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Universal Human Rights (universal + human_right)
Selected AbstractsSTRUCTURING GLOBAL DEMOCRACY: POLITICAL COMMUNITIES, UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND TRANSNATIONAL REPRESENTATIONMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2009CAROL C. GOULD Abstract: The emergence of cross-border communities and transnational associations requires new ways of thinking about the norms involved in democracy in a globalized world. Given the significance of human rights fulfillment, including social and economic rights, I argue here for giving weight to the claims of political communities while also recognizing the need for input by distant others into the decisions of global governance institutions that affect them. I develop two criteria for addressing the scope of democratization in transnational contexts,common activities and impact on basic human rights,and argue for their compatibility. I then consider some practical implications for institutional transformation and design, including new forms of transnational representation. [source] Republicanism, Freedom from Domination, and the Cambridge Contextual HistoriansPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 5 2001Patricia Springborg Philip Pettit, in Republicanism: a Theory of Freedom and Government (1997), draws on the historiography of classical republicanism developed by the Cambridge Contextual Historians, John Pocock and Quentin Skinner, to set up a programme for the recovery of the Roman Republican notion of freedom, as freedom from domination. But it is my purpose to show that classical republicanism, as a theory of institutional complexity and balanced government, could not, and did not, lay exclusive claim to freedom from domination as a defining value. Positive freedom was a concept ubiquitous in Roman Law and promulgated in Natural Law as a universal human right. And it was just the ubiquitousness of this right to freedom, honoured more often in the breach than the observance, which prompted the scorn of early modern proto-feminists like Mary Astell and her contemporary, Judith Drake. The division of society into public and private spheres, which liberalism entrenched, precisely allowed democrats in the public sphere full rein as tyrants in the domestic sphere of the family, as these women were perspicacious enough to observe. When republicanism is defined in exclusively normative terms the rich institutional contextualism drops away, leaving no room for the issues it was designed to address: the problematic relation between values and institutions that lies at the heart of individual freedoms. [source] State of the Art: Addressing the INGO ,Legitimacy Deficit'POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2005Vivien Collingwood While the numbers and competencies of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have increased dramatically in the past few decades, questions have been raised about the legitimacy of their new activities. A number of scholars have identified significant tensions between INGOs' legitimacy claims and the realities of their working practices. We examine the current state of the debate on INGO legitimacy in two contrasting literatures: normative work on global governance and its implications for the role of INGOs, and policy-oriented work on INGOs' legitimacy. The first shows how INGO involvement in global governance opens the door to a range of alternative conceptions of world order, rooted in notions of universal human rights, democracy, and theories of redistributive justice. The latter set of voices is concerned less with locating INGOs' roles as agents in global normative structures than with analysing concrete problems arising from increased INGO participation in the development process. Future research might take into account key questions concerning the sources and the scope and nature of INGO legitimacy. [source] American Values or Human Rights?PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2003U.S. Foreign Policy, the Fractured Myth of Virtuous Power American exceptionalism placed American values at the center of foreign policy, fostering belief in the essential union of American virtue and power. Developing a theme of Henry Kissinger's, this article argues that in Vietnam this union was severed and undermined: America's power was defeated and its virtue assailed. Nixon offered only a pretense of reunion. Carter attempted the real thing by putting universal human rights, not American values, at the heart of foreign policy. His failure was followed by Reagan's denial of sin and reassurance of American values, though the Gulf War of his successor had a deeper impact on the national psyche. Clinton's foreign policy remained subject to the "Vietnam syndrome" and he, despite rhetorical dazzle, developed no new consensus on the disposition of American power. September 11, however, produced a sense of injured innocence in whose defense American power could again be virtuously deployed. The subsequent patriotic surge encouraged George W. Bush to revive American values in foreign policy, with potentially dangerous consequences. [source] Rights and the Sovereignty of the People in the Crisis of the Nation StateRATIO JURIS, Issue 1 2000Hauke Brunkhorst Following Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism, the first part of the paper gives an account of the historical advances of the republican