Abstract: The emergence of cross-border communities and transnational associations requires new ways of thinking about the norms involved in democracy in a globalized world. Given the significance of human rights fulfillment, including social and economic rights, I argue here for giving weight to the claims of political communities while also recognizing the need for input by distant others into the decisions of global governance institutions that affect them. I develop two criteria for addressing the scope of (...) democratization in transnational contexts— common activities and impact on basic human rights —and argue for their compatibility. I then consider some practical implications for institutional transformation and design, including new forms of transnational representation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In a series of reports the United Nations Special Representative on the issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations has emphasized a tripartite framework regarding business and human rights that includes the state “duty to protect,” the TNC “responsibility to respect,” and “appropriate remedies” for human rights violations. This article examines the recent history of UN initiatives regarding business and human rights and places the tripartite framework in historical context. Three approaches (...) to human rights are distinguished: moral, political, and legal. It is argued that the tripartite framework’s grounding of the responsibility of TNCs to respect human rights is properly understood as moral and not merely as a political or legal duty. A moral account of the duty of TNCs to respect basic human rights is defended and contrasted with a merely strategic approach. The main conclusion of the article is that only a moral account of the basic human rights duties of TNCs provides a sufficiently deep justification of “the corporate responsibility to respect human rights” feature of the tripartite framework. (shrink)

Despite their strong transnational links and support in the second half of the 1990s, Turkish NGOs have not yet had a “tremendous” impact on domestic political and social change. But new points of contact have been established in the public sphere between governmental agencies and the IHV and IHD, with both sides engaged in an argumentative process, which may, in the long run, lead to the subscriptive phase of “human rights talk” and deed. The general tenor of (...) this essay may lend itself to suggesting two prerequisites for establishing such a sustainable human rights regime in this geography: the first is “capacity building”, the other is grounding this regime in an accurate perception of the structures of power, domestic and international, so as to “integrate” the human rights bundle into all aspects of life, at all levels, within all traditions and institutions by empowering the community into the language of human rights. Most of all, integration of human rights into a liberal democratic order requires coming to terms with the past.Capacity building can be defined in different terms: in the words of Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, it is “facing-up to the bullies.” It is a cliché that the legalistic entrenchment of human rights is sufficient guarantee against their violation. It is almost unrealistic to expect a system to volunteer to set up a human rights regime that will limit and cripple the power it wields. So, what to do? Mary Robinson suggests a “national plan,” as, opposed to fragmented political notions, building a sustainable model with strong bricks and mortar. As Robinson notes, “even where there are plans, plans without effective strategies for implementation are empty vessels.” We could add more: in contexts like Turkey where “special circumstances” provide the pretext for legitimating an anti-human rights discourse, Mary Robinson's national plan's chances of success depend on building a strong survival capacity for any civilian government that works to bring, itself, the urban middle classes, civil society and the military into the realities embedded in human rights. (shrink)

During this age of globalisation, the law is characterised by an ever diminishing hierarchical framework, with an increasing role played by non-state actors. Such features are also pertinent for the international enforceability of human rights. With respect to human rights, TNCs seem to be given broadening obligations, which approach the borderline between ethics and law. The impact of soft law in this context is also relevant. This paper aims to assess whether, and to what extent, this (...) trend could be a proper path to enforce the legal accountability of transnational corporations for human rights. It will be argued that the interplay between law and ethics should be assessed differently depending on which kind of correlative duty is at stake. With regard to negative duties, soft law tools concerning TNCs’ conduct may weaken the impact of hard law. By contrast, when positive duties are concerned, insofar as the horizontal effect of rights cannot be assumed, soft law turns out to be much more useful. (shrink)

To understand the Muslim world it is essential to see it in a transnational context that is informed by its heterogeneity, power contestations, and continuous change. To understand human rights' foundations and origins it is essential to grapple with its legal, political, normative, and institutional groundings, and bear in mind its ongoing reconfigurations and global impacts. Each of these tasks is illustrated by how movements for the rights of women and sexual minorities have come to impact (...) on the transnational Muslim world and international human rights. This article explores each element within these complementary themes as a way of framing how and why the international human rights regime increasingly intersects with the Muslim world in a way that underpins challenges to authoritarian politics and the monolithic constructs of politics and society on which authoritarianism thrives. (shrink)

The literature on transnational civil society encompasses a number of conflicting views regarding civil society organizations’ (CSOs) behavior and impacts and the desirability of civil society involvement in international policymaking. This piece suggests that this lack of consensus arises from the diverse range of contexts in which CSOs operate and the wide variety of activities in which it engages. This article seeks to organize and analyze the disparate data on civil society by developing a context-based standard of democratic (...) legitimacy for CSOs. The article disaggregates democracy into input, throughput, and output components, and shows how CSOs must support or manifest different aspects of democracy in order to be democratically legitimate in a given context. Applying this standard to existing works, the article identifies several problems in current research, including a failure to recognize ways the democratic imperatives of transnational advocacy differ from national advocacy, and the potential for international civil society interventions to undermine local democratic processes. Keywords: transnational civil society; democracy; global governance; NGOs; international policymaking (Published: 1 September 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2010, pp. 217-238. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i3.4882. (shrink)

Purpose This paper is concerned with the place of human rights in the process of technological development but specifically as this process is situated within the corporate-technological complex of modern digital communications and their derivatives. This paper aims to argue that expecting and institutionalizing the incorporation of human rights in the process of technological innovation and production, particularly in the context of global economic actors, constitutes a necessary act if we want to navigate the immediate future (...) of artificial intelligence and ubiquitous connectivity in ways that protect democracy and human dignity. Design/methodology/approach The discussion presents the case for defending human rights through a social control perspective, which assumes the conscious quest for impacting change and cartographing a path of actions and intentions. The authors approach the problem from James Ralph Beniger’s theory of the Control Revolution to explain the emergence of a new social order and to outline the main challenges brought particularly by media and information and communication technology corporations as global actors of power. Findings Ethics initiatives, considering human rights as an ethical framework for media and ICT businesses, can be based on social control perspectives to regard the more complex variables interacting in the formation of effective policy making. It is the right to participate in the construction of knowledge in society and, informed by this knowledge, help manage or control democratic issues, including influencing on the regulation of technology and other cultural formats of control. Knowing social control tools enable citizens to lead their destinies, plan their freedom and the change what they wish in the societies they live in. Originality/value Social control is often understood as a term taken for granted and many times faced as representing malignant and anti-democratic forms. Here, the authors try to build a theoretical ground where both sides – the benign and the malignant – can be taken in consideration to bring awareness to the need to discuss social control as a democratic endeavor, and consider human rights as part of this and not something apart and idealized. The practice of human rights is directly associated with social control forms and is from within these practices individuals must understand its role on social control and act. (shrink)

