Broadening The Frontiers Of Human Rights

This collection of essays addresses the future of human rights in a world currently undergoing dramatic changes. The rise of democratic ideals in much of the world has engendered hopes for the future, while at the same time the birth pangs of the fledgling democracies have led to new dangers for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, those engaged with its ideas and ideals have worked to give them greater life and to ensure their place in the policies of governments and international organizations. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of what human rights has meant and how its meaning is constantly changing.

Although historians have devoted a great deal of attention to the development of federal government policy regarding civil rights in the quarter century following World War II, little attention has been paid to the equally important developments at the state level. Few states underwent a more dramatic transformation with regard to civil rights than Michigan did. In 1948, the Michigan Committee on Civil Rights characterized the state of civil rights in Michigan as presenting "an ugly picture." Twenty years later, Michigan was a leader among the states in civil rights legislation. "Expanding the Frontiers of Civil Rights" documents this important shift in state level policy and makes clear that civil rights in Michigan embraced not only blacks but women, the elderly, native Americans, migrant workers, and the physically handicapped.

In an epoch of transnational armed conflict, global environmental harm, and rising inequality, the extraterritorial application of human rights law has become a pressing and controversial legal issue. The faultlines of the Westphalian order are the meridians along which the extraterritorial application of human rights run, as human rights are invoked to address a panoply of global-scale problems, from transborder environmental harm, to social and economic development and global inequality, to the repression of piracy in ungoverned spaces, and military occupation and armed conflict in the territory of a third state.

This rich collection focuses on the broad research interests of Professor Nico Schrijver, in whose honour it was created. Written by a wide range of international scholars affiliated with Leiden University's Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, the essays reflect Professor Schrijver's important contribution to academia and practice, particularly in the fields of sovereignty, human rights and sustainable development. The authors aim to reflect on changes in international law and on new developments in the diverse fields they explore. "Furthering frontiers" is the research theme of the Grotius Centre. Its exploration in this thought-provoking volume is a fitting homage to Nico Schrijver's achievements on the occasion of his retirement as Chair of Public International Law of Leiden University.

Preface to the first edition

This book draws attention to emerging issues around the rights of minorities, marginalized groups, and persons in Africa. It explores the gaps between human rights provisions and conditions, showing that although international human rights principles have been embraced in the continent, various minority groups and marginalized persons are denied such rights through criminalization and persecution. African countries have a good record of signing and ratifying international and regional rights instruments but the political will and capacity for enforcing these with respect to minorities remain weak. International contributors to the book provide new perspectives on the rights of marginalized and minority groups in different parts of Africa and the extent to which they are deprived or denied entitlement to the universality and equality articulated in law. The authors show that human rights, while having come of age as a moral ideal, has not been fully entrenched in practice towards groups such as children, indigenous populations, the mentally ill, persons with disabilities, and persons with albinism. This volume is geared toward scholars, students, human rights groups, policy makers, social workers, international organizations, and policy makers in the fields of criminology, security studies, development studies, political science, sociology, children studies, social psychology, international relations, postcolonial studies, and African Studies.

The 21st century demands expanding rights, as the established human rights regime is necessary but not sufficient. This project will analyze the global dynamics of the mobilization of new actors, claims, institutions and modes of accountability. Our multi-disciplinary, multi-method analysis draws from a full range of global experience, with balanced attention to civil-political and social-economic rights; from LBGT movements in the new Europe to campaigns for the right to food in India.

This book analyses one of the most controversial areas in the political economy of international trade, namely the issues surrounding the creation of newtrade rules. Various concerns are addressed, including the environment, labour standards, intellectual property rights, trade facilitation, competition policy, investment and government procurem