Bien qu’étant une des ressources les plus essentielles pour toute vie sur Terre, l’eau douce ne représente que 3% des ressources d’eau de la planète, et seulement 0,5% de cette eau douce est facilement accessible aux humains. De plus, les ressources d’eau douce (RED) disponibles sont inégalement distribuées à travers le globe, de nombreuses régions et populations faisant face à des problèmes de pénurie et de qualité d’eau. Les RED sont sous d’immenses pressions de la part des systèmes agricoles, le changement climatique et d’autres facteurs directement liés au comportement humain – dont la croissance de la population et l’industrialisation. De plus, les institutions censées gérer les RED sous pression peuvent être inaptes à le faire, surtout dans le contexte de revendications multiples et souvent conflictuelles sur les RED et la complexité des débits d’eau dans le temps et l’espace. Une conscience accrue de ces défis a engendré un sentiment d’urgence pour attirer l’attention et catalyser des actions vers une meilleure gestion des RED, notamment au niveau local.

Are efforts to protect workers' rights compatible with the forces of globalization? How can minimum standards designed to protect labor rights be implemented in a world in which national labor law is more and more at the mercy of international forces beyond its control? The contributors to this volume argue that international agreements and institutions are of central importance if labor rights are to be protected in a globalized economy, exploring some of the options that are open to governments, civil society, and the labor movement in the years ahead.

A multi-country research initiative to understand poverty from the eyes of the poor, the Voices of the Poor project was undertaken to inform the World Bank's activities and the upcoming World Development Report 2000/01. The research findings are being published in three books: "Can Anyone Hear Us?" gathers the voices of over 40,000 poor women and men in 50 countries from the World Bank's participatory poverty assessments (Deepa Narayan, Raj Patel, Kai Schafft, Anne Rademacher, and Sarah Koch-Schulte, authors). "Crying Out for Change" pulls together new field work conducted in 1999 in 23 countries (Deepa Narayan, Robert Chambers, Meera Shah, and Patti Petesch, authors). "From Many Lands" offers regional patterns and country case-studies (Deepa Narayan and Patti Petesch, editors). Voices of the Poor marks the first time such an exercise has been undertaken in so many developing countries and transition economies around the world. It provides a unique and detailed picture of the life of the poor and explains the constraints poor people face to escape from poverty in a way that more traditional survey techniques do not capture well. Each of the three volumes demonstrates the importance of voice and power in poor people's definition of poverty. Voices of the Poor concludes that we need to expand our conventional views of poverty which focus on income expenditure, education, and health to include measures of voice and empowerment.

Comprises a collection of papers grouped around four themes: the existing institutional framework for monitoring state compliance with social and economic rights; rethinking methods of supervision and evaluating their impact; international supervision at the time of institutional reform; and future approaches to international regulation and supervision.

Presenting reflections on the historical perspectives and philosophical foundations of human rights, this book provides a detailed analysis of civil and political rights, as well as the rights of persons belonging to such vulnerable groups as women, children and minorities, indigenous people, refugees, displaced persons and migrant workers.

2. History and Norms