In his recent work exploring the role of science in democratic societies Kitcher claims that scientists ought to have a prominent role in setting the agenda for and limits to research. Against the backdrop of the claim that the proper limits of scientific inquiry is John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle , he identifies the limits of inquiry as the point where the outcomes of research could cause harm to already vulnerable populations. Nonetheless, Kitcher argues against explicit limitations on unscrupulous research (...) on the grounds that restrictions would exacerbate underlying social problems. I show that Kitcher’s argument in favor of dissuading inquiry through conventional standards is problematic and falls prey to the same critique he offers in opposition to official bans. I expand the conversation of limiting scientific research by recognizing that the actions that count as ‘science’ are located in the space between ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’. In this space, we often attempt to balance freedom of research, as scientific speech, against the disparate impact citizens might experience in light of such research. I end by exploring if such disparate impact justifies limiting research, within the context of the United States, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or under international human rights standards more generally. (shrink)

This paper considers the UN efforts to introduce a legally binding Treaty on corporate accountability for human rights impacts in the context of other proposed legislation at country level, on the one hand, and existing voluntary initiatives like the UN Guiding Principles (2011), on the other. What we are interested in is whether the proposed Treaty signals a transition from voluntary initiatives (based on moral commitments) to law (that is, a focus on compliance), and the extent to which (...) it might stimulate or hinder links between judicial and non-judicial initiatives. The scholars who have explicitly addressed these two divides are – Michael Sandel, on theory v. practice; and Amartya Sen, on law v. morality. We engage with their views, in sections II and III respectively, seeking to build an integrated approach to help us overcome these dualisms. We further consider John Ruggie’s “principled pragmatism”, a strategy that he uses to build the Protect, Respect and Remedy (henceforth, PRR) Framework; and we invoke arguments from casuistry as well as a practice-focused deontology (Thomas Donaldson’s) in favour of an ethics ‘beyond cognition’, which we consider better suited than either utilitarian or principle-based theories to guide the debate on human rights. This is because it allows us to take non-rational factors into account (such as emotions and personal affiliations), when judging the kind of common good we consider worth pursuing. In the last section of the paper, we investigate whether and how might the Treaty illustrate the two divides, trying to (a) distinguish between purely legal elements and those of a wider nature, to do with morality; and (b) understand what might help bridge the gap between theoretical commitments to the universality of human rights and various practical challenges. Our aim is not to evaluate the Treaty, from a legal viewpoint, or suggest improvements to it (lawyers are better placed to do that); rather, we seek to investigate the way in which the proposed Treaty – which is the first attempt to address the challenge of transnational business and human rights in international law – combines moral and legal aspects, and what this tells us about the world we live in. (shrink)

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right responds to two dichotomies. One is between the freedom of rational thought in its practical application and the givenness of natural impulses and desires. Against Kant Hegel argues that pure reason alone cannot determine the content of any maxim or principle of action. Thus Hegel must find a way in which the content of natural needs and impulses – the only source of content for maxims of action – can be transfigured into contents of rationally self-given (...) principles and maxims. Hegel also responds to the dichotomy between the individual agent and the social whole within which agents act. Hegel argues that this dichotomy is specious because human beings are fundamentally social practitioners and because neither social practices nor individual agents have priority over the other. There are no social practices without social practitioners and there are no social practitioners without social practices. Hegel’s response to this second dichotomy allows him to respond to the first one as well. The elaboration and specialization of natural needs and desires through exchange relations and the social division of labor transfigures the contents of those needs and desires into collectively self-given ends. The social practices producing this transfiguration and meeting these ends form the contents of implicit principles of right. These implicit principles are collectively self-given because they result from the social practices collectively developed to meet these needs. Only acts that are executed and accepted by an agent are free acts. This strong condition requires that an agent’s intentions correspond to the actual nature and consequences of his or her act. Since the aims, the principles, and the means of action are fundamentally social, these strong constraints entail that free action is possible only within a community which makes known its structure and the role of its members within it and their contribution to it, so that its members can act on the basis of that knowledge. Hegel’s theory of the state is a theory of a communal structure that makes such explicit, free action possible. In briefest compass, Hegel holds that laws are legitimate only insofar as they codify those practices that have been developed in order to achieve human freedom, and laws are obligatory only insofar as they are necessary for achieving human freedom. Hegel’s government is designed to codify and promulgate such laws. Hegel’s legislature is designed to make known to the citizens at large, through their corporate representatives, that laws have such a basis and how individual roles and actions fit within the community as a whole. (shrink)

The success of any cosmopolitan political project depends on the development of forms of transnational solidarity that go beyond particularist commitments of kin, community, or nation. In this paper, I analyze how transnational solidarity can be generated around basic human rights. Rather than presupposing strong conceptions of a common humanity or a pre-existing sentiment of universal benevolence, I propose that the global discourse on human rights itself – an ongoing, dynamic, and dialogical process (...) carried out within global public spheres – be considered a form of or at least as a developing source for transnational solidarity. Together with the politics of human rights promoted by NGOs within global public spheres, this global discourse can contribute to constructing transnational solidarity around human rights. But a human right to basic subsistence, and commitment to fulfilling the correlative duties to the global poor, must be central to the cross-cultural dialogue on human rights for their to be adequate transnational solidarity around a global human rights regime. I frame my central argument through an engagement with Jürgen Habermas's revision of the Kantian cosmopolitan project. (shrink)

This article aims to define natural human rights in the context of forming postmodern views on an individual today. Natural rights exist, regardless of whether they are enshrined somewhere or not: they are clear from the natural context and essence of human activity. The postmodern world is experiencing a crisis of fatigue from life, fatigue of culture, which for the global world has become a political and economic crisis of ineffectiveness of the policy of multi-culturalism and (...) poly-culturalism and the growing dangers and threats associated with it. Therefore, it is crucial to find out how natural human rights are realized in postmodern society. Importantly, the article analyzes the basic theoretical and methodical principles of creating the postmodern environment and its impact on people. It also defines the main concepts and categories of human rights in the context of evolution of postmodern society. To study the socio-cultural impact on personality development in the postmodern era, the article explores how legal culture is formed in the course of civilizational-evolutionary development of society. Research methods are as follows: analytical methods, descriptive and explanatory methods, synthesis and analysis. The obtained results prove that natural human rights manifest the evolution of cultural progress and prospects for further analysis of their socio-cultural effects on the development of postmodern society. (shrink)

The article deals with the impact of the recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the German labour law practice. After a brief introduction of the general importance of the jurisprudence of the ECHR for the German labour law (I.), the authors illustrate the German and the ECHR’s jurisprudence on the duty of loyalty towards the ecclesiastic employer (II.) and whistle blowing (III.). Analysing this jurisprudence, the authors come to the conclusion that the ECHR (...) approved the principles of the German jurisprudence in these cases. Therefore, its impact on the practice will be rather marginal as it does not obtain such a far-reaching significance that a change in the jurisprudence regarding dismissals is to be expected. The judgements merely raised the awareness for the set of problems in the context of ecclesiastic employers and whistle blowing. In this regard, the article will try to provide the reader with basic directions on how to deal with this jurisprudence. Finally, the authors argue that concerns, the ECHR could evolve into a further instance reviewing all German judgements not only regarding the question if there is a violation of the Convention or not but regarding the correctness of the findings are unfounded. On the other side, the article addresses the problem that – apparently – applications have been declared admissible by the ECHR despite Art. 35 para. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights because the final decision on the national level – dismissing the complaint as inadmissible – did not reveal the reason why the application did not succeed. (shrink)

Drawing on case studies from around the world - including Iran, Guatemala, USA and Mexico - this collection documents how transnational human rights discourses and legal institutions are materialised, imposed, resisted and transformed in a variety of contexts.

