Search Results

This chapter adds to the discussion about the relationship between the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and childhood research by exploring what the application of a ‘human rights-based approach’, as commonly understood in the international human rights community, would mean if implemented systematically in the context of research with children. The implications of this are explored in relation to the three key chronological research stages: framing, conducting, and disseminating children's rights-based research. However, before drawing out the features of such research, it is necessary to define first what it is we understand by the term ‘rights-based’.

This chapter explores what is meant by a new way of judicial thinking in which children are conceived of as independent subjects with rights and entitlements as opposed to mere objects in need of protection and charity. It consists of four parts. Part 5.1 provides an overview of the ways in which courts have constructed childhood over time. It suggests that three broad models have emerged — a proprietary approach, a welfare approach, and more recently a rights-based approach. Part 5.2 details the features of this newest way of thinking about children and Part 5.3 provides an overview of the ways in which courts engage with this model. It is argued that courts' engagement with a rights-based approach can be classified along a spectrum that ranges from the non-existent (or invisible) to the substantive with a range of approaches between these extremes. Finally, Part 5.4 identifies the legal, institutional, and social factors that influence the extent to which courts engage with this new way of thinking whereby children are conceived of as rights holders. It argues that we are on the verge of a new epoch in which the construction of childhood by courts will increasingly be viewed through the prism of rights.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse a number of prominent views concerning the nature of a just war and, having criticized them, to outline the account of a just war that follows from a cosmopolitan perspective. It explores different philosophical approaches at a general level, analysing their accounts of when war may be waged (jus ad bellum) and how it may be waged (jus in bello). To do this it begins, in Section I, with some methodological observations, and then, in the next three sections (II–IV), examines several leading perspectives on the nature of just war: Sections II and III explore Michael Walzer’s influential treatment of this subject in Just and Unjust Wars (1977), criticizing in particular his account of jus ad bellum and his derivation of rules of jus in bello; Section IV analyses Terry Nardin’s state-centric account of just war in Law, Morality and the Relations of States (1983). The following four sections (V–VIII) turn to more cosmopolitan perspectives: Section V outlines the general structure of a cosmopolitan theory of just war; Sections VI and VII examine particular cosmopolitan accounts of some aspects of just war, analysing utilitarian and deontological approaches; and Section VIII criticizes the utilitarian and deontological accounts given in the previous two sections, outlining an alternative cosmopolitan rights-based approach that avoids the objections levelled against these two theories. Sections IX–XI analyse realist misgivings about both traditional and cosmopolitan conceptions of jus ad bellum (IX) and jus in bello (X); and Section XI summarizes and concludes.

This chapter discusses what has been called the rights-based, developmental approach to social work with people with disabilities. Drawing on social development ideas, the chapter focuses on the campaigns of the disability rights movement to normalize the lives of people with disabilities and to ensure their integration into economic, cultural and political activities. It emphasizes three aspects of the right based developmental approach, namely: the emergence and institutionalization of disability rights; the mainstreaming of people with disabilities into community living; and finally their engagement in the productive economy. Referring to statistical data and case examples, it shows that much more needs to be done to implement the rights based developmental approach. In addition, outmoded “expert” and medical approaches still exert considerable influence and need to be challenged.

This chapter describes the rights-based approach to health. This approach is based on the human right to health but looks beyond that right to focus on cross-cutting human rights principles for ensuring that health outcomes are achieved in a manner consistent with the foundational values of human rights. The rights-based approach to health is thus a key strategy in the development and implementation of health policy – based on principles of participation, equality and non-discrimination, transparency, and accountability. Examining these human rights principles, the rights-based approach has developed from rhetoric to practice, guiding health policy so as to provide for the highest attainable level of health for all. Nevertheless, the rights-based approach to health faces challenges as health and human rights address a larger global health landscape of state and non-state actors and find new meaning under the Sustainable Development Goals.

