Human rights: a common standard for all peoples? Reclaiming Britishness: Living together after 11 September and the rise

2015 ◽  
pp. 102-113
Keyword(s):  
2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Osler ◽  
Juanjuan Zhu

Throughout history individual and collective narratives have been used in struggles for justice. We draw on Sen’s theory of justice to examine the potential of narratives in teaching and researching for social justice. Human rights are presented as powerful ethical claims that can be critically examined by learners to consider their rights and responsibilities to others, at scales from the local to the global. One life history is used as an illustrative example to examine the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 and its possible meanings for learners in China and globally. This article discusses the strengths and limitations of narratives as research and pedagogical tools in understanding justice, human rights and inequalities; in stimulating solidarity and our common humanity; and in enabling learners to explore their multiple identities. We conclude by making the case for human rights as principles for learning and living together in overlapping communities of fate.


Author(s):  
Antonio López Castillo

En la reciente jurisprudencia del TEDH se advierte una cierta modulación, de lo subjetivo a lo objetivo, en un contexto de controvertida reconsideración nacional de las sociedades abiertas de la Europa en crisis. De ello se trata aquí atendiendo a dos manifestaciones de conflictos de diverso porte y alcance; a propósito, la una, del inclusivo ámbito de la enseñanza, y relativa, la otra, a la regulación de acceso al espacio público mediante reglas excluyentes, de prevención general, pretendidamente instrumentales al aseguramiento de la salvaguarda de la convivencia, de la vida en común.The recent case law of the European Court of Human Rights shows a certain modulation, from the subjective to the objective, in a context of controversial national reconsideration of the open societies of Europe in crisis. This is what we are dealing with here in the light of two manifestations of conflicts of different sizes and scope; purposefully, one, of the inclusive field of education, and relative, the other, to the regulation of access to public space by means of excluding rules, of general prevention, supposedly instrumental to ensuring the safeguarding of coexistence, of living together.


Author(s):  
Bianca Gutan

The growing and multifarious challenges (political, legal, social, and economic) that global migration raises for contemporary states requires solutions related not only to constitutional identity, but also to a better protection of human rights. Although less visible in the ‘big picture’, cultural rights are an important category of human rights. An absent or a precarious protection of these rights might affect other rights. That is why a balance must be struck between society’s needs and the cultural rights of the individual. In this context, questions may be asked: could there be common points regarding the cultural rights of migrants and of minorities in Europe? Is ‘living together’ a concept that can ensure the full respect of the human dignity of migrants, especially as regards cultural rights? The chapter attempts to answer some of these questions, mainly through the prism of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-241
Author(s):  
Anicée Van Engeland

According to some interpretations of Islam supported by gender activists, the veil can be perceived as a passport that enables women to participate in public affairs. This argument has been overlooked by the courts, including the European Court of Human Rights. The latter has adopted a discourse that considers the veil to be a threat to public order and gender equality, and more recently, an obstacle to social cohesion. By doing so, the Court has excluded veiled European Muslim women from the public sphere. The Court has justified curbing freedom of religion by granting states a wide margin of appreciation on the basis of the concept of “living together.” I argue that the Court needs to take the “passport veil” into account to be consistent with its argument on living together. A shift of approach and discourse would constitute a new way of understanding integration through the veil.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-59
Author(s):  
Vojtěch Novotný

The ‘Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together’, co-signed on 4 February 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayeb, states: ‘The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.’ The article presents the starting points of correct hermeneutics of this statement. It points out that it is a positive reformulation of the anti-discrimination human rights declarations, which list the criteria according to which people cannot be discriminated. It shows the compatibility of the statement with the Quran, which presupposes a plurality of successive and graded revelations of God and religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It then represents the reactions with which Catholic theologians responded to the statement: the accusation of the Pope of heresy; the claim that while God’s creative will has instilled a natural religion in human beings, it does not positively seek a plurality of religions; the claim that non-Christian religions are an evil by which God allows to achieve greater good; the claim that all religions are wanted by God’s Providence in what is true, good, and beautiful in them as the preparation for the salvation of man in the encounter with Christ. In the end, it discusses the idea of St. John Paul II, who, for several years before the creation of the Abu Dhabi declaration, combined this last idea with the work of the Holy Spirit.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 809-825
Author(s):  
Kristin Henrard ◽  
Peter Vermeersch

AbstractIn this article, we show how judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have provided nationalists with an unexpected opportunity to promote a nationalist discourse that is seemingly in line with human rights while fundamentally at odds with the counter-majoritarian core of human rights. We start our analysis with two judgments in which the Court accepted the arguments of liberal democratic states to infringe fundamental rights of persons belonging to (immigrant) Muslim minorities in the name of “requirements of living together” or “social integration”: SAS v France (2014) and Osmanoglu and Kocabas v Switzerland (2017). Strikingly, the justifications by the states for these infringements point to concerns about perceived threats to national identity and culture. We show how nationalist politicians in countries with minority populations, including those in East Central Europe, have used justifications in terms of national self-protection, tacitly or explicitly, to pursue old anti–human rights agendas. The case law discussed here enabled them to present these justifications as ECtHR proof, notwithstanding the underlying nationalism.


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