From Publishers Weekly
If any foreign policy primer could be called a page-turner, it is this one by the executive director of Amnesty International USA. What the human rights community needs to do, argues Schulz in this well-written clarion call, is find “the compelling reasons why respect for human rights is in the best interests of the United States.” For Schulz, this means convincing “realists” that a moral foreign policy serves a practical end. His case is strongest when arg…
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As compelling and page-turning as it is necessary. An effort to make the subject of human rights accessable and interesting to the American Public. Excellent work.
William Schulz is the Executive Directory of Amnesty International USA. In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All is an articulate explanation and defense of our using personal, economic, political, national, and international resources to intervene in behalf of victims of governmental and paramilitary atrocities wherever in the world we encounter them. Very highly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the politics and perpetuation of human rights, In Our Own Best Interest explains the moral underpinnings respecting the never ending struggle for human rights; the role of human rights in promoting democracy and peace, why human rights are good for business; and the role played out by the struggle for human rights in the world at large. Other issues informatively covered include public health and human rights; the economic rewards arising from a defense of human rights; human rights violations occurring within the United States of America; and what ordinary citizens can do to promote human rights at home and abroad.
“In our own best interest” takes a look at many different aspects of the human rights debate. The first chapter of the book examine the moral and ethical debates of human rights with the following chapters looking at the human rights of health care, environment, work place protection and many other signifcant topics. Many of Schulz arguements also examine the cost benefits and ethnical mores of aiding third world and other nations.
While it took me quite a while to make it through the opening chapter of this book once I begun to examine the chapters looking at health care, environmentalism, and other topics the book began to gell for me. This book allows for human rights to be understood by everyone