Universal Human Rights and Extraterritorial Obligations

by Gibney, Mark; Skogly, Sigrun

• ISBN13: 9780812242157
• ISBN10: 0812242157
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-26
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

Globalization challenges fundamental principles governing international law, especially with respect to state sovereignty and international relations. This transformation has had a significant impact on the practice of trade law, financial regulation, and environmental law but relatively little effect on one area of law and regulation: human rights. Universal Human Rights and Extraterritorial Obligationsexamines both the international and domestic foundations of human rights law. What other contemporary human rights debates have almost totally ignored is that in an increasingly interdependent world-where public and private international actors have great influence on the lives of individuals everywhere-it is insufficient to assess only the record of domestic governments in human rights. It is equally important to assess the effect of actions taken by intergovernmental organizations, international private entities, and foreign states. From this standpoint, contributors to this book address how states' actions or omissions may affect the prospects of individuals in foreign states and asks important questions: To what extent do agricultural policies of rich countries influence the right to food in poorer countries? How do decisions to screen asylum seekers outside state borders affect refugee rights? How does cooperation among different states in the "war on terror" influence individuals' rights to be free from torture? This volume presents a brief for a more complex and updated approach to the protection of human rights worldwide.

Author Biography

Mark Gibney is Belk Distinguished Professor and Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of several books on international affairs and human rights, including The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Sigrun Skogly is Professor of Human Rights Law at Lancaster University and is the author of a number of publications, including Beyond National Borders: States' Human Rights Obligations in International Cooperation.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Obligations of States to Prevent and Prohibit Torture in an Extraterritorial Perspective	p. 11
Obligations to Protect the Right to Life: Constructing a Rule of Transfer Regarding Small Arms and Light Weapons	p. 30
Growing Barriers: International Refugee Law	p. 55
Diagonal Environmental Rights	p. 82
The Human Rights Responsibility of International Assistance and Cooperation in Health	p. 104
The World Food Crisis and the Right to Adequate Food	p. 130
Labor Standards and Extraterritoriality: Cambodian Textile Exports and the International Labour Organization	p. 157
A Sort of Homecoming: The Right to Housing	p. 166
Protecting Rights in the Face of Scarcity: The Right to Water	p. 194
Notes	p. 217
Bibliography	p. 223
List of Contributors	p. 249
Index	p. 253
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