Deck 13: The Battle on Behalf of Human Rights

Question 1

Which of the following statements with regard to human rights is correct?

A) There is no universal agreement on the exact meaning of the term human rights.
B) Historically, liberal democracies in the West have been exclusively concerned with economic rights.
C) One of the great breakthroughs of the twenty-first century is the development of a powerful international legal enforcement mechanism to make countries alter their human rights behavior.
D) None of these is correct.

Answer 1

There is no universal agreement on the exact meaning of the term human rights.

Question 2

Which of the following is an example of post-Cold War genocidal behavior resulting in the killing of over half a million people?

A) Rwanda in 1994
B) Chechnya, Russia, in 1999
C) Kashmir, India, in 2002
D) West Bank/Gaza/Israel in 2001 to 2002

Answer 2

Rwanda in 1994

Question 3

In which of the following countries in 2011-2012 did the leader Affaz Assad conduct a brutal campaign against his country's citizens?

A) Saudi Arabia
B) Syria
C) Iran
D) Iraq

Answer 3

Syria

Question 4

It has been estimated that between 1 and 2 million people out of a total population of 7 million were killed during the reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime in which country?

A) Vietnam
B) Cambodia
C) North Korea
D) Burma

Question 5

In which U.S. Supreme Court case did the Court declare that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place because separate educational facilities are inherently unequal"?

A) Dred Scott v. Sandford
B) Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
C) Plessy v. Ferguson
D) McCulloch v. Maryland

Question 6

In which of the following countries was apartheid--the official government policy of separation of the races--practiced?

A) Egypt
B) Zimbabwe
C) Angola
D) South Africa

Question 7

The secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter who argued that a strong human rights policy was in the interest of the United States was ______.

A) Henry Kissinger
B) Cyrus R. Vance
C) John Foster Dulles
D) James Baker

Question 8

With regard to the doctrine known as R2P (Responsibility to Protect), which of the following is incorrect?

A) R2Ps aim is to provide the legal and ethical basis for international humanitarian intervention.
B) One of the great human rights success stories is that the doctrine has been repeatedly translated into meaningful action.
C) A number of developing countries feel that the R2P doctrine is merely an excuse to allow the United Nations and the developed countries to militarily intervene in their internal affairs.
D) The doctrine emerged out of a commission formed by the Canadian government.

Question 9

What is considered the primary reason that human rights often take a backseat in American foreign policy?

A) Public opinion will not support risky human rights policies.
B) National security interests override human rights interests.
C) There is no monetary payoff from human rights policies.
D) Congress sees little value in a strong human rights policy.

Question 10

Which of the following statements is incorrect?

A) The USA Patriot Act enacted shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, raised serious questions about the right of privacy in the United States.
B) The Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the two international covenants on human rights prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race or color.
C) Shortly after the United States eliminated slavery in 1865, most of the rest of the international community followed suit, and the practice of involuntary servitude is basically a thing of the past.
D) Genocide and mass killing remain problems for the international community.

Question 11

Which of the following statements best characterizes the work of the United Nations in the area of human rights?

A) The UN has been seriously constrained in its efforts to safeguard human rights, particularly in its ability to punish human rights violations.
B) The UN has not done a very good job of articulating common principles for human rights.
C) The UN has done a very effective job of applying sanctions against human rights violators.
D) For most of its history, the UN has been extremely effective in prosecuting individual leaders in international courts for human rights violations.

Question 12

Which of the following terms refers to the forceful displacement of a group of people from a given territory based on their religion, race, or nationality, as happened in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995?

A) ethnic cleansing
B) genocide
C) immigration restriction
D) devolution

Question 13

The revelations made by Edward Snowden in 2013 did what?

A) dealt with the activities of the National Security Agency
B) revealed that communication giants like Verizon, AT&T, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook had been pressured to turn over records of their consumers to NSA or allow NSA access to the companies' operational programs
C) were based on stolen documents
D) all of these

Question 14

The massive ethnic cleansing campaign in 2017 against the Rohingya Muslims occurred in which country?

A) Myanmar (Burma)
B) Vietnam
C) Malaysia
D) Indonesia

Question 15

___________________________ was the principal Balkan country in which ethnic cleansing took place in the mid-1990s.

Question 16

The belief in male superiority is known as ______________________.

Question 17

The sum total of human rights declarations and treaties within the United Nations context is known as the ____________________________.

Question 18

President Trump came under heavy criticism for his remarks that seemed to equate neo-Nazis with those who protested against them in __________________ in 2017.

Question 19

Three ad hoc international criminal tribunals were established after 1990 to deal with war crimes carried out in _________________, ____________ and ____________________.

Question 20

_______________________ is a well-known nongovernmental organization that works to secure the release of prisoners of conscience.

Question 21

In 2013 ____________________________revealed stolen documents indicating questionable surveillance operations of the National Security Agency on U.S. citizens.

Question 22

The North African terrorist group known as _______________________has been known to conduct kidnapping and imprisonment operations specifically targeting women.

Question 23

What is your understanding of freedom? Of human rights? How does your understanding of freedom and human rights compare with the definitions provided by the authors?

Question 24

Which alternative approach to freedom and human rights do you find most persuasive? Why?

Question 25

Should the United Nations be satisfied with a role as the articulator of human rights standards and the rhetorical acceptance of those standards by the international community? Or should it concentrate on devising wise and effective legal, political, and economic remedies for confirmed, consistent, and gross human rights violations? Support your position.

Question 26

Can a new world order be devised that would permit human rights violations to be overcome or dealt with at national, regional, and global levels? Defend your position.

Question 27

In your judgment, should there be changes in international law and in the United Nations Charter that would permit nations to intercede in the internal affairs of other nations that engage in gross, systematic, and persistent violations of human rights? Explain.

Question 28

Compare and contrast the human rights policies of any two of the following presidents: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama.

Question 29

In general, it is recognized that the United States has a better human rights record than many other countries, particularly those of a more authoritarian political structure. That does not mean that the United States is free of human rights problems. Discuss some of these problems and how they might be addressed.