This collection addresses human rights and development for researchers, policymakers and activists at a time of major challenges. ÔCritical issuesÕ in the title signifies both the urgency of the issues and the need for critical rethinking. After exploring the overarching issues of development and economic theory, gender, climate change and disability, the book focuses on issues of technology and trade, education and information, water and sanitation, and work, health, housing and food.

With international human rights under challenge, this book represents a comprehensive critique that adds a social policy perspective to recent political and legalistic analysis. Expert contributors draw on local and global examples to review constructs of universal rights and their impact on social policy and human welfare. With thorough analysis of their strengths, weaknesses and enforcement, it sets out their role in domestic and geopolitical affairs. Including a forward by Albie Sachs, this book presents an honest appraisal of both the concepts of international human rights and their realities. It will engage those with an interest in social policy, ethics, politics, international relations, civil society organisations and human rights-based approaches to campaigning and policy development.

This insightful book offers a critical reflection on the sustainability and effectiveness of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its legacy over the last 70 years. Exploring the problems surrounding universality, proliferation and costs, it asks the provocative question, can we still afford human rights?

Human rights indicators are central to the application of human rights standards in context and relate essentially to measuring human rights realization, both qualitatively and quantitatively. They offer an empirical or evidence-based dimension to the normative content of human rights legal obligations and a provide means of connecting those obligations with empirical data and evidence, and in this way relate to human rights accountability and the enforcement of human rights obligations. Human rights indicators are important both for assessment and diagnostic purposes: the assessment function of human rights indicators relates to their use in monitoring accountability, effectiveness and impact, while the diagnostic purposes relates to measuring the current state of human rights implementation and enjoyment in a given context, whether regional, country-specific or local. This paper offers a preliminary review of the foregoing in the development context, and a general perspective on the significance of human rights indicators for development processes and outcomes. It is not intended to be prescriptive and does not provide specific operational recommendations on the use of human rights indicators in development projects. Nor does it advocate a particular approach or mode of integrating human rights in development, or argue for a rights-based approach to development. This paper is designed to provide development practitioners with a preliminary view on the possible relevance, design and use of human rights indicators in development policy and practice. It also introduces a basic conceptual framework about the relationship between rights and development, including in the World Bank context and surveys a range of methodological approaches on human rights measurement, exploring in general terms different types of human rights indicators and their potential implications for development at three different levels of convergence or integration.

Critical Issues in Contemporary China: Unity, Stability and Development comprehensively examines key problems crucial to understanding modern-day China. Organized around three interrelated themes of unity, stability and development, each chapter explores distinct issues and debate their significance for China domestically and for Beijing’s engagement with the wider world. While presenting contending explanatory approaches, contributors advance arguments to further critical discussion on selected topics. Main issues analysed include: political change military transformation legal reforms economic development energy security environmental degradation food security and safety demographic trends migration and urbanization labour unrest health and education social inequalities ethnic conflicts Hong Kong’s integration cross-Strait relations. Given its thorough and up-to-date assessment of major political, social and economic challenges facing China, this fully revised and substantially expanded new edition is an essential read for any student of Chinese Studies.

Critical Issues in Human Resource Management will enable all HR students to take a critical approach to HR issues. Outlining the influences and shapers of HR strategy including ethics, managing in different national contexts, employment relations, politics, governance and finance, this book provides students with a full understanding of the complexities of HRM strategy and what the implications of these are. There is also crucial discussion of critical issues in the processes and practice of HRM including the dilemmas of onshoring and offshoring, gender equality, challenging institutional racism and disability discrimination in the modern workplace to enable readers to think deeply and critically about these issues. Critical Issues in Human Resource Management also includes discussion of the application of HRM in different sectors such as manufacturing, the public sector, the private sector and not-for-profit organizations. This will enable HR students to examine HR practices in specific industries and to think about how issues might be dealt with differently in different sectors, rather than assuming that best practice is universal. Online resources include a lecturer guide with additional seminar activities and discussion topics, powerpoint slides and annotated weblinks for students to enable them to develop an astute, nuanced and critical approach to human resource management

This collection asks theorists and educational practitioners from around the world influenced by the schools of feminist pedagogy, critical pedagogy, anti-racist or postcolonial pedagogy, and gay and lesbian pedagogy to reflect upon the possibilities of articulating a "curriculum of difference" that critically examines the cross-cultural issues of peace and education that are at the forefront of global education issues today. Contributors examine the conceptualizations of peace and education within, between, and across cultures through the conceptualization of pedagogical possibilities that create an openness toward the horizons of the other within communal formations of difference permeating the public sphere. They take up new ways of questions related to globalization, difference, community, identity, peace, democracy, sexuality, ethics, conflict, politics, feminism, technology, language rights, cultural politics, Marxism, and deconstruction that have a vast literary history in and outside the area of "education." This volume makes a significant contribution to the question of difference and its quintessential role in peace education for the new millennium.