Showing papers on "Human rights published in 1982"

Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Analytic Critique of Non-Western Conceptions of Human Rights

Abstract: It is regularly argued that human rights are not a Western discovery and that non-Western societies have long emphasized the protection of human rights. Such claims, however, are based on a confusion of human rights and human dignity. A concern for human dignity is central to non-Western cultural traditions, whereas human rights, in the sense in which Westerners understand that term—namely, rights (entitlements) held simply by virtue of being a human being—are quite foreign to, for example, Islamic, African, Chinese, and Indian approaches to human dignity. Human rights are but one way that has been devised to realize and to protect human dignity. Although the idea of human rights was first articulated in the West in modern times, it would appear to be an approach particularly suited to contemporary social, political, and economic conditions, and thus of widespread contemporary relevance both in the West and the Third World.

First Things First: Meeting Basic Human Needs in the Developing Countries

Abstract: In this book the author answers critics of the basic needs approach to economic development. Based on the actual experience of various countries, the book distills World Bank studies of the operational implications of meeting basic needs. The author explores the feasibility of implementing such an approach as well as ways of measuring performance. Also discussed are the presumed conflict between economic growth and basic needs, the relation between the New International Economic Order and basic needs, and the relation between human rights and basic needs.

A Third Generation of Solidarity Rights: Progressive Development or Obfuscation of International Human Rights Law?

Abstract: In recent years there has been growing support, manifested in various international fora, for the notion that a third generation of human rights, composed of solidarity rights, is emerging. The principal assumptions behind this concept are:(1) that the principal categories or sets of human rights presently recognized by international law (civil and political rights on one hand and economic, social and cultural rights on the other) can be termed respectively first and second generation rights;(2) that these rights are not sufficiently flexible or dynamic to be able to respond adequately to present circumstances;(3) that there is a set of more or less homogeneous demands which are distinguished primarily by the fact that solidarity is a prerequisite to their realization; and(4) that these new demands are presently in the process of acquiring international recognition as human rights.

Human Rights as Natural Rights

Abstract: 1. There are subtle differences in emphasis, however, between each of the major formulations, human rights, natural rights and the rights of man, and each has advantages and disadvantages. Natural rights stresses a grounding in human nature. It also refers to a tradition of thought which includes Locke, Paine, and Jefferson among its most prominent exponents and suggests a connection with the older idea of natural law. Such resonances add richness to the idea, but also may be a burden, for example, as is the case in the Lockean tradition's concentration on civil and political rights alone or the vague and confusing reference to natural law. Furthermore, the endowment of man with rights by nature is at best an obscure process. The phrase rights of man suggests man as the source of rights. To the extent that man is viewed as not merely natural, but rational and moral, this suggests a more complicated, and probably more illuminating, source for these rights. However, this phrase, particularly in English (although not necessarily in the French droits de I'homme), has deeply rooted ideological connotations from the era of the French Revolution. It also has regrettable, even if easily exaggerated, sexist connotations. Human rights seems to avoid the disadvantages of the other two terms. Like the rights of man, it suggests a subtle and particularly interesting derivation of rights from the complex moral notion of humanity; human nature as the source of the rights. However, the character of this derivation is rarely made explicit enough to be considered as anything more than suggestive. In addition, human rights may misleadingly suggest that all the rights held by human beings are human rights. Paine falls into this confusion, for example, in attacking Burke. See The Collected Works of Thomas Paine, edited by Philip S Foner, New York: The Citadel Press, 1945, vol. 1, p. 273. Instead, human rights are a particular type of rights held by human beings, the rights they hold simply by their nature as human persons. Furthermore, human rights may misleadingly suggest that one is being humane, charitable or beneficent in establishing or recognizing such rights, when in fact one is giving to rightholders that to which they are entitled. However,

