Top Research Papers on Human Rights

Review of Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism. A new history of the parallel rise of neoliberalism and human rights.

ABSTRACT In this paper I respond to the central claims presented in Samuel Moyn’s influential book, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. Moyn argues that human rights have the following features: they are powerless to combat growing material inequality; they share key characteristics with neoliberalism; they make only minimalist or sufficientarian demands and therefore are not enough to achieve the equality demanded by justice. He suggests, in particular, that Henry Shue’s Basic Rights exemplifies these features. My response argues that Moyn does not accurately present the core concep...

Objectives: The objectives of this research are to examine various legal aspects related to the right to a livable environment. This includes defining the right, elucidating its characteristics, exploring its sources and legal basis, and identifying the individuals entitled to enjoy this right. The research aims to contribute to both national and international understanding of how to protect and uphold this fundamental right.   Methods: To achieve the stated objectives, this research employs a qualitative approach. It involves a comprehensive review and analysis of relevant international doc...

Contrasting religion with human rights is a critical response that is unproductive because basically the relationship between religion and human rights is ambivalent. Meanwhile, freedom of religion is understood as part of human rights, but in reality, religious practices emerge which result in violations of human rights. This research wants to answer the question of how to bridge the relationship between religion and human rights by taking the case of Iqbal's concept of humanism, "How does Iqbal's humanism reconcile religion and human rights?" This study uses the hermeneutic-philosophical met...

ABSTRACT In this contribution, I approach the question of the future of the African human rights system both by situating the issue within the broader context and by reference to the system's own institutional and political setting. To this end, I deploy the COVID-19 pandemic as a lens to discuss the existential questions facing human rights, drawing out the major issues the pandemic has brought out and the lessons we can take from these about the flaws and gaps in the current human rights system in general. While the issues that threaten human rights worldwide apply to human and peoples’ righ...

Background. Currently, the law is still considered discriminatory and unfair. The law should be fair, especially to women. Purpose. The goal is for men and women to have equal rights to participate in social and state activities. Method. This article is made using a quantitative method that conducts research to several people, especially women, so that the author knows whether people know about human rights for women, gender equality, and violence experienced by women and law enforcement against women's human rights. Results. In life, the achievement of equality of the dignity of women has not...

The Human Right to Science is about the “human right to benefit from progress in science and its applications,” also known more succinctly as the “right to science.” Although the right to science is one of the oldest internationally recognized human rights, it has suffered too long from neglect. International organizations and States pay little attention to it. There are only a few inadequate indicators to measure progress toward its realization. There is also little or no international or national jurisprudence, as the right as such is not litigated. However, at the beginning of the twenty-...

ABSTRACT Human rights concerns are hardly integrated in investment decisions. That is a missed opportunity given investors’ crucial role in putting pressure on corporations to produce better information on adverse human rights impacts and addressing these impacts. This article investigates why human rights abuses by companies are so persistent. Explanations include the inherent complexity of global value chains; a lack of integration of human rights in business; insufficient legal enforcement; and inadequate data and limited pressure on corporations by investors. Although investors have launch...

Island Studies literature has rarely engaged with human rights law to scrutinise how the development of human rights standards and/or their (in)efficient implementation on islands contour the lives of islanders and islandness itself. Along similar lines, human rights research and practice do not systematically take into account islandness and Island Studies research. The present article explores the mutual reticence between human rights law and Island Studies, suggesting, though, that both fields can offer each other important opportunities for development. It advocates, in particular, that it...

What is science, and what role should it play in the future mediation of our global society? Any discussion of the human right to science ought to begin by trying to answer those two foundational questions. As counterintuitive as it may seem in an age dominated by technology, consensus on how those questions might be answered has thus far proved elusive. More difficult still is elucidating the position of science within a framework of human rights. It may seem strange at first to talk of science as mediation. Yet science pervades complex societal spaces in areas beyond innovation, technology, ...