This chapter explores two general theoretical models that are used to frame higher education policy. Under the market-based approach to higher education teaching and learning, higher education is provided through the free market. This approach is based on the principles of competition, privitisation, and absence of government intervention. In contrast, a human rights-based approach to higher education seeks to translate the human right to higher education and operationalise it. The principles of a human rights-based approach include integration and mainstreaming of human rights norms, accountability, non-discrimination and equality, participation, dignity, interdependence and indivisibility, and cultural sensitivity. The chapter evaluates the theoretical effectiveness of these two models.

This chapter uses Sen's capability approach to explore whether there are inherent contradictions between human rights and development. The ‘human rights based approach’ has gained momentum yet many development practitioners and economists remain skeptical. The chapter reviews diverse critiques of the approach and assesses its application in government policy by reviewing Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers for fifty-five countries. It finds that only a few governments have incorporated the approach in policy priorities and concludes that the obstacles to further implementation do not lie with inherent contradictions between human rights principles and development, but with gaps in practical methods and tools. In particular, the absolutist interpretation of the principle of indivisibility is a major obstacle, and more work is needed to analyse norms of human rights that relate to the duty bearer to promote human rights in development in economic, social, and governance policies.

This chapter examines the evolution of sustainable human development as central to health governance, drawing on international human rights norms and standards to establish a human rights-based approach to development. The progression of economic development theories and the international development agenda has led to a discernible paradigm shift in considering development to be a human right. This right to development holds promise in contributing to global health and influencing the Sustainable Development Agenda—positing a rights-based approach to international development cooperation. Bilateral and multilateral development policies and practices have begun to make some progress in implementing a human rights-based approach to development, but the mutually reinforcing goals of health, human rights, and development must be integrated in governance. Global health governance stands to benefit from applying a human rights framework for sustainable human development, yet obstacles remain in realizing the health-related Sustainable Development Goals and advancing the right to development.

This chapter analyses whether political groups merit equal treatment to the four groups enumerated in the Genocide Convention. It first discusses what human ‘groups’ really are and the inherent difficulties of defining them for legal and social purposes. It details the linkages and interactions between international law and broader understandings of human groups as social collectives. It then proposes a new theoretical understanding of genocide as a rights-based offence. This theory links the legal protection of groups to certain individual rights of a collective nature that give rise to the group's existence in this context. This sets the stage for the subsequent analysis demonstrating that political collectives have many similar characteristics to the existing four groups, such that they likewise deserve specific protection from physical and biological destruction ‘as such’ through a separate crime of political genocide.

Disabled people have a major stake in health services, often as regular users, although the experience of many is that disability can be caused not just by their impairment, but by societal barriers and attitudes. Social attitudes during the 20th century to people with disabilities have moved through containment, victims deserving of compensation, a medical approach, to a rights-based approach. The history of societal marginalization of people with disabilities produced a ‘normalization’ push, since separate services, particularly within a medical model, were regarded as stigmatising. Whether people are better served by integrated or specialist care, however, depends upon the person and their particular impairment. The entitlement of disabled people to appropriate health care is based on rights supported in law, and professionals should reflect this view and become more knowledgeable about the health needs of disabled people.

The introductory chapter frames the way the topic of the risk-based approach will be addressed throughout the book. Rather than studying the risk-based approach as a given that is often seen as the irreconcilable opposite of the so-called rights-based approach (directly stemming from the status of data protection as a fundamental right of the EU), it sees the risk-based approach instead as the latest avatar of a series of regulation models applied in the data protection context. If the risk-based approach is the implementation of a regulation model to data protection, this means that the rights-based approach, and data protection more generally, has always had something to do with regulation. Furthermore, given the crucial importance that risk management tools play in the regulation model at stake, the issue becomes one of the entanglement of data protection law, risk, and regulation. One of the main points put forth is that the principle of proportionality is common to data protection law, regulation, and risk. From this perspective it frames the shift from the rights-based approach to the risk-based approach as a matter of variations around the proportionality principle. These variations are encapsulated in the different models of regulation at play: from the command and control model of the Data Protection Directive, to the meta regulation model underpinning the risk-based approach in the GDPR and other statutes.

