Epilogue : The Limits of a Transformative Change in European Equality Law

Author(s):  
Madeline Baer

Chapter 2 presents the central research questions that drive the theoretical and empirical work of the book, outlines the “moments of social transformation” model used for analyzing human rights realization, and positions the book in relation to theoretical and contemporary policy debates. The chapter synthesizes the literatures on socioeconomic human rights fulfillment and the human right to water and sanitation. It introduces two key elements for implementing human rights: political will and state capacity, as well as some obstacles to rights realization, including lack of strong regulatory frameworks and accountability mechanisms. The chapter explores the tensions between markets and rights, finding that neoliberal approaches to water policy have a negative effect on rights fulfillment by weakening the state’s role, and it engages with critiques that the human rights frame is too narrow and vague to facilitate transformative change in the water sector.


2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-55
Author(s):  
Christina Ankenbrand ◽  
Abrina Welter ◽  
Nina Engwicht

Abstract Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has long been a vital source of livelihoods for rural populations in the global South. Yet, it has also been linked to a host of social, political and environmental adversities, including violent conflict. As environmental peacebuilding increasingly stresses the importance of livelihood improvement as a means of fostering peace in conflict-affected extractive societies, ASM formalization has been identified as a solution to mitigate the sector's challenges, thereby addressing underlying causes of conflict. This article critically investigates the contribution of ASM formalization to sustainable peace by focusing on its impact on the livelihood dimension of peacebuilding. It analyses the livelihood impact of three formalization interventions in the diamond sectors of two countries: cooperatives in Liberia, and, in Sierra Leone, ethical sourcing schemes and a community-based natural resource management initiative. In line with calls for a paradigm shift from a narrow legalization-centred understanding of formalization to a broader approach that accounts for livelihood quality, the analysis presented here focuses on interventions that were informed by the ideal of improving the well-being of ASM workers and communities. We propose three pathways through which ASM formalization could potentially contribute to livelihood enhancement: income security, working conditions and community benefits. Based on fieldwork, this article highlights the challenges of generating livelihood improvements through formalization. Even when specifically designed to address the needs of ASM communities, during implementation, they risk prioritizing a narrow conceptualization of formalization and thus failing to become a conductor of transformative change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Gilda L. Ochoa

By 10 January 2017, activists in the predominately Latina/o working class city of La Puente, California had lobbied the council to declare the city a sanctuary supporting immigrants, people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. The same community members urged the school district to declare itself a sanctuary. While community members rejoiced in pushing elected officials to pass these inclusive resolutions, there were multiple roadblocks reducing the potential for more substantive change. Drawing on city council and school board meetings, resolutions and my own involvement in this sanctuary struggle, I focus on a continuum of three overlapping and interlocking manifestations of white supremacist heteronormative patriarchy: neoliberal diversity discourses, institutionalized policies, and a re-emergence of high-profiled white supremacist activities. Together, these dynamics minimized, contained and absorbed community activism and possibilities of change. They reinforced the status quo by maintaining limits on who belongs and sustaining intersecting hierarchies of race, immigration status, gender, and sexuality. This extended case adds to the scant scholarship on the current sanctuary struggles, including among immigration scholars. It also illustrates how the state co-opts and marginalizes movement language, ideas, and people, providing a cautionary tale about the forces that restrict more transformative change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Lucky Mathebe

After almost 25 years of what could justifiably be called transformative change in South Africa, a truism is that the country’s new legal order, established by the Constitution in 1993 and 1996, provides the critical foundation of peace and security upon which its freedom has been built. The Constitutional Court was one of the most important of the new democratic institutions in the shaping of the country’s position as a constitutional democracy, upholding the values for which millions of people, black and white, had fought. This article is a brief reflection on the role of the Court in establishing the meaning of this democracy and giving it effect. The main goal of the article is to understand how the Court’s new jurisprudence works in particular contexts, how its work is related to crime and punishment, and what it means for the rights of marginalised groups in society. Using the examples of the Court’s decision in Makwanyane on the death penalty, and the Court’s decision on the findings of the Public Protector’s report on Nkandla, the article finds that the Court’s new jurisprudence takes quite a different view of legal developments in South Africa, insofar as the jurisprudence entrusts broad discretion to the Court and emphasises the need for sustained leadership of the Court to advance the battle for fundamental human rights, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.


2020 ◽  
pp. 027614672098171
Author(s):  
June N.P. Francis

This essay poses the question do Black Lives Matter to marketing? Putting the spotlight on research in marketing reveals the multiple ways in which the field has neglected a most pressing issue of our time—structural and systemic anti-Black racism. The global rallying cry in the Black Lives Matter protests alerts us to the urgency for transformative change in all spheres including the marketing academy. Macromarketing is particularly poised to lead this change given the commitment to justice in marketing systems and concerns with the bilateral impact of marketing on society. This essay issues a call to action to re-historize the role of transatlantic slavery, for researchers to be reflective in addressing systemic racism, and for the academy to adopt anti-racist strategies to propel this scholarship from the periphery of marketing thought to its core.


Author(s):  
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr ◽  
Thea Smaavik Hegstad

Abstract One of the most important elements of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs is the strong commitment to inclusive development, and “leaving no one behind” has emerged as a central theme of the agenda. How did this consensus come about? And what does this term mean and how is it being interpreted? This matters because SDGs shift international norms. Global goals exert influence on policy and action of governments and stakeholders in development operates through discourse. So the language used in formulating the UN Agenda is a terrain of active contestation. This paper aims to explain the politics that led to this term as a core theme. It argues that LNOB was promoted to frame the SDG inequality agenda as inclusive development, focusing on the exclusion of marginalized and vulnerable groups from social opportunities, deflecting attention from the core issues of distribution of income and wealth, and the challenge of “extreme inequality.” The term is adequately vague so as to accommodate wide ranging interpretations. Through a content analysis of LNOB in 43 VNRs, the paper finds that the majority of country strategies identify LNOB as priority to the very poor, and identify it with a strategy for social protection. This narrow interpretation does not respond to the ambition of the 2030 Agenda for transformative change, and the principles of human rights approaches laid out.


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