Economic Liberties and Human Rights
Economic Liberties and Human Rights

Author: Taylor & Francis Group

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9781032092621

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The status of economic liberties remains a serious lacuna in the theory and practice of human rights. Should a minimally just society protect the freedoms to sell, save, profit and invest? Is being prohibited to run a business a human rights violation? While these liberties enjoy virtually no support from the existing philosophical theories of human rights and little protection by the international human rights law, they are of tremendous importance in the lives of individuals, and particularly the poor. Like most individual liberties, economic liberties increase our ability to lead our own life. When we enjoy them, we can choose the occupational paths that best fit us and, in so doing, define who they are in relation to others. Furthermore, in the absence of good jobs, economic liberties allow us to create an alternative path to subsistence. This is critical for the millions of working poor in developing countries who earn their livelihoods by engaging in independent economic activities. Insecure economic liberties leave them vulnerable to harassment, bribery and other forms of abuse from middlemen and public officials. This book opens a debate about the moral and legal status of economic liberties as human rights. It brings together political and legal theorists working in the domain of human rights and global justice, as well as people engaged in the practice of human rights, to engage in both foundational and applied issues concerning these questions.

The Economics of Human Rights
The Economics of Human Rights

Author: Elizabeth M. Wheaton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-09-21

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1351012983

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Economics plays a key role in human rights issues as decision-makers weigh the incentives associated with choosing how to use scarce resources in the context of committing or escaping human rights violence. This textbook provides an introduction to the microeconomic analysis of human rights utilizing economics as a lens through which to examine social topics including capital punishment, violence against women, asylum seeking, terrorism, child abuse, genocide, and hate. Whether analyzing the decisions made in capital punishment cases, the causes and consequences of genocide, or the impact of terrorist acts on domestic and international decision-making, the science of economics provides tools and a systematic method of analysis and policy recommendation. This key text presents a method for integrating the social sciences of economics and human rights to create new opportunities for the investigation of social issues. Within each chapter, readers gain a fundamental understanding of a specific human rights issue, the decision-makers and the decision-making process involved, and the benefits and costs leading to the decisions. Experts on each issue, drawn from a variety of fields, contribute to each chapter and present first-hand accounts and different perspectives on each issue. The detailed analyses and accounts provided also explore the potential incentives involved in the prevention and termination of human rights violations. Aiming to further economic inquiry and enhance interdisciplinary research, this textbook serves as a multi-purpose guide for a range of readers. Students, researchers, and educators, as well as those working in organizations supporting victims of human rights violations and policy-makers facing human rights challenges, will find this book informative and engaging.

International Economic Law in the 21st Century
International Economic Law in the 21st Century

Author: Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2012-07-24

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 1847319815

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The state-centred 'Westphalian model' of international law has failed to protect human rights and other international public goods effectively. Most international trade, financial and environmental agreements do not even refer to human rights, consumer welfare, democratic citizen participation and transnational rule of law for the benefit of citizens. This book argues that these 'multilevel governance failures' are largely due to inadequate regulation of the 'collective action problems' in the supply of international public goods, such as inadequate legal, judicial and democratic accountability of governments vis-a-vis citizens. Rather than treating citizens as mere objects of intergovernmental economic and environmental regulation and leaving multilevel governance of international public goods to discretionary 'foreign policy', human rights and constitutional democracy call for 'civilizing' and 'constitutionalizing' international economic and environmental cooperation by stronger legal and judicial protection of citizens and their constitutional rights in international economic law. Moreover intergovernmental regulation of transnational cooperation among citizens must be justified by 'principles of justice' and 'multilevel constitutional restraints' protecting rights of citizens and their 'public reason'. The reality of 'constitutional pluralism' requires respecting legitimately diverse conceptions of human rights and democratic constitutionalism. The obvious failures in the governance of interrelated trading, financial and environmental systems must be restrained by cosmopolitan, constitutional conceptions of international law protecting the transnational rule of law and participatory democracy for the benefit of citizens.

