Exploring often-overlooked issues, the book delves into the intersection of human rights and private matters, addressing topics such as children's labor migration, the treatment of unaccompanied minors in refugee policy, and corporate responsibilities in financial contexts. It also tackles complex dilemmas related to access to pharmaceutical research benefits, transnational organ trafficking, and genetic research control, highlighting the need for a broader understanding of human rights in these private spheres.
Human rights have fallen on hard times, yet they are more necessary than ever. People all over the world – from Amazonian villages to Iranian prisons – need human rights to gain recognition, campaign for justice, and save lives. But how can we secure a brighter future for human rights? What changes are required to confront the regime’s weaknesses and emerging global challenges? In this cutting-edge analysis, Alison Brysk sets out a pragmatic reformist agenda for human rights in the twenty-first century. Tracing problems and solutions through contemporary case studies – the plight of refugees, declining democracies such as Mexico and Turkey, the expansion of women’s rights, new norms for indigenous peoples, and rights regression in the USA – she shows that the dynamic strength of human rights lies in their evolving political practice. This distinctive vision demands that we build upon the gains of the human rights regime to construct new pathways which address historic rights gaps, from citizenship to security, from environmental protection to resurgent nationalism, and to globalization itself. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience as a leading human rights scholar and activist, The Future of Human Rights offers a broad and authoritative guide to the big questions in global human rights governance today.
How can we understand and contest the global wave of violence against women? In this book, Alison Brysk shows that gender violence across countries tends to change as countries develop and liberalize, but not in the ways that we might predict. She shows how liberalizing authoritarian countriesand transitional democracies may experience more shifting patterns and greater levels of violence than less developed and democratic countries, due to changes and uncertainties in economic and political structures. Accordingly, Brysk analyzes the experience of semi-liberal, developing countries atthe frontiers of globalization - Brazil, India, South Africa, Mexico, the Philippines, and Turkey - to map out patterns of gender violence and what can be done to change those patterns. As the book shows, gender violence is not static, nor can it be attributed to culture or individual pathology - rather it varies across a continuum that tracks economic, political, and social change. While a combination of international action, law, public policy, civil society mobilization, andchanges in social values work to decrease gender violence, Brysk assesses the potential, limits, and balance of these measures. Brysk shows that a human rights approach is necessary but not sufficient to address gender violence, and that insights from feminist and development approaches areessential.