Human rights are a suspect project – this seems the only sensible starting point today. This suspicion, however, is not absolute and the desire to preserve and reform human rights persists for many of us. The most important contemporary critiques of human rights focus on the problematic consequences of the desire for universal rights. Some defenders of human rights accept elements of this critique in their reformulations, but opponents remain wary of (...) the desire to think and act in human rights terms because of their limitations as a political ethics. Yet, we hesitate to abandon human rights. In this article, I look at the political critique of human rights in greater detail. I argue that an agonistic account drawing on the work of William Connolly and Bonnie Honig offers the best response to the most important contemporary critiques of human rights, and a clearer account of what it means to claim that human rights do valuable work. The key developments of this agonistic view of human rights are its focus on the ambiguity of ‘humanity’ as a political identity and the challenge to legitimate authority and membership that new rights claims make. In the end, human rights are defended as a universal political ethos focused on the pluralization and democratization of global politics. (shrink)

States cannot legitimately enforce their borders against migrants if dominant conceptions of sovereignty inform enforcement because these conceptions undermine sufficient respect for migrants’ basic human rights. Instead, such conceptions lead states to assert total control over outsiders’ potential cross-border movements to support their in-group’s self-rule. Thus, although legitimacy requires states to prioritize universal respect for basic human rights, sovereign states today generally fail to do so when it comes to border enforcement. I contend that (...) this enforcement could only be rendered legitimate if it was predicated on more desirable conceptions of sovereignty that supported the universal prioritization of basic human rights. Specifically, desirable conceptions would not establish and require absolute state sovereignty over borders as a necessary precondition for true popular self-governance. (shrink)

The aim of the contribution is to outline the ethical foundations in Maritain’s and Novak’s interpretation of human rights in a wider historical context and to assess its meaning for the present, with special regard to our Central European area. The issue of human rights has, in addition to its political aspect, an inherent ethical one. Fundamental human rights relate to the possibility of autonomy of a person as a moral being endowed with reason (...) and striving for a meaningful life. Therefore, these rights have a fundamental role in practical life; however, they have also become an issue of speculative philosophy and theology, where the focus is upon concepts of freedom and reason. Jacques Maritain and Michael Novak were important figures in the advancement of human rights at the international level, with exceptional impacts especially in Central Europe. Both have their roots in Christian humanism, and for both their concept of human relations is derived from Biblical religion and love for one’s neighbour. Novak accepts Maritain’s concepts of a person and human dignity, and he tries to explain his own concept of democratic capitalism in accordance with it. (shrink)

Increasing attention is being paid to the potential of anti-retroviral treatment for HIV prevention. The possibility of eliminating HIV from a population through a universal test and treat intervention, where all people within a population are tested for HIV and all positive people immediately initiated on ART, as part of a wider prevention intervention, was first proposed in 2009. Several clinical trials testing this idea are now in inception phase. An intervention which relies on universally testing the entire population for (...) HIV will pose challenges to human rights, including obtaining genuine consent to testing and treatment. It also requires a context in which people can live free from fear of stigma, discrimination and violence, and can access services they require. These challenges are distinct from the field of medical ethics which has traditionally governed clinical trials and focuses primarily on patient researcher relationship. This paper sets out the potential impact of a population wide treatment as prevention intervention on human rights. It identifies five human right principles of particular relevance: participation, accountability, the right to health, non-discrimination and equality, and consent and confidentiality. The paper proposes that explicit attention to human rights can strengthen a treatment as prevention intervention, contribute to mediating likely health systems challenges and offer insights on how to reach all sections of the population. (shrink)

Critics of state sovereignty have typically challenged the state’s right to close its borders to foreigners by appeal to the liberal egalitarian discourse of human rights. According to the liberty argument, freedom of movement is a basic human right; according to the equality or justice argument, open borders are necessary to reduce global poverty and inequality, both matters of global justice. I argue that human rights considerations do indeed mandate borders considerably more open than (...) is the norm today but that, no matter how radical in its critique of state sovereignty, human rights discourse fails to address a crucial feature of this ideology. It is not enough to engage in a substantive moral argument about what the state’s moral duties are. One must also address the procedural political question of who has the legitimate authority to decide what rights and duties to act on in cases of disagreement. In addition to human rights discourse, I argue, border activists must also draw on the challenge posed to the doctrine of state sovereignty by the democratic theory of popular sovereignty. According to democratic theory, the people subject to the state’s coercive exercise of political power, and not the state itself, is ultimately the sovereign arbiter of political questions. And because foreigners are subject to the state’s border laws, democratic theory requires granting them a participatory say in setting those laws. (shrink)

Peaceful protests and strikes are a basic human right as stated in the United Nations’ universal declaration on human rights. But for doctors, their proximity to life and death and the social contract between a doctor and a patient are stated as the reasons why doctors are valued more than the ordinary beings. In Pakistan, strikes by doctors were carried out to protest against lack of service structure, security and low pay. This paper discusses the moral (...) and ethical concerns pertaining to the strikes by medical doctors in the context of Pakistan. The author has carefully tried to balance the discussion about moral repercussions of strikes on patients versus the circumstances of doctors working in public sector hospitals of a developing country that may lead to strikes. (shrink)

Introduction: the foundation of justice -- Practical reason and justifying reasons: on the foundation of morality -- Moral autonomy and the autonomy of morality : toward a theory of normativity after Kant -- Ethics and morality -- The justification of justice: Rawls's political liberalism and Habermas's discourse theory in dialogue -- Political liberty: integrating five conceptions of autonomy -- A critical theory of multicultural toleration -- The rule of reasons: three models of deliberative democracy -- Social justice, justification, and power (...) -- The basic right to justification: toward a constructivist conception of human rights -- Constructions of transnational justice: comparing John Rawls's the law of peoples and Otfried Höffe's democracy in an age of globalisation -- Justice, morality, and power in the global context -- Toward a critical theory of transnational justice. (shrink)