Scholarly treatments of the human rights agenda tend to posit civil society organisations (CSOs) as its defender and the state and mainstream political actors as its violators. Even when raising the problem of an ‘uncivil society’, the literature labels these CSOs as reactive and hostile to the human rights agenda they perceive as ‘Western’ and ‘foreign’. I argue that these treatments of the issue overlook another phenomenon: the emergence of CSOs that adopted the language of human rights and participated in its formal processes yet subtly redefined, subverted, and undermined the core commit...

The first of its kind, this comprehensive interdisciplinary textbook in Business and Human Rights (BHR) connects and integrates themes, discussions, and issues in BHR from both legal and non-legal perspectives, and provides a solid foundation for cross-disciplinary conversations. It equips students, teachers, and scholars with the necessary knowledge to navigate and advance evolving BHR debates, and fosters a thorough understanding of the academic foundations, evolving policy spaces, and practical approaches in BHR. Short cases throughout translate conceptual insights into practical solutions....

Abstract National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) have been part of the infrastructure of international law since 1946, two years before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was completed. Globally, more than 120 nations have established independent NHRIs. Two-thirds of these have been accredited by the Global Association of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) after passing a rigorous review to assess their compliance with the Paris Principles, a set of minimum standards for NHRIs. The United States does not have an NHRI and the federal government has resisted calls from both do...

In recent years, climate change has presented itself as a new challenge to human rights dogmatism. The present contribution examines the hurdles caused by interpreting existing regional and international human rights standards in the context of climate change, with particular reference to issues of causality, attribution, standing, and extraterritorial jurisdiction. As climate change does not neatly fit into present human rights categories, and progressive interpretation bears the risk of arbitrary and unjust results as well as overstretching the rules of interpretation, this article makes a c...

In his extensive body of work, Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim challenges both historical interpretations of Islamic Sharia and neo-colonial understanding of human rights. To advance the rationale of scholarship for social change, An-Naim proposes advancing the universality of human rights through internal discourse within Islamic and African societies and cross-cultural dialogue among human cultures. This book proposes a transformation from human rights organized around a state determined practice to one that is focused on a people-centric approach that empowers individuals to decide how hu...

In Indonesia, human rights courts are ad hoc and are only intended for serious human rights courts. This means that there is no special human rights court that deals with the justiciability of human rights, particularly the justiciability for the fulfillment of limited economic, social and cultural rights. This condition is different from civil and political rights which have the principle of non-derogable rights. The research question is how the implementation of human rights justiciability in Indonesia and several other countries in order to build the construction of human rights justiciabil...

This article aims to clarify the relationship between human rights and the environment, as it results from the jurisprudence of the two supranational institutions at the level of the European Union (the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice). It can be said that, to date, the jurisprudence covered by this article reflects the most important principles that the Court has applied in environmental case law. The article sets out the three most important principles regarding the individual rights that could be affected by environmental damage. On the one hand, the human r...

The article analyzes the need to establish the “right to be forgotten” as a new human right in the context of the correlation with the right to privacy. Its legislative development and global application call into question the relationship between private and public interests. The issue includes protection of an individual’s privacy, on the one hand, and freedom of information and expression on the other. In this context, the purpose of the study is to identify an approach to enshrine the “right to be forgotten” in a way that strikes an optimal balance of interests.Exploring the evolution of t...

Human Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice helps students and practitioners understand how human rights concepts underpin the social work profession and inform their practice. This book examines the three generations of human rights and the systems of oppression that prevent citizens from participating in society as equals. It explores a range of topics, from ethics and ethical social work practice, to deductive and inductive approaches to human rights, and global and local human rights discourses. The language, processes, structures and theories of social work that are fundam...

Abstract This article argues that continuing ambivalence about the importance of rights in Southeast Asia is not based on a perception that rights are a hegemonic ideological imposition of the West, or on a desire on the part of some states to preserve the ability to treat domestic populations however they wish, unhampered by the constraints of international human rights law. Instead, I contend that ambivalence has to do with uncertainty in the application of rights. I use two case studies (Brunei’s introduction of a strict form of Islamic law in 2013; and the attack by Myanmar’s military forc...

