This book is designed to provide an overview of the development and substance of international human rights law, and what is meant concretely by human rights guarantees, such as civil and political rights, and economic and social rights. It highlights the rights of women, globalization and human rights education. The book also explores domestic, regional and international endeavors to protect human rights. The history and role of human rights NGOs coupled with an analysis of diverse international mechanisms are succinctly woven into the text, which well reflects the scholarship and erudition of the authors. This lucidly written and timely volume will be of great help to anyone seeking to understand this area of law, be they students, lawyers, scholars, government officials, staff of international and non-international organizations, human rights activists or lay readers.

This volume focuses on Japan over the last one hundred years, with special emphasis on the twentieth century and the contemporary period. Chapters on cultural, intellectual and economic history, domestic politics and foreign relations trace the complex and multi-faceted process through which Japan has been transformed from an isolated agricultural society to an economic world power and model for the other developing nations. The authors demonstrate the adaptibility of Japan's native tradition in its encounter with the world beyond its own shores, and show how many aspects of traditional Japanese culture and society have been transformed while others have survived, giving contemporary Japan that distinctive flavour of an old insular culture which continues to delight and baffle foreign and native scholars alike.

This study of the "independent life of society" (dissent) in Central and Eastern Europe examines the forms of independent activity at work today. Included are autonomous family life, religion and nationalism, the second economy, "samizdat" communications, the second culture and social deviance.

Despite the policy change the Asian Development Bank's rural sector projects have continued to focus on increasing production, with little impact on unemployment or poverty. This study examines the reasons - both political and organizational - for the gap between policy practice.