How do international human rights influence national healthcare provisions for irregular migrants?: A case study in France and the United Kingdom

Debates about human rights have often questioned their potential for generating rights at national levels. In this article, we use the case of irregular migrants' access to health care in the United Kingdom and France to explore the extent to which international human rights influence national health care provisions for irregular migrants. We explore the extent to which health care access and provision for irregular migrants in these two countries is in agreement with international human rights. In so doing, we examine what constitutes an infringement of the international human right to health care. Finally, we sketch out some hypotheses about the role played by different state structures in the implementation of human rights norms, comparing the United Kingdom with France. We argue that, although international human rights often have a largely symbolic role in nation-state jurisdiction, they may sometimes represent a force for change.     

Can a human rights framework improve biomedical and social scientific HIV/AIDS research for African women?

In most countries in Africa, the epidemiologic profile of HIV/AIDS is significantly different from that of the USA or Europe. Women in Africa are as likely to be HIV positive as men, while young women are significantly more likely to be HIV positive than young men. How can health research in Africa be made more responsive and relevant to women’s health needs? And how would a human rights perspective change the conduct of biomedical and social scientific research on gender and HIV/ AIDS in Africa? The application of a human rights framework to HIV/AIDS typically has focused on social justice issues employing national and international legal structures to legislate and advocate for HIV positive persons. This essay, however, offers some broad considerations of the links between the health of African women, biomedical and social scientific research, HIV/AIDS, research ethics, and the human rights movement.     

Treating Poorly Healed Wounds: Partisan Choices and Human Rights Policies in Latin America

Despite the common trauma of systematic human rights violations under military rule, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay have responded in markedly different ways to their troubling pasts. This paper explains differences in human rights policies over time and across countries by looking at varying domestic conditions, including the ideological orientation of the governing party and the structure of party competition, as well as constraints and opportunities presented by external events. Government support for human rights derives in part from ideological proclivity but even more from the ability to build popular support for such a policy. Conservative and center-right politicians lack credibility among voters on human rights and therefore have little political incentive to adopt an activist stance on this issue. Leftist politicians are ideologically predisposed toward championing human rights but may be hamstrung by concerns about alienating centrist voters. Leftist politicians will only come out strongly in favor of human rights when they enjoy a clear political majority; leftist leaders who rely upon centrist allies will adopt a low-profile approach to human rights. Conversely, centrist political leaders who rely upon leftist allies have a strong political incentive to emphasize human rights. Once political momentum begins to shift to the right, however, centrist politicians will downplay human rights. Finally, external events may significantly alter national discourse on human rights, allowing cautious governments to gain political cover for more progressive human rights policy. By drawing attention to the important role of ideology and the structure of party competition, this paper offers a more complete explanation of the sources of human rights policy. It also provides a novel perspective on the ways in which external and international influences are filtered through national political systems.     

Voting and Human Rights in Democratic Societies

The majority of research on human rights focuses on the consequences of regime-type for human rights violations, and overwhelming evidence suggests that democracies are less likely to violate human rights of their citizens as compared to non-democracies. However, a regime-type perspective is unable to account for disparities in human rights violations within democratic and non-democratic regimes. This paper disaggregates regime-type and analyzes the relationship between citizens’ participation and human rights violations. I argue that a participative citizenry, as captured by high voter turnout, is indicative of an active and vigilant populace who are more likely to hold governments accountable and ensure better human rights protections. The paper tests the relationship between human rights and voter turnout among 89 democratic countries from 1976 to 2008. The findings demonstrate that a participative citizenry enhances governmental respect for human rights.     

Variation of employee benefit costs by age

Health care, pension, and disability plans account for the bulk of employers' benefit costs, as defined in this article. Because those costs tend to rise as employees get older, the age structure of the workforce affects not only employers' costs but ultimately their competitiveness in global markets. How much costs vary depends in large part on the structure of the benefits package provided. The method a company chooses to finance benefits generally varies with its size. This article focuses primarily on the benefit practices of large, private employers. In the long run, such employers pay the costs associated with the demographics of their workers, whereas small employers can often pool costs with other companies in the community. In addition, small employers often offer fewer benefits, and the costs and financing of those benefits are subject to the insurance markets and state regulations. The discussion of benefit packages is illustrated by case studies based on benefits that are typical for three types of organizations--a large traditional company such as steel, automobile, and manufacturing; a large financial services company such as a bank or health care organization; and a medium-sized retail organization. The case studies demonstrate the extent to which the costs of typical packages vary and reveal that employers differ radically in the incentives they offer employees to retire at a specific time. An employer can shift the variation in cost by age by changing the structure of the benefit program. The major forces that drive age differences in benefit costs are the time value of money (the period of time available to earn investment income and the operation of compound interest) and rates of health care use, disability, and death. Those forces apply universally, in the United States and elsewhere, and they have not changed in recent years. However, the marketplace and the prevalence of various types of benefit programs have changed, and those changes have generally resulted in less cost variation by age and more frequent employer selection of benefit packages that exhibit less variation by age.     