The Power of Freedom
The Power of Freedom

Author: Jean-Pierre Chauffour

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 2009-02-01

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1933995998

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Are the quests for human rights and economic development compatible? In this thought-provoking book, Jean-Pierre Chauffour argues that the answer depends on the place given to freedom in both human rights and development. When freedom advances, prosperity and human rights progress. When freedom is threatened—especially economic and civil liberties—fundamental human rights are violated and economic development suffers. Yet although the connection between rights and development has long been recognized, practice has not followed principle. Human rights advocates and economic development experts rarely engage each other and often work at cross purposes. Moreover, the proposition that freedom plays a central role in both agendas challenges a number of human rights and development orthodoxies as well as practices developed over the last 60 years. A reconciliation of the human rights and development communities is possible. It requires highlighting the role that freedom plays in both. Rights advocates must recognize economic liberty as an essential component of human rights, and development experts must recognize the broad range of institutions and economic policies consistent with human rights. With his engaging style, Chauffour makes clear that empowering people with economic freedom, civil rights, and political liberties is the best way to ensure development and respect for the individual. This book provides major lessons to meet the challenges of securing freedom, peace, and prosperity.

Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice
Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice

Author: Radhika Balakrishnan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-31

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1317572114

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The dominant approach to economic policy has so far failed to adequately address the pressing challenges the world faces today: extreme poverty, widespread joblessness and precarious employment, burgeoning inequality, and large-scale environmental threats. This message was brought home forcibly by the 2008 global economic crisis. Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice shows how human rights have the potential to transform economic thinking and policy-making with far-reaching consequences for social justice. The authors make the case for a new normative and analytical framework, based on a broader range of objectives which have the potential to increase the substantive freedoms and choices people enjoy in the course of their lives and not on not upon narrow goals such as the growth of gross domestic product. The book covers a range of issues including inequality, fiscal and monetary policy, international development assistance, financial markets, globalization, and economic instability. This new approach allows for a complex interaction between individual rights, collective rights and collective action, as well as encompassing a legal framework which offers formal mechanisms through which unjust policy can be protested. This highly original and accessible book will be essential reading for human rights advocates, economists, policy-makers and those working on questions of social justice.

Socio-Economic Human Rights in Essential Public Services Provision
Socio-Economic Human Rights in Essential Public Services Provision

Author: Marlies Hesselman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1317209893

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There is a clear overlap between securing socio-economic human rights for all persons and arranging adequate access to essential public services across society. Both are necessary to realise thriving, inclusive societies, with adequate living standards for all, based on human dignity. This edited volume brings together the two topics for the first time. In particular, it identifies the common challenges for essential public services provision and socio-economic human rights realisation, and it explores how socio-economic rights law can be harnessed to reinforce better access to services. An important aim of this book is to understand how international socio-economic human rights law and guideposts can be used and strengthened to improve access to services, and assess socio-economic legal and policy decisions. The volume includes contributions from different continents, on a range of different services, and engages with the realities of different regulatory settings. After an introduction that sets out the most important challenges for universal access to services – including sufficient resources mobilisation, private actor involvement and regulation, or the need for improved checks and balances – the book goes on to discuss current issues in services provision and socio-economic rights, as well as explores the place and role of private business actors in the provision of services. In particular, it assesses how the responsibility and accountability of such actors for human rights can be improved . The final part of the book narrows in on the under-explored human rights concepts of ‘participation’ and ‘accountability’, as essential prerequisites for better ‘checks and balances’. Overall, this volume presents a unique and powerful illustration of how socio-economic human rights law supports improved access to essential public services for all.

