The book provides in-depth insight to scholars, practitioners, and activists dealing with human rights, their expansion, and the emergence of 'new' human rights. Whereas legal theory tends to neglect the development of concrete individual rights, monographs on 'new' rights often deal with structural matters only in passing and the issue of 'new' human rights has received only cursory attention in literature. By bringing together a large number of emergent human rights, analysed by renowned human rights experts from around the world, and combining the analyses with theoretical approaches, this book fills this lacuna. The comprehensive and dialectic approach, which enables insights from individual rights to overarching theory and vice versa, will ensure knowledge growth for generalists and specialists alike. The volume goes beyond a purely legal analysis by observing the contestation, rhetorics, the struggle for recognition of 'new' human rights, thus speaking to human rights professionals beyond the legal sphere.

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

In this thoroughly revised second edition editors Bård A. Andreassen, Claire Methven O’Brien and Hans-Otto Sano advance contemporary discussions on human rights methodology, bringing together an array of leading scholars to offer instruction and guidance on the methodological approaches to human rights research.

The right to life stands at the heart of human rights protection. Individuals cannot enjoy any of the rights guaranteed to them unless their physical existence is ensured. All human rights instrument list the right to life as the first one of their safeguards. Nonetheless, in many situations human life finds itself under structural threat. Although obligated by law to protect the right to life, State authorities time and again engage in deliberate acts of killing. Fortunately, international review bodies have devised many imaginative counter-strategies. Another one of those structural threats is global warming. Obviously, armed conflict puts human life inevitably at risk; the limits of the ‘license to kill’ given by the laws of war must be scrupulously observed.

This book investigates how sustainability informs the universal principles used in domestic and international law. It calls for the acceptance of sustainability as a recognized legal principle which could be applied to the entire legal system rather than just environmental law and regardless of its international or domestic levels. To this end, the book makes a contribution to a theory of global law by discussing whether, as a universally shared concern, environmental protection and the principle of sustainability should contribute to the 'greening' of the fundamental principles of law and governance. The book will be a valuable resource for students, researchers and policy makers working in the areas of environmental law and governance.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that social and economic welfare is essential for human dignity, freedom to develop as a person, and ultimately “social security” in the broad sense of social justice. This study examines the text, context, and origins of article 22 which establish an entitlement to the economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights indispensable for wellbeing. By using legal rights to define socially just conduct that secures human dignity, article 22 reorients philosophical approaches to the conception and processes of social justice. The individual, the community and the State are collaboratively engaged in the realization of ESC rights, through national effort and international cooperation. ESC rights must be implemented as a whole, not selectively; this approach serves a functional purpose as well since, in operation, the rights are largely interdependent. The study analyzes the current tendency to fragment the pursuit of ESC rights into selective and uncoordinated initiatives, and proposes adjustments to the theory and practice governing the responsibility and conduct of States, international organizations, the business sector, and other private actors. The legal principles rooted in article 22 create a vital connection between human rights and development that reshapes development cooperation, in relations between States and in multilateral efforts like the Millennium Development Goals and policies of international financial institutions. Development success needs to be redefined to include reducing inequality and assisting the most vulnerable and marginalized. Development processes should integrate methods that ensure participation, transparency and accountability. Even so, democratic processes are no guarantee that ESC rights will be taken seriously, nor do they necessarily lead to full elimination of economic and social inequality. Judicial enforcement and solidarity among private actors, and attention to the synergies that realization of one ESC right provides another are equally important to making the entitlement a reality for all. The approach to human rights in article 22 acts as a compass in the pursuit of social justice. Its course to realizing ESC rights reaches beyond mere assets and material comforts, and surpasses quantitative assessments of equality and non-discrimination, critical as these may be. Rather, progress toward social justice through ESC rights is measured by assessing whether the opportunities, resources and freedoms provided to people are sufficient for their full and free development as human beings, individually and as members of society. Article 22 affirms the vision of a just society in which dignity and personal development are secured with ESC rights that offer the chance for well-being to everyone. This book is the third volume in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Series. The Series will consist of approximately 20 volumes, each dealing with a substantive right (or group of rights) set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Each volume is authored by an expert in human rights generally and in the particular subject addressed. Without losing sight of the political context in which the implementation of human rights must occur, each book provides a comprehensive, legally-oriented analysis of the rights concerned, including an examination of the legislative history of the text of each right as adopted in 1948, the right's subsequent articulation and interpretation by international bodies and in subsequent international instruments, and a surv...