This book is devoted to the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development. It contains a collection of analytical studies of various aspects of the right to development, which include the rule of law and good governance, aid, trade, debt, technology transfer, intellectual property, access to medicines and climate change in the context of an enabling environment at the local, regional and international levels. It also explores the issues of poverty, women and indigenous peoples within the theme of social justice and equity. The book considers the strides that have been made over the years in measuring progress in implementing the right to development and possible ways forward to make the right to development a reality for all in an increasingly fragile, interdependent and ever-changing world.

The first in a series of PULP commentaries on African human rights law, under the series title: PULP Commentaries on African human rights law Since its adoption on 11 July 2003, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Maputo Protocol) has become a landmark on the African human rights landscape. It has steadily gained prominence as a trail-blazing instrument, responsive to the diverse realities of women on the African continent. This comprehensive Commentary on the Maputo Protocol, the first of its kind, provides systematic analysis of each article of the Protocol, delving into the drafting history, and elaborating on relevant key concepts and normative standards. This Commentary aims to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ for anyone interested in the Maputo Protocol, such as researchers, teachers, students, practitioners, policymakers and activists.

There has been a growing recognition in the post-Cold War era that culture has increasingly become a factor in determining the course of today's complex and interconnected world. The U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq extended this trend to national security and military operations. There is also a growing recognition by the national security community that culture is an important factor at the policy and strategy levels. Cultural proficiency at the policy and strategy levels means the ability to consider history, values, ideology, politics, religion, and other cultural dimensions and assess their potential effect on policy and strategy. The Analytical Cultural Framework for Strategy and Policy (ACFSP) is one systematic and analytical approach to the vital task of viewing the world through many lenses. The ACFSP identifies basic cultural dimensions that seem to be of fundamental importance in determining such behavior and thus are of importance in policy and strategy formulation and outcomes. These dimensions are (1) Identity, or the basis for defining identity and its linkage to interests; (2) Political Culture, or the structure of power and decisionmaking; and (3) Resilience, or the capacity or ability to resist, adapt or succumb to external forces. Identity is the most important, because it ultimately determines purpose, values and interests that form the foundation for policy and strategy to attain or preserve those interests.

On the occasion of the 60 anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this special issue of the OECD Journal on Development focuses on robust methods and tools for assessing human rights, democracy and governance.

How can cultural factors be integrated into development processes? Based on many well-known previous attempts, this book tries to systematize the interactions between cultures and development in order to identify the common methodological aspects of current experience.

Drawing on debates about intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding at the local and international levels, Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development: Inside a UNESCO Convention, explores the theoretical and practical implications of the intertwinement between these policy fields. Considering how sustainable development (SD) priorities are influencing representations of ICH, the volume questions how they are expanding the frontiers of the heritage realm and unsettling accepted understandings of the social uses of heritage. The contributing authors, who hail from a variety of different contexts and disciplinary backgrounds, explore these issues from a unique vantage point as both scholars and actors of the processes they analyze. Playing different roles in the implementation of the Convention, their positioning as insiders allows for a unique analytical perspective that is based on first-hand engagement with the practices of the Convention. Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development: Inside a UNESCO Convention sheds light on the complexity, potential, and consequences of combining ICH and SD at the policy-making level and in heritage practices on the ground. It will be of interest to academics and students working in heritage studies, development studies, anthropology, archaeology, international law, political science, international relations, and sociology.

In this edited volume, leading experts of human rights measurement address the challenges scholarship of human rights face as well as explore approaches and means to overcoming them. The book seeks to further answer three specific and related questions. First, what do existing measures of human rights conditions tell us about the state of human rights? Are conditions improving or deteriorating? Second, how might scholars improve their measurement efforts and observe states’ human rights practices given efforts by governments to hide human rights abuses and to make them essentially “unobservable”? Finally, what challenges might scholars encounter in the future as the conceptualization of human rights develops and changes, and as new methods and technologies (e.g., natural language processing, machine learning) are introduced into the study of human rights? This book will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights politics, power, development, and governance. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Human Rights.