"Over many centuries, philosophers, theologians, and poets have been fascinated by the interplay of will and desire in the human psyche. Does will follow or precede desire? How can we bond them and thus unite body, soul, and spirit in harmonic concord? For fresh insights to these age-old questions, Dr. Joanne Stroud enlists the tools of modern psychology. Her eclectic probe of basic human drives moves from the awesome power of Eros, the great liberator of antiquity, through (...) the impact of the monotheistic faiths on will and desire, and finally to the discordant views of the great philosophers and psychologists of the modern era, among them Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and the little known but magnetic Frenchman, Gaston Bachelard." "Love and will, human aspirations and desires, are caught - the author concludes - in a whirlwind of change, with impersonal scientific data supplanting the myths, the ancient lore, the stories rich in imagery, that previously contoured human behavior. As a result we live, in W.B. Yeat's famous phrase, in "the age of disordered will."" "In the twentieth century will became recognized only in its more conscious applications, as almost synonymous with ego. With this increasing reverence for the strong ego, will was elevated (by psychologists, among many others) to new egotistical summits as a potent tool of power. The more subtle aspects of will, such as the way it delineates identity, have been neglected, the author contends, and can only be recaptured by an understanding of how will becomes bonded to desire."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Benhabib argues that the tension between universal human rights and democratic self-determination cannot be resolved. Distinguishing between the principle of rights, on the one hand, and context-specific `schedules of rights', on the other hand, helps, however, to specify the scope of both norms. I show that applying this idea to questions of citizenship requires further elaboration in three respects: (1) Benhabib's argument for porous rather than open borders, which does not fully address the challenge of global (...) distributive justice; (2) norms for access to citizenship, which need to cover also transnational affiliations between sending states and their external populations; and (3) necessary constraints on democratic self-determination. I suggest replacing the principle of self-determination with a principle of self-government that does not include a unilateral right to determine the territorial or membership boundaries of the polity. (shrink)

A great deal of constructivist international relations research on norms focuses on the diffusion of liberal human rights values. In contrast, this article analyzes how critics seek to undermine human rights principles in contexts where human rights norms are increasingly hegemonic. It argues that when norm challengers are frustrated by the institutionalization of human rights, they engage in transnational strategies to pursue their agendas. In norm proxy war, actors patronize surrogates (...) in locales where norms are weak in the hope that victories abroad will reverberate internationally and at home. This dynamic is illustrated by American evangelical sponsorship of political homophobia in Uganda, culminating in that country’s draconian anti-LGBT legislation. When norms are resisted through outsourcing, actors contract out human rights violations in an effort to erode norms through practice, as evidenced by patterns of extraterritorial detention and extraordinary rendition to torture in the post-9/11 “Global War on Terror.” Identifying these patterns broadens understanding of potential pathways of norm contestation. (shrink)

One of the challenges facing AI governance is the need for multiple scales. Universal human rights require a global scale. If someone asks AI if education is harmful to women, the answer should be “no” regardless of their location. But economic democratization requires local control: if AI’s power over an economy is dictated by corporate giants or authoritarian states, it may degrade democracy’s social and environmental foundations. AI democratization, in other words, needs to operate across multiple (...) scales. Nature allows the multiscale flourishing of biological systems through fractal distributions. In this paper, we show that key elements of the fractal scaling found in nature can be applied to the AI democratization process. We begin by looking at fractal trees in nature and applying similar analytics to tree representations of online conversations. We first examine this application in the context of OpenAI’s “Democratic Inputs” projects for globally acceptable policies. We then look at the advantages of independent AI ownership at local micro-levels, reporting on initial outcomes for experiments with AI and related technologies in community-based systems. Finally, we offer a synthesis of the two, micro and macro, in a multifractal model. Just as nature allows multifractal systems to maximize biodiverse flourishing, we propose a combination of community-owned AI at the micro-level, and globally democratized AI policies at the macro-level, for a more egalitarian and sustainable future. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

That the Enlightenment shaped modernity is uncontested. Yet remarkably few historians or philosophers have attempted to trace the process of ideas from the political and social turmoil of the late eighteenth century to the present day. This is precisely what Jonathan Israel now does. In Democratic Enlightenment , Israel demonstrates that the Enlightenment was an essentially revolutionary process, driven by philosophical debate. The American Revolution and its concerns certainly acted as a major factor in the intellectual ferment that shaped the (...) wider upheaval that followed, but the radical philosophes were no less critical than enthusiastic about the American model. From 1789, the General Revolution's impetus came from a small group of philosophe-revolutionnaires , men such as Mirabeau, Sieyes, Condorcet, Volney, Roederer, and Brissot. Not aligned to any of the social groups represented in the French National assembly, they nonetheless forged " la philosophie moderne "--in effect Radical Enlightenment ideas--into a world-transforming ideology that had a lasting impact in Latin America, Canada and eastern Europe as well as France, Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. In addition, Israel argues that while all French revolutionary journals powerfully affirmed that la philosophie moderne was the main cause of the French Revolution, the main stream of historical thought has failed to grasp what this implies. Israel sets the record straight, demonstrating the true nature of the engine that drove the Revolution, and the intimate links between the radical wing of the Enlightenment and the anti-Robespierriste "Revolution of reason." Acclaim for earlier volumes in the trilogy: "His vast--and vastly impressive--book sets out to redefine the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. Magnificent and magisterialwill undoubtedly be one of the truly great historical works of the decade." -- Sunday Telegraph "The scholarship is breathtaking. Israel has read everything, absorbed every nuance, followed up every byway." -- New Statesman "An enormously impressive piece of scholarship. The breadth and depth of the author's reading are breathtaking and Enlightenment Contested is set to become the definitive work for philosophers as well as historians on this extraordinary period." -- Tribune. (shrink)

An illustrative comparison of human rights in 1948 and the contemporary period, attempting to gauge the impact of globalization on changes in the content of human rights (e.g., collective rights, women's rights, right to a healthy environment), major abusers and guarantors of human rights (e.g., state actors, transnational corporations, social movements), and alternative justifications of human rights (e.g., pragmatic agreement, moral intuitionism, overlapping consensus, cross-cultural dialogue).

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in (...) three main steps. First, I consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the "just authority" of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions. (shrink)

In the field of bioethics, scholars have begun to consider carefully the impact of structural issues on global population health, including socioeconomic and political factors influencing the disproportionate burden of disease throughout the world. Human rights and social justice are key considerations for both population health and biomedical research. In this paper, I will briefly explore approaches to human rights in bioethics and review guidelines for ethical conduct in international health research, focusing specifically on health research (...) conducted in resource-poor settings. I will demonstrate the potential for addressing human rights considerations in international health research with special attention to the importance of collaborative partnerships, capacity building, and respect for cultural traditions. Strengthening professional knowledge about international research ethics increases awareness of ethical concerns associated with study design and informed consent among researchers working in resource-poor settings. But this is not enough. Technological and financial resources are also necessary to build capacity for local communities to ensure that research results are integrated into existing health systems. Problematic issues surrounding the application of ethical guidelines in resource-poor settings are embedded in social history, cultural context, and the global political economy. Resolving the moral complexities requires a commitment to engaged dialogue and action among investigators, funding agencies, policy makers, governmental institutions, and private industry. (shrink)