ABSTRACT In 1948, Article 27(1) UDHR declared the right ‘to share in scientific advancement and its benefits’. Since 1966, the right has also been guaranteed by Article 15(1)(b) ICESCR as the right to ‘enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications’. This equivocation on the right’s name reveals a disagreement about the object of that right, i.e. (actively) participating in the scientific practice or (passively) ‘enjoying its fruits’ only. While the importance of participation in science has recently been emphasised, no justifications thereof have yet been provided. Drawing on ...

Abstract This article explains and critiques the protection of love within judgments concerning relationships under the Human Rights Act 1998. Using theory of emotion to conduct doctrinal analysis of the protection of love within international human rights laws and under the Human Rights Act 1998, it reveals a shift in the conception of love underlying the domestic judicial application of huamn rights. Whereas previously the law was underpinned by values of duty and property, judgments concerning relationships now protect the capacity of individuals to choose how to live. However, the protecti...

ABSTRACT The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted, in part, as a response to the horrific antisemitism leading to the extermination of millions of Jews in World War II. Yet, today, organisations that utilise human rights instruments to criticise Israel’s laws, policies and practices are themselves being cast as antisemitic. How has the contemporary human rights regime come to be charged with antisemitism? The ostensible answer is that the meaning of antisemitism has expanded to include anti-Zionism and harsh criticism of Israel. While scholars have debated the validity of this exp...

ABSTRACT:Over the decades human rights advocates have increasingly engaged with economic policy with a growing focus on what economies would look like if they were based on human rights. This article reports on an inquiry that asked whether it is possible to articulate a concept of human rights economics and if so, what its main features would be. This article notes the elements that ecological, feminist, and other branches of economics brought to light and succeeded in integrating into economic thought and policy. Drawing on this logic, this article analyzes key human rights principles to dis...

The priorities reflected in the overarching system that includes the regimes dealing with international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law are currently undergoing a gradual but highly significant transformation. The cause is a growing preoccupation with ‘atrocity crimes’ in each of the three fields, along with the imposition of criminal sanctions in response to an ever increasing range of violations, the recasting of other violations as crimes (ecocide), and the urge to describe a great many situations as involving genocide. These developments h...

ABSTRACT Human rights defenders (HRD) are facing shrinking spaces. The United Nations Human Rights Council (Council) is one of these potentially shrinking spaces. At the Council, there exists significant contestation over HRD and their role in human rights protection. Resolutions on HRD are facing contestation including lengthy debates and record-setting numbers of amendments by opponents of HRD initiatives. This paper uses theories of contestation from international relations to examine how Member States both advocate for and against HRD at the Council. Case study analysis including participa...

Under the League of Arab States’ human rights regime, Arab countries are governed by the Arab Charter of Human Rights 2004. The Charter, however, lacks an enforcement mechanism. The Statute of the Arab Court of Human Rights 2014 aims to fill this enforcement void. This article addresses the criticism that, because it fails to provide for a direct right of individual petition, the Statute is not fit for purpose. It is argued contrarily that, within the context of an Arab human rights system, the Court should be welcomed as an important step in the process of establishing an effective regime.

This article discusses the evolution of soft law concerning the link between corruption and human rights. Evolution is defined as the increase in quantity and/or quality in International Human Rights Institutions’ normative outputs concerning corruption and human rights in (non-legally binding) instruments. Previous scholarly research was used as the benchmark to assess the evolution. The results indicated quantitative and qualitative evolutions in the production of the normative outputs regarding the link between corruption and human rights. The number of normative outputs produced by the r...

The welfare of society and the relationship between people and the natural environment are all directly impacted by engineering work, and codes of ethics are central to the profession. Yet many engineers struggle to incorporate these principles into their daily work because such codes typically emphasize professional conduct without reflecting on the role of engineering within such complex social and environmental systems. In this paper, we propose a human rights–based approach to engineering anchored in four core principles of distributive justice, broad participation, explicit consideration ...

