Economic globalisation is one of the guiding paradigms of the twenty-first century. The challenge it implies for human rights is fundamental, and key questions have up to now received no satisfying answers. How can human rights protect human dignity when economic globalisation has an adverse impact on local living conditions? How should human rights evolve in response to a global economy in which non-statal actors are decisive forces? Economic Globalisation and Human Rights was originally published in 2007, and sets out to assess these and other questions to ensure that, as economic globalisation intensifies, human rights take up the central and crucial position that they deserve. Using a multidisciplinary methodology, leading scholars reflect on issues such as the need for global ethics, the localisation of human rights, the role of human rights in WTO law, and efforts to make international economic organisations more accountable and multinational corporations more socially responsible.

The right to adequate food is firmly established in international human rights law. It is among those most cited in solemn declarations and most violated in practice. In a landmark decision, the 1996 World Food Summit decided to break with the all too familiar right-to-food rhetoric and requested a clarification of "the content of the right to food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger" and the means for its implementation. Since then much efforts have gone into further conceptualisation of social and cultural rights in general and the right to adequate food in particular. UN agencies, scholars, interested governments and civil society have joined forces in attempting to provide a foundation for national and international follow-up of the recommendations of the World Food Summit, reinforced by the Millennium Development Goals. This first of two volumes provides evidence of some of this work and gives direction for future activities to promote and protect the right to adequate food for all. It has contributions from some 15 authors who have all been directly involved, from different angles, in the advancement of the right to food and related human rights over the past years. Besides introducing the concept of the right to food and elaborating on its theoretical basis and meaning in development, it provides several recent examples from work both at the national and international level to apply it in practical situations, and with a special view to how to go about identifying the corresponding obligations of states and complementary duties and responsibilities of non-state actors and international organisations. Finally, several chapters address the right to food under special circumstances and for special groups needing particular attention. The book is the first of its kind on the right to food as a human right. It is not a textbook but is intended to inform and stimulate further debate among scholars, policy-makers and practitioners and activists alike, on some of the major issues of concern in applying a right-based approach to alleviating food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition, and in promoting access to and consumption of nutritionally adequate, safe and culturally acceptable food on a sustainable basis for all. It is now evident that with the current pace of events the goal set by the WFS and the MDG of halving poverty and hunger by 2015 will not be achieved. There is a growing need to watch some of the possible effects of rapid economic globalisation and market liberalisation on food and nutrition security conditions, and to promote countervailing measures to offset their most negative consequences, particularly for vulnerable groups. The right to food is a first test case of the extent to which the application of economic, social and cultural rights can effectively exert such counterforce in an increasingly economics- and market-driven international climate, and enhance progress towards established goals.

The era of technology in which we reside has ushered in a more globalized and connected world. While many benefits are gained from this connectivity, possible disadvantages to issues of human rights are developed as well. Defending Human Rights and Democracy in the Era of Globalization is a pivotal resource for the latest research on the effects of a globalized society regarding issues relating to social ethics and civil rights. Highlighting relevant concepts on political autonomy, migration, and asylum, this book is ideally designed for academicians, professionals, practitioners, and upper-level students interested in the ongoing concerns of human rights.

Human rights are increasingly described as being in crisis. But are human rights really on the verge of disappearing? Human Rights Transformation in Practice argues that it is certainly the case that human rights organizations in many parts of the world are under threat, but that the ideals of justice, fairness, and equality inherent in human rights remain appealing globally—and that recognizing the continuing importance and strength of human rights requires looking for them in different places. These places are not simply the Human Rights Council or regular meetings of monitoring committees but also the offices of small NGOs and the streets of poor cities. In Human Rights Transformation in Practice, editors Tine Destrooper and Sally Engle Merry collect various approaches to the questions of how human rights travel and how they are transformed, offering a corrective to those perspectives locating human rights only in formal institutions and laws. Contributors to the volume empirically examine several hypotheses about the factors that impact the vernacularization and localization of human rights: how human rights ideals become formalized in local legal systems, sometimes become customary norms, and, at other times, fail to take hold. Case studies explore the ways in which local struggles may inspire the further development of human rights norms at the transnational level. Through these analyses, the essays in Human Rights Transformation in Practice consider how the vernacularization and localization processes may be shaped by different causes of human rights violations, the perceived nature of violations, and the existence of networks and formal avenues for information-sharing. Contributors: Sara L. M. Davis, Ellen Desmet, Tine Destrooper, Mark Goodale, Ken MacLean, Samuel Martínez, Sally Engle Merry, Charmain Mohamed, Vasuki Nesiah, Arne Vandenbogaerde, Wouter Vandenhole, Johannes M. Waldmüller.