The Debasement of Human Rights
The Debasement of Human Rights

Author: Aaron Rhodes

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1594039801

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The idea of human rights began as a call for individual freedom from tyranny, yet today it is exploited to rationalize oppression and promote collectivism. How did this happen? Aaron Rhodes, recognized as “one of the leading human rights activists in the world” by the University of Chicago, reveals how an emancipatory ideal became so debased. Rhodes identifies the fundamental flaw in the Universal Declaration of Human of Rights, the basis for many international treaties and institutions. It mixes freedom rights rooted in natural law—authentic human rights—with “economic and social rights,” or claims to material support from governments, which are intrinsically political. As a result, the idea of human rights has lost its essential meaning and moral power. The principles of natural rights, first articulated in antiquity, were compromised in a process of accommodation with the Soviet Union after World War II, and under the influence of progressivism in Western democracies. Geopolitical and ideological forces ripped the concept of human rights from its foundations, opening it up to abuse. Dissidents behind the Iron Curtain saw clearly the difference between freedom rights and state-granted entitlements, but the collapse of the USSR allowed demands for an expanding array of economic and social rights to gain legitimacy without the totalitarian stigma. The international community and civil society groups now see human rights as being defined by legislation, not by transcendent principles. Freedoms are traded off for the promise of economic benefits, and the notion of collective rights is used to justify restrictions on basic liberties. We all have a stake in human rights, and few serious observers would deny that the concept has lost clarity. But no one before has provided such a comprehensive analysis of the problem as Rhodes does here, joining philosophy and history with insights from his own extensive work in the field.

Economic Liberties and Human Rights
Economic Liberties and Human Rights

Author: Jahel Queralt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-14

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1351329596

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The status of economic liberties remains a serious lacuna in the theory and practice of human rights. Should a minimally just society protect the freedoms to sell, save, profit and invest? Is being prohibited to run a business a human rights violation? While these liberties enjoy virtually no support from the existing philosophical theories of human rights and little protection by the international human rights law, they are of tremendous importance in the lives of individuals, and particularly the poor. Like most individual liberties, economic liberties increase our ability to lead our own life. When we enjoy them, we can choose the occupational paths that best fit us and, in so doing, define who they are in relation to others. Furthermore, in the absence of good jobs, economic liberties allow us to create an alternative path to subsistence. This is critical for the millions of working poor in developing countries who earn their livelihoods by engaging in independent economic activities. Insecure economic liberties leave them vulnerable to harassment, bribery and other forms of abuse from middlemen and public officials. This book opens a debate about the moral and legal status of economic liberties as human rights. It brings together political and legal theorists working in the domain of human rights and global justice, as well as people engaged in the practice of human rights, to engage in both foundational and applied issues concerning these questions.

International Economic Actors and Human Rights
International Economic Actors and Human Rights

Author: Adam McBeth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-09-28

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1135245223

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In noting that the actions of entities other than states in the economic arena can and often do have a profound effect on human rights, this book poses the question as to how international human rights law can and should address that situation. This book takes three very different categories of international actor – the World Trade Organization, the international financial institutions (World Bank and IMF) and multinational enterprises – and analyses the interaction of each category with human rights, in each case analysing the interaction of the different fields of law and seeking to identify a role for international human rights law. Adam McBeth concludes that each of the selected international economic actors can and should be considered to operate within a holistic system of international law, including human rights obligations, but that changes in the operations and the accountability mechanisms for each actor are necessary for the practical implementation of that approach. While written from a human rights perspective, the underlying theme of the book is one of engagement and harmonisation rather than condemnation. It provides valuable insight for those who approach this topic from a background of international trade law, commercial law or general international law, just as much as those who have a human rights background. International Economic Actors and Human Rights will be of great interest to those studying or working in any field of international economic law, as well as human rights scholars and practitioners.

International Human Rights Law and Destitution
International Human Rights Law and Destitution

Author: Luke D. Graham

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-18

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 1000632547

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This book explores destitution from the perspective of international human rights law and, more specifically, economic, social, and cultural rights. The experience of destitution correlates to the non-realisation of a range of economic, social, and cultural rights. However, destitution has not been defined from this perspective. Consequently, the nexus between destitution and the denial of economic, social, and cultural rights remains unrecognised within academia and policy and practice. This book expressly addresses this issue and in so doing renders the nexus between destitution and the non-realisation of these rights visible. The book proposes a new human rights-based definition of destitution, composed of two parts. The rights which must be realised (the component rights) and the level of realisation of these rights which must be met (the destitution threshold) to avoid destitution. This human rights-based understanding of destitution is then applied to a UK case study to highlight the relationship between government policy and destitution, to illustrate how destitution manifests itself, and to make recommendations – founded upon engendering the realisation of economic, social, and cultural rights – aimed towards addressing destitution. This book will have global and cross-sectoral appeal to anti-poverty advocates, policy makers, as well as to researchers, academics and students in the fields of human rights law, poverty studies, and social policy.