Turning Global Rights into Local Realities


Book Description

Focusing on Ghana, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from European colonial rule and the first in the world to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this book explores how dominant children's rights principles interact with the lived realities of a range of children’s lives. The author considers the changeability and inconsistencies of childhoods within this context and the factors that underpin these varied intersections, including cultural norms, British colonial legacy, the influence of Christianity, urbanization, and social, economic and political transformations. Challenging one-dimensional portrayals of childhoods in the Global South, the author highlights the need for more holistic approaches to the study of children’s lives and children’s rights realization in Southern contexts.







Globalization and Global Citizenship


Book Description

Globalization and Global Citizenship examines the meaning and realities of global citizenship as a manifestation of recent trends in globalization. In an interdisciplinary approach, the chapters outline and analyse the most significant dimensions of global citizenship, including transnational, historical, and cultural variations in its practice; foreign and domestic policy influences; and its impact on personal identities. The contributions ask and explore questions that are of immediate relevance for today’s scholars, including: How does globalization in its current form present a new set of challenges for states, non-state actors, and individual citizens? How has globalization diminished, expanded, or complicated notions of citizenship? What rights could exist outside the context of state sovereignty? How can social accountability be imagined beyond the borders of towns, cities, or states? What forms of political representational legitimacy could be productive on the global level? When is it useful, possible or desirable for individuals to identify with global political communities? Drawing together a broad range of contributors and cutting edge research the volume offers chapters that seek to reflect the full spectrum of approaches and topics, providing a valuable resource which highlights the value of an extended and thoughtful study of the idea and practice of global citizenship within a broader consideration of the processes of globalization. It will be of great use to graduates and scholars of international relations, sociology, and global studies/affairs, as well as globalization.




Realizing the Right to Development


Book Description

This book is devoted to the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development. It contains a collection of analytical studies of various aspects of the right to development, which include the rule of law and good governance, aid, trade, debt, technology transfer, intellectual property, access to medicines and climate change in the context of an enabling environment at the local, regional and international levels. It also explores the issues of poverty, women and indigenous peoples within the theme of social justice and equity. The book considers the strides that have been made over the years in measuring progress in implementing the right to development and possible ways forward to make the right to development a reality for all in an increasingly fragile, interdependent and ever-changing world.




Global Trends 2040


Book Description

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.




Human Rights, Southern Voices


Book Description

This anthology contains a variety of Southern perspectives on human rights and contemporary issues relating to Islam, African custom, constitution making and abuses of the language of human rights.




Women and the UN


Book Description

This book provides a critical history of influential women in the United Nations and seeks to inspire empowerment with role models from bygone eras. The women whose voices this book presents helped shape UN conventions, declarations, and policies with relevance to the international human rights of women throughout the world today. From the founding of the UN up until the Latin American feminist movements that pushed for gender equality in the UN Charter, and the Security Council Resolutions on the role of women in peace and conflict, the volume reflects on how women delegates from different parts of the world have negotiated and disagreed on human rights issues related to gender within the UN throughout time. In doing so it sheds new light on how these hidden historical narratives enrich theoretical studies in international relations and global agency today. In view of contemporary feminist and postmodern critiques of the origin of human rights, uncovering women’s history of the United Nations from both Southern and Western perspectives allows us to consider questions of feminism and agency in international relations afresh. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners of law, diplomacy, history, and development studies, and brought together by a theoretical commentary by the Editors, Women and the UN will appeal to anyone whose research covers human rights, gender equality, international development, or the history of civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003036708, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.










World State, Nation States, Or Non-centralized Institutions?


Book Description

World state or nation-states? Democratic or hegemonic transnational order? Illusions and delusions. . . Ethnic conflicts, religious fundamentalism and evanescent, hard-to-grasp worldwide terrorism--what will be humanity's political future? This study is the first to try to find non-conventional solutions to this problem. Its intent is to induce people to invent new ways of political reordering based on prevailing trends in civil societies, and to think of adopting hitherto unimaginable, entirely new political-institutional forms. A second innovating aspect is its linking such a political reordering to the achievements of scientific and technological progress, the availability of the latest information and communication technologies. Political communities' networking is seen as the only way to realize the ideas proposed through linking the new institutional entities in a non-centralized framework.