Can Markets Secure Human Rights?

In recent years, State inefficiency in delivering some public goods to everybody has been the main argument set forth by those who sustain that markets should play a more active role in providing those goods and services that are needed to secure human rights. In result, in many parts of the world, we have been witnessing extensive privatization of social security and water distribution, for example. This article argues that markets are not fully equipped to play the role of a supplier of goods and services as human rights, and more specifically of the right to social security and the right to water. The main reason for this is that in the language of markets capability to pay is the key question whereas within the rights language it is entitlement. If in the first case exclusion and inequality are acceptable in the second case the only acceptable situation is the one characterized by inclusion and equality. In other words goods and services can be unequally distributed, rights cannot. Secondly a provider of goods and services as human rights must be a democratically accountable institution, whereas markets are anonymous, and therefore, unaccountable by definition. Finally, markets are also inefficient in providing goods and services as human rights, either because human rights “markets” are not competitive or because market incentives for private provision of human rights are notoriously weak.

Economics for Human Rights

The Subprime Crash that started capitalism’s latest crisis was mainly a proxy for an inexistent housing policy which would benefit many impoverished middle class families. Housing being clearly recognized as a human right, the behaviour of markets and its critical consequences could lead us to say that the Subprime Crash is above all the dramatic and global expression of the incapacity of markets to meet human rights. More than that, it could also be the demonstration of the counterproductive effects of the neglect of human rights by the market and by economics itself, the crisis being a result of this neglect. Human rights are assuredly one of the most influential and fruitful concepts of modern times in the human quest for dignity. Economics has developed a considerable amount of tools especially designed to overcome, or at least mitigate, scarcity, probably the most tormenting spectre that haunts the deprived. Human rights and economics, thus, have contributed immensely to free human kind, human rights from fear and economics from want. Despite this convergence it seems that economics regards human rights as competing rather than as completing. I have argued that mainstream economics discourse is often contradictory with promoting human rights. What are the changes economics must undergo in order to promote human rights? These changes will be examined in four aspects concerning specific economic, social and cultural human rights. First, on the right to work, second on the right to social security, third on cultural freedom, and finally on substantive democracy.Economics; Human Rights; Work; Cultural Freedom; Democracy.

The Political Economy Of The Human Right To Water

Water being essential to human survival, a political economy directed to satisfying human basic needs, should be especially concerned with the issue of water availability and distribution. Why is there such inequality in its distribution? This inequality represents a serious violation of a human right, as it will be developed in the paper and therefore should not be tolerated. The issue this paper wishes to address concerns the role played by economics in the unequal assertion of every people?s human right to clean water. First of all, what are we talking about when we talk about economics? A rapid overview can identify at least twenty schools of economic thought, from neoclassic to evolutionary, from Marxist to post-Keynesian. If one had to be accurate, a paper on the impact of economics on the human right to water human rights would then have to be divided in at least twenty chapters. The sort of economics we will be referring to in this paper results from a considerably narrower point of view: economics, here, will be mainstream economics, the school of thought which dominates not only within the academia, but also within the political cabinets and the media. More specifically, this paper will examine how mainstream economics discourse can be conflictive with human rights in general and the right to water in particular. First, within mainstream economic analysis satisfying wants implies the use of concepts like prices, supply and demand, or cost and benefit, and therefore, the issue is ability to pay, in other words purchasing power. With rights, on the other hand, the issue is quite different; the heart of the matter here concerns entitlement, the criteria according to which an individual should qualify to enjoy rights, purchasing power being obviously excluded as well as the consequences of the use of such criteria. Therefore it is perfectly admissible for economics to exclude from access to water those that do not have the capability to pay violating the basic principles of human rights. Second, by putting emphasis on the market as the default regulation institution, mainstream economics also hinders the human right to water because on one hand market is inefficient in reaching universal coverage of water supply and on the other hand it is an unaccountable institution and human rights purveyors need by principle to be submitted to democratic control.Human Rights, Right to Water, Economic Theory, Market.