Public Education and the Public Space

Abstract: are continually reminded that we can no longer assume the existence of a consensus where the purposes of public education are concerned; nor can we assume consensus when it comes to professional expertise. It is obvious that faith in the promise of public schools has eroded, along with confidence in what they can offer to the young. We are all aware of a cacophony of demands, most of them focusing on individual achievement and on an assumed connection between achievement and mobility, acceptable performance and success. We hear special interest groups expressing multiple discontents, calling for new kinds of conformity, or for acquiescence to parochial ideals. We see people in their enclaves, people breaking off from what John Donne called "the Continent," refusing to be "part of the maine." (Thinking of the fundamentalists and the creationists and the bookburners and the segregationists, we might well ask ourselves: "For whom does the bell toll?") Most significantly, however, there is little talk today about the connection between public education and freedom, or about the ways in which schools might prevent what Thomas Jefferson called "a perversion into tyranny." Yet t is is a time when what we think of as civilization is being ripped apart across the planet by terror, torture, and totalitarian controls. It is a moment when we are instructed daily in the fragility of human rights, in the tenuousness of both freedom and democracy. To speak of freedom is in no sense to speak of separation from the many, from the "maine." Freedom is an achievement within concrete situations, an achievement by human beings involved in the world and with others. To speak of it is to speak, as John Dewey (1928) did of "something which comes to be, (of) a certain kind of growth" (p. 280). It is to hold in mind the human capacity to orient the self to the possible, to posit alternatives, to look at things as if they could be otherwise. The opposite of freedom is a type of alienation; it is stasis, petrifaction, fixity. It would seem to me that educators, on principle, would want to take a stand against what threatens our way of being in the world; yet the matter seldom enters educational discourse today. And with rare exceptions, nor does ny notion of the social good. We protest, of course, the withholding of funds from remedial programs and school lunch programs; we work to maintain support for res arch intended to improve what happens in our schools. Now and then someone comments on the link between effective schooling and national defense or industrial productivity; literacy is talked of as if it were part of the gross national product. Almost never is there an expressed concern about the public realm; there is silence about renewing the common world and about what that common world should be. What is it that lies in between, that holds us together, that we can cherish and try to keep alive? Where, when we ponder it, are we to turn? Questions like these move me to explore the role that might be played by public education in bringing into being an authentic public space, one that might give rise to a significant common world. I believe that our fundamental difficulties spring from what Dewey (1927) once called "the eclipse of the public" (p. 137). In The Public and its Problems, he This paper was the Presidential Address at the AERA Annual Meeting, New York City, March 1982.

Human Rights and Foreign Policy

Abstract: Five recent books reveal the beginnings of important new work in conceptualizing the place of human rights concerns in national foreign policies. The moral force of claims of human rights requires that they be given serious consideration in foreign policy. Philosophical analysis also shows that categorical moral distinctions between personal (or civil and political) and economic and social rights must be abandoned. Any justifiable priority for one class of rights must rest on strategic or political, not conceptual or moral, grounds. Since human rights are only one of many foreign policy concerns, tradeoffs with other goals, interests, and values will be necessary. However, human rights and the national interest are often complementary. The “tradeoffs” actually made should be principled, instrumental decisions, rather than apparently ad hoc or cynical sacrifices of human rights.

Conditioning U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights Practices

Abstract: In the United States, with its government of separated powers and functions, it is the executive branch, and in particular the Department of State, that bears responsibility for implementing legislation on foreign relations. The success of implementation will depend on political decisions, involving competing national interests, as well as on institutional and personal considerations of the officials concerned. Inevitably, there is a gap between legislation and execution, especially when the Executive is not wholly sympathetic to the law. The gap may even devour legislated policies as the Executive refuses "to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,"2 and bureaucratic and personal considerations distort judgments, exploit the generality and uncertainty of language, and lead to abuse of discretion. A notable instance of this problem has been executive implementation of legislation on international human rights. The international law of human rights imposes obligations on governments in the exercise of their domestic sovereignty. Under the Universal Declaration, the United Nations Covenants, the European and Inter-American Conventions, and the Helsinki accords, states have defined and agreed to respect certain basic freedoms of persons within their jurisdiction.3 These obligations suggest a corresponding duty of one government not to support another engaged in serious violations of internationally recognized human rights. In the world of states,

The Right Not To Be Hungry

Abstract: Do people have a right to be free from hunger? This is asserted often enough, but what does it stand for? It is, of course, tempting to say: Nothing at all. But that piece of sophisticated cynicism provides not so much a penetrating insight into the practical affairs of the world, but merely a refusal to investigate what people mean when they assert the existence of rights that, for much of humanity, are plainly not guaranteed by the existing institutional arrangements.