FEDERAL LEGISLATION AND INTEREST FORMATION: THE CASE OF IMPUTED INTEREST GROUPS

This paper examines an impact of federal legislation on the formation of political interests; it identifies and defines a phenomenon we have labeled imputed interest groups . The interest groups can be seen when federal legislation makes benefit packages that serve as incentives to interest formation and ties interest groups to the maintenance of these benefit packages. Identification of imputed interest groups necessitates a re-examination of subgovernments, service deliverer-recipient relationships, and policymaking in a federal system.     

In Pursuit of a Balance: the Regulation of Conscience and Access to Sexual Reproductive Health Care

In any given society, rights are said to co-exist. When rights, however, begin to conflict, a balance must be sought. In few fields has the ability of governments to accommodate two conflicting sets of rights been so controversial as it has in the case of conscientious objection (CO) in reproductive health care. Today, states have an obligation under international law to protect the right to the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion of medical providers. They also, however, have an obligation to protect right to the highest attainable standard of health and other fundamental rights of women. Considering the extent to which CO has been invoked in the context of reproductive health care, international law recognizes limits to its use. Over the years, human rights bodies have sought to develop guidelines around CO in order to ensure the protection of women’s basic rights. While some state practices have shown to be consistent with guidelines established at the international level, some countries have struggled to provide an effective balance so as to protect women’s fundamental rights. Taking the example of countries in Latin America and Europe, this article provides an overview of the different ways states have sought to regulate CO in the medical context and the various difficulties ensued.     

ASEAN and human rights: resisting Western pressure or emulating the West?

Abstract

Observers of Southeast Asian affairs commonly assume that the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are reluctant to pursue liberal agendas, and that their main concern is to resist pressure from Western powers to improve their human rights practice. This article, however, argues that such a conventional view is too simplistic. The Southeast Asian countries have voluntarily been pursuing liberal agendas, and their main concern here is to be identified as ‘Western’ countries – advanced countries with legitimate international status. They have ‘mimetically’ been adopting the norm of human rights which is championed by the advanced industrialized democracies, with the intention of securing ASEAN's identity as a legitimate institution in the community of modern states. Ultimately, they have been pursuing liberal agendas, for the same reason as cash-strapped developing countries have luxurious national airlines and newly-independent countries institute national flags. Yet it should be noted that the progress of ASEAN's liberal reform has been modest. A conventional strategy for facilitating this reform would be to put more pressure on the members of ASEAN; however, the usefulness of such a strategy is diminishing. The development of an East Asian community, the core component of which is the ASEAN–China concord, makes it difficult for the Western powers to exercise influence over the Southeast Asian countries. Hence, as an alternative strategy, this article proposes that ASEAN's external partners should ‘globalize’ the issue of its liberal reform, by openly assessing its human rights record in global settings, with the aim of boosting the concern of its members for ASEAN's international standing.     

Do pro-market economic reforms drive human rights violations? An empirical assessment, 1981–2006

Liberals argue that economic policy reforms will benefit most in terms of better access to goods, less inflation and better economic opportunities. Critics of market reforms, among them Marxists, critical theorists, skeptics of globalization as well as a large portion of the NGO community, see the majority as losers from such reform, expecting resistance that would lead to political repression. They suggest that free-market policy reforms are analogous to “swallowing the bitter pill.” We make use of the change in the Index of Economic Freedom as a measure of market liberalizing reforms, employing data from a panel of 117 countries for the period from 1981–2006. Our results show a strong positive association between reforms towards more free markets with regard to governments’ respect for human rights, controlling for a host of relevant factors, including the possibility of endogeneity. The results are robust in relation to sample size, alternative data and methods, and a sample of only developing countries; and they are substantively quite large. Our results support those who argue that freer markets generate better economic conditions and higher levels of social harmony and peace, and it seems as if getting there is less problematic than people generally think—in fact, halfhearted measures and backsliding that prolong crises could be more dangerous to human rights.     