The consequences of foreign direct investment (FDI) for human rights protection are poorly understood. We propose that the impact of FDI varies across industries. In particular, extractive firms in the oil and mining industries go where the resources are located and are bound to such investment, which creates a status quo bias among them when it comes to supporting repressive rulers (“location-bound effect”). The same is not true for nonextractive multinational corporations (MNCs) in manufacturing or services, which can, (...) in comparison, exit problematic countries more easily. We also propose that strong democratic institutions can alleviate negative impacts of extractive FDI on human rights (“democratic safeguard effect”). Using U.S. FDI broken up into extractive and nonextractive industries in 157 host countries (1999–2015), we find support for these propositions.1 Extractive FDI is associated with more human rights abuse, but nonextractive FDI is associated with less abuse, after controlling for other factors, including concerns about endogeneity. We find also that the negative human rights impact of extractive FDI vanishes in countries where democratic institutions are stronger. Our results are robust to a range of alternative estimation techniques. (shrink)

Background: Some developed countries have recently changed their role in the context of international recruitment, becoming donors due to socio-economical and political factors such as recessions. This is also the case in Italy, where there has been a flow of immigrant nurses out of the country that has been documented over the past several years. In a short time, it has become a donor country to other developed European countries, such as the United Kingdom. Aims: To advance knowledge in the (...) context of human rights conflicts and ethical implications of the decision-making process of nurses who migrate between developed countries, such as from Italy to the United Kingdom, during times of recession. Research design: A case study based on the descriptive phenomenological approach was undertaken in 2014. Participants and research context: A total of 26 Italian newly graduated nurses finding a job in the United Kingdom were interviewed via Skype and telephone. Ethical considerations: The Internal Review Board of the University approved the project. Findings: In accordance with the descriptive phenomenological approach undertaken, three main themes emerged: (1) escaping from the feeling of being refused/rejected in order to be desired, (2) perceiving themselves respected, as a person and as a nurse, in a growth project and (3) returning if the country changes its strategy regarding nurses. Discussion: Ethical implications in the context of human rights, such as autonomy of the decision, social justice and reciprocal obligation, non-maleficence and double effect, have been discussed. Conclusion: The call for investing in nurses and nurses’ care in developed countries facing recession is urgent. Investing in nurses means respecting individuals and citizens who are at risk of developing health problems during the recession. (shrink)

