This volume presents responses to the work of James Griffin, one of the most significant contributors to the contemporary debate over human rights. Leading moral and political philosophers engage with Griffin's views--according to which human rights are best understood as protections of our agency and personhood--and Griffin offers his own reply.

Human Rights and the Body is a response to the crisis in human rights, to the very real concern that without a secure foundation for the concept of human rights, their very existence is threatened. While there has been consideration of the discourses of human rights and the way in which the body is written upon, research in linguistics has not yet been fully brought to bear on either human rights or the body. Drawing on legal concepts and aspects of the law of human rights, Mooney aims to provide a universally defensible set of human rights and a foundation, or rather a frame, for them. She argues that the proper frames for human rights are firstly the human body, seen as an index reliant on the natural world, secondly the globe and finally, language. These three frames generate rights to food, water, sleep and shelter, environmental protection and a right against dehumanization. This book is essential reading for researchers and graduate students in the fields of human rights and semiotics of law.

This book is designed to introduce law students, legal actors and human rights activists, particularly participants in human rights dialogues with China, to the process and reality of a newly confident China’s participation in the international human rights system, albeit with inherent challenges. From an international and comparative perspective, one of the key findings of the author's research is that progress towards human rights depends more on judges than on legislators. Chinese legislators have enacted a series of reforms in order to better protect human rights. Unfortunately, these reforms have not led to greater adherence to China’s international human rights obligations in practice. The reforms failed because they have generally been misunderstood by Chinese judges, who often have a limited understanding of international human rights norms. Specifically, this book will examine how judicial misunderstandings have blocked reforms in one specific area, the use of severe punishments, based on international human rights theory and case studies and data analyses. This examination has several purposes. The first is to suggest that China ratify the ICCPR as the next step for its substantive progress in human rights and as a good preparation for its re-applying to be a member of the UN Human Right Council in the future. The second is to explain how judges could be better educated in international human rights norms so as to greatly reduce the use of severe punishments and better comply with China's human rights obligations. The third is to demonstrate how the international community could better engage with China in a manner that is more conducive to human rights improvements. The author's ultimate goal is to enhance dialogue on human rights in China between judges and the Chinese government, between Chinese judges and their foreign counterparts and between China's government and the international community. Another significant aim of this book is to clarify the controversial question of what obligations China should undertake before its ratification of the ICCPR and to re-examine trends in its developing human rights policy after standing down from the Council in late 2012. The tortuous progress of China’s criminal law and criminal justice reforms has confirmed that Chinese judges need further instruction on how to apply severe punishments in a manner consistent with international standards. Judges should be encouraged to exercise more discretion when sentencing so that penalties reflect the intent of relevant domestic laws as well as the international human rights standards enumerated in the ICCPR. In order to better educate and train judges, this book contains introductory chapters that examine the severe punishments currently available to Chinese judges from an international human rights perspective. To illustrate how Chinese justice currently falls short of international norms, this paper also examines several cases that are considered to be indicative of China’s progress towards greater respect for human rights and the rule of law. These cases demonstrate that China still has a long way to go to achieve its goals, at least before abolishing the death penalty, forced labor and torture.

A right to equality and non-discrimination is widely seen as fundamental in democratic legal systems. But failure to identify the human interest that equality aims to uphold reinforces the argument of those who attack it as morally empty or unsubstantiated and weakens its status as a fundamental human right. This book argues that an understanding of the human interest which equality aims to uphold is feasible within the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In comparing the evolution of the prohibition of discrimination in the case-law of both Courts, Charilaos Nikolaidis demonstrates that conceptual convergence within the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the EU on the issue of equality is not as far as it might appear initially. While the two bodies of equality law are extremely divergent as to the requirements they impose, their interpretation by the international judiciary might be properly analysed under a common light to emphasise the substantive dimension of equality in European Human Rights law. The book will be of great use and interest to scholars and students of human rights, discrimination law, and European politics.