Through an ethnographic analysis of Hong Kong LGBT activists’ fight for a gender recognition ordinance (GRO) that would simplify the process for transgender Hongkongers to change their legal gender, a paradox emerged: Why was a human rights framing of LGBT issues problematic when human rights were central to locals’ understanding of what it meant to be Hongkongers? Local LGBT activists’ vernacularization of human rights—or the process of localization of international human rights law into culturally relevant frameworks—hinged on reframing the need for a GRO as a matter of humanity, not human r...

The intersection of human rights and data rights is explored, the legal and ethical dimensions of data protection are analyzed, and strategies to ensure the effective safeguarding of data rights in order to uphold fundamental human rights principles in the digital age are proposed.

Why and how can records serve as evidence of human rights violations, in particular crimes against humanity, and help the fight against impunity? Archives and Human Rights shows the close relationship between archives and human rights and discusses the emergence, at the international level, of the principles of the right to truth, justice and reparation. Through a historical overview and topical case studies from different regions of the world the book discusses how records can concretely support these principles. The current examples also demonstrate how the perception of the role of the arch...

rights values. These tactics draw from practical knowledge and experience rather than formalized thinking and consistent methods.

This article examines explanations for AI decision-making as it concerns end users through the lens of humans rights as it increasingly fuels Internet applications.

This article focuses on fundamental human rights based on a historical literature review. Methodologically, a literature review and application of the design thinking (DT) method were used in three sessions using storytelling techniques and canvas drawings with managers specializing in “smart and sustainable city” projects in Brazil. The scientific work demonstrates that, in the view of the participating experts selected according to the research criteria, there are many gaps regarding fundamental human rights in cities. The digitalization of cities, with its layers of digital governance, alon...

The aim of this paper is to search for possibilities to change the terms and content of conversations on colonial/decolonial human rights education. The content of conversations consists of what we know about human rights. The terms of conversations are the principles, assumptions, and rules of knowing in human rights education. The terms and content are interrelated and continually sustain each other. Decoloniality resists global coloniality of power, ontologies and epistemologies which are consequences of colonisation. It also questions the Eurocentric assumptions and principles which serve ...

Contemporary assessments of human rights tend to diverge in increasingly polarized ways. Human rights are frequently labeled “ the dominant normative or moral discourse of global politics ” (Goodhart, 2009: 2)

In 2022 the UN CRPD Committee was informed about the disproportionate exposure of persons with disabilities to the risks engendered by military Russian aggression in Ukraine – risks such as poverty, violence, abandonment, injuries and death. This commentary provides an overview of the main issues identified.

ABSTRACT Contributing to debates in human rights and critical migration and border studies, this article focuses on how certain bordering practices limit displaced people from accessing universally recognised human rights. Specifically, it draws attention to some key bordering practices that restrict the physical mobility of displaced people in Turkey and Mexico. These two countries have become responsible for offering protection to many displaced people while simultaneously containing their mobility towards desired destinations. The analysis draws on extensive policy, program, and scholarly d...

Abstract. In 2020, the United Nations celebrated its 75th anniversary. The celebration marked the founding of the UN Charter and reminded the world that this intergovernmental organization, created in the aftermath of World War II, was envisioned as an institution to safeguard humanity, and extend the protection and promotion of human rights, peace and security, the rule of law, and development. The anniversary also came against the backdrop of a world teetering on the brink of disaster – the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN Secretary-General described the COVID-19 pandemic as a global crisis that th...

Human rights were introduced into the United Kingdom law over two decades ago. They were, it was said, brought home. The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) created binding and justiciable human rights for everyone within the jurisdiction of the country. UK courts became the venues for arguments based on human rights for the very first time. The HRA gave effect within UK law to the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights 1950 (ECHR). Human rights were brought home in the sense that British lawyers and politicians played an important part in developing and writing the ECHR. The original...

