Okay, the glass is almost half full! I wrote my Human Rights exam this morning and I sure am glad it’s over. That one has been haunting me. I don’t think it went too bad overall. We had three hours to write two essays. The first had to do with transitional justice and its theoretical models. Basically, transitional justice is a collection of processes and mechanisms that help victims come to terms with mass atrocities they have witnessed. For example, this might consists of trials for crimes against humanity after a genocide. It can also be as simple as the creation of memorials or apologies–anything that acknowledges the wrongfulness of the crime and helps people cope with the past without forgetting about it.

The second essay was very broad. It asked, “How have human rights influenced the world’s people.” How do you approach such a question? Well, basically I just gave a rundown of the development of human rights from the first ideas of universality and natural rights to current notions of “thin” morality (morals shared by all people) and debates about cultural and group rights vs. individual rights. Overall I concluded that human rights development has played a positive role in the world (although it still needs a lot of work). Somehow I managed to fit robot rights in there, but that’s a whole other story. Well, time to study for the next 20%! Cheers.

Related Posts

• No Related Posts