Somerville, Margaret Over the millennia of human history, the idea that children - at least those born into a marriage - had rights with respect to their biological parents was taken for granted and reflected in law and public policy. But with same-sex marriage, which gives same-sex spouses the right to found a family, that is no longer the case. Likewise, children's rights with respect to their biological origins were not an issue when there was no technoscience (...) that could be used to manipulate or change those origins: a baby could only be conceived in vivo through sexual reproduction. But with assisted human reproductive technologies and genetic technologies, that, too, is no longer the case. So, in light of these new realities, what are our obligations, as societies, to children with respect to their biological origins and biological families? What protections do children need and deserve? I propose that the most fundamental human right of all is a child's right to be born from natural human biological origins and that children also have human rights with respect to knowing who their biological parents and families are, and that these rights must be recognized. Children also have a right to be reared within their biological families and to have a mother and a father, unless an exception can be justified as being in the 'best interests' of a particular child. The connection among adoption, the use of new reproductive technologies, and same-sex marriage is that they all unlink child-parent biological bonds. Each context raises one or more of three important issues: children's right to know the identities of their biological parents; children's right to both a mother and a father, preferably their own biological parents; and children's right to come into being with genetic origins that have not been tampered with; that is, 'designing' our children should be prohibited. Such 'designing' would result in losses with implications far beyond those persons directly affected and far beyond the present time. It would undermine the rights to equality and freedom of future generations. Because the liberty and equality of all citizens is at the heart of democratic societal institutions and of the values that democratic societies promote, to create people who are neither free nor equal undermines those institutions and values. In short, not to prohibit 'designer children' would undermine the very foundations of our Western democratic societies. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): ‘Full Disclosure of the “Raw Data” of Research on Humans: Citizens’ Rights, Product Manufacturer’s Obligations and the Quality of the Scientific Database.’Philosophy Compass 6/2 (2011): 90–99. doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2010.00376.x Author’s Introduction Securing consent (and informed consent) from patients and research study participants is a key concern in patient care and research on humans. Yet, the legal doctrines of consent and informed consent differ in their applications. In patient care, the judicial doctrines of consent and (...) informed consent are disclosure doctrines based on the obligation of physicians to inform their patients of the following types of information: the nature of the procedure the physician is recommending in the patent’s care (P), the alternatives to the physician‐recommendation (A), and the risks of procedure and its alternatives (R). In addition, the physician must provide truthful answers to the patient’s questions (Q) to the best of the physician’s abilities. In research on humans, the onus of disclosure by study sponsors and principal investigators is much greater than in patient care precisely because the purpose of research is not patient care. The purpose of research is the identification and development of new generalizable knowledge. Thus, participation in a research study or trial may not benefit the study volunteer at all. In addition, the participant may carry a heavy risk burden in relationship to any testing of a newly designed drug or device as part of their experiences in the research study. Presently, despite the risks borne by the research study participant, the raw data collected from volunteers in research trials are treated by courts as if they were the private property of the study sponsor rather than generally owed to the public as would be expected by an effort like research participation aimed at contributing to the development of generalizable knowledge. This paper reviews the obligations that study sponsors owe to their study participants based on the very definition of research as a systematic activity whose purpose is to develop generalizable knowledge to help all humans. Author Recommends Court cases Canterbury v. Spence, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate decision heard in the District of Columbia, USA) Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980). (Supreme Court of Canada) Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Canterbury v. Spence is the landmark Federal informed consent case in the United States heard in the District of Columbia. In this case, Judge Spottswood Robinson articulated the reasonable person standard of informed consent. This standard was subsequently adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada (Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980)) and the High Court of Australia (Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992)). The House of Lords rejected the reasonable person standard in England in Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985). Book Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. This book is a detailed guide for the review of scientific and ethical aspects of research on humans contained in the research study protocols and research informed consent forms which need to be submitted by study sponsors and principal investigators to institutional review boards (IRBs) for IRB review before a research study can receive approval to be conducted within a human study population in those institutions over which the IRB has authority. It also presents basic definitions in the area of research on humans and basic approaches to help conduct a deep review of the underlying scientific and ethical issues that are present within a research study protocol and its accompanying research informed consent form. Report National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). This U.S. National Commission in the Belmont Report argued for the necessity of a reasonable volunteer standard in research on humans in the United States. Arguing that the professional standard and the reasonable person standard of consent and informed consent were insufficient to base a disclosure standard in research on humans, this National Commission developed the reasonable volunteer standard where a study participant is to be approached in research informed consent with that information that a reasonable volunteer would want to know. Online Materials Belmont Report: Syllabus Topics for Lecture and Discussion Week I: Introduction and Overview Readings: Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L.R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week II: The Different Standards of Consent and Informed Consent Readings: Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate opinion heard in the District of Columbia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week III: Definition of Research Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 2 and 3) Week IV: How to Review a Research Study Protocol and Research Informed Consent Form Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 4–6, 10, and 12–14) Week V: Obligations in Research of Humans Versus Patient Care Reading: National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). Focus Questions • How do the judicial doctrines of consent in England and Australia compare to the judicial doctrines of informed consent in the United States and Canada? • How does a professional standard of disclosure differ from a reasonable person standard of disclosure? • What is the definition of research? • How is a research study (study proposal and research informed consent form) reviewed from scientific and ethical bases for considerations of approval by an IRB? • How do the obligations of a study sponsor, a principal investigator, and a research team conducting a research trial on human study participants differ from the obligations of a physician caring for a patient? • Should all raw data of research derived from humans be made available to the public for use in developing generalizable knowledge to help others, or should raw data be considered the private property of the study sponsors (for example, prescription drug manufacturers), who fund the research trials? Seminar/project Idea Draw a timeline of the development of the basic concepts of consent and informed consent in patient care and in patient research. On this timeline, first place the dates of the key court cases in England, the United States, Canada, and Australia on consent and informed consent. Then place the date of the development of the Belmont Report. Why do differences exist between these four countries in terms of the legal requirements of informedness of a patient (in medical care) and a study participant (in medical research)? What roles if any do the concepts of self‐determination and self‐decision have in consent and informed consent in patient care and in informed consent in research on humans among the four countries of interest? What are the realities of research on human participants that require a new standard of informed consent, the reasonable volunteer standard, to be developed beyond the two standards in patient care, the professional standard, and the reasonable person standard? Counterpoint Arguments The following are counterpoint arguments that need to be appreciated to more fully understand the concepts that impact the thesis that ‘raw data’ should be open to the public to allow the opportunity of checking of the results of its associated scientific paper and for further analysis. De‐Identified (Anonymized) Raw Data A current approach to identifying (anonymizinig) raw data is based on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (P.L.104‐191). HIPAA was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to keep a person’s medical information private. In a research study, a person’s private medical information can become research data. HIPAA’s Privacy Rule allows a covered entity to de‐identify data by removing all 18 elements that could be used to identify the individual or the individual’s relatives, employers, or household members; these elements are enumerated in the Privacy Rule. The covered entity must also have no actual knowledge that the remaining information could be used alone or in combination with other information to identify the individual who is the subject of the information. Under this method, the identifiers that must be removed are the following: 1 Names. 2 All geographic subdivisions smaller than a state, including street address, city, county, precinct, ZIP Code, and their equivalent geographical codes, except for the initial three digits of a ZIP Code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: 2a. The geographic unit formed by combining all ZIP Codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people. 2b. The initial three digits of a ZIP Code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people are changed to 000. 3 All elements of dates (except year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, and date of death, and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older. 4 Telephone numbers. 5 Facsimile numbers. 6 Electronic mail addresses. 7 Social security numbers. 8 Medical record numbers. 9 Health plan beneficiary numbers. 10 Account numbers. 11 Certificate/license numbers. 12 Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers. 13 Device identifiers and serial numbers. 14 Web universal resource locators (URLs). 15 Internet protocol (IP) address numbers. 16 Biometric identifiers, including fingerprints and voiceprints. 17 Full‐face photographic images and any comparable images. 18 Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code, unless otherwise permitted by the Privacy Rule for re‐identification. Even though ‘raw data’ can be de‐identified (anonymized) so that there is no way to trace back the data to the study participant from which it was drawn, there are still questions whether the ‘de‐identified raw data’ can be given to other researchers or made public without the original study participant’s approval. It may be the case that this approval could be done at the start of any research study where the individual considering study participation would be counseled on what the process of de‐identification consists of and would be asked whether the participant would allow use of the data by other researchers or made available to the public in a de‐identified state. However, there may be questions of the study participants as to whether the data are truly de‐identified and untraceable back to the study participant since the participant would not be able to see the process actually being carried out in detail in all relevant circumstances. Using Raw Data in Context Simply being in possession of raw data is never enough to build on that data from a research perspective. Researchers need to understand the context of the scientific research study in which the data were collected. This research context includes (but is not limited to): (i) the scientific hypothesis of the research study, (ii) the inclusion and exclusion criteria selected by the research designers of the study to determine which study participants were included and which were excluded from the study, (iii) the methods used to collect the data and possibilities of errors in the data collection processes, and (iv) answers to questions regarding whether any data were excluded from the study data and why these data were excluded. Ownership Rights Over Data There are ownership rights over data. Ownership rights include court decision making related to the question which parties are to be considered as the owners of the data. Possible owners here include (but are not limited to) (i) the study sponsor whose only role was to fund that study, (ii) the principal investigator(s) who developed the scientific hypothesis, and (iii) individual study participants through special contracts made by individual participants who negotiate such contracts with study sponsors and principal investigators to share in the ownership of data. Examples of such data are participant sources of unique gene lines or unique cell lines to be used in future research. Objections to Data Sharing Finally, individual researchers may simply object to sharing data. A researcher’s arguments here may be simply stating that he or she has a right to fully analyze the data since the collection of the data was the researchers’ idea in the first place. These researchers may argue that they have the right to mine the data as fully as they can before deciding to make the data open to the public for others to analyze. Works Cited 1 Kaiser, J. ‘Making Clinical Data Widely Available.’Science 322.5899 (10 Oct. 2008): 217–8. 2 de Lusignan, S., J.F. Metsemakers, P. Houwink, V. Gunnarsdottir, and J. van der Lei. ‘Routinely Collected General Practice Data: Goldmines for Research? A Report of the European Federation for Medical Informatics Primary Care Informatics Working Group (EFMI PCIWG) from MIE2006, Maastricht, The Netherlands.’Informatics in Primary Care 14.3 (2006): 203–9. 3 Sim, I. ‘Human Studies Database Project’, CTSA Data Repositories Symposium (17 Oct. 2008). 23 Nov. 2010. 4 Sim, I., C.G. Chute, H. Lehmann, R. Nagarajan, M. Nahm, and R.H. Scheuermann. ‘Keeping Raw Data in Context.’Science 323.5915 (6 Feb. 2009): 713. 5 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, HIPAA Privacy Rule, Information for Researchers. 13 Nov. 2010. 6 Wilczynski, N.L., R.B. Haynes, and Hedges Team. ‘EMBASE Search Strategies for Identifying Methodologically Sound Diagnostic Studies for Use by Clinicians and Researchers.’BMC Medicine 29.3 (March 2005): 7. (shrink)

The debate on climate change needs normative visions and principles to provide orientation and to line up normative requirements. This may enable to provide a comprehensive view on energy and climate topics. This contribution, while dealing with justice, gives a perspective from ethics respectively from a (re-)interpretation of national constitutions, the EU Charter of fundamental rights and the European convention on human rights in the light of sustainability. It takes us to human rights as the (...) basic norm of any liberal democratic constitution (on national and transnational level), but criticizes the academic international law debate (unlike the practice of international law) which seems to be focused on the idea of even absolute, i.e. not subject to any balancing, environmental fundamental rights. Overall, it turns out that an interpretation of fundamental rights which is more multipolar and considers the conditions for freedom more heavily – as well as the freedom of future generations and of people in other parts of the world – develops a greater commitment to climate protection. Regarding the theory of balancing, for the purpose of a clear balance of powers the usual principle of proportionality also proves specifiable. (shrink)