While multinational companies contribute to the economies of thecountries in which they operate, they can also cause negative effects such asenvironmental pollution, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions,insufficient wages, child labor and forced displacement of indigenous people,and as a result, human rights violations. In this paper, corporate human rightsdue diligence obligations, which serve the purpose of preventing human rightsviolations and environmental damage that may be caused by the commercialactivities of multinational companies, are examined. In this context, nonbinding and volu...

The urgency of the issue of human rights implementation is determined by its permanent nature. Human rights ensuring has become not only a moral imperative, but also a key indicator of the countries' development and their readiness to cooperate in the international arena. Human rights implementation is an important component of any democratic society. The level of freedom and justice within society depends on how efficiency human rights are implemented. The European Court of Human Rights activity, the practice of which is recognized as a source of national law, is of particular importance. Th...

ABSTRACT Western discourse towards China had been hardening since it became clear to US leaders that their assumption that increasing trade and engagement with China would lead it to become a pale imitation of Western neoliberal financialised capitalisms was coming unravelled and China continued to adhere to its socialist commitments. In waging the US’s New Cold War on China with equal if not greater vigour than Trump, Biden merely replaced Trump’s “America First” stance with the traditionally hypocritical stance of imperialism that always pretends to do good for the world it seeks to dominate...

ABSTRACT:Bringing together the heretofore separate theorizations of Deafnicity and the hearing line, this article shows how reading the hearing line in literature becomes crucial to understanding Deafnicity and promoting Deaf rights. This article presents Angeline Fuller-Fischer’s Scenes in the History of the Deaf and Dumb and Annie C. Dalton’s To Viola Meynell as resistance literature that countered Viola Meynell’s advancement of the international doctrine of eugenics in We Were Just Saying. Speaking to Sign Language Peoples’ contemporary arguments for human and group rights, Angeline Fuller-...

Human rights are first, universal, second, fundamental, third, abstract, and fourth, moral rights that, fifth, take priority over all other norms. For the question of the existence of human rights, the fourth defining element, the moral character of human rights, is of special significance. The purely moral character distinguishes human rights from constitutional rights. Constitutional rights are positive law at the level of the constitution. This, however, is not to say that no connection exists between human rights and constitutional rights. On the contrary, constitutional rights have to be ...

An innovative book that provides fresh insights into the neglected field of remedies in both international and domestic human rights law. Providing an overarching two-track theory, it combines remedies to compensate and prevent irreparable harm to litigants with a more dialogic approach to systemic remedies. It breaks new ground by demonstrating how proportionality principles can improve remedial decision-making and avoid reliance on either strong discretion or inflexible rules. It draws on the latest jurisprudence from the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and domestic courts...

This timely collection brings together original explorations of the COVID-19 pandemic and its wide-ranging, global effects on human rights. The contributors argue that a human rights perspective is necessary to understand the pervasive consequences of the crisis, while focusing attention on those being left behind and providing a necessary framework for the effort to 'build back better'. Expert contributors to this volume address interconnections between the COVID-19 crisis and human rights to equality and non-discrimination, including historical responses to pandemics, populism and authoritar...

The present day human rights advocacy can be justified on grounds of ‘positive view of freedom’. This entails ‘the view that individual freedom in the full sense involves having an opportunity for self- realization... The political content of the positive view is that, if certain resources, powers or abilities are needed for self-realization to be effectively achievable, then having these resources must be considered part of freedom itself. It is on this basis that modem revisionary liberals have defended the welfare state as a freedom- enhancing institution: it is alleged to confer needed res...

Abstract The modern human rights movement arose during a moment of unprecedented encounter between global religions in the mid-twentieth century. Yet attempts to parse the historical relationship between human rights and religious thought have almost exclusively taken the form of case studies of individual religious traditions. This focus on intellectual genealogies obscures the fact that much of human rights doctrine emerged from interreligious contacts and conflicts between Judaism and Christianity, particularly in the context of the decolonizing Middle East. This article retraces this inter...