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A reprint of an article by former US Ambassador to the UN Jeane J. Kirkpatrick that originally appeared in the Spring 1981 volume of "World Affairs" focuses on the Carter administration's human rights policy. The Carter definition of human rights included the right of all people to be free from governmental violation of an individual's integrity; to have access to food, shelter, health care, & education; & to enjoy civil & political liberties. The claim that economic & social rights are just as important as civil & political rights went well beyond previous US understandings of human rights. Attention is called to President Carter's failure to single out the Soviet Union & other communist regimes for human rights violations & his emphasis on violations by governments while ignoring those committed by guerrilla groups. Steps being taken by the Reagan administration to develop a more successful human rights policy that distinguishes between ideas & institutions; rights & goals; intentions & consequences; & morals & politics are described. J. Lindroth

This is a descriptive, analytical treatment of international human-rights nongovernmental organizations. A typology of human-rights groups is developed. Threats to human and political rights are analyzed. Following a brief description of Amnesty International as a new type of noneconomic interest group in world politics, the article focuses explicitly on three practical political— yet, also, social—scientific—problems: (1) the legitimacy of human-rights organizations; (2) the selection of targets and of tactics, including prepolitical resource-generating tactics; and, especially, (3) the problems entailed in evaluating the impact, if any, of interest group activities. The last, which questions the efficiency of translation of activity into access and then influence, opens up another discrete question: whether and how the group evaluates its own goals, structure and tactics. This evaluation suggests that Amnesty International has meas urable impact on the defense of human and political rights.

Every day several thousand of people are trafficked in different countries in searching better life. Modern day slavery,trafficking in human beings, presents a grave human rights violation. This is the problem, which covers social, political, anddemographic aspects, as well as gender and ethnic stratification, transnational organized crime and human rights abuses, andthe facility of states and supranational institutions effectively to deal with those issues. It seems that one of the core causes oftrafficking in persons is poverty related to the inequalities between economically developed countries and less developedones. This main factor pushes people to migrate to different countries, as they have no other options to feed their families. Intandem, pull factors such as European demographic problems ensure continuing demand. Consequently, individual nations'efforts cannot succeed unless global efforts are harmonized and these push and pull factors are addressed. This paper presentsthe positive and negative aspects of European legal documents in combating trafficking in human beings, where we canclearly see the minuses which need to be overcome.

A comparison of conditions in Iran in the last years of Pahlavi control and in the first year of the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic government illustrates nothing better than the difficulties inherent in governing a developing nation as diverse as Iran despite a leader's good intentions. A review of State Department reports on human rights in Iran for 1977 and 1978, in conjunction with the observations of private groups monitoring basic rights, indicates that the country was then in a period of transition. In response to international and domestic pressure the shah's extremely authoritarian administration had initiated the first series of measures aimed at ultimately liberalizing the nation's political climate. Ironically, these very reforms aided the shah's opposition in mounting the challenge that drove him from power in January, 1979.

Illicit dumping of hazardous, toxic and dangerous products and wastes in developing countries adversely affects the human rights of peoples to health and life. The 57th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has condemned the practice universally.