access. Dr Bourquain does this by proposing both proper legal suitability as well as the appropriateness in the real world.

We felt this was a fine book on a topic given little time and effort to on the publication front. The book closes the gap on water resources and human rights and will make a terrific addition to not only a human rights library collection, but a climate change collection. This book has our thumbs up and we recommend it for purchase.

Table of contents

Acknowledgement;

A. Introduction; I. The background situation – water scarcity as a global problem; II. Causes of the current crisis; III. Strategies of crisis management; IV. The role of law in problem-solving; V. The human rights-based approach to freshwater access in international law; VI. Synopsis of the study;

B. The law on international watercourses and its deficits in providing freshwater access; I. Introduction; II. Survey of the development of international water law in the 20th century; III. Analysis of international water law in regard to fulfilling the basic human need for water; IV. Concluding observations on international water law’s deficits;

C. Elements of a human rights-based approach to freshwater access; I. Introduction; II. Characteristics of a human rights-based approach to freshwater access; III. Human rights-based approaches vs. policy concepts?; IV. Freshwater access in the context of the debate on rights to development and a clean environment; V. Elaboration of the scope of obligations attached to a human rights-based approach to freshwater access; VI. Universalism, particularism and pluralistic legal systems; VII. Concluding observations on the characteristics of a human rights-based approach to freshwater access;

D. The human rights-based approach to freshwater access within current international human rights law; I. Introduction; II. Freshwater access within international human rights treaties; III. Freshwater access as part of customary international human rights law; IV. Freshwater access as part of general principles of international law; V. Extraterritorial obligations of states concerning the basic human need for water; VI. Concluding observations on the international human rights law’s contribution to freshwater access;

E. Improving a human rights-based approach to freshwater access; I. Introduction; II. The need to connect human rights law with international water law; III. Establishing new international treaty law; IV. Specifying and developing the human rights-based approach to freshwater access by the interpretation of existing law; V. Soft law and policy instruments strengthening a human rights-based approach to freshwater access; VI. Concluding observations on prospects for the improvement of a human rights-based approach to freshwater access;

F. Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.

Michael Simon
The Human Rights Book Review

The Guantánamo Lawyers – Inside a Prison Outside the Law
ISBN-13: 9780814737361

The Guantánamo Lawyers is a great read.

Everyone of us has been peppered for years now with stories from the media of Guantanamo inmates and their abuse, either at the hands of their guards, or by the legal system (lack of due process). This book, the Guantanamo Lawyers, brings over 100 personal narratives from not only the inmates at “Gitmo” but also from other overseas prisons/detention centres. It brings these narratives to us first hand from their direct representatives, their Lawyers. The inmates, range from teenagers to octogenarians from approximately forty separate countries. For years, so many have been detained without charges, without any form of trial, and/or a fair and proper hearing. Many of these inmates are indeed America’s enemies but what is so scary is that in the book we learn of stories of how many of the inmates weren’t even captured on any form of battlefield. They were just rumored to be enemies, sometimes on little or faulty intelligence and delivered up to US forces for handsome bounty.

What really pulls at ones sensitivities is the utter mental and physical despair that the detainees go through, their feeling of hopelessness and fear as they are terrorized daily.
Its is hard to believe that civilized society can be driven to these depths. Especially the United States, the once shining example of freedom and justice.
Countless studies have been done on inmates and detainees over hundreds of years and this is probably one of the best (and most horrible) studies of how an intense isolation of a torturous military imprisonment devoid of so many human rights and international legal norms, can wreak havoc on an inmates mind and body and in the process, collaterally rip apart the very soul of the people and country that the system is supposed to protect. One can’t help but draw parallels with these stories with those of the harshest of colonial era penal colonies. These inmates have no sense of future. Deprived of their reality they are driven to self harm such as suicide, hunger strikes, self mutilation etc to add to the harm already heaped upon then day after day by their overseers.

Guantanamo detainees like the ones from 'The Guantanamo Lawyers"

We learn of the brave fight by true American patriots – the lawyers who represent them. The lawyers, many of them military lawyers, thankfully, are not beholden to their military masters, but driven by their devotion and oaths to justice, fairness and human rights for all. Their plight is moving. One finds themselves cheering for these advocates like one would cheer on a football team. Their lesson is our lesson and that is, no matter who we are, we must respect the rule of law, human rights and never stoop to the level of our enemies.
Grab a copy – it’s sure worth the read.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Contents of The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law

Introduction by Mark P. Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz
Prelude

Chapter 1 Representing the “Worst of the Worst”
How and Why the Lawyers Started Representing Detainees

Chapter 2 Getting behind the Wire
Rasul/Al Odah: The Right to Representation

Chapter 3 – Uncovering Guantánamo’s Human Face
First Impressions
Rendered: How the Detainees Got to Guantánamo
Female Attorneys
Family Members
Interpreters

Chapter 4 Red Tape and Kangaroo Courts
Barriers to Representation
The No-Hearing Hearings: Combatant Status Review Tribunals
Military Commissions
Political Maneuvering
Boumediene v. Bush: The Death Knell for Prisons beyond the Law

Chapter 5 – Tortured
A Product of Torture Culture
Reactions
Hunger Strikes
Suicides

Chapter 6 – Alternative Forms of Advocacy

Chapter 7 – Leaving Guantánamo
Stuck in Limbo
Out but Not Free
Happy Endings?

Chapter 8 – Guantánamo beyond Cuba: A Global Detention System outside the Law
Guantánamo Comes to America
Black Sites
Coda
Timeline: Guantánamo and the “War on Terror”

Contributors

If one is inclined to go further with the research or understanding of the Lawyers narrative, New York University Library has produced a Guantánamo Lawyers digital archive for this purpose. The site is dedicated to collecting the narratives of the legal representatives who acted on behalf of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center. Anyone can download and view the documents as PDFs. Please visit the site here: Guantánamo Lawyers Digital Archive

Michael Simon
The Human Rights Book Review

Happy New Year to all our readers. May 2010 be a a great year for you all.

Following are some of the books we have recently got wind of, so keep on the look out for their upcoming release. They seem like ones worth checking out.

1. The Geneva Conventions Under Assault

Sarah Perrigo and Jim Whitman

Due: late March

The Geneva Conventions Under Assault by Sarah Perrigo and Jim Whitman

2. Global Governance and Biopolitics: Regulating Human Security

David Roberts

Due: early March

Global Governance and Biopolitics - Regulating Human Security by David Roberts

3. The Devil and Mr. Casement: One Man’s Battle for Human Rights in South America’s Heart of Darkness

Jordan Goodman

Due: mid Feb

The Devil and Mr. Casement - One Man's Battle for Human Rights in South America's Heart of Darkness by Jordan Goodman

4. Before Eminent Domain: Toward a History of Expropriation of Land for the Common Good (Studies in Legal History)

Susan Reynolds

The University of North Carolina Press

Due: mid January

Before Eminent Domain: Toward a History of Expropriation of Land for the Common Good

5. Beyond Punishment in International Criminal Justice

Mark Findlay and Ralph Henham

Due: early Jan

Beyond Punishment in International Criminal Justice by Mark Findlay and Ralph Henham

6. Profiting from Diversity: The Business Advantages and the Obstacles to Achieving Diversity

Gloria Moss

Due: early January

Profiting from Diversity: The Business Advantages and the Obstacles to Achieving Diversity by Gloria Moss