پایگاه تخصصی سیاست بین الملل (  INPO  )‌

a right that safeguards a person against illegal imprisonment. Habeas corpus is a Latin phrase that means literally "you must have the body." It refers to a writ that requires a person to be brought before a court to establish whther he is being detained legally.

a worker for a political party, usually at a fairly low level of the organization, who is unquestioning in his loyalty to the party. Also refers to someone hired to do writing, often of a routine or uninspired nature.

currency that has a stable value in international exchange and is therefore freely convertible into currency of other countries. The opposite is soft currency, which is subject to exchange controls. Hard currency serves as an international currency.

in a presidential system, the head of state is the president himself, who is considered to be the symbolic embodiment of the nation. In parliamentary systems, the head of state is not the prime minister but a figure considered to be above politics and representing the nation as a whole. In these systems the head of state may have mainly a ceremonial function, as in present-day Germany and Israel. In a constitutional monarchy, the king or queen is the head of state-their real power may be limited but their symbolic power may be great.

authority or influence. Usually used to refer to international affairs, to describe the dominance of a specific country, as in the nineteenth century was the period of British hegemony; the post-World war II era was one of U.S. and Soviet hegemony.

an organization with people ranked in order of grade, rank, etc. An executive, for example, would be high in the company hierarchy; a sales clerk would be low in that hierarchy.

the systematic extermination in gas chambers built in concentration camps of 6,000,000 Jews by the Nazis in World War II. The Holocaust was the most terrible example of genocide in modern history, perhaps in the entire history of the world. It marked the only time that the resources of a large industrial state have been dedicated to rounding up, transporting and killing so many people in such a short space of time, for no reason other than the victims' race. Jews were gathered from all over Europe for the slaughter; in one two-month period in 1944, 438,000 Jews were shipped to Auschwitz alone. This is what awaited them: "The victims, unsuspecting, walked to the gas chambers under the blank and baleful gaze of the SS, and then were turned into smoke that blackened the skies, and a stench so awful and pervasive that Lyon [a survivor, Gloria Lyon, who was taken to Auschwitz when she was fourteen] lost her sense of smell for nearly five decades after." (From Newsweek, on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.)

someone who is held against his will, as a bargaining counter or as security. For example, in the 1980s, terrorists in the Middle East took Westerners hostage frequently, hoping to use them as a bargaining counter to win the release of Arab prisoners in U.S. and Israeli jails. And in May, 1995, when Serb forces in Bosnia took U.N. soldiers hostage, they tried to use them as security, hoping to prevent an attack by NATO forces.

Human rights were defined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It was a historic step brought about in response to the horrors of World War 11. Article 1 of the declaration states, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." Article 2 states, "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." President Jimmy Carter's administration (1977-81) made human rights an important aspect of American foreign policy; those countries that violated human rights were less likely to have good relations with the U.S. than those who observed those rights. Human rights continue to be an important factor in U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Today, for example, the debate over U.S. relations with China revolves around China's poor human rights record, and whether this is reason enough to cancel China's Most Favored Nation trading status with the U.S.

an individual or organization devoted to promoting the welfare of humanity, especially to relieve pain and suffering. Thus the Red Cross is a humanitarian organization; sending aid to starving people is a humanitarian act.