Human Rights as a Tool for Sustainable Development

In poor as much as in rich countries there is a fear that environmentally sustainable development might be contradictory to development in general and equitable development in particular. There could be indeed a contradiction between environmental and social sustainability, too much care for the environment eventually leading to forgetting about the people. The purpose of this paper is to explore institutional principles and tools that allow the conciliation between environmental and social sustainability. In this respect we will present human rights based political economy as an institutional tool of this sort. We will show how a human-rights based political economy could at the same time respect ecological sustainability and social equity. One of the reasons for that consists in the fact that within a human-rights based political economy, welfare is not the result of economic growth, as within traditional political economy, but of justice. The main objectives of development will be attained, therefore, not through growth but through redistribution of resources or of access to resources. In this paper more specific aspects will be presented by examining the human right to work and the human right to water. Regarding the human right to work the main aspect which will be stressed is that within a human rights frame full employment becomes disconnected from both growth and labour market deregulation. It will be shown that traditional policies not only do not solve unemployment but are also not environmentally and socially sustainable. The only policy that is not contradictory with either human rights and de-growth is work sharing by decreasing the length of the work day. When properly enforced this policy has, indeed, historically shown to be the only one that has created jobs. Regarding the right to water, the point is that democratic and human rights oriented exploitation and distribution policies of water are both more sustainable and more equitable than those that intend to transform water into a private good as any other and, thus, promote commodification and privatisation of resources. This way of controlling water exploitation and distribution not only may relieve pressure from the resource but also alleviate deprivation of poorer families, conciliating, therefore, environmental and social sustainability.

La lutte contre les schistosomoses en Afrique de l'Ouest

Le complexe pathogène de la schistosomose est étroitement lié aux propriétés des points d'eau où se reproduisent les mollusques. Ces particularités des sites de transmission correspondent souvent à des caractéristiques analysables par télédétection. En outre, les sytèmes d'information géographique permettent l'analyse spatiale des données recueillies. Ces deux outils produisent une synthèse exploitable par les programmes nationaux de lutte. (Résumé d'auteur

Serializando Ramona: La provincialización del cine temprano en Cuba

This video essay uses my family’s anecdotes of moviegoing in rural Cuba to fashion a speculative account of the early cinema experience outside the cinema spectatorship, this video essay is also a meditation on historiographic method and the challenges of an object of study with a periphrastic form and a periphrastic material circulation. Keywords: film history, early cinema, reception, spectator theory, audience, region, rural studies, Cuba, distribution.metropolitan center of Havana. More than a speculative imagining of early___________ Serializando Ramona. La provincialización del cine temprano en CubaResumen: Este video ensayo utiliza anécdotas familiares sobre el cine temprano en las provincias rurales cubanas para forjar una crónica especulativa de la experiencia cinematográfica fuera de la metrópolis de La Habana.  Más allá de una figuración especulativa de la experiencia del espectador del cine temprano, el video ensayo es también una meditación sobre el método historiográfico y los desafíos de estudiar un objeto de estudio con una forma perifrástica y una circulación material también perifrástica.Palabras clave: historia de cine, cine temprano, recepción, espectador, regionalismo, estudios rurales, Cuba, distribución___________ Ramona Seriada: A Provincialização do Cinema Silencioso em CubaResumo: Este vídeo-ensaio usa anedotas familiares sobre o cinema silencioso nas províncias rurais cubanas para forjar uma crônica especulativa da experiência cinematográfica fora da metrópole de La Habana. Além de uma figuração especulativa da experiência do espectador do cinema silencioso, o vídeo-ensaio é também uma meditação sobre o método historiográfico e os desafios de estudar um objeto de estudo com uma forma perifrástica e uma circulação material também perifrástica.Palavras-chave: história de cinema, cinema silencioso, recepção, espectador, regionalismo, estúdios rurais, Cuba, distribuição___________Date of reception: 29th  August  2018Date of acceptance: 12th November 2018 Este video-ensayo utiliza anécdotas familiares sobre el cine temprano en las provincias rurales cubanas para forjar una crónica especulativa de la experiencia cinematográfica fuera de la metrópolis de La Habana.  Más allá de una figuración especulativa de la experiencia del espectador del cine temprano, el video-ensayo es también una meditación sobre el método historiográfico y los desafíos de estudiar un objeto de estudio con una forma perifrástica y una circulación material también perifrástica.Palabras clave: historia de cine, cine temprano, recepción, espectador, regionalismo, estudios rurales, Cuba, distribución___________ Serializing Ramona: Provincializing Early Cinema Spectatorship in CubaAbstract: This video essay uses my family’s anecdotes of moviegoing in rural Cuba to fashion a speculative account of the early cinema experience outside the metropolitan center of Havana. More than a speculative imagining of early cinema spectatorship, this video essay is also a meditation on historiographic method and the challenges of an object of study with a periphrastic form and a periphrastic material circulation.Keywords: film history, early cinema, reception, spectator theory, audience, region, rural studies, Cuba, distribution___________ Ramona Seriada: A Provincialização do Cinema Silencioso em CubaResumo: Este vídeo-ensaio usa anedotas familiares sobre o cinema silencioso nas províncias rurais cubanas para forjar uma crônica especulativa da experiência cinematográfica fora da metrópole de La Habana. Além de uma figuração especulativa da experiência do espectador do cinema silencioso, o vídeo-ensaio é também uma meditação sobre o método historiográfico e os desafios de estudar um objeto de estudo com uma forma perifrástica e uma circulação material também perifrástica.Palavras-chave: história de cinema, cinema silencioso, recepção, espectador, regionalismo, estúdios rurais, Cuba, distribuição___________Fecha de recepción: 29 de agosto de 2018Fecha de aceptación: 12 de noviembre de 201

