UCL Institute of the Americas

Institute of the Americas

• Home
• News
• Events
• Research
• People
• Study Here
  • Masters Degrees
    • Caribbean and Latin American Studies MA
    • Globalisation and Latin American Development MSc
    • International Relations of the Americas MSc
    • Latin American Studies MA
    • Latin American Politics MSc
    • United States Studies: History and Politics MA
    • New Courses
  • Research Degrees
  • Student Facilities
  • Student Comments
  • Career Prospects
• Publications
• Contact Us

AMERG015: The Politics of Human Rights in Latin America: Transitional Justice

Course convenor: Dr Par Engstrom

Outline

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to human rights issues in Latin America. The course will be offered in Term 1 and offers the groundwork for its twin course: Politics of Human Rights in Latin America: Challenges of Democratization.

The course is divided into four sections:

Section I provides a theoretical grounding for the course as a whole, introducing students to the principal analytical debates on human rights; how and why the idea of human rights came to play an important role in the domestic and international politics of Latin American countries.

Section II focuses on the role of human rights in the transition from authoritarian to democratic forms of governance.

Section III considers the nature and implications of trends towards the transnationalisation of justice and their impact in Latin America.

Section IV examines the evolution over time of transitional justice trends in Latin America and assesses to what extent transitional justice “works”.

The focus of the course is thematic rather than country-based, but examples will be drawn principally from the Southern Cone and Central America. The course is inter-disciplinary, drawing on politics, law and anthropology.

A list of introductory reading is given below. A full course reading list is normally issued at the beginning of the session. When you are offered a place, you will be sent a password which will enable you to access Student Intranet with detailed reading lists from the current year.

N.B. The course listed is offered subject to availability of staff, and may change without notice. The Institute will endeavour to enable students to take their preferred combination of courses subject to quotas and timetabling.

This course is assessed by means of a 4,000 word essay.

Introductory Reading

• A. de Brito, C. González-Enríquez and P. Aguilar (eds.), The Politics of Memory Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies (Oxford, 2001);

• P. B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York, 2001);

• A. de Brito, Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America: Uruguay and Chile (Oxford, 1996);

• A. Brysk, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina: Protest, Change and Democratization (Stanford, 1994);

• J. Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca, 1989);

• N. J. Kritz (ed.), Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes, Vol. I (Washington, D.C., 1995);

• E. Jelin and E. Hershberg (eds.), Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship and Society in Latin America (Boulder, 1996);

• K. Sikkink, Mixed Signals: US Human Rights Policy and Latin America (Ithaca, 2004);

• J. E. Mendez, G. O’Donnell and P. S. Pinheiro (eds.), The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America (Notre Dame, 1996);

• L. Roniger and M. Sznajder, The Legacy of Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Oxford, 1999);

• R. Sieder (ed.), Impunity in Latin America (London, 1995);

• P. Domingo and R. Sieder (eds.), Rule of Law in Latin America:The International Promotion of Judicial Reform (London, 2001);

• Mark Ungar, Elusive Reform: Democracy and the Rule of Law in Latin America (Boulder, 2002).