nation state that was born during the constitutional revolutions in France and America at the end of the eighteenth century. This state has organised an efficient solidarity among strangers by means of democratic legislation. The European nation state was particular and universal at once. As Arendt could demonstrate on the Dreyfus affair, republicanism of a specific people was based on the Jacobean patriotism of universal human rights. In the second part an explanation is laid out for the destruction of the European nation state during the first fifty years of the nineteenth century. Beginning with Arendt's thesis on the imperialist society that blurred the borders of state, this thesis is revised with reference to the sociological theory of modern society (Luhmann, Habermas). The last part then turns to the rebirth of the nation state after World War Two and the postimperialist development of globalisation at the same time. Again progress in globalising human rights and civil society is threatened by the uncontrolled expansion of capital and power. The lasting problem is to find any regional or global functional equivalent for the democratic rule of law that for so long only worked on the level of the nation state. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 25, Number 3.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 3 2009June 200 Front & back cover caption, volume 25 issue 3 Front & back cover HERITAGE PROTECTION Created in the aftermath of World War II, UNESCO was mandated to engage in a worldwide educational campaign aimed at establishing the conditions for lasting peace. This involved working out and disseminating a new world view based on a revised conception of human diversity. The founders of UNESCO argued that prejudice relating to human diversity is the main cause of war, and hoped that a radical modification of the existing vision of that diversity would help to guarantee of peace. Over the 60 years of its history UNESCO's doctrine has been subject to numerous modifications. Initially, cultural diversity was often described in terms of unequal economic progress and presented as an obstacle to be overcome. But in the 1960s ,progress', and the resulting cultural homogenization, began to be considered a major threat to human diversity, particularly diversity of culture. Co-ordinated by UNESCO, the international salvage of the Abu Simbel temples, threatened with submersion in Lake Nasser, became a symbol of a new moral obligation, incumbent upon all humans, to safeguard a common ,world heritage' (exemplified in the images on the back and front covers of this issue). Over the last decade, the notion of common heritage of humanity has been extended to all expressions of cultural traditions, thought to be endangered by the deleterious effects of globalization. UNESCO has chosen to put its support behind local identities and the right of the minorities to conserve their traditional differences. Alongside the principle of the equality of individuals, UNESCO now also upholds the equality of cultures, suggesting that the charter of human rights needs to be supplemented by a charter of cultural rights. The major challenge to UNESCO's current ideology is the compatibility of universal human rights with particular cultural rights. If all traditions deserve to be protected, should this privilege be bestowed equally on masterpieces of the past as on traditional practices. Wearing the burqa need not be controversial, but what about practices like genital mutilation or ,honour killings'? As Wiktor Stoczkowski argues in his article, such issues are intensely anthropological challenges deserving our attention. [source] END-OF-LIFE CARE IN THE 21st CENTURY: ADVANCE DIRECTIVES IN UNIVERSAL RIGHTS DISCOURSEBIOETHICS, Issue 3 2010IREVI, VIOLETA BE ABSTRACT This article explores universal normative bases that could help to shape a workable legal construct that would facilitate a global use of advance directives. Although I believe that advance directives are of universal character, my primary aim in approaching this issue is to remain realistic. I will make three claims. First, I will argue that the principles of autonomy, dignity and informed consent, embodied in the Oviedo Convention and the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, could arguably be regarded as universal bases for the global use of advance directives. Second, I will demonstrate that, despite the apparent consensus of ethical authorities in support of their global use, it is unlikely, for the time being, that such consensus could lead to unqualified legal recognition of advance directives, because of different understandings of the nature of the international rules, meanings of autonomy and dignity which are context-specific and culture-specific, and existing imperfections that make advance directives either unworkable or hardly applicable in practice. The third claim suggests that the fact that the concept of the advance directive is not universally shared does not mean that it should not become so, but never as the only option in managing incompetent patients. A way to proceed is to prioritize work on developing higher standards in managing incompetent patients and on progressing towards the realization of universal human rights in the sphere of bioethics, by advocating a universal, legally binding international convention that would outlaw human rights violations in end-of-life decision-making. [source] | ||||||||||