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human rights

Who cares about human rights?

Jim Anderson's picture

At a recent gathering of World Bank staff in Helsinki to take stock of progress on activities supported by the Nordic Trust Fund on Human Rights (NTF), one found lawyers, health specialists, economists and other social scientists. There were participants from all regions, from network anchors and from operations; there were those focused on research, those integrating human rights perspectives into operations, and those supporting our clients’ efforts to strengthen human rights. 

Rights-based Principles for the Internet: Are These Enough?

Shanthi Kalathil's picture

The Internet Rights and Principles Coalition - a group formed out of the Internet Governance Forum - has been working for many months to develop rights-based principles to govern the Internet. Those draft principles are now out, and can be found here. They are duplicated below (excerpted from the Access website):

The Internet offers unprecedented opportunities for the realization of human rights, and plays an increasingly important role in our everyday lives. It is therefore essential that all actors, both public and private, respect and protect human rights on the Internet. Steps must also be taken to ensure that the Internet operates and evolves in ways that fulfill human rights to the greatest extent possible. To help realize this vision of a rights-based Internet environment, the 10 Rights and Principles are:

Give Peace a Chance

Anne-Katrin Arnold's picture

Talk of citizen agency and citizen power is all over the place these days - the media, the international community, academia and everybody else who cares about change and how it happens is looking in awe at current events. Civil protests have changed the political face of an important part of this world, and so far they have done so mostly peacefully. The persistence of protesters to not use violence is one of the most outstanding features of what we're seeing unfold in some Northern African countries. The rejection of violence may be one of the most important factors that contribute to the success of these uprisings.

How Human Rights Have Contributed to Development

Otaviano Canuto's picture

The last 20 years have seen a growing engagement between development and human rights practitioners. But are we still mainly talking past each other? Or has there been valuable mutual learning with development results on the ground?

Let’s start by clarifying what I mean when I refer here to human rights. Adapted from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, human rights are international norms that help to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, economic and social abuses, or, alternatively, which serve to secure and preserve extremely important goods, protections and freedoms in these various areas, for all people everywhere. These rights are now embodied in the 1947 Universal Declaration on Human Rights and nine core international covenants and treaties.

Since 1947 much has happened. And in the last two decades, there has been a growing convergence between human rights and development. Paralleling the broad reach of human rights concerns, the scope of development has also extended enormously. From mainly being concerned with economic growth, the term has broadened to include poverty reduction, inequality, human and social development, the environment, governance and institutions, just to name some. From GDP figures, we now also think about households and the specific needs of specific groups.

Obama backs U.N. indigenous rights declaration

Harry A. Patrinos's picture

Parents in Mexico meeting at a schoolWe just wrapped up a research dissemination workshop for an upcoming study on Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Development. About 50 people attended the event  in person and several more viewed the event via webcast. All the proceedings are available to view on the event site.

The timing of this event couldn’t be better. Just last week U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The declaration recognizes the rights of indigenous groups in such areas as culture, property and self-determination.

The challenge of forced displacement and survival Migration

Margarita Puerto Gomez's picture

The World Bank’s Social Development Department (SDV) and Migration and Remittances Unit hosted a brown bag lunch (BBL) on state fragility, forced displacement, and survival migration on September 21, 2010. Dr. Alexander Betts from the University of Oxford presented a compelling argument on the need for innovative institutional approaches to displacement and forced migration as a development challenge. In today’s world of internal conflicts, state and societal fragility, and climate-related threats to food security, constant movements of people are not only associated with political persecution (“refugees”) or the mere desire to improve livelihoods (“economic migrants”), but also with a concept called “survival migration.” According to Dr Betts, this concept refers to people who are forced to move outside of their countries of origin because of an existential threat to their liberty, security, or livelihood systems.  Such people do not fall within the existing conventions and agreements related to displaced people. Case studies conducted in Angola, Botswana, among others, illustrate that these migrants are extremely vulnerable groups and that their human rights are often violated in host countries.

The Empty Stomach and Citizen Demand

Sabina Panth's picture

 

In my blog posts, I have been introducing some tools and techniques that are being tried and tested to instigate citizen-led, demand-driven good governance practices. In this post, I wish to analyze the processes that are involved in working towards that goal.  In other words, what are the basic minimal requirements that need to be in place to initiate and realize demand-driven accountability? Where is the starting point? What are the constraints or opportunities that support or hinder the movement? The purpose of this analysis is to draw out ground realities to understand the effectiveness of the practice to make better policy and program decisions.

Establishing Norms in Large Organizations (Or: How to Win the Turf War)

Anne-Katrin Arnold's picture

Wharton Professor Galit Sarfaty just published a paper on changing norms in international institutions, using as an example the advance of the human rights agenda in the World Bank. The study describes the process of how new norms are adopted - or not - in large organizations and how different factions negotiate their positions. It's well worth a read and spells out the difficulties of reforming organizations and establishing new norms.


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