Controversy at Love Canal

Abstract: A cancer researcher reviews the events surrounding the toxic waste contamination at Love Canal with emphasis on the political nature of the controversy about its health impact. Antagonism between the community and the New York State Department of Health was fueled by several factors: the state's awareness that it gained from delay in investigation, disagreement on health problems to be studied, control over the information gathering process, silencing of opposition opinion, and the violation of norms of scientific behavior. The author calls for the establishment of standards of ethical behavior for scientists in such situations, standards for conflict resolution, and means of appeal for those injured.

The Margin of Appreciation Doctrine: Standards in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract: The European Convention of Human Rights (Convention) 1 establishes a set of rights and freedoms which all member states undertake to "secure to everyone within their jurisdiction."2 At the same time the Convention provides machinery to enforce these rights: the European Commission of Human Rights (Commission); 3 the European Court of Human Rights (Court); 4 and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.5 Though the Commission continues to be the most active, the Court has in recent years developed a considerable body of case law of its own. It has also made use of the doctrine of the margin of appreciation, first developed by the Commission. As the Court is the final interpreter of the Convention, its use of the margin of appreciation doctrine and its development of standards for its application are critical to the enforcement of the Convention.

Collective Entities and Moral Rights: Problems in Liberal-Democratic Thought

Abstract: THOSE WHO ESPOUSE traditional liberal-democratic thought-whom I will call liberals, however conservative or progressive they may be-have problems in dealing with collective entities. Their ideology focuses on the individual. They are protective and solicitous of the individual, seeking conditions that make for individual self-fulfillment. In bills of rights and, more recently, in various international documents such as the covenants on human rights, they have secured the spelling out of rights for individuals and are making the promotion of these rights (or some of them) a major issue in the world. But liberals and their historic doctrine neglect collective entities. They assert the rights of individuals against the state and, thus, in a sense admit that the state exists with obligations, but, at the same time, they fear that this is an instance of reification and tend to dissolve the state into the persons who hold public office. Some liberals acknowledge that nations and peoples exist, and champion the idea of self-determination for them, but they tend to think of a nation or people not as a collective entity but as an aggregation of individuals. Liberals are naturally pleased with the requirement of the Charter of the United Nations that members shall promote human rights "without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion," but are in a quandary over the proper response to groups * I wish to thank Lane Davis and Lance Stell for helpful suggestions.

The Concept of Human Rights in International Law

Abstract: In the past ten years, the concept of human rights has become a permanent part of the way we think about relations between nations. International human rights are now a legislative condition of foreign aid, [FN1] have been institutionalized in bureaucratic structures, [FN2] and, perhaps most importantly, have been stamped indelibly in the minds of the public as one of the most important standards by which we measure other countries.

On Human Rights and the Qur'anic Perspective in Human Rights in Religious Traditions.

Abstract: L'A. enumere les nombreux droits exprimes par le Coran, qui composent une somme des droits de l'homme. Elle met en garde contre la tendance a considerer le Coran comme la seule conception legitime de ces droits| en particulier, elle insiste sur le droit de la femme| et elle souligne le probleme pose par l'integrisme musulman: pas plus que les autres religions, l'Islam ne realise le paradis sur terre.

