Evaluating essential health packages from a human rights perspective

Many countries at all levels of development have formulated an essential health package, sometimes also referred to as a health benefit plan or a health benefit basket. As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), essential health packages (EHPs) are “health service interventions that are considered important and that society decides should be provided to everyone.” Although EHPs are not often formulated from an explicitly human rights perspective, since they are conceptualized as a guaranteed minimum of health services, much like core health obligations, they have obvious human rights import. This article evaluates the principles from which the plans are developed, the content of the packages, and the experience of countries seeking to implement them from a human rights perspective. In the process, it seeks to gain greater clarity about the health service requirements of the right to health.     

Committees in legislatures: A property rights perspective

Without the imposition of some institutional structure, a legislature is a non-exclusive resource, and legislators will have a tendency to overuse the resource and reduce its productivity. The committee system is a method for granting property rights over the legislature's agenda by subdividing the agenda and assigning each committee rights over a portion of the agenda. Just as common grazing ground could be more productive if it were subdivided and assigned to individual owners, the legislature is more productive if access to the agenda is subdivided and assigned to committees.Ownership rights to committee assignments are allocated based on seniority because this makes the rights more secure and therefore more valuable to their owners. In the United States Congress, the seniority rule replaced a system in which assignments were made at the discretion of party leaders. In the former system, legislators needed to expend effort to retain their assignments, which diminished their ability to use their assignments productively. Because individuals can use resources more productively if they do not have to be concerned about protecting their ownership interest, the seniority system enables the legislature to be more productive in producing legislation.     

Regulating political advertising in the EU and USA: a human rights perspective

Underlying the American model of political campaign communication are the US Constitutional guarantees of free speech, which secure the rights of citizens to support political candidates of their choosing and express that support in various forms, from bumper stickers to television advertising. Courts have at times struck down measures regulating political advertising, including limits on the amounts of such advertising and the amounts of funds which candidates, parties and individuals may spend on election‐related speeches and advertising as infringements of these rights. With few exceptions, in the USA, government may not limit the number of spots a candidate airs in an election. In Europe, international norms concerning free expression and fair elections appear in a number of legal instruments, including, most recently, the UK's Human Rights Act 1998 and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. This paper compares the role and development of American First Amendment doctrines in limiting restrictions on political advertising in the USA with the development of comparable norms of free expression under the European Convention on Human Rights, European Union treaties and legislation and national laws of the member states and accession countries. In particular, this paper addresses the validity and enforceability of European legal limits on number, timing, placement, quantity and content of political advertisements under applicable human rights rules and similar regulations. The paper concludes that (1) a combination of European legal instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Community Treaty, the European Community's ‘Television Without Frontiers’ Directives and the Council of Europe's Convention on Transfrontier Television offer protections of a kind and type which broadly track the protections of the USA's First Amendment; that (2) it seems that governmental justifications for restricting these freedoms are more readily accepted in Europe than they might be in courts in the USA; and that (3) certain restrictions on political advertising identified in previous studies as existing throughout Europe will face increased judicial scrutiny and some of them are probably illegal under European Human Rights principles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Fortifying the future of human rights with human rights education

Abstract

Those scholars debating the health of the human rights movement completely ignore the role of human rights education, HRE. Whether it is Samuel Moyn and Stephen Hopgood declaring the demise of what they also term the “human rights project”, or Kathryn Sikkink defending it, none explore the effect HRE is having or can have. This article argues that those who neglect to recognize the substantial and substantive conversation going on in our institutions of higher education cannot provide a complete picture of the human rights project. It will demonstrate which of the naysayers Moyn and Hopgood's arguments are weakened by ignoring HRE and argue that Sikkink's recommendations for human rights efforts can be strengthened by HRE. Also explored is what HRE should learn from the critiques of these three scholars and how university HRE can be improved.     

Rethinking human rights

He is author of The Political Economy of the International Monetary Fund (published by Transaction).He is presently a visiting lecturer on ethics and statecraft at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.     

