Rethinking Human Rights in York as a Human Rights City

Human rights is in crisis in the UK. It lacks significant political backing and public support. This ‘insider account’ of York becoming a human rights city suggests that there is a need to rethink approaches to human rights. The article looks at the strategies adopted in the city; the annual city‐based indicator report which provides the key reference point for all local activities; and the declaration of York as a ‘human rights city’ in 2017 alongside its subsequent impact. The discussion is linked to two debates within human rights: how to define and build a culture of human rights, and what it means for human rights to be truly relevant at a local level. The new approach advocated can be summarised as participatory, locally informed, and related to everyday concerns.     

Seeking Life, Finding Justice: Russian NGO litigation and Chechen Disappearances before the European Court of Human Rights

This article presents findings from an interview study of human rights practitioners who assist relatives of the disappeared from Chechnya with their complaints before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). These practitioners work for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The study contributes to the scant literature on NGO litigation before the ECtHR and to the social scientific literature on how human rights are actively practiced. It investigates the NGOs?? intermediary position between the ECtHR and the relatives of the disappeared in Chechnya. Consequently, this article asserts that a significant aspect of this position lies in the practitioner??s capacity to mediate between an ambition to externalize local grievances to the ECtHR and the relatives?? hopes that the ECtHR can bring certainty to the uncertain loss of their disappeared relatives. From this position, several dilemmas emerge as to how international legal mechanisms can provide remedies following disappearances.     

The Globalization of Rights: From Citizenship to Human Rights

Globalization is shifting the balance away from membership-based citizenship towards universal human rights, thus we ask: how are new human rights generated? We argue that the movement for human rights follows on the heels of the much older and richer tradition of citizenship, as can be seen from the fact that many of the new claims put forward by human rights activists seek to define traditional citizenship rights as universal human rights. Most recently, we witness attempts by NGOs and CSOs to bring health, rights-based development, and identity rights under the umbrella of human rights. We examine the changing but continuous relationship of these two rights traditions, the gains made by human rights activists and the global solidarity and national enforcement capacity needed to underwrite their further progress.     

The Review of Victoria's Guardianship Legislation: State Policy Development in an Age of Human Rights

This article considers the Victorian government's decision to review the state's guardianship legislation and notes the significant place international human rights developments are playing in that review. The article recognises the opportunities these developments present for reworking the guardianship legislation to increase the autonomy and decision-making power of people with disabilities, but also considers the challenge these developments present to ensuring that society continues to protect its most vulnerable citizens.     

Foreign Policy and Human Rights Advocacy: An Exercise in Measurement and Explanation

This article addresses three questions: How can we define and measure what constitutes a foreign policy in human rights? How is it possible to explain both the activism of a state and its ideological orientation in the international promotion of human rights? What is the empirical evidence found when we try to answer these questions in intermediate states? Research done on four cases (Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa) suggests a correlation between domestic efforts in the promotion of human rights and international advocacy. It also shows that the greater the power of intermediate states, the greater their activism in human rights. Further, as development grows states show less support for economic, social and cultural rights. Last, the strategic relation with the USA shapes how states vote regarding human rights violators states.     

Human Rights or Citizen's Privileges: The Great Bill of Rights Swindle

New Labour arguably left Britain more comfortable in its diversity and better protected by anti‐discrimination law. Equal treatment for gay people advanced significantly and the Human Rights Act provides a modern Bill of Rights for everyone in the Kingdom. Curiously however, parallel laws dishonoured these values in thought, word and deed. Home affairs hyperactivity left ours a less friendly country in which to seek asylum, dissent or even be young. The Coalition bound itself together with ‘civil liberties’ and quickly reversed some excesses of the previous decade. Last year's ‘Arab Spring saw it promote human rights abroad. However the Government appears bitterly divided by them at home. Is the debate about a more ‘British’ Bill of Rights, political genius, pragmatic fudge or a dangerous swindle capable of depriving us all of vital protection against abuse of power?”     

货币政策决策的科学性和有效性:基于从紧货币政策的反思

自2003年9月以来,我国货币政策就由稳健转向偏紧,进而转向从紧,央行频繁地采取提高存款准备金率等措施,仅2008年上半年,已经连续5次调高存款准备金率,使之达到17．5％的历史高位。从央行的角度看,从紧的货币政策如此密集推出是基于对目前经济运行态势的判断。按照央行的解释口径,其目标主要在于解决以下问题：其一是控制被认为过快的经济增长速度,     

Civil Rights and Political Human Rights: Contesting Human Rights Failures within the Minimally Democratic State

Allen Buchanan argues that democracy ought to be added to the list of basic human rights, but he limits the conception of democracy to a minimum of electoral representation within the nation state, effectively collapsing human rights into civil rights. This, however, leaves him unable to address the problem of human rights failures occurring within established states that meet his standard of minimal democratic representation. In order to address this problem, I appeal to James Bohman's conception of the political human rights of all members of humanity, as opposed to the civil rights of the citizens of particular states. I argue that while this provides the basis on which to address the problem of human rights failures within minimally democratic states, Bohman's conception also entails the potential for deep tensions to arise between the different claims of civil and human rights.     

The Conservative Case for Human Rights

This article explores how conservative values and Conservative Party politicians helped to shape the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948 and the European Convention on Human rights (ECHR) 1950. It provides an overview of the history of conservatism in the UK with a focus on the way that Conservative Party administrations promoted the protection of human rights, including social and economic rights. The author argues that the Conservative Party should continue to play a key role in protecting human rights legislation rather than regarding human rights as a ‘foreign’ imposition from Europe.     

The Honor of Human Rights: Environmental Rights and the Duty of Intergenerational Promise

The idea of human rights either as a moral system or as a set of legal practices does not sit well with the concept of honor. This is true for both ontological reasons and because of some reprehensible misuses of the term in constructs such as “honor killings.” Yet the absence of honor as an argument for human rights comes with a high cost in the defense of human rights generally. As Hobbes made clear in his early theory, rights—and dignity—are grounded in the human capacity to make promises and in the necessity of honoring them. In his view then, honor is an essential feature of human rights and one closely linked to the human capacity for dignity. In this article, I explore how environmental human rights place a renewed emphasis on honor as a requirement for the protection of the rights of future generations. In the process, I explore the general relationship between honor, dignity, and human rights.