Contesting Austerity in the 1970s and 1980s

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-316
Author(s):  
Matthias Goldmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
The Status ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

While human rights discourse became fundamental for challenging austerity in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, in historical perspective, such a role of human rights represents the exception rather than the rule. Human rights discourse in the context of sovereign debt-induced austerity has varied enormously over time. Far from reflecting progress, its history reveals changing paradigms of human rights law. This chapter focuses on one of these paradigm shifts occurring at the turn from the 1970s to the 1980s. In the 1970s, newly independent states invoked human rights mostly to assert their sovereignty and avert international interference. This structural human rights paradigm abruptly disappeared from austerity debates in the 1980s, when the sovereign debt crisis hit the Global South, creating a need for multilateral liquidity assistance. Faced with pressure to reconsider the social impact of structural adjustment programmes, the International Monetary Fund shifted the terms of the debate from ‘human needs’, a human rights-related term, to ‘human capital’. Consequently, at the time when human rights rose to the status of the ‘last utopia’, they ceased to have relevance for austerity. Hence, whether human rights discourse promotes social ends depends on the particular context and time. The chapter ends by proposing a political paradigm of human rights law reflecting this insight.

Debt Crisis and Learning – Replying to Two Stimulating Reviews

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky ◽  
Kunibert Raffer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Debt Crises

AbstractThis piece tackles Barrio Arleo and Lienau’s comments on Sovereign Debt Crises: What Have We Learned? while tries to further develop some ideas and discussions proposed in the book. This piece deals with existing alternatives to overcome debt crises, the link between sovereign policy space and the principle of creditors’ equal treatment, who the target of the book is (and should be), whether “learning is enough”, and the potential policy and legal role of human rights law in debt restructurings.

Ethnocultural Diversity and Human Rights: Legal Categories, Claims, and the Hybridity of Group Protection

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaetano Pentassuglia
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Group Status ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Ethnocultural Diversity ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Impact

In this article I explore the interface between theoretical accounts of the field, the overlapping dimensions of international legal categories in framing ethnocultural claims, as well as the impact of international legal practice, particularly human rights jurisprudence, on addressing those claims both on their own merits and within the wider context of human rights law. By doing so, I seek to provide a perspective on ethnocultural diversity in human rights discourse that is less concerned with issues of group status and right-holding and more interested in capturing complex overarching dimensions surrounding the field. I argue that looking at the nature and structure of claims is as important as discussing how to maximise protection for tightly construed classes of groups – universally and in the Arctic region. In this context, I also argue for a hybrid understanding of group protection that puts strains on rigid conceptual dichotomies between the individual and the group in human rights law.

scholarly journals The victim and the criminal process: an analysis of recent trends in regional and international tribunals

Legal Studies ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Doak
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
European Court ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
International Tribunals ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper examines the recent trends in regional and international tribunals that relate to the position of the victim in the criminal process. Recent decisions in both the European Court of Human Rights and other international tribunals have illustrated a new and progressive attitude towards the role of the crime victim. This can be attributed, in part, to the breakdown of the public/private divide in human rights law and the mutually expanding parameters of both human rights discourse and criminal law. It is argued here that cross-fertilisation between these disciplines, which is widely evident in current policy making and judicial decision-making, has meant that the traditional failures of human rights law and the criminal law to protect victims are being addressed – at least to some extent. A line of European and international case law has developed which suggests that victims of crime have acquired a number of enforceable substantive rights, similar to those held by victims of abuse of power. While the potential for victims to be further empowered will always be inherently limited in adversarial jurisdictions, it is none the less a welcome development that a clear trend is emerging which indicates that international policy makers and tribunals are viewing criminal justice issues in a much more holistic manner.

scholarly journals Protection AgainstRefoulementfrom Europe: Human Rights Law Comes to the Rescue

1999 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
The Status ◽  
Convention Against Torture ◽  
Domestic Jurisdiction ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Scope Of Protection

A growing opinion has appeared in refugee and human rights discourse that the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the European Convention) provides more extensive protection againstrefoulementthan the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the Refugee Convention). However, uncertainties remain as to whether the protection offered by the 1984 UN Convention against Torture (the Torture Convention) and the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the Political Covenant) may substitute, or, rather, reinforce, that of the European Convention. Which of these four instruments offers the greatest protection against a decision ofrefoulementfrom a European country? The answer to this question is far from being academic. The rule that an international organ may only be competent to consider an individual petition or communication provided “the same matter is not being examined under another procedure of individual investigation or settlement” is embodied in all three instruments providing a procedure for individual complaints. It is therefore crucial for an asylum-seeker to give his or her best shot first, even if, as rightly pointed out by Liz Heffernan, the Strasbourg organs and the Geneva organs are not in competition.1This article will review the scope of protection afforded under the three of these treaties which provide an international enforcement mechanism to persons who have sought refugee status in the domestic jurisdiction.