This chapter sets up the two key questions for the book: How does a rights-based approach to development change the way UN agencies pursue their development agenda? And, how does the pursuit of human rights politicize the work of UN agencies. It considers whether the move to rights-based development is meaningful or only a rhetorical repackaging of older work. The chapter places its contribution in the context of modern theories of how international organizations define and pursue their agendas. It also explains the distinction between civil and political rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights. It defends a focus on the former set, since these are the more “controversial” rights on the UN’s agenda, given their inherently political nature.

Part I, ‘Theoretical Perspectives’, which is structured in two chapters (Chapters 1 and 2), develops a new general theory of human rights planning including four sub-theories. The first sub-theory, contextual theory, is presented in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is dedicated to the other three sub-theories. The first two sections propose the substantive and procedural sub-theories of human rights planning. Whereas the substantive theory of human rights planning provides the knowledge base to inform the content of planning, procedural sub-theory offers procedural principles for the formation, implementation, and assessment of human rights planning. The last section of Chapter 2 builds up a new analytical sub-theory of human rights planning through positive critique of the three major theories of rights, namely the interest theory, the need-based approach, and the capability approach. This analytical theory performs an heuristic role for human rights planning.

This chapter explores the recent emphasis by the World Bank on “social accountability,” that is, “affirming and making operational the direct accountability relationships between citizens and the state”. It examines a range of accountability mechanisms and types of impact to assess the effectiveness of social accountability for promoting human rights. Sano finds that, though there are synergies between social accountability and ESCR, there are also distinctions. Social accountability has rarely a perspective on discrimination and makes generally no operational reference to the human rights regime. But social accountability does hold some promise in that the kinds of empowerment it promotes can be rights-based and it can strengthen procedural and other CPR that support ESCR

The concluding chapter summarises the most important remarks contained in the various chapters of the book and contains specific recommendations aimed at contributing to the complete abolition of this unacceptable new form of slavery-like practice of our time. It is emphasised that even if many steps forward have been taken over the last few years — both at the universal and European level — to focus the attention of the international community on the need to fight against trafficking in persons, undoubtedly much work still remains to be done to reach the fundamental goal of inducing all the relevant actors to adopt human rights, child-sensitive approaches, and gender mainstreaming as the basis for every action in this field.

This chapter considers health impact assessment (HIA) from the perspective of disease, experts, and quantification. Impacts of disease (including accidents and mental illness) are clearer than notions of ‘health’; perceptions by an expert can be based on scientific evidence rather than the subjective judgements of the general public; and a statement that one death may occur is clearer than a statement simply that there is an ‘appreciable’ risk, or some other non-quantified statement. This approach is utilitarian: that is, it proposes information for the good of the public as a whole rather than taking a rights-based approach for an individual in a group.

The first part of this chapter summarizes the various strategies used by UN agencies to overcome political opposition from India to a rights-based approach. The second part considers how successful rights-based approaches have been. It is difficult to assess this in a rigorous way since the effect of promoting rights is difficult to separate from overall programming. Most UN assessment documents admit that drawing a causal arrow from rights promotion to improvements in the living conditions of people is impossible; rather, than define “success” as the implementation of a rights-based approach instead of showing that the approach improves outcomes.

This chapter assesses UNICEF efforts to implement the child’s right to health, reviewing UNICEF’s evolving governance to address global health, examining the influence of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on UNICEF’s mission, and analyzing the opportunities and challenges in using a rights-based approach to advance children’s health. Where UNICEF had long been concerned by the practical implications of implementing human rights, the 1989 CRC solidified UNICEF’s central institutional role in the development and implementation of child rights. This development under international law created a burgeoning implementation framework to advance child health and human rights. Based upon this CRC mandate, UNICEF has sought to implement the child’s right to health across its health programming, assistance to states, and work with the Committee on the Rights of the Child.