Monetary Compensation for Survivors of Torture: Some Lessons from Nepal

The Nepali Compensation Relating to Torture Act (1996) is one of the earliest pieces of specific anti-torture legislation adopted in the global South. Despite a number of important limitations, scores of Nepalis have successfully litigated for monetary compensation under the Act, on a scale relatively rare on the global human rights scene. Using a qualitative case study approach, this article examines the conditions under which survivors of torture are awarded compensation in Nepal, and asks what lessons does this have for broader struggles to win monetary compensation for torture survivors? We end by suggesting that there can be practical tensions between providing individual financial compensation and addressing wider issues of accountability

Children’s access to beneficial information in Arab states: Implementation of Article 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates

In theory, the multiple platforms and transnational nature of digital media, along with a related proliferation of diverse forms of content, make it easier for children’s right to access socially and culturally beneficial information and material to be realised, as required by Article 17 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Drawing on data collected during research on children’s screen content in the Arab world, combined with scrutiny of documents collated by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors compliance with the CRC, this paper explores how three Arab countries, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, presented their efforts to implement Article 17 as part of their periodic reporting on their overall performance in putting the CRC into effect. It uncovers tensions over the relationship between provision, participation and protection in relation to media, reveals that Article 17 is liable to get less attention than it deserves in contexts where governments keep a tight grip on media, and that, by appearing to give it a lower priority, all parties neglect the intersection between human rights in relation to media and children’s rights

La Convention des Nations Unies relative aux droits des personnes handicapées et son interprétation

AbstractThis paper explores the United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD) from a phenomenological perspective. It argues for complementing the predominant juridical approach to the CRPD with attention to the extra-juridical dimension of the constitution of its meaning. The core argument is that disabled people's collectives should be recognised and admitted as important stakeholders and contributors in the community of interpretation that gives the CRPD its meaning. After briefly introducing the CRPD, the first part of the paper highlights the ubiquity of interpretation and the limits of its juridical regulation. The second part explores some extra-juridical factors that influence the interpretation of the CRPD. Two cases are considered: the socially embedded materiality of the interpretive work of the CRPD Committee; and the politics of interpretation inherent in the CRPD's translation between languages. The latter is backed up by comparing the English, French, Russian and Bulgarian versions of several CRPD provisions. In conclusion, some methodological and programmatic inferences are drawn from the analysis. In particular, it is argued that disabled people's civic self-organising is indispensable for sustaining the interpretation of the CRPD along transformative and emancipatory lines

Exploring synergies between human rights and public health ethics: A whole greater than the sum of its parts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The fields of human rights and public health ethics are each concerned with promoting health and elucidating norms for action. To date, however, little has been written about the contribution that these two justificatory frameworks can make together. This article explores how a combined approach may make a more comprehensive contribution to resolving normative health issues and to advancing a normative framework for global health action than either approach made alone. We explore this synergy by first providing overviews of public health ethics and of international human rights law relevant to health and, second, by articulating complementarities between human rights and public health ethics.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>We argue that public health ethics can contribute to human rights by: (a) reinforcing the normative claims of international human rights law, (b) strengthening advocacy for human rights, and (c) bridging the divide between public health practitioners and human rights advocates in certain contemporary health domains. We then discuss how human rights can contribute to public health ethics by contributing to discourses on the determinants of health through: (a) definitions of the right to health and the notion of the indivisibility of rights, (b) emphasis on the duties of states to progressively realize the health of citizens, and (c) recognition of the protection of human rights as itself a determinant of health. We also discuss the role that human rights can play for the emergent field of public health ethics by refocusing attention on the health and illness on marginalized individuals and populations.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>Actors within the fields of public health, ethics and human rights can gain analytic tools by embracing the untapped potential for collaboration inherent in such a combined approach.</p

Self-management of health by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities

BackgroundSelf‐management of health includes people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) playing a key role in health management in collaborating with healthcare professionals.MethodsThis study analysed data from Personal Outcome Measures® surveys (n = 1,341) to explore self‐management of health. We had the following research questions: Who is most likely to be supported to self‐manage their health? How does being supported to self‐manage impact different areas of health? and How does being supported to self‐manage impact other health‐related organizational supports? ResultsFindings revealed the impact of self‐management of health can be wide‐ranging, regardless of impairment severity. When supported to self‐manage their health, healthcare professionals were more likely to address healthcare issues, and interventions were more likely to be effective.ConclusionsSelf‐management represents a paradigm shift for people with IDD because it transforms people from passive recipients to active directors of their health

Children’s rights and digital technologies

Digital technologies have reshaped children’s lives, resulting in new opportunities for and risks to their well-being and rights. This chapter investigates the impact of digital technologies on children’s rights through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Up until now, not all rights have received the same level of attention in the digital context. Legal and policy discourse in the area of children and digital media predominantly focuses on ‘protection’ rights, albeit with a growing awareness of the tension between ‘protection’ and ‘participation’ rights. ‘Provision’ rights are not often emphasised, other than in the important domain of education. However, all children’s rights should be supported, valued and developed in both online and offline spheres of engagement. Governments, parents, educators, industry, civil society and children’s rights commissioners or ombudspersons should all take up their responsibility to enhance children’s rights in relation to digital technologies, while actively listening and taking account of children’s views when developing laws, policies, programmes and other measures in this field

‘Repeal the 8th’ in a Transnational Context: The Potential of SRHRs for Advancing Abortion Access in El Salvador

This article undertakes a discursive feminist reading of citizenship and human rights to understand, through the cases of Ireland and El Salvador, domestic abortion rights movements as part of a transnational women’s rights movement. While abortion has been partially decriminalised in Ireland, approximately 42 per cent of the world’s women1 of reproductive age still live in a country where abortion is prohibited entirely or only permitted to save a woman’s life or health (Singh et al., 2018, p. 4). In El Salvador, abortion is illegal and those suspected of having the procedure are prosecuted. As in Ireland, since 2012/2013 numerous controversies have brought the issue to wider public attention and have further galvanised the feminist movement to campaign for reform. Feminist abortion rights campaigns in both countries have connected important sites of activism and contestation: civil society, national parliaments, regional human rights systems and the United Nations