A Framework Convention on Global Health: Social Justice Lite, or a Light on Social Justice?

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Burris ◽  
Evan D. Anderson

A decade ago, Jonathan Mann made a powerful case that human rights could provide a vocabulary and mode of analysis for understanding and advancing health. He made the case well, and put the idea into inspired practice, but the idea was neither new nor his alone. The idea that social justice — and henceforth in this article we will use that term loosely (and with obvious imprecision) to embrace goods like human rights, social equality, and distributive justice — was intrinsically important to health resonated with the social epidemiology already gathering force (not to mention an enduring theme running through the history of public health work). That social structure and relations of power explain a great deal about the level and distribution of population health was implicit in the work of pioneers like Geoffrey Rose, evident in Marmot’s seminal Whitehall studies, explicit in the writings of Mervyn Susser, and the main thrust of scholars like Nancy Krieger and Meredeth Turshen. Although researchers tend to avoid using a term with such normative weight, it is safe to say that Mann — and Susser, and Marmot and Krieger among others — were right: social justice is central to the proper understanding of health.

Author(s):  
Christian Schemmel

This chapter introduces the key features and motivations of liberal relational egalitarianism. It notes that social justice and social equality have mostly been treated as separate values in the history of modern Western political thought, and that contemporary liberal egalitarianism is traditionally thought to require a form of distributive equality. It then argues that weaving social justice and social equality together in an account of relational equality as an urgent and stringent demand of liberal social justice is therefore a novel project worth attempting. It goes on to outline the overall argument of the book and the contribution of each chapter, as well as the different literatures and rival theories it draws on, and concludes by delineating the social scenario it is a theory for: primarily, for a society characterized by a reasonably well-functioning institutional structure capable of organizing social cooperation by enabling and sustaining a complex division of labour.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002087282110200
Author(s):  
Kang Liu ◽  
Catherine A Flynn

While the environment is fundamental to humankind’s wellbeing, to date, social work has been largely focused on the social, rather than the physical, environment. To map how the broader environment is captured in the profession’s foundational documents, an exploratory sequential mixed methods study (QUAL → quan) analysed data from 64 social work codes of ethics. Findings indicate that although the environment is mentioned in the majority of these, there is a continued focus on the social, overlooking to some degree the physical, predominantly the built, environment. A more holistic understanding of the environment would enable social work to better fulfil its commitment to human rights and social justice.


2021 ◽  
pp. 282-298
Author(s):  
Mikhail B. Sverdlov ◽  

The author studies the history of the judicial natural and money forfeit for the criminal offence, moral and social content of this criminal offence in the late tribal Slavic society and in early medieval Russian state the context of the history of the Pravda Russkaya’s content. He analyzes the content of the social and legal policy during the rule of Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh in Kiev or the rule of his son Mstislav. Probably at that time the Vast Pravda Russkaya was issued. It made judicial rights secured of all social strata including women, children, poor men on the principles of social justice and the Evangel. It kept old human tradition of the money forfeit for a crime instead of to cut off any limb or to execute as in Byzantine and in medieval vest European countries.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 246
Author(s):  
Mohd. Sanjeer Alam

India is one of the most socially fragmented and unequal societies of the world. At the same time, it has the distinction of having the longest history of most elaborative affirmative action programmes for alleviating socially structured inequalities. While the affirmative action programmes have wider coverage in terms of social groups, there is continuing demand by new social groups for getting acknowledged as ‘disadvantaged’ and inclusion in the system of affirmative action. While group based ‘reservation’ as the most vital instrument of social justice has long been under fire and grappling with several challenges, the social justice regime is faced with the charge that it has largely excluded nation’s religious minorities. Of course, religion based affirmative action is faced with many constraints; nevertheless there are possibilities for it. This article discusses the constraints and possibilities of affirmative action for disadvantaged religious minorities, Muslims in particular.  