Administration of human rights

It is puzzling that although human rights pervade nearly all actions that affect the public, so little attention is devoted to their administration. The absence of books, chapters or even courses describing human rights administration is a silent reproach to our profession. To suggest how such a study might proceed, this article considers three questions: (1) how rights like those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are converted to policies; (2) how human experiences can suggest priorities in their administration; and (3) how to improve the performance of the ‘virtual bureaucracy’ that is carrying the related administrative responsibilities. Serious studies of human rights administration must deal with three critical problems: their complexity as they infuse other public policy issues; their universality as they interact at all levels of public and private society; and their ubiquity, which renders coherent bureaucratic structures and reforms difficult. Such studies are justified because large‐scale efforts to provide education in rights administration can make important contributions to the realization of human dignity. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

人权中国化的研究

以人权为切入点,基于中国的人权状况一直受西方国家抨击的现实,运用历时与共时的研究方法,通过对中西方人权发展历程的梳理,进而对二者进行对比分析,得出中国要实现自由平等的发展,就要发展中国的人权理论的结论,提出中国只有将西方人权的合理内核与中国的特殊国情相结合,确定人权发展的中国模式——人权中国化,才能促进中国人权的实现。     

人权中国化的研究

以人权为切入点,基于中国的人权状况一直受西方国家的抨击的现实,运用历时与共时的研究方法,通过对中西方人权发展历程的梳理,进而对二者进行对比分析,得出中国要实现自由平等的发展,就要发展中国的人权理论的结论,提出中国只有将西方人权的合理内核与中国的特殊国情相结合,确定人权发展的中国模式——人权中国化,才能促进中国人权的实现。     

Potential through paradox: indigenous rights as human rights

This paper takes the ratification of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as its departure point. Reactions to the Declaration have thus far been mixed. According to advocates, these events signal ‘a new consensus’ that brings ‘to an end the nation states’ history of oppression of indigenous peoples’. According to critics, however, we have uncritically assumed an alliance between human rights and Aboriginal rights initiatives. This paper draws on these conflicting accounts, the theories of Rancière, and a discussion of a current Canadian court case to offer an assessment of the political possibilities of the UN declaration. Overall we argue that the value of the Declaration rests on our interpretation of the political process by which these rights are enacted. The possibilities of rights-based politics are always contextually dependent. In some instances a human rights frame can represent radical repositionings and rearticulations while at the same time always risking the possibility of co-optation. The acts of politics, in particular acts of dissensus, are the key factors that will impact whether the Rights of Indigenous Peoples lead to transformation or to the reinforcement of the status quo.     

浅析人权、主权和球权的关系

人权、主权、球权是当今人类社会最为重要的三项权利。三者中,人权是核心;主权是人权的延伸,目的是为了保护人权;而球权则是人权和主权的让渡,根本目的是为了在全球化时代维护国家主权和保护基本的人权。因此,可以认为人权是目标,主权和球权则是达成这一目标的手段。     

An integrated approach to corporate due diligence from a human rights,environmental, and TWAIL perspective

Ten years since the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, we have witnessed an increasing trend in Europe toward the adoption of mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. Focusing on due diligence legislation from France, Germany, Norway, and the EU, this article examines the extent to which these laws are laying the foundations for the articulation of an integrated, comprehensive, and robust framework that effectively fosters corporate accountability through preventing, addressing, and remedying corporate-related human rights and environmental harms. In this examination, we draw on international human rights and environmental standards and Third World Approaches to International Law, to identify the lessons learned from current approaches and that ought to be considered in future frameworks.     

Conceiving human rights without ontology

Conclusion In his book, World Poverty and Human Rights, Pogge sets out to articulate an approach to basic justice that is inversal and cosmopolitan. This notion of justice is to be articulated through the language of human rights. Pogge’s arguments about justice, moral universalism and cosmopolitanism are impressive and reward serious study. It is to be hoped. indeed, that many aspects of his argument might be adopted by the elite ruling classes of world politics; they have much to offer in the project of creating a world that is humane for all. The issues that I have raised in the foregoing argument however are central to the integrity of Pogge’s project. I have argued, in sum that it is not possible to advance a program for the expansion of justice and the implementation of human rights in world politics without making an appeal to a specific account of the nature of justice and of human rights. The account that informs Pogge’s argument is that of political liberalism, and this is an account that has much in its favor as a preferred vehicle for justice in world politics. However, this account makes itself vulnerable when it argues for universal principles without acknowledging their partisan and normative base. My argument has been that this issue is at the center of Pogge’s attempt to isolate the conception of human rights he explicates, which he wants to serve as the language for his global ethical universalism, from the ontological affirmations which make that conception of human rights possible, and which of necessity tie human rights to a specific conception of the nature of the good for human persons and groups. The attempt to establish a single, universal criterion of justice, and to express it in the language of human rights, is undermined from within for as long as it fails to engage with ontological concerns.