Auditing Economic Policy in the Light of Obligations on Economic and Social Rights

One of the things we have learned so far is that the realization of human rights, especially economic and social rights, requires resources as well as laws. The availability and use of resources is strongly influenced by the type of economic policies that States Parties implement. This paper considers how concerned citizens might audit economic policies from a human rights perspective, with a particular focus on economic and social rights. It draws on an ongoing project, directed by Radhika Balakrishnan, advised by Diane Elson, and funded by the Ford Foundation, on economic policy and economic and social rights in Mexico and the USA. The project brings together human rights experts and activists who are focussing on economic and social rights, and economists who are critical of the neo-liberal economic policies being pursued by so many governments and international economic policy institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank. (Amartya Sen has called these critical economists ?non-conformist economists?, because they do not conform to the currently dominant forms of economic analysis and policy prescription). These economists share the concerns of the human rights community about poverty, deprivation and inequality; and draw on a range of other approaches to economic policy, including Keynesian, human development and feminist economics approaches. The project aims to audit key economic polices in the two countries in the light of human rights obligations, and the analysis produced by ?non-conformist? economists

Characterizing the geometrical edges of nonlocal two-qubit gates

Nonlocal two-qubit gates are geometrically represented by tetrahedron known as Weyl chamber within which perfect entanglers form a polyhedron. We identify that all edges of the Weyl chamber and polyhedron are formed by single parametric gates. Nonlocal attributes of these edges are characterized using entangling power and local invariants. In particular, SWAP (power)alpha family of gates constitutes one edge of the Weyl chamber with SWAP-1/2 being the only perfect entangler. Finally, optimal constructions of controlled-NOT using SWAP-1/2 gate and gates belong to three edges of the polyhedron are presented.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, Phys. Rev. A 79, 052339 (2009