Ageing with Dignity: Old-Age Pension Schemes from the Perspective of the Right to Social Security Under ICESCR

The ‘dignity and worth of the human person’ emphasised in international human rights instruments resonate strongly in relation to the world’s ageing population, which is projected to be the fastest growing population group in the world and often among the most vulnerable. While elderly persons as a group are heterogeneous and their socio-economic life situation varies significantly between individuals, the need for universal support mechanisms such as non-contributory old-age benefits have been recognised by many states, and currently, over 100 countries around the world provide some form of social pension targeted towards the elderly populations. This article appraises a sample of these old-age pension schemes from the perspective of the right to social security, with particular emphasis on the dignity and worth of the human person as espoused within the international human rights regime.     

Migration and Citizen Rights: The Mexican Case1

This article analyzes Mexican migration to the United States (US), as part of the South to North global migration, and focuses on the access of migrants to citizen rights from the perspective of the sending countries. Studies of citizenship and migration have mostly looked at receiving countries' policies; however, sending countries are also enacting laws that facilitate immigrants' access to rights. The study shows that the restriction of immigrant rights in the US has been paralleled by an extension of rights to emigrants by Mexico. These policies of the Mexican state include the rights to retain nationality when migrants nationalize overseas and the extension of citizen rights to the population abroad. The study describes the efforts on the part of the Mexican state to extend civic, political and social rights to non-resident nationals. It also reveals how the results of these efforts vary substantially, depending on the nature of each one of these types of rights.     

Justifying Human Rights: Does Consensus Matter?

This paper is a critical examination of a widely accepted method of human rights justification. The method defends the universality of human rights by appeal to diverse worldviews that converge on human rights norms. By showing that the norms can be justified from the perspective of diverse worldviews, human rights theorists suggest that there is reason to believe that human rights are universal norms that should govern the institutions of all societies. This paper argues that the evidence of plural foundations of human rights fails to increase our confidence in the universality of human rights. The paper defends the following claims: (1) the convergence on human rights is better explained as an accidental outcome than as an indicator of the universality of human rights, (2) the plurality of human rights justification is superfluous to the explanation of why human rights apply to all societies, (3) the aggregation of justifications decreases rather than increases the reliability of the universality belief, and (4) the reasonable disagreement among conflicting justifications generates an epistemic dilemma.     

Comment: Does benefit cost analysis stand alone? rights and standing

The issue of standing in benefit cost analysis is not different from the issue of rights. Benefit cost analysis contributes to legal analysis and also rests upon legal analysis. Debates about standing issues can be reinterpreted as questions of the role of benefit cost analysis when rights are uncertain at the margin. This perspective illumines such questions as whether gains to the criminal count and what weight should be given to expert opinion, to irrational fears, and to gains or losses by foreigners. This perspective is also consistent with a rights-based interpretation of 1) the willingness-to-pay approach, 2) an approach that considers distributional consequences, and 3) an approach that ignores distributional consequences when the costs of determining them are likely to be greater than the benefits.     

联合国国际人权两公约之背景,内容与意义

联合国国际人权两以约是国际社会在人权保护方面最重要的两个公约。两公约诉产生过程,内容和执行体系,都表明国际社会在人权保护领域既普遍的共识,也有尖锐的分歧。两公约本身即是求同存异的产物,它是尽可能地融合了东西方国家对人权的不同理解,充实和发展了《联合国宪章》中关于基本人权的内容和为人权领域的国际合作提供了国际法依据。但是,人权进行国际法领域,并不意味着可以把人权作为攻击或干涉他国内政的工具,借口不人     

Human rights and development: the case of local government transformation in South Africa

Local governments throughout the world are assuming a more important role in economic development of their communities as an increasing number of governments begin to decentralise powers and functions. As these lower levels of government seek sustainable local economic development (LED) strategies the human rights approach towards development becomes pertinent as globalisation accelerates. This article proposes an emphasis on socio‐economic rights as the basis for sustainable LED in developing countries. The article is based on the experience of South African local government in the period after 1994, leading up to the first democratic local government elections on 5 December 2000. Proceeding from the view that the promotion of human rights is necessary for the promotion of economic development, the article critically assesses the role of local government in the promotion of LED through a rights‐based approach. It is argued that the identification in the South African Constitution of local government with basic service provision (recently emphasised by a Constitutional court judgement) will place socio‐economic rights at the centre of LED strategies in South Africa. It is argued that this is indeed the most appropriate cornerstone of LED in South Africa. However, the transformation process that leads the country towards its progressive Constitution needs to be maintained and this article identifies five broad areas for transformation that may still be needed to entrench an adequate human rights culture within the sphere of local governance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Revealing and concealing: Islamist discourse on human rights

