9.2 Rights in an Age of Intense Globalization
- 5 Activities
- 2 Articles
- 1 Video
Introduction
Globalization has spread human rights across the world. Globalization has also threatened the human rights of people all over the world. Wait, what? If you think that seems a little contradictory, you’re right. The mass killings and atrocities of the first half of the twentieth century helped produce new documents guaranteeing the rights of all people. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed new violations of rights and horrific genocides. This lesson questions why atrocities still happen and asks you to grapple with whether globalization might help us, or prevent us, from building a more just world. You’ll examine the development and effectiveness of nonviolent resistance in different regions, and again compare the “flattening” of the human experience to the “lumpy” exceptions setting us apart.
Learning Objectives
- Assess how globalization both positively and negatively affects human communities, networks, and production and distribution.
- Utilize the historical thinking practice of comparison to evaluate human rights documents from around the world.
- Analyze how genocides happen in a modern world.
- Investigate how different groups have responded to globalization.
What is This Asking?
Preparation
Purpose
This quick skill-building activity is intended to help you understand what is being asked of you when you’re presented with historical prompts, particularly those you’ll encounter in assessment prompts such as document-based questions (DBQs) and long essay questions (LEQs).
Process
In this activity, you will revisit the process of how to parse a prompt. Remember, parsing a prompt is the process of analyzing a string of words—that is, trying to figure out what something is saying and asking!
Take out the Question Parsing Tool and write down the following prompt at the top of the tool: Compare demographic and environmental effects of the Columbian Exchange on the Americas with the Columbian Exchange’s demographic and environmental effects on ONE of the following regions (Africa, Asia, or Europe) between 1492 and 1750. Africa Asia Europe.
Now, follow the tool directions. Be prepared to discuss your answers with the class!
Universal Rights
- advocacy
- atrocity
- genocide
- international
- proponent
- relativist
Preparation
Summary
Human rights are supposed to be “universal”. That is, they are supposed to be the same for all people in all places by virtue of the fact that they are human. As globalization has spread in the twentieth and twenty-first century, the concept of human rights has spread along with it. In theory, that’s a good thing. But like globalization, the practice of protecting human rights has often been more “lumpy” than universal.
Purpose
In addressing the universal nature of human rights, this article will help you address the global similarities and differences between people and evaluate whether globalization—or human rights—can ever be universally beneficial.
Process
Preview—Skimming for Gist
Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!
Key Ideas—Understanding Content
For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and according to this article, why was it written?
- What were some ways that oppressed people used the Universal Declaration of Human Rights immediately after it was signed?
- According to the author, what is the fundamental problem facing people who want to make human rights universal?
- What do cultural relativists argue?
- According to this article, are human rights an invention of Western imperialists?
- What are some ways that globalization has helped spread human rights? What are some ways that it has endangered human rights?
Evaluating and Corroborating
At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:
- Like most of the articles you’ll read in this unit, this one doesn’t give you many definitive answers. So, you’ll just have to decide: Do you think that the concept of human rights is enough to protect people in the age of globalization?
Comparison – Rights Documents
Preparation
Purpose
In this final activity in the comparison progression, you’ll compare rights documents from around the world. These documents all include references to a source of government or power, individual rights, accountability of leaders or government, and information about the structure of governments. Comparing these documents will get you to think about what makes national governments and their citizens similar on a global scale. However, it can also show you where people differ, and how different cultures may place value on certain things that other nations do not.
Practices
Contextualization
Analyzing the context in which these documents were created tells us a lot about why certain nations adopted these constitutional rights at specific times in history.
Process
In this activity, you’ll read a collection of human rights documents from a variety of different nation-states, compare them, and then write an essay in response to a comparison prompt.
First, your teacher will break up the class into small groups and assign two articles to each group. Your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Comparison—Rights Documents worksheet along with the Comparison – Rights Documents excerpts. Read your assigned documents on your own and then answer the questions for your articles in Part 1: Identifying and Describing of the Comparison Tool (included in the worksheet). Discuss your answers to these questions with your group members and then work together to complete the similarities and differences column.
Once all groups have completed Part 1 of the tool for their assigned documents, each group will share their similarities and differences by writing them on the chart your teacher creates on the board. Take a few minutes to read what the other groups found and look for similarities and differences across all the documents.
Next, use these similarities and differences to write to thesis statements in response to the prompts:
- What is the most significant similarity between these rights documents?
- What is the most significant difference between these rights documents?
Remember to use the acronym ADE (amount, depth, and endurance) to help determine historical significance. Consider if all people were affected by these similarities and differences (amount); if people were deeply affected by these similarities and differences (depth); or if these similarities and differences were long lasting (endurance).
