The e ftieth anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights marks an appropriate moment to reconsider the reasons why governments construct international regimes to adjudicate and enforce human rights. Such regimes include those established under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, and the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These arrangements differ from most other forms of institutionalizedinternational cooperation in both their ends and their means. Unlike international institutions governing trade, monetary, environmental, or security policy, international human rights institutions are not designed primarily to regulate policy externalities arising from societal interactions across borders, but to hold governments accountable for purely internal activities.In contrast to most international regimes, moreover, human rights regimes are not generally enforced by interstate action.Although most arrangements formally empower governments to challenge one another, such challenges almost never occur. The distinctiveness of such regimes lies instead in their empowerment of individual citizens to bring suit to challenge the domestic activities of their own government. Independent courts and commissions attached to such regimes often respond to such individual claimsby judging that the applicationof domestic rules or legislationviolates international commitments,even where such legislationhas been

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The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(11)60858-1.pdf

The health of prisoners

The aim of this paper is to synthesise findings on the salutogenic concept, sense of coherence (SOC), and its correlation with quality of life (QoL). This study is descriptive and analytic, with a systematic integration of the contemporary knowledge base on the salutogenic research published in 1992–2003. This review includes 458 scientific publications and 13 doctoral theses on salutogenesis. In all, 32 papers had the main objective of investigating the relationship between SOC and QoL. This study is based on scientific publications in eight authorised databases, doctoral theses and available books. The SOC seems to have an impact on the QoL; the stronger the SOC, the better the QoL. Furthermore, longitudinal studies confirm the predictive validity of the SOC for a good QoL. The findings correspond to the core of the Ottawa Charter—that is, the process of enabling people to live a good life. Therefore, a certain possibility to modify and extend the health construct is becoming discernible, implicating a construct including salutogenesis and QoL. The SOC concept is a health resource, influencing QoL.

/pdf/antonovsky-s-sense-of-coherence-scale-and-its-relation-with-k8bhm1wzvr.pdf

Antonovsky’s sense of coherence scale and its relation with quality of life: a systematic review

The political origins of health inequity: prospects for change

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(10)60742-8.pdf

Prevention of HIV infection for people who inject drugs: why individual, structural, and combination approaches are needed

/pdf/the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights-1w2c9xl3bz.pdf

Johannes Morsink

Papers

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights