The Economics Of Human Rights

Economics plays a key role in human rights issues as decision-makers weigh the incentives associated with choosing how to use scarce resources in the context of committing or escaping human rights violence. This textbook provides an introduction to the microeconomic analysis of human rights utilizing economics as a lens through which to examine social topics including capital punishment, violence against women, asylum seeking, terrorism, child abuse, genocide, and hate. Whether analyzing the decisions made in capital punishment cases, the causes and consequences of genocide, or the impact of terrorist acts on domestic and international decision-making, the science of economics provides tools and a systematic method of analysis and policy recommendation. This key text presents a method for integrating the social sciences of economics and human rights to create new opportunities for the investigation of social issues. Within each chapter, readers gain a fundamental understanding of a specific human rights issue, the decision-makers and the decision-making process involved, and the benefits and costs leading to the decisions. Experts on each issue, drawn from a variety of fields, contribute to each chapter and present first-hand accounts and different perspectives on each issue. The detailed analyses and accounts provided also explore the potential incentives involved in the prevention and termination of human rights violations. Aiming to further economic inquiry and enhance interdisciplinary research, this textbook serves as a multi-purpose guide for a range of readers. Students, researchers, and educators, as well as those working in organizations supporting victims of human rights violations and policy-makers facing human rights challenges, will find this book informative and engaging.

This book provides new insights into combining economic theory and ethics, and how to formulate policies to combat the roots of poverty. Since a large part of the world’s working population is underpaid, and does not have enough income to feed themselves and their families, there is a need for an alternative approach to producer prices than the usual neo-classical approach with its emphasis on market and equilibrium prices. This book is an introduction to the Living Income / Fair Price approach, a price theory based on ethics and Universal Human Rights. The book explains why there is a need for a paradigm change in our thinking about prices by explaining why the usual market prices rarely are equilibrium prices. Besides market disturbing elements like monopolies and oligopolies, the needs of the poorest parts of the population are not taken into consideration because they are not reflected in the effective demand. This means that the way our producers are paid needs a drastic overhaul, especially in a critical area like food production. An important part of the book is devoted to the need to pay, and the possibilities for paying, a decent price to smallholder farmers. The underpayment of small food producers means they have no possibility to invest and are not able to prepare for the future. This is even more pressing now that climate change demands that every farmer must adjust to changing circumstances and adapt new production methods. Although primarily meant for economists, the book meant also to stimulate discussion amongst those involved in agricultural policies, both in developing and developed countries.

The dominant approach to economic policy has so far failed to adequately address the pressing challenges the world faces today: extreme poverty, widespread joblessness and precarious employment, burgeoning inequality, and large-scale environmental threats. This message was brought home forcibly by the 2008 global economic crisis. Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice shows how human rights have the potential to transform economic thinking and policy-making with far-reaching consequences for social justice. The authors make the case for a new normative and analytical framework, based on a broader range of objectives which have the potential to increase the substantive freedoms and choices people enjoy in the course of their lives and not on not upon narrow goals such as the growth of gross domestic product. The book covers a range of issues including inequality, fiscal and monetary policy, international development assistance, financial markets, globalization, and economic instability. This new approach allows for a complex interaction between individual rights, collective rights and collective action, as well as encompassing a legal framework which offers formal mechanisms through which unjust policy can be protested. This highly original and accessible book will be essential reading for human rights advocates, economists, policy-makers and those working on questions of social justice.

This interdisciplinary volume examines the potential of human rights to challenge economic inequalities and their adverse impacts on human wellbeing.

The Global Citizenship Commission was convened, under the leadership of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the auspices of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study, to re-examine the spirit and stirring words of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The result – this volume – offers a 21st-century commentary on the original document, furthering the work of human rights and illuminating the ideal of global citizenship. What does it mean for each of us to be members of a global community? Since 1948, the Declaration has stood as a beacon and a standard for a better world. Yet the work of making its ideals real is far from over. Hideous and systemic human rights abuses continue to be perpetrated at an alarming rate around the world. Too many people, particularly those in power, are hostile to human rights or indifferent to their claims. Meanwhile, our global interdependence deepens. Bringing together world leaders and thinkers in the fields of politics, ethics, and philosophy, the Commission set out to develop a common understanding of the meaning of global citizenship – one that arises from basic human rights and empowers every individual in the world. This landmark report affirms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seeks to renew the 1948 enterprise, and the very ideal of the human family, for our day and generation.

Political Economy of Human Rights is the first complete text covering and discussing human rights from a political economy perspective. Confronting international human rights with both global and local economic-political realities, this book entails a full shake-up of the UN led mission for human rights and the national strategies linked to it. It approaches human rights as not just legal resources but political tools as well, aimed at not only protection of existing freedoms and entitlements but also transformation of "disabling" environments. This implies a shift in the allocation of human and financial resources from the quasi-legal international level to the national and local environments in which these rights have to be realised. In a "human dignity triangle" the author connects human rights to human development and human security. Numerous issues connected to this major focus are presented and analysed from a political economy perspective. After an introduction that familiarizes the reader with some of the key concepts used throughout, the book is divided into six chapters. The first two combine a critique of the overly legal use of human rights with a reconceptualisation of their potential as powerful tools outside of the legal context. The next two chapters examine the nature of the structural challenges that face realisation, both on the global and on the local level. The last two chapters analyse two major areas of the human rights deficit: the structural non-implementation of the rights of the poor and the failing protection of non-dominant collectivities. Finally, a concluding chapter elaborates on the main findings and insights gained. The book combines rigorous juridical study with a focus on political-economic analysis of rights in context. Hence, it aims at an interdisciplinary treatment of human rights as opposed to current texts that have a tendency to be monodisciplinary. The book should be of interest to students of human rights, political economy, law and conflict studies, as well as those who work or research in these areas.

Tony Evans critically investigates the theory and practice of human rights in the current global order. Evans covers a range of contentious debates as he considers critiques of the prevailing conceptions of human rights. He then explores the changing global context of human rights issues, the nature and status of human rights within that context, and recent institutional responses. With its emphasis on policy and process, his book offers a rich analysis of the politics of today's human rights regime.

Recent years have seen a remarkable expansion in the scale and importance of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESC rights), culminating in the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in December 2008. The Protocol gives individuals and groups the ability to bring complaints about rights violations before the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Against this background, this book focuses on the question of how fundamental socio-economic human rights enshrined in international law are defined, interpreted, understood, and implemented. It assesses how effective efforts to realize ESC rights have been and investigates the contemporary challenges obstructing their protection. It sets out the impact of the global financial crisis and austerity measures, the human rights responsibilities of corporations, and trends in the justiciability of those rights at the national and international level. The interrelationship between ESC rights and other legal regimes such as trade and investment law, environmental law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law is also thoroughly examined. After an introduction by the editors the book contains seventeen chapters looking at the main questions which shape the progressive realization of ESC rights and their monitoring mechanisms. The authors of the chapters, both scholars and practitioners, adopt interdisciplinary approaches that move beyond traditional analyses of ESC rights. In doing so, they clarify and illuminate multiple aspects of the law by bringing together the different aspects of ESC rights, restating the challenges they face, and assessing the progress that has been made in expanding their adoption.