Cultural Rights and Natural Resources

Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert

This chapter examines the connections between cultural practices, cultural rights, and natural resources, and focuses on three different approaches. The first examines the human rights discourse on cultural diversity and how international human rights law has developed a link between the rights of minorities’ and indigenous peoples’ cultural practices and natural resources. The second focuses on cultural heritage and explores how the legal framework of cultural heritage is relevant to protecting certain traditional cultural practices and knowledge connected to the use of natural resources. The third concerns the connection between spirituality, religion, and natural resources, and examines how the human rights protection of religious practices and spirituality could be linked to a spiritual connection to natural resources.

Author(s):  
Carole R. Fontaine

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.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Mariane Morato Stival ◽  
Marcos André Ribeiro ◽  
Daniel Gonçalves Mendes da Costa

This article intends to analyze in the context of the complexity of the process of internationalization of human rights, the definitions and tensions between cultural universalism and relativism, the essence of human rights discourse, its basic norms and an analysis of the normative dialogues in case decisions involving violations of human rights in international tribunals such as the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and national courts. The well-established dialogue between courts can bring convergences closer together and remove differences of opinion on human rights protection. A new dynamic can occur through a complementarity of one court with respect to the other, even with the different characteristics between the legal orders.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-203
Author(s):  
Patricia GOEDDE

AbstractThis article asks how legal mechanisms are employed outside of North Korea to achieve human rights diffusion in the country; to what extent these result in human rights diffusion in North Korea; and whether measures beyond accountability can be pursued in tandem for more productive engagement. Specifically, it examines how the North Korean government has interacted with the globalized legal regime of human rights vis-à-vis the UN and details the legal processes and implications of the UN Commission of Inquiry report, including domestic legislation, and evidence collection. While transnational legal mobilization has gathered momentum on the accountability side, it is significantly weaker in terms of achieving human rights protection within North Korea given the government’s perception of current human rights discourse as part of an externally produced war repertoire. Thus, efforts to engage the North Korean population and government require concurrent reframing of human rights discourse into more localized and relatable contexts.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Sorial

In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas articulates a system of rights, including human rights, within the democratic constitutional state. For Habermas, while human rights, like other subjective rights have moral content, they do not structurally belong to a moral system; nor should they be grounded in one. Instead, human rights belong to a positive and coercive legal order upon which individuals can make actionable legal claims. Habermas extends this argument to include international human rights, which are realised within the context of a cosmopolitan legal order. The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of law as a mechanism for securing human rights protection. I argue that positive law does make a material difference to securing individual human rights and to cultivating and augmenting a general rights culture both nationally and globally. I suggest that Habermas' model of law presents the most viable way of negotiating the tensions that human rights discourse gives rise to: the tensions between morality and law, between legality and politics, and between the national and international contexts of human rights protection.


PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1638-1642
Author(s):  
Bruce Robbins

Will historians looking back a hundred years from now see the rise of human rights as an agent or reflection of the decline of national sovereignty? I take this question (asked at a recent meeting by Richard Wilson, director of the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut) as an expression of worry about the effects that the decline of national sovereignty is likely to have, including effects on human rights themselves. Human rights advocates will recognize an obvious reason for this worry. Human rights are often seen, correctly but narrowly, as a key line of protection against an invasive and oppressive state. But the project of winning respect for human rights also relies heavily on the state's legal and bureaucratic powers—the power to enforce, to educate, to take positive measures, and so on. This is especially true in the domain of economic, social, and cultural rights, which require for their fulfillment that states exercise what has come to be called “due diligence.” Violence against women, for example, which has only been classified as an abuse of human rights since 1993, is often perpetrated not by states but by private individuals and groups. It can come under the protection of human rights discourse only if a sovereign state, which is held responsible for intervening to punish and prevent, is strong enough to do so. Weaken national sovereignty, and you may subvert the cause of women's rights.


Author(s):  
Nigel Rodley

This chapter considers the background to, and current developments concerning the manner in which international law has engaged with the protection of human rights, including both civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights. It looks at historical, philosophical, and political factors which have shaped our understanding of human rights and the current systems of international protection. It focuses on the systems of protection developed by and through the United Nations through the ‘International Bill of Rights’, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN human rights treaties and treaty bodies, and the UN Special Procedures as well as the work of the Human Rights Council. It also looks at the systems of regional human rights protection which have been established.


Author(s):  
Chiara Altafin ◽  
Karin Lukas ◽  
Manfred Nowak

The chapter presents and assesses the various normative layers—domestic, European, regional, international—on which the European Union’s (EU’s) commitment to human rights is built. It analyses the interaction of EU primary law, general principles of law derived from constitutional traditions of Member States, and international human rights law, including relevant regional instruments such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, and the Istanbul Convention. It is contended that, despite an impressive and pioneering normative framework on human rights, the EU currently faces a number of challenges that call for a strong stance on human rights realisation in all areas of its competence and influence. Enduring deficiencies in the relevant normative framework include the absence of a fully fledged EU competence to legislate in the area of human rights protection and the application of ‘double standards’ in the EU’s approach to human rights internally and externally, leading to a deep divide between internal and external policies guided by starkly different logics. Further areas of concern include the difficulties of the Charter of Fundamental Rights implementation in view of EU institutions and Member States’ competencies, which have become particularly apparent in the EU’s response to the Eurozone crisis and the arising tensions between EU and Member States’ austerity measures, as well as the uneven nature of the EU and Member States’ human rights obligations with regard to the international legal framework, leading to gaps and overlaps.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pinghua Sun

China’s discourse on human rights has a very rich and colorful content and the construction thereof has its own particular characteristics. Approaches to examine it should be adopted to understand thoroughly both the past and the present and both Chinese and Western methods of integration of theory into practice. Many important human rights factors are embodied in traditional Chinese culture and Confucianism became an important basis of the international consensus on morality. The Chinese representative, Peng-chun Chang made historical contributions to the construction of the international human rights protection system. These represent the core texts in constructing China’s human rights discourse, which will play an important role in China’s struggle for authority in the international discourse on human rights and dominance in global governance.


Author(s):  
Eibe Riedel

This chapter examines the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights in armed conflict under international human rights law (IHRL) and international humanitarian law (IHL). It analyses the relationship between such human rights protection and IHL rules and suggests that, despite the differences in the scope of the applicability of these two bodies of law, they are intricately interwoven and have become more so in recent times. It also compares the implementation mechanisms of IHL and IHRL and shows that human rights procedures are more varied, comprehensive in scope, and potentially more effective.


2000 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-177 ◽  
Author(s):  

AbstractThis essay analyses how UN mechanisms of human rights protection – namely the UN Commission and Sub-Commission on Human Rights, the Committee Against Torture, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Committee – can be used as a practical and analytical tool to enhance the protection of refugees and suggests that they can make a significant contribution to refugee protection. Although UN mechanisms may not provide a framework of protection as expansive and reliable as domestic systems, recent developments in international human rights law have contributed to an increasingly important legal framework that can be invoked in support of both specific cases and more broad-based advocacy on behalf of refugees. This article draws on specific examples to argue that UNHCR and refugee advocates can use these laws and mechanisms to enhance protection principles and give effect to forms of enforcement.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document