Multinational companies (MNCs) can have positive and negative impacts on the human rights situation of a country. More and more MNCs have made a commitment to respect human rights. So far, little research has been done on how MNCs can embed their commitment and which factors determine its success. This paper therefore aims to describe and learn from the process of embedding human rights in six subsidiaries of the multinational oil company Royal Dutch Shell (...) (in short, Shell), operating in different parts of the world. It develops an approach based on the model of Tatiana Kostova. Using a specific tool called the Human Rights Compliance Assessment, the paper concludes that, despite differences in local context, the process requirements of embedding global standardscan be the same. (shrink)

This paper traces the evolution of the international concept of a human right to culture from a general and individual right of participation in the public life of a state (1966, Article 27 of the IC of Civil and Political Rights), to a group right to a cultural identity (1992 Declaration on the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities). I argue that the original generic formulation of the human right to (...) culture reflected the nineteenth-century ideal of one-nation, one culture which had proved inadequate from the beginning even in Europe and wrecked havoc upon newly evolving nations in previously colonized territories. International Human Rights doctrine has had to evolve in response to the confl icts that have erupted within multi-ethnic states. In this paper I will consider and defend the argument of William Kymlicka that culture is a necessary context for the exercise of meaningful choices and therefore, within limits, deserves protection within liberal regimes. I argue that providing political support for cultural identities in the form of group rights need not imply a right of secession and can support a robust conception of multicultural citizenship. I analyze the philosophical significance of cultural identity for human dignity and democratic participation in multicultural contexts and conclude that group rights are neither “collectivist” nor “individualist” but a necessary and significant byproduct of the fundamental human right to free association. (shrink)

This paper seeks to analyse the contribution of a human rights perspective to emancipatory social work. Human rights practice builds on long-standing values and theoretical frameworks related to emancipatory, radical and structural social work and anti-oppressive practice. However, historical tensions within social work, notably in the United Kingdom, continue in contemporary forms, magnified by the global impact of neo-liberalism. The paper considers connections between human rights and other frameworks, including professional codes; ethical critiques drawing (...) on feminist and indigenous perspectives; the articulation of human rights with social justice; and the strength of a rights-based approach demonstrated by community campaigns and service-user movements. It also addresses discontinuities between human rights and trends in social work and the wider context, including managerialism, privatization, and the consumerization of rights; unexamined rhetoric and limited regulatory interpretations; the dangers of rights being interpreted and imposed from dominant and/or Western perspectives; and the complexities of universal versus culturally specific rights claims. Drawing on the struggles of oppressed groups, the paper argues that a more critical and informed focus on human rights can be a further potentially powerful tool contributing to resistance to oppression, collective solidarity and the promotion of emancipatory change. (shrink)

In her 2004 book Carol Gould addresses the fundamental issue of democratizing globalization, that is to say of finding ways to open transnational institutions and communities to democratic participation by those widely affected by their decisions. The book develops a framework for expanding participation in crossborder decisions, arguing for a broader understanding of human rights and introducing a new role for the ideas of care and solidarity at a distance. Reinterpreting the idea of universality to accommodate a (...) multiplicity of cultural perspectives, the author takes up a number of applied issues, including the persistence of racism, cultural rights, women's human rights, the democratic management of firms, the use of the Internet to enhance political participation, and the importance of empathy and genuine democracy in understanding terrorism and responding to it. Accessibly written with a minimum of technical jargon this is a major contribution to political philosophy. (shrink)

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? -/- This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this (...) network is a core notion of human dignity as an inherent, non-instrumental, egalitarian, and high-priority normative status of human persons. People have this status in virtue of their valuable human capacities rather than as a result of their national origin and other conventional features. Second, it shows how human dignity gives rise to an inspiring ideal of solidaristic empowerment, which calls us to support people's pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to block or destroy, and positive duties to protect and facilitate, the development and exercise of the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. The most urgent of these duties are correlative to human rights. Third, this book illustrates how the proposed dignitarian approach allows us to articulate the content, justification, and feasible implementation of specific human rights, including contested ones, such as the rights to democratic political participation and to decent labour conditions. Finally, this book's dignitarian approach helps illuminate the arc of humanist justice, identifying both the difference and the continuity between the basic requirements of human rights and more expansive requirements of social justice such as those defended by liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists. -/- Human dignity is indeed the moral heart of human rights. Understanding it enables us to defend human rights as the urgent ethical and political project that puts humanity first. (shrink)

This paper relates human rights to public health ethics and policies by discussing the nature and moral justification of human rights generally, and the right to health in particular. Which features of humanity ground human rights? To answer this question, as an alternative to agency and capabilities approaches, the paper offers the “fundamental conditions approach,” according to which human rights protect the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions approach (...) identifies “basic health”—the adequate functioning of the various parts of our organism needed for the development and exercise of the fundamental capacities—as the object of a human right. A human right to basic health entails human rights to the essential resources for promoting and maintaining basic health, including adequate nutrition, basic health care, and basic education. Duty bearers include every able person in appropriate circumstances, as well as governments and government agencies, private philanthropic foundations, and transnational corporations. (shrink)

Human rights are a suspect project – this seems the only sensible starting point today. This suspicion, however, is not absolute and the desire to preserve and reform human rights persists for many of us. The most important contemporary critiques of human rights focus on the problematic consequences of the desire for universal rights. Some defenders of human rights accept elements of this critique in their reformulations, but opponents remain wary of (...) the desire to think and act in human rights terms because of their limitations as a political ethics. Yet, we hesitate to abandon human rights. In this article, I look at the political critique of human rights in greater detail. I argue that an agonistic account drawing on the work of William Connolly and Bonnie Honig offers the best response to the most important contemporary critiques of human rights, and a clearer account of what it means to claim that human rights do valuable work. The key developments of this agonistic view of human rights are its focus on the ambiguity of ‘humanity’ as a political identity and the challenge to legitimate authority and membership that new rights claims make. In the end, human rights are defended as a universal political ethos focused on the pluralization and democratization of global politics. (shrink)

Humanitarian agencies have confronted one disaster after another over the last twenty-five years. Decades of intense growth in reacting to complex global calamities have seriously affected humanitarian efforts. Contending organizations – NGOs, states – engage in transnational interventions. From regions of natural disaster to sectors marked by political clashes, a new rationale for intervention has appeared which merges humanitarian assistance and military engagement. Humanitarian intervention sanctions the notion that military power is a necessary part of the responsibility to protect. (...) The imperative to safeguard lives in jeopardy results in a form of humanitarian and military government in constant motion from one disaster to the next. Under the mandate of the right to intervene, this tactic confronts state sovereignty, particularly since humanitarian organizations engage in political activities such as establishing respect for human rights. The relation between military and humanitarian intervention in the context of disaster, is founded on a calculus of security, based in the legitimacy of measures meant to safeguard human life. A new form of humanitarian governance is thus emerging from military occupations and natural disasters. This paper will examine the human rights consequences of these states of disaster and the novel form of government associated with them. (shrink)

