Books in the Critical Human Rights series

After the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, the UN resolved to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. The resulting UN Genocide Convention treaty, however, was weakened in the midst of Cold War tensions. Anton Weiss-Wendt reveals in detail how the political aims of the superpowers rendered the convention a weak instrument for addressing abuses against human rights.

From 1973 to 1990 in Chile, approximately 370,000 young men were conscripted to serve in Augusto Pinochet's regime. Some were brutal enforcers, but many themselves endured physical and psychological abuse. Relying on unpublished material, interviews, and field notes, Passmore locates these individuals' narratives at the intersection of long-term histories of patriotism, masculinity, and poverty.

A definitive account and analysis of the evolving genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994, and of the judicial, political, and diplomatic responses to it.

In Santiago's urban shantytowns, a searing history of poverty and Chilean state violence have prompted grassroots resistance movements among the poor and working class from the 1940s to the present. Underscoring this complex continuity, Alison J. Bruey offers a compelling history of the struggle for social justice and democracy during the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath.

During the 1990s and early 2000s in Europe, more than fifty historical commissions were created to confront, discuss, and document the genocide of the Holocaust and to address some of its unresolved injustices. Amending the Past offers the first in-depth account of these commissions, examining the complexities of reckoning with past atrocities and large-scale human rights violations.

In recent decades, a more formalized and forceful shift has emerged in the legislative realm when it comes to gender and sexual justice in Africa. This rigorous, timely volume brings together leading and rising scholars across disciplines to evaluate these ideological struggles and reconsider the modern history of human rights on the continent.

Argues that today's Chile is a product of both complicity and complacency. Combining historical analysis with deft literary, political, and cultural critique, Michael J. Lazzara scrutinizes the post-Pinochet rationalizations made by politicians, artists, intellectuals, bystanders, former revolutionaries-turned-neoliberals, and common citizens.

Reads between the lines of Argentine cultural texts (fiction, drama, testimonial narrative, telenovela, documentary film) to explore the fundamental role of silence - the unsaid - in the expression of trauma. Nancy J. Gates-Madsen's careful examination of the interplay between textual and contextual silences illuminates public debate about the meaning of memory in Argentina.

This collection of case studies by scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds turns a critical and reflective eye toward qualitative fieldwork on perpetrators of genocide. This volume provides an essential starting point for future research while advancing genocide studies, transitional justice, and related fields.

Facing repression, the Latin American left in the '60s and '70s found connection in transnational exchange, organising with activists in Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. By exploring South-South solidarity, this volume begins conversations about what makes these movements unique, how they shaped political identities, and their influence.