Finally, use your thesis statements to write a comparison essay in response to the prompt To what extent are these rights documents similar and why? The essay should be five- to six-paragraphs long, and you should use evidence from the rights documents and the Comparison Tool to support your thesis statement. To ensure you meet your writing goals, review the WHP Writing Rubric before turning in your paper to your teacher.
Why Does Genocide Still Happen?
- civilian
- convention
- ethnic
- genocide
- international
- national sovereignty
Preparation
Summary
Since the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations, genocides have continued to occur around the world. Historian Bennett Sherry asks why, and arrives at some unsettling conclusions including international indifference. To explain this failure, Sherry points to United Nations priorities, including a reluctance to violate national sovereignty (even in cases of obvious human rights violations), as well as the paralyzing veto power wielded by each of the five United Nations Security Council’s permanent members.
Purpose
In this article, Bennett Sherry catalogs some of the post-World War II instances of genocide and asks how they have persisted in spite of international bodies designed to prevent such violence. This article should help you consider the most destructive aspects of the communities and networks frames. Though global communication networks have increased international awareness, genocides continue to occur. This article will help you respond Unit 9’s first big-problem question of why genocides continue in an era of expanding human rights and rights of citizenship.
Process
Preview—Skimming for Gist
Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!
Key Ideas—Understanding Content
For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- The United Nations passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide in 1948. When was it first enforced and in what context?
- How did the Cambodian genocide relate to the role of the American military in the Vietnam War?
- How did the United States and China end up favoring the Khmer Rouge?
- How do the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members prevent decisive action to stop or mitigate genocides?
- Bennett notes several reasons for the international community’s failure to prevent or mitigate genocide, including the UN Security Council’s veto structure, international indifference, and a reluctance to fund aid efforts. But what commonly cited excuse for inaction does Bennett flatly reject and why?
- Bennett concludes with quotes from former US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, who asserts that ongoing genocide is proof that the postwar system “is working.” What does she mean and how does Bennett demonstrate this?
Evaluating and Corroborating
At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:
- Bennett defines genocide very simply as “organized murder.” Do you think this is sufficient? What are the strengths of such a simple definition? How might this definition fail to consider the complexity of genocide in history? How would you support this simple approach to characterizing genocide, and how might you challenge this approach? How would you extend this definition?
- Do you agree with Bennett’s characterization of the international community’s response to genocide? While reading, what did you think about the UN Security Council permanent member’s decision to obstruct decisive action in most instances of genocide?
Nonviolence and Peace Movements
- boycott
- civil disobedience
- colonization
- nonviolence
- protest
Summary
In the history of the twentieth century, millions of people took part in globally connected nonviolent movements around the world, led by figures like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. Their stories included tragic setbacks but also great victories over the brutal regimes whose violent methods failed to stop the revolutionary changes won through peaceful protest. The world wars and genocides of the twentieth century should not completely overshadow the triumphs of nonviolent movements, and the more peaceful world they delivered.
Nonviolence and Peace Movements: Crash Course World History #228 (12:48)
Key Ideas
Purpose
This video introduces several important instances of nonviolent protest on a local, national, and global scale in the twentieth century. Sharing ideas and inspiration, networks of communication and awareness encouraged and supported nonviolent movements and helped them spread. This video addresses the framing concepts of networks and communities, and also addresses the Unit Problem of the ways in which the rapid movement of people and ideas affects our sense of identity. Green encourages you to consider big questions related to the ways in which nonviolent movements have been as consequential as violent conflict in shaping the world today.
Process
Preview—Skimming for Gist
As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.
Key Ideas—Understanding Content
Think about the following questions as you watch this video:
- What major traditions influenced the ideas about nonviolence that were shared by Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi?
- How did Gandhi’s use of nonviolence specifically confront British colonial authorities in India?
- What were the main characteristics of the Rosenstrasse protest of 1943, and what made it unique?
- How did Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. connect the success of the nonviolent independence movement in India to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States?
- How did the Prague Spring movement begin and end?
Evaluating and Corroborating
- Nonviolent movements developed in conversation with each other, influencing and inspiring each other around the world. How do you think the ability to communicate and share ideas across borders changed the identities and strategies of protestors? Were these movements different from similar protests in the long nineteenth century?
- The video briefly mentions the colonial salt monopoly of British India, reflecting a profound injustice in the big frame of “production and distribution.” Why do you think Gandhi’s strategy was effective? What are some other injustices in the structures of production and distribution that exist today? How do people protest?