scholarly journals Exploring the Theory and Practice of the Relationship between International Human Rights Law and Domestic Actors

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
FRANS VILJOEN
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
National Human ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The One ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

In recent times the human rights discourse has become increasingly concerned with the relationship between domestic and international (UN and regional) human rights law. In 2007, two significant additions to this body of scholarship appeared. Although the authors of these texts are based in Canada and the United Kingdom respectively, their contributions explore the domestic–international relationship from a particularly African angle. While both works are concerned with the national arena (local activist forces and national human rights institutions respectively), the one investigates the domestic impact of international law and institutions, while the other explores the increased international impact of a particular domestic institution.

The Official Police Voice

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-97
Author(s):  
Richard Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
High Level ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Official Police

The task of this chapter is to trace how and why human rights law has come to be such an integral and sustained feature of the PSNI’s official narrative. The reason, this chapter argues, lies in the apparent power of human rights discourse to cool down, even if not quite neutralize, political tensions, debates and controversies that still animate ‘high-level policing’ (Brodeur, 1983) in the country. To frame this chapter’s analysis of the PSNI’s official vernacular of human rights, a ‘dialogic’ model of legitimacy is drawn upon to better account for the conditional nature of power and legitimation. Doing so enables us to better identify and account for the dynamic struggles in which rights-based claims are deployed as part of efforts to frame, or even resolve, contemporary political and public debates. By closely examining chief officers’ forewords and speeches, as well as their public responses to questions at the Policing Board’s public session, three central properties are identified that define this official vernacular. These are: human rights as legality; as an ethics of power; and as accountability. Each of these major strands of the police voice, it is argued, contribute to a purported vision of the PSNI as worthy of endorsement by elite audiences.

Doing Justice in South Africa and Canada

2019 ◽  
pp. 239-265
Author(s):  
Brian Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Status ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mission Field

This chapter highlights the impact on the churches of the human rights agenda in its application to issues of racial justice and the treatment of indigenous peoples. Most discussions of human rights discourse in the second half of the twentieth century begin with the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the consequent adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the Third General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris in December of 1948. Ecumenical leaders, influenced by concerns arising from mission field experience in Asia and Latin America, were determined that the Declaration should go further still, incorporating a full statement of freedom of religion, including the increasingly contested right to convert to another religion. In the course of the 1960s and 1970s, human rights discourse acquired a sharper edge. Alongside its older Cold War use as a weapon against communist totalitarianism there developed a radical human rights tradition that addressed the condition of oppressed groups and spoke the language of liberation. This alternative human rights tradition confronted the churches with a choice—either to realign themselves with the demands for liberation, or to pay the price for their apparent collusion with the status quo.

The Bible and Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-36
Author(s):  
Carole R. Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This essay explores the socially restrictive traditions that cause scriptural groups to reject the idea of universal rights and equal access to economic, social and cultural rights. This hermeneutical situation is difficult to tolerate, as our multicultural planet is seeking survival. Ethical issues and the principles of a culture’s morality are often partly religious in nature. The UNDUHR recognizes the right to believe and to promote one’s own beliefs, and it considers these particular rights as being part of a cultural “right to affiliate.” Nevertheless, international human rights law has not successfully promoted full human rights in countries of “Religions of the Book.” The essay thus suggests that appeals to the Bible grounded in human rights must be woven into contextual exegetical work, human rights discourse, and feminist critique. Even so, for women, foreigners, and “Others,” the Bible will remain a serious obstacle for enjoying full economic, social, and cultural rights.

Social Rights Protection in Europe in Times of Crisis: ‘A Tale of Two Cities’

ICL Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Baraggia ◽  
Maria Elena Gennusa
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

AbstractEurope can be considered a sort of fortress of the protection of socio-economic rights. However, this bright scenario has been unsettled by the eruption of the Eurozone crisis, which has challenged the narrative of social Europe and swept away protections for social rights in Member States grappling with sovereign debt crises such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Latvia and Romania. In these countries, austerity measures led to persistent violations of social rights, under the external constraint of conditionality regimes which involved cuts in wages, pensions and welfare services. Consequently, austerity measures were challenged in domestic and European Courts and before the ECSR. In other words, there has been a ‘turn to the law’, in order to give concrete effect to the potential offered by the relevant legal instruments. What has been the general attitude of the Courts and quasi-judicial bodies to actions challenging austerity measures? Since the analysis of how the Courts and other human rights bodies manage the complex and controversial balance between austerity and social rights is an excellent ‘stress test’ to determine the ‘weight’ of the latter not only in the political debate, but also in the human rights discourse, this paper will focus on the ‘crisis cases’ in Europe, so as to shed light on the actual level of protection for social rights.

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