Author(s):  
Serena Koissaba

Global development discourse around the interplay between social justice and childhood issues are complicated when interpreting these ideas contextually through translocational gender and cultural lenses. This chapter attempted to address some of the following questions: How do international gender and education interventions problematize the transition for Maasai girls as they transition from childhood to adulthood? Can Amartya Sen's ‘capability framework, work effectively for African children in Kenya who by their cultural norms become adults before the age of 18? In what ways are the social justice schemes producing disaggregated cultural structures for Maasai Girls? This chapter, therefore examined how Maasai girls' subjectivities are affected by gender and education rights mediation through Amartya Sen's ‘capabilities approach' and a human rights framework. The experiences and perspectives of female subjects have seemingly been distorted within feminist and geopolitical rhetoric. Transnational feminism in this work is positioned as a postcolonial project that employs theories of human rights, capabilities, and multiculturalism as lenses in which to interrogate practices of erasures of voice and representation of active participants within the movement, but reconsider what feminist theory can do to move the conversation away from male-centric ideologies.


Author(s):  
Diller Janelle M

This article examines the issues of social justice, social rights, and the international labour movement in relation to international human rights. It traces the history of the emergence of international labour law and describes the action and innovation of the International Labor Organization (ILO). It suggests that the ILO�s structural machinery and guiding principles served as the global reference point for setting and supervising standards on workers� rights, freedoms, and entitlements.


Author(s):  
Changming Duan ◽  
Kristen Sager

Empathy, one of the most studied and most multidisciplinary theoretical constructs, has garnered the attention of scholars from psychology as well as the social and biological sciences. The scholarship of empathy has developed significantly in the past century, with the most notable knowledge emerging in the areas of the neuroscience of empathy and the interplay between race/culture and empathy in recent decades. The positive psychology of empathy also continues to occupy researchers, as the links between empathy and individual and societal health abound. Future empathy research by socially and scholastically responsible scientists must overcome a long history of Euro-ethnocentric biases and integrate social justice into the understanding of this important construct. The scholarship and application of empathy will continue to be an important source of positivity for humans and for society as a whole.


Author(s):  
Karen Lyons ◽  
Nathalie Huegler

The term social exclusion achieved widespread use in Europe from the late twentieth century. Its value as a concept that is different from poverty, with universal relevance, has since been debated. It is used in Western literature about international development, and some authors have linked it to the notion of capabilities. However, it is not widely used in the social work vocabulary. Conversely, the notion of social inclusion has gained in usage and application. This links with values that underlie promotion of empowerment and participation, whether of individuals, groups, or communities. Both terms are inextricably linked to the realities of inequalities within and between societies and to the principles of human rights and social justice that feature in the international definition of social work.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-605
Author(s):  
Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel

Abstract Apropos the history of human rights in France, one spontaneously thinks of the French Revolution and then of left-wing activists, particularly socialists. Their opponents, the Catholics, normally considered to be right wing and usually opposed to socialism, appear as a counterpoint. This article argues that some Catholics, especially those who referred to themselves as ‘social Catholics’, also contributed to the adoption of certain rights, particularly social rights, in France in unexpected and paradoxical ways. Their contribution was made through their social activities, visible in their organizations’ archives more than through their discourse. Social Catholics spoke little of ‘rights’. Yet paradoxically, discourses about ‘duties’ can lead to the defence of rights, especially through the practice of social surveys and the importance of social ‘facts’. Examples are taken from the history of the Ligue Sociale d’Acheteurs, the Union Féminine Civique et Sociale and other French Catholic organizations such as the Secrétariats sociaux.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloria Orrego Hoyos

AbstractThe article below, which is written by Gloria Orrego Hoyos, presents an overview of the Inter-American Human Rights System, its main instruments, its organs for the protection and promotion of human rights in the Americas and the available tools for the academic research and the activism in the vindication for human rights in the region. This information is presented from the contextualization of the system within a history of violation of human rights in the region, and the role of both the Inter-American Convention and the Inter-American Court in the transformation of the social, political and institutional realities of the people of the continent.


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