The Political Economy of Democratic Governance and Economic Development

Pure mainstream economics, based on methodological and sociological individualism usually ignores politics; development economics, on the contrary frequently integrates social and political factors in order to explain economic progress. Within this branch of economics, politics can mainly be dealt in two different approaches. The classical and neoclassical approach takes politics essentially as an obstacle to the expression of agents’ rationality, and, therefore considers it a disturbance. A more heterodox approach of development, on the contrary, puts politics at the heart of the process, development being an economic as much as a political process. Those, like A. Sen, that take human rights, both as a means and an end to development do not separate the two processes as well. Be that as it may, and despite the opposed ways in which these approaches take politics, all consider governance, and its democratic or authoritarian character, a key factor in the development process. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of the issue of democratic governance within the development process. In the first part of the paper I will make a review of the main literature concerning the impacts of democracy on economic development and the importance of promoting democracy. In the second part of the paper the analysis will focus on the political economy of democratization, namely on the obstacles standing before democracy, and on the economic policies and reforms needed to facilitate democratization. The diagnosis states that democratization needs to deal with inequality of income distribution, with institutional design in order to overcome cultural divisions within the nations, with diversification of the sources of income and with a new economic order characterized by an erased debt burden and a more equitable distribution of the benefits of international trade

The role of traditional land use systems in the well-being of rural Timor-Leste

Natural ecosystems and traditional land use systems have an important role in the life and well being of the rural population of Timor-Leste. The land itself is the support of natural ecosystems and subsistence agriculture of rural populations of East Timor and is the main focus of this research. This paper is part of work in progress. Our research, located in rural Timor-Leste focuses on land tenure, rural family income and the mechanisms that will induce changes in the rules of traditional society organisation. The main objectives of this paper are: 1) to identify the different land use patterns of Timor-Leste; 2) to identify the goods and services produced by them and 3) to relate the services produced by land use patterns with the well-being of Timor-Leste rural population. This paper is based on a multidisciplinary approach incorporating contributions from several fields of knowledge, and uses documentary sources, direct observations made in various periods in the field and interviews conducted in 2003, 2009 and 2010. We identify as the main land use patterns in Timor-Leste the following ones: natural and semi-natural ecosystems, subsistence agriculture, sacred, housing and basic infrastructures and Industries and services. For Timor-Leste rural communities the above land use patterns produce a set of goods and services, which can be classified as supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural goods and services, and those are essential for their survival and well-being. The conceptual framework used to examine the above mentioned issues is the human rights approach to development within which human rights are considered as means and objectives of development as much as economic purposes.Timor-Leste, land use patterns, ecosystems goods and services, well-being.

The Logic of Globalization and Substantive Democracy

Despite some notable achievements in many parts of the planet the gap between the rich and the poor has become wider rather than tighter. On the political sphere success seems much more unequivocal, though. Indeed, beyond a handful of anachronistic exceptions, the world seems to have surrendered to the delights of democracy. From there to the conclusion that globalization favours democracy there was a small step that many political scientists all over the world have not hesitated to make. Refusing to share this optimism, many other scientists have, on the contrary, severely questioned the democratic character of the global economy, almost since the term globalization itself has been invented. In this work I will show how the logic of globalisation, in other words the logic of internationalised market capitalism conflicts with a substantive definition of democracy in developed countries as much as in developing countries