Historically as well as contemporarily, the relationship between religion and democratic pluralism in the Muslim world has been problematic. In the Muslim world, both governments and popular movements are using religious documents (the Qur'an and the hadith) to inspire political and social change. In the process, the fusion of religion and politics that characterizes revivalist Islam has impeded the development of both democracy and religious pluralism. An area of particular concern has been the reluctance of Muslim countries to implement international standards of human rights as defined in the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Since the adoption of the UDHR in 1948, there has been disagreement in the Muslim world about the relevance of this document for Islamic countries. The reactions have ranged from an angry rejection of human rights as destructive to Islam to claims that Islamic law guarantees the same rights as those embodied in the United Nation's documents. The two most influential international Islamic statements on Human Rights (the Universal Islamic Declaration on Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights) attempt to reconcile Islamic law and modern norms of human rights. These documents claim that human rights are an inherent part of Islam. Such arguments are cause for concern because since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, documents proposing regional alternatives to international law almost always entail the weakening of international standards. The incorporation of the Cairo Declaration into the UN corpus means that what were once informal, regional obstacles to implementing the protections guaranteed by the UDHR have become formal, regional norms that legitimate Islamist restrictions on rights.     

Equality and Human Rights: Foundations of a Common Culture?

The creation of the new GB Commission for Equality and Human Rights invites fresh reflection on the relationship between human rights and equality. This article suggests that an account of equality that goes beyond the negative notion of anti-discrimination towards a more positive value-driven conception of equal participation offers the best chance of fruitful coalition with a human rights approach. It also argues that human rights themselves must be rescued from the perception that they are primarily about civil liberties and relevant only to matters of state security and criminal justice. It is proposed that recent developments in equality law and in the understanding of the implications of human rights principles for public service delivery provide the foundation for shared values and for a common culture that is truly democratic, deliberative and participatory. The new Commission to that extent enjoys an historic opportunity.     

Do human rights offenders oppose human rights resolutions in the United Nations?

We investigate whether countries with poor human rights records oppose human rights resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly. An instrumental account of voting would suggest that these countries aim to weaken resolutions since they could be future targets of these policies. We estimate determinants of voting using 13,000 individual voting decisions from 1980 to 2002. Our results from ordered probit estimation show that a country??s human rights situation is irrelevant to voting behavior if regional dependence of voting is controlled for. The results also show that simple rules for aggregating voting choices can lead to misleading results.     

Post‐national citizenship,social exclusion and migrants rights: Mexican seasonal workers in Canada

In the past few decades, migrants residing in many European and North American countries have benefited from nation‐states' extension of legal rights to non‐citizens. This development has prompted many scholars to reflect on the shift from a state‐based to a more individual‐based universal conception of rights and to suggest that national citizenship has been replaced by post‐national citizenship. However, in practice migrants are often deprived of some rights. The article suggests that the ability to claim rights denied to some groups of people depends on their knowledge of the legal framework, communications skills, and support from others. Some groups of migrants are deprived of the knowledge, skills, and support required to negotiate their rights effectively because of their social exclusion from local communities of citizens. The article draws attention to the contradiction in two citizenship principles—one linked to legal rights prescribed by international conventions and inscribed through international agreements and national laws and policies, and the other to membership in a community. Commitment to the second set of principles may negate any achievements made with respect to the first. The article uses Mexican migrants working in Canada as an illustration, arguing that even though certain legal rights have been granted to them, until recently they had been unable to claim them because they were denied social membership in local and national communities. Recent initiatives among local residents and union and human rights activists to include Mexican workers in their communities of citizens in Leamington, Ontario, Canada, are likely to enhance the Mexican workers' ability to claim their rights.     

The welfare state,migration, and voting rights

This paper proposes a political economic analysis of public opinion in European Union countries toward migrants from poor countries. By focusing on redistributive policy, the analysis sheds light on specific determinants of public opinion. The theoretical analysis, based on the median voter framework, shows that one of the key variables affecting public opinion is the voting rights of migrants. Where migrants do not have the right to vote, their presence negatively impacts the poorest natives. In countries where migrants enjoy voting rights, they are able to vote on redistributive policy; therefore, the impact of migration on natives’ welfare is fundamentally different. After the theoretical analysis, the paper proposes an empirical analysis of Europeans’ attitudes toward non-Western migrants in European Union countries. This empirical analysis confirms the decisive impact of migrants’ voting rights. It shows that, in EU countries, the more educated natives are significantly less favorable to migrants from poor countries when the latter have the right to vote.