Are human rights gaining or losing ground? This question has become relevant after two decades of unprecedented progress in developing human rights standards and institutions. The political climate during the Cold War created many obstacles, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its aftermath during the following decade created a sense of promise and progress among human rights scholars and actors. Yet, today, actions, statements and initiatives questioning the legitimacy and validity of human rights, or even threatening their very existence, have become a regular part of current political realities, even in states traditionally dedicated to the rule of law. This would have been inconceivable ten or twenty years ago. At the political level human rights are gaining as well as losing ground. The question of the adequacy, legitimacy and scope of human rights is still a live one. And weaknesses in supra-national human rights protection systems have emerged over the last twenty years. It is now clear that human rights mechanisms are not well adapted to the handling of the ever-increasing number of complaints or to the effective implementation of human rights. This thought-provoking collection of essays by leading scholars and practitioners in the field of human rights explores the ways in which human rights are currently being challenged and weakened, but also strengthened in important and groundbreaking ways in different areas and settings. They explore the many current debates which centre on human rights concerns: debates about secularism and religious norms, about minimum social standards and social security, about the future regulation of citizenship, about prison reform and theuse of less inhumane methods of detention; as well as the reform of the UN system and the challenges facing the now overburdened European Court of Human Rights.

Recent events such as ‘Iran’s Green Revolution’ and the ‘Arab Uprisings’ have exploded notions that human rights are irrelevant to Middle Eastern and North African politics. Increasingly seen as a global concern, human rights are at the fulcrum of the region’s on-the-ground politics, transnational intellectual debates, and global political intersections. The Routledge Handbook on Human Rights and the Middle East and North Africa: emphasises the need to consider human rights in all their dimensions, rather than solely focusing on the political dimension, in order to understand the structural reasons behind the persistence of human rights violations; explores the various frameworks in which to consider human rights—conceptual, political and transnational/international; discusses issue areas subject to particularly intense debate—gender, religion, sexuality, transitions and accountability; contains contributions from perspectives that span from global theory to grassroots reflections, emphasising the need for academic work on human rights to seriously engage with the thoughts and practices of those working on the ground. A multidisciplinary approach from scholars with a wide range of expertise allows the book to capture the complex dynamics by which human rights have had, or could have, an impact on Middle Eastern and North African politics. This book will therefore be a key resource for students and scholars of Middle Eastern and North African politics and society, as well as anyone with a concern for Human Rights across the globe.

Over time, public goods, services, and policies have been developed for the welfare of people all over the world, and public finance in particular focuses on challenging issues that are significantly important for the common good of humanity. It is a plausible argument that public economics should be focused on dealing with new challenging issues such as global health crises, global warming, and internet architecture. The Handbook of Research on Challenges in Public Economics in the Era of Globalization evaluates a variety of new challenging issues that have directly affected the world economy in terms of the economic units, institutions, and social life. Covering topics such as democratic decentralization, economic instability, and global health issues, this major reference work is a valuable resource for economists, international business leaders, government officials, sociologists, libraries, researchers, academicians, educators, and students.

Globalisation turns out to be untenable because it does not guarantee minimum social equity, peace and respect for the environment, and therefore does not guarantee the effective accomplishment of human rights. This book analyzes this issue and raises proposals for a new perspective. The first part describes the soft threats to human rights, derived from the devaluation of the politics and the productive economy with regard to the finance. It entails the concealment of the reality in the shape of exploitation as the tax havens and in the shape of marginalization of the persons with different abilities. The second part include a study of hard threats to human rights and examines two cases of failed states: Afghanistan and Somalia, in which the violence has supplanted the politics and the economy. In view of these situations it is necessary to rethink the force of classic ius gentium and the humanitarian right. The third part presents the European Union as a legal and political space in which conditions of a worthy life are better defended by means of the Primacy of Practical Reason and Social State of Law, and by the requirement of peace as the main rule of international relations.

This engaging and enlightening third edition explores how the principles of human rights inform contemporary social work practice.