The Local Relevance of Human Rights

Koen De Feyter, Stephan Parmentier, Christiane Timmerman, George Ulrich

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781107009561
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139142878
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Do human rights offer real protection when disadvantaged groups invoke them at the local level in an attempt to improve their living conditions? If so, how can we make sure that the experiences of those invoking human rights at the local level have an impact on the further development of human rights (at national and other levels) so that the local relevance of human rights increases? Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10 December 1948, numerous international documents have reaffirmed human rights as global norms. This book examines what factors determine whether appeals to human rights that emanate from the local level are successful, and whether the UDHR adequately responds to threats as currently defined by relevant groups or whether a revision of some of the ideas included in the UDHR is needed in order to increase its contemporary relevance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Series editors preface
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Introduction: reconsidering human rights from below
• Chapter 2 Sites of rights resistance
• Chapter 3 Freedom from want revisited from a local perspective: evolution and challenges ahead
• Chapter 4 Relevance of human rights in the glocal space of politics: how to enlarge democratic practice beyond state boundaries and build up a peaceful world order
• Chapter 5 The local relevance of human rights: a methodological approach
• Chapter 6 Ensuring compliance with decisions by international and regional human rights bodies: the case of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture
• Chapter 7 Building rights-based health movements: lessons from the Peruvian experience
• Chapter 8 Defining human rights when economic interests are high: the case of the western Shoshone
• Chapter 9 Struggling to localise human rights: the experience of indigenous peoples in Chile
• Chapter 10 Enforcing environmental rights under Nigerias 1999 Constitution: the localisation of human rights in the Niger Delta region
• Chapter 11 Conflict resolution through cultural rights and cultural wrongs: the Kosovo example
• Chapter 12 Epilogue: widening the perspective on the local relevance of human rights
• Index