This book offers a stimulating introduction to the links between areas of global governance, human rights global economy and international law. By drawing on a range of diverse subject areas, Errol P. Mendes argues that the foundations of global governance, human rights and international law are undermined by a conflict or ‘tragic flaw’, where insistence on absolute conceptions of state sovereignty are pitted against universally accepted principles of justice and human rights resulting in destructive self-interest for both the state and the global community. The book explores how human rights and international law are applied in some of the critical institutions of global governance and in the operations of the global private sector, and how States, institutions and global civil society struggle to fight this ‘tragic flaw’. The book is brought up to date by considering developments in the role of the IMF, the World Bank, bilateral investment treaties; the likely failure of the Doha round of WTO negotiations; the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis; and the role of the International Criminal Court and the evolving Responsibility to Protect doctrine in international peace and security crises in the Middle East, Central and West Africa among other regions of the world. With its intensely interdisciplinary approach, this book motivates new thinking in the realm of global governance and international law, and promotes the development of new strategies for negotiating between conflicting leadership and organisational values within global institutions. The book will be of great interest and use to students and researchers of public international law, international relations and political science, business and human rights, global governance and international trade and economic law.

This book assesses the role of human rights education (HRE) in the peacebuilding field. Today, most governments, international organisations and non-governmental organisations recognise the importance of human rights in peace- and democracy-building activities in post-conflict regions. However, compared with other components of peacebuilding, little attention and funding have been given to the cultivation of human rights knowledge and skills within these populations. Almost nothing has been committed to understanding how HRE is best accomplished in such difficult circumstances. Human Rights Education and Peacebuilding demonstrates the promise of HRE programs to help bring about peace within challenging post-conflict contexts. Each chapter of this book (a) identifies the short and medium term impacts of seven different HRE programs on their respective target groups, and (b) provides an analysis of the peculiar local contextual factors that influenced each program’s rationale for human rights education. More specifically, each chapter addresses these critical questions: - How are communities around the world using HRE to help rebuild their lives in the aftermath of an armed conflict? - How does HRE respond local problems and needs? How similar are the human rights impacts in the different projects? - How can we understand the promise and challenges associated with HRE as a component of community peace-building? This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, human rights, education studies and IR in general.

The Visible Human Project examines how the VHP provides visual access to every organ of the body, viewable from every angle and capable of being manipulated to simulate living processes like respiration.

Fourteen years since its establishment,the work of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has not received the attention that should have been paid to its important contributions towards the promotion and protection of human rights in Africa. The aim of this publication is to provide not only the basic documents, but also the less well known material related to the jurisprudence emanating from the consideration of communications. This volume therefore includes, amongst other material, the twelve activity reports adopted by the Commission, resolutions, and final communiqués from the sessions. This is the first attempt to reproduce comprehensively the many documents of the Commission adopted since its inception in 1987. It will be an essential reference for academics, students, and practitioners. The publication is produced in collaboration with the African Society for International and Comparative Law, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria and Interights in London.

prospects of the High Commissioner proposal with careful scholarship and shrewd judgment. Mr. Clark wrote the first draft of this book under my supervision for the degree of Doctor of the Science of Law at Columbia Law School before returning to take up his career as a law teacher in his native New Zealand. I am delighted that his work, in this improved and updated version, is now being published. It fills a real need, since it is the first book on this important subject. On this occasion it might be appropriate to add a few comments on the history of the High Commissioner proposal. As Mr. Clark indicates, I had something to do with its "revival" in the United States Government during the closing months of the Kennedy Administration. A few details as to how this "revival" took place may perhaps be useful to students of international relations and international organization.

The three-volume set LNCS 8009-8011 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, UAHCI 2013, held as part of the 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2013, held in Las Vegas, USA in July 2013, jointly with 12 other thematically similar conferences. The total of 1666 papers and 303 posters presented at the HCII 2013 conferences was carefully reviewed and selected from 5210 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas. The total of 230 contributions included in the UAHCI proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this three-volume set. The 78 papers included in this volume are organized in the following topical sections: universal access to smart environments and ambient assisted living; universal access to learning and education; universal access to text, books, ebooks and digital libraries; health, well-being, rehabilitation and medical applications; access to mobile interaction.