Grounding rights and a method of reflective equilibrium

Abstract: A method of reflective equilibrium is adumbrated and then used to test the adequacy of moral conceptions appealing to fundamental human rights against Nietzschean conceptions of morality which would reject such an appeal. There is an attempt here both to articulate and critically probe a distinctive moral methodology (the method of reflective equilibrium) and to examine skeptical challenges to a foundationalism which would ground morality in fundamental rights claims. I attempt a partial testing of such a moral methodology by examining its ability to meet such skeptical challenges to the rational grounding of human rights, and I assess (and this is plainly a reciprocal process) the depth of such skeptical challenges by the ability of such challenges to survive such an application of a method of reflective equilibrium. If that method is applied with discrimination and understanding, is it sufficient to defuse skeptical challenges to the pervasive belief that either rationality or the very taking of the mor...

Rawlings, populism and the civil liberties tradition in Ghana

Abstract: On returning to power following the coup d’etat of December 31, 1981, Flight-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings set two major goals: the restoration of power to the people and the waging of a “holy war” against corruption. In line with these objectives, he suspended the constitution, banned political parties, detained party leaders, and took a number of extra-legal actions. Almost immediately questions began to surface about the prospects of the regime’s impact on Ghana’s long civil liberties tradition. This essay will examine the basis for these fears and assess whether or not they might be justified. An attempt is made to do this by placing the Ghanaian civil liberties situation in a broader comparative context, seeking in this way to give a balanced perspective on this subject.

International Law and Fact-Finding in the Field of Human Rights

Abstract: Foreword: Dr N Valticos, Former Assistant Director-General and Adviser for International Labour Standards, ILO Secretary-General, Institute of International Law Introduction: Dr BG Ramcharan Chapter I Substantive law applicable - Dr BG Ramcharan Chapter II Procedural law - KT Samson, Co-ordinator for Human Rights, ILO Chapter III Evidence - Dr BG Ramcharan Chapter IV The competence and functions of fact-finding bodies - Prof Felix Ermacora, Member of the Austrian Parliament, Member of the European Commission on Human Rights, Member of the Human Rights Committee, former member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Chapter V Hearings - A Dieye, Judge of the Supreme Court of Senegal, Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Chile, Member of the Human Rights Committee Chapter VI Legal representation - Prof R Clark, Rutgers University Chapter VII Visits on the spot A The Experience of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights - Edmundo Vargas Carreno, Executive Secretary, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights B The experience of the European Commission on Human Rights - CH Kruger, Secretary, European Commission of Human Rights C The experience of the ILO - Mr G von Potobsky, Chief, Application of Standards Branch, International Labour Standard Department, ILO D The experience of the United Nations - Dr BG Ramcharan Chapter VIII The reports of fact-finding bodies - Dr Theo C van Boven, former Director, United Nations Division of Human Rights Chapter IX Fact-finding by non-governmental organizations - Prof D Weissbrodt, University of Minnesota, and J McCarthy Annex I: Model rules of Procedure for United Nations Bodies dealing with violations of human rights Annex II: Draft Model Rules of Procedure suggested by the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Ad Hoc bodies of the United Nations entrusted with studies of particular situations alleged to reveal a consistent pattern of violations of human rights Annex III: Economic and Social Council resolution 1870 (LVI): Model rules of procedure for United Nations bodies dealing with violations of human rights Annex IV: Belgrade Minimal rules of procedure for international human rights fact-finding missions Annex V: UN General Assembly Resolution 35/176 Bibliography Index

The West and South Africa

Abstract: The united states under the Reagan Administration has come to align itself more closely with the Republic of South Africa. The Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker, has said that the United States "seeks to build a more constructive relationship with South Africa, one based on shared interests, persuasion and improved communication."1 The hectoring, scolding tone that the Carter Administration adopted in relation to Pretoria has been dropped. Gone is the emphasis on meeting the aspirations of non white South Africans for human rights, and on "viewing African problems in North South terms rather than in East-West terms." Instead, there is a new stress on meeting the Soviet threat in Southern Africa, on the West's stake in the South African economy, and on interests shared with South Africa in nonviolent constitutional change, in the prosperity generated by the free enterprise system,