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SECTION 3 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

"The Chixoy Dam Destroyed Our Lives" 04/26/04
Monti Aguirre describes the tragedy of the Maya-Achi people of Guatemala, victims of a World Bank-funded hydro-electric dam, and their efforts to reclaim their lives.
Author(s): Monti Aguirre

Twilight People: Iraq's Marsh Inhabitants 04/27/04
Saddam Hussein drained Iraq's southern marshlands as part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the lives of the region's indigenous inhabitants. As Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi and Stuart M. Leiderman explain, restoring this fragile ecosystem should be a fundamental imperative in the new Iraq.
Author(s): Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi, Stuart Leiderman

Mining a Sacred Land 04/27/04
Walton describes Freeport McMoRan's devastation of the Amungme and Kamoro people in Papua in what has become one of the best known cases of environmental injustice perpetrated by a multinational extractive industry.
Author(s): Abigail Abrash Walton

Commentary on "The relationship between environmental rights and environmental injustice" 04/27/04
Atik examines the issues addressed in this section through claims of (1) environmental justice, (2) environmental human rights, and (3) “strong environmental rights,” the rights of the natural environment itself, in order to formulate possible solutions appropriate to each.
Author(s): Jeffery Atik

About Human Rights Dialogue

Human Rights Dialogue promotes a global discussion of human rights ideas and practices by presenting firsthand accounts of human rights issues as they arise within specific real-life contexts. In so doing, it helps to clarify the significant and ongoing evolution that is taking place within the human rights movement to make the human rights framework more relevant and effective in addressing the social, economic, and political challenges of the twenty-first century.

The entire publication is online, or you may purchase individual print copies.

Series One (1993–1998)examines all sides of the Asian values debate—the argument that Asian cultural values imply different human rights standards and priorities from those in the West.

Series Two(2000–2005)addresses the problem of the “human rights box”—the constraints that have enabled the human rights framework to gain currency among elites while limiting its advance among the most vulnerable. Specifically, the essays aim to locate the barriers to greater public legitimacy of human rights and to demonstrate how those barriers can be overcome.