Monitoring State Compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child


Book Description

This open access book presents a discussion on human rights-based attributes for each article pertinent to the substantive rights of children, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It provides the reader with a unique and clear overview of the scope and core content of the articles, together with an analysis of the latest jurisprudence of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. For each article of the UNCRC, the authors explore the nature and scope of corresponding State obligations, and identify the main features that need to be taken into consideration when assessing a State’s progressive implementation of the UNCRC. This analysis considers which aspects of a given right are most important to track, in order to monitor States' implementation of any given right, and whether there is any resultant change in the lives of children. This approach transforms the narrative of legal international standards concerning a given right into a set of characteristics that ensure no aspect of said right is overlooked. The book develops a clear and comprehensive understanding of the UNCRC that can be used as an introduction to the rights and principles it contains, and to identify directions for future policy and strategy development in compliance with the UNCRC. As such, it offers an invaluable reference guide for researchers and students in the field of childhood and children’s rights studies, as well as a wide range of professionals and organisations concerned with the subject.










Human Rights and Equality in Education


Book Description

Thousands of children from minority and disadvantaged groups will never cross the threshold of a classroom. What can human rights contribute to the struggle to ensure that every learner is able to access high quality education? This brilliant interdisciplinary collection explores how a human rights perspective offers new insights and tools into the current obstacles to education. It examines the role of private actors, the need to hold states to account for the quality of education, how to strike a balance between religion, culture and education, the innovative responses needed to guarantee girls’ right to education and the role of courts. This unique book draws together contributors who have been deeply involved in this field from both developing and developed countries which enriches the understanding and remedial approaches to tackle current obstacles to universal education.




Promoting and Protecting Minority Rights


Book Description

"The present guide offers information related to norms and mechanisms developed to protect the rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. It includes detailed information about procedures and forums in which minority issues may be raised to minorities and by also covering selected specialized agencies and regional mechanisms, the present Guide complements information contained in Working with the United Nations Human Rights Programme: A Handbook for Civil Society"--Introduction.




Minority Education in China


Book Description

China has been ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse. This volume recasts the pedagogical and policy challenges of minority education in China in the light of the state's efforts to balance unity and diversity. It brings together leading experts including both critical voices writing from outside China and those working inside China's educational system. The essays explore different aspects of ethnic minority education in China: the challenges associated with bilingual and trilingual education in Xinjiang and Tibet; Han Chinese reactions to preferential minority education; the ro.




Rights Make Might


Book Description

Winner of the American Sociological Association's 2019 Asia and Asian American Section Book Award Winner of the American Sociological Association's 2019 Political Sociology Section Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award Since the late 1970s, the three most salient minority groups in Japan - the politically dormant Ainu, the active but unsuccessful Koreans, and the former outcaste group of Burakumin - have all expanded their activism despite the unfavorable domestic political environment. In Rights Make Might, Kiyoteru Tsutsui examines why, and finds an answer in the galvanizing effects of global human rights on local social movements. Tsutsui chronicles the transformative impact of global human rights ideas and institutions on minority activists, which changed their understandings about their standing in Japanese society and propelled them to new international venues for political claim making. The global forces also changed the public perception and political calculus in Japan over time, catalyzing substantial gains for their movements. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of human rights principles and instruments outside of Japan. Drawing on interviews and archival data, Rights Make Might offers a rich historical comparative analysis of the relationship between international human rights and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms and institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.




Cultural Diversity and the Empowerment of Minorities


Book Description

Conflicts between different racial, ethnic, national and other social groups are becoming more and more salient. One of the main sources of these internal conflicts is social and economic inequality, in particular the increasing disparities between majority and minority groups. Even societies that had been successful in dealing with external conflicts and making the transition from war to peace have realized that this does not automatically resolve internal conflicts. On the contrary, the resolution of external conflicts may even sharpen the internal ones. This volume, a joint publication of the University of Haifa and the International Center for Graduate Studies (ICGS) at the University of Hamburg, addresses questions of how to deal with internal issues of social inequality and cultural diversity and, at the same time, how to build a shared civility among their different national, ethnic, religious and social groups.




Minority Education


Book Description

In both Europe and North America during the past 20 years, controversy has surrounded the education of children from linguistic minority backgrounds. An increasing number of minority children are experiencing difficulties at school and many leave school with no formal qualifications. There are fears among many educators and policy-makers that an entire generation of alienated youth with no future prospects is being produced by western educational systems. This book analyses policy issues regarding the education of minority students in western industrialised societies and presents a number of case studies of programs that have been successful in reversing the pattern of minority students' academic failure. A central theme throughout the volume is that the causes of minority students' academic difficulties are rooted in the power relations between the dominant and subordinate groups in society. Schools have typically reflected and reinforced these power relations through strategies such as punishment of children for speaking their mother tongue at school with the result that minority students have not developed confidence in their own cultural identity or academic abilities. Reversal of minority students' school failure requires that educators set out to enable both minority students and communities to empower themselves. The presentation of case studies in which this empowerment has been successfully achieved is complemented by the perspectives of individuals and minority communities who have been involved in the struggle for educational and linguistic rights of minority children.




Racial and Cultural Minorities


Book Description

We need scarcely note that the topic of this book is the stuff of headlines. Around the world, political, economic, educational, military, religious, and social relations of every variety have a racial or ethnic component. One cannot begin to understand the history or contemporary situation of the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Great Britain, Lebanon, Mexico, Canada-indeed, almost any land-without careful attention to the influence of cultural and racial divisions. Preparation of this new edition has brought a strong sense of deja vu, with regard both to the persistence of old patterns of discrimination, even if in new guises, and also to the persistence of limited and constraining explanations. We have also found, however, rich new empirical studies, new theoretical perspectives, and greatly expanded activity and analyses from members of minority groups. Although this edition is an extensive revision, with reference both to the data used and the theoretical approaches examined, we have not shifted from our basically analytical perspective. We strongly support efforts to reduce discrimination and prejudice; but these can be successful only if we try to understand where we are and what forces are creating the existing situation. We hope to reduce the tendency to use declarations and condem nations of other persons' actions as substitutes for an investigation of their causes and consequences.