The paper is in four parts. The first part offers a brief reminder of the historical context for human rights as women's rights. The second part notes the relative lack of attention in human rights theory to the roles of social meaning and what has been called the ‘social imaginary’. The third part suggests that the social imaginary — understood in terms of the always present backdrop to meaningful social action — may be seen as (...) a fruitful ‘middle ground’ upon which negotiations may take place between human rights and cultural norms. The fourth part examines a case where women's entitlements to basic human rights are compromised by men's claims to cultural or group rights. I conclude by arguing that if human rights are to accommodate women's rights then women must be recognized as legitimate stakeholders in, and valuable contributors to, the necessarily ongoing re-invention and recreation of social meaning and cultural identity. (shrink)

The weakening of mechanisms for international cooperation within the context of the right to minimum wage can be explained by the increasing power of new players, the transnational corporations on the one hand, and the waning of the power of the state, on the other hand. These processes of globalization produce various challenges to the modern welfare state, such as the ability to attain minimum wage. This right is vital particularly to weakened workers that would otherwise be remunerated at (...) a very low wage, which could likely lead to poverty. This right poses, however, numerous challenges, in particular the ability of international labor law to define it across borders. The article describes three models for defining this right: the existential deficiency model, the welfare model, and the comfort model and analyzes the various forms regulating the right to minimum wage in international regulations, state regulations, and codes of conduct of transnational corporations examining the ramifications of globalization within the context of labor rights. Moreover, the article suggests changes to international labor law, required to ensure that it functions as an effective instrument in protecting labor rights and proposes establishing regional parliaments—a supra-governmental body—composed of states and a broad array of interested private parties in its activities to establish fundamental principles relating to various areas of life, such as the basic rights of workers, taxation principles, and principles for protecting the environment. These regional bodies would decide which of the various models used for shaping the right to minimum wage should be adopted as a fundamental principle. (shrink)

Transnational effects are identified as those economic effects which cross state boundaries. Where these effects are negative, as illustrated by the ‘transnational case’, it is asked what the appropriate ethical analysis of such a case might be. If we leave aside a social distributive justice analysis, for reasons given, then a typical move is to claim that transnational economic effects are analysable as human rights violations. The paper examines this claim and identifies the specific view (...) of human rights which motivates it: the ‘outcomes view of human rights’. It is then shown how the outcomes view of human rights ultimately collapses into social distributive justice-type standards and so suffers from the same problems raised against using those standards for transnational effects. An alternative approach to human rights is sketched, although a complete theory of human rights is not offered. Finally, a different type of justice analysis for transnational cases is offered in which a form of international justice proper is proposed. (shrink)

Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights collects thirteen new essays that analyze how human agency relates to poverty and human rights respectively as well as how agency mediates issues concerning poverty and social and economic human rights. No other collection of philosophical papers focuses on the diverse ways poverty impacts the agency of the poor, the reasons why poverty alleviation schemes should also promote the agency of beneficiaries, and the fitness of the human (...) rights regime to secure both economic development and free agency. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 considers the diverse meanings of poverty both from the standpoint of the poor and from that of the relatively well-off. Part 2 examines morally appropriate responses to poverty on the part of persons who are better-off and powerful institutions. Part 3 identifies economic development strategies that secure the agency of the beneficiaries. Part 4 addresses the constraints poverty imposes on agency in the context of biomedical research, migration for work, and trafficking in persons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon FirthJohn-Erik HanssonRhiannon Firth. Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022. Paperback, 243 pp. ISBN 9780745340463The COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding climate crisis, with the multiplication of unprecedented weather events, have shown how urgent it is to reflect on our responses to disaster. Following up on themes she first broached in Coronavirus, Class, and Mutual Aid (...) in the United Kingdom, Rhiannon Firth throws a fresh, anarchist, and utopian light on disaster relief in Disaster Anarchy.1 In this work, Firth seeks to “consider how [anarchist] social movements’ impressive efforts in mutual aid might contribute to a radical and revolutionary reconceptualisation of disasters and the processes of relief and recovery efforts” (19). To do so, she begins by surveying the dominant approaches to disaster relief (chapters 2 and 3) before offering a comprehensive anarchist theoretical critique of these perspectives (chapter 4). Firth then fleshes out her anarchist theory of disaster and community response through two empirical case studies of grassroots relief efforts. In chapter 5 she looks into the Occupy Sandy movement, a New York area community-based response to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy’s passage in October 2012 in the United States. The final chapter is then dedicated to the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups that emerged in the United Kingdom during the pandemic.In building her argument, Firth mobilizes anarchist (and more broadly radical) theory and interviews with participants in both movements. She engages with how activists motivated and understood their participation in mutual aid groups, perceived disaster and relief organizing, sought to solve practical and political problems, and reflected on their experiences. The empirical sections of Disaster Anarchy are thus reminiscent of investigations into the anarchist connections and orientations of contemporary social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street.2 However, Firth’s is a work [End Page 606] of political theory. Her interviews were not conducted simply to describe and analyze the anarchist components of disaster relief social movements. Echoing Uri Gordon, she proposes to take the “worldviews of activists seriously as sources of theoretical knowledge,” leading us to rethink both anarchism and the politics of disaster as a whole (16).3 There lies a key part of the originality of Firth’s contribution to both anarchist theory and to the study of disaster relief. The utopian core of Disaster Anarchy also shines through this movement-based theoretical elaboration of an anarchist challenge to the dominant theories and practices of disaster relief. By examining mutual aid groups in critical dialogue with anarchist theory, Firth raises the possibility of more egalitarian and democratic “utopian alternatives to the status quo,” though, as she reminds us, they always run the risk of being co-opted (20).To set the scene for the desirability of anarchist approaches to disaster relief, Disaster Anarchy opens with Firth’s dissatisfaction with what she identifies as the two main sets of approaches to disaster studies. The first represents “the dominant neoliberal paradigm of disaster politics” and falls under the umbrella of “Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)” (21). Firth contends that, despite some internal variety, all DRR approaches share the three same basic assumptions. First, DRR considers disasters to be “ruptures in the normal functioning of society.” They become a “management problem” that must be dealt with using the tools of political governance to restore order and ensure “systemic stability” (39–40). This can be done both directly through state institutions, and through civil society-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that cooperate with state institutions. DRR then evaluates responses using the categories of “efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” leaving aside “the affects and human impacts of disasters” (40). Second, DRR tends to flatten out differences between disasters, and in the ways in which individuals and groups respond to them. Disaster becomes abstract, and authorities can design sets of responses taken to be effective regardless of local contexts and demands. DRR approaches are therefore particularly congenial to the growth of large governmental “specialised agencies like DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]” that produce knowledge and practices linked to the vertical “management of disaster” (41). Finally... (shrink)