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Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law: A Research Companion (Routledge Research in Human Rights Law)
by Mart SusiThe Internet has created a formidable challenge for human rights law and practice worldwide. International scholarly and policy-oriented communities have so far established a consensus regarding only one main aspect – human rights in the internet are the same as offline. There are emerging and ongoing debates regarding not only the standards and methods to be used for achieving the "sameness" of rights online, but also whether "classical" human rights as we know them are contested by the online environment. The internet itself, in view of its cross-border nature and its ability to affect various areas of law, requires adopting an internationally oriented approach and a perspective strongly focused on social sciences. In particular, the rise of the internet, enhanced also by the influence of new technologies such as algorithms and intelligent artificial systems, has influenced individuals’ civil, political and social rights not only in the digital world, but also in the atomic realm. As the coming of the internet calls into question well-established legal categories, a broader perspective than the domestic one is necessary to investigate this phenomenon. This book explores the main fundamental issues and practical dimensions related to the safeguarding of human rights in the internet, which are at the focus of current academic debates. It provides a comprehensive analysis with a forward-looking perspective of bringing order into the somewhat chaotic online dimension of human rights. It addresses the matter of private digital censorship, the apparent inefficiency of existing judicial systems to react to human rights violations online, the uncertainty of liability for online human rights violations, whether the concern with personal data protection overshadows multiple other human rights issues online and will be of value to those interested in human rights law and legal regulation of the internet.
Human Rights Discourse: Linguistics, Genre and Translation at the European Court of Human Rights (Law, Language and Communication)
by Jekaterina NikitinaThis book explores the concept of human rights as constructed in language, shedding light on discursive and professional practices at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), as differentiated from other judicial institutions offering human rights defence mechanisms. It unveils the system of genres at the ECtHR adopting a holistic outlook, which caters for an interdisciplinary readership including both language and law professionals. The genres, along with the underlying professional practices and interdiscursive mechanisms, are described following the lifecycle of cases, starting from the initial application to the Court and ending with institutional press releases and execution of judgments, which foster greater democratic participation. The Court is depicted through its plurality of voices and stakeholders, acknowledging the non-monolithic nature of judicial discourse. The work follows the knowledge migration path from national into international justice and traces how national, and linguistically divergent, elements are recontextualized in a supranational context. It problematizes the coexistence of institutional and outsourced legal translation as well as their potential effects on the discourse of human rights. The book covers issues of legal terminology, phraseology, dialogism, pragmatics and knowledge dissemination dynamics. The study will be an invaluable resource for academics, researchers and translators working in the areas of law and language, linguistics, Translation Studies and Genre Studies.
Human Rights Discourse in the Post-9/11 Age (Human Rights Interventions)
by Kanishka ChowdhuryThis book offers a materialist critique of mainstream human rights discourse in the period following 9/11, examining literary works, critical histories, international declarations, government statutes, NGO manifestos, and a documentary film. The author points out some of the contradictions that emerge in contemporary rights language when material relations are not sufficiently perceived or acknowledged, and he directs attention to the role of some rights talk in maintaining and managing the accelerated global project of capital accumulation. Even as rights discourse points to injustices—for example, injustices related to labor, gender, the citizen’s relationship to the state, or the movement of refugees—it can simultaneously maintain systems of oppression. By constructing subjects who are aligned to the interests of capital, by emphasizing individual “empowerment,” and/or by containing social disenchantment, it reinforces the process of wealth accumulation, supports neoliberal ideologies, and diminishes the possibility of real transformation through collective struggle.
Human Rights Dissemination in Central Asia: Human Rights Education and Capacity Building in the Post-Soviet Space (SpringerBriefs in Political Science)
by Anja Mihr Cindy WittkeThis open access book explores the field of human rights dissemination in Central Asia. Offering a comparative perspective on five post-Soviet Central Asian states—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, it examines compliance with international human rights standards in these countries. The contributions capture various aspects of human rights dissemination through educational programs, seminars, training, and empowerment programs at Central Asian universities, together with Central Asian NGOs/CSOs and international organizations. The book shows that a change of behavior among state and non-state actors in the region can only happen when both local and international actors, usually international donors, jointly take action to report, train, and empower people in human rights. This book is an invitation to anyone interested in the (troubled) nexus between international human rights norms and standards and their implementation on the local level, as well as in the effective empowerment of citizen in the region.
Human Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The South Asian Experience
by M. Ehteshamul Bari Uday ShankarThis book sheds light on the fact that the proclamation of an emergency can be a legitimate constitutional method to take prompt preventative measures in protecting the interests of the society in times of grave crises. However, the exercise of emergency powers should not undermine a nation’s commitment to democratic values, such as maintaining the rule of law and upholding fundamental human rights. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed grave threats to the lives and health of individuals. However, since the constitutions of South Asian nations do not permit the proclamation of an emergency on health grounds, executives of these nations were constrained to rely, among other things, on ordinary legislation to tide over the threats posed by the pandemic. Although these statutes entrust the executive with extensive emergency powers, they do not simultaneously stipulate any safeguards subjecting the exercise of such powers to a reliable system of checks and balances. Accordingly, this book critically examines the exercise of emergency powers in the South Asian nations to tide over threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a profoundly adverse impact on the human rights of individuals. Such exercise of powers was consistent with the general tendency demonstrated by succeeding generations of the executives in these nations to use emergency situations as the convenient means for imposing long-lasting limitations on the rights of individuals. Consequently, this book identifies the flaws, deficiencies, and lacunae of the legal framework in these nations, which permit the executive to assume unfettered power in the exercise of emergency measures at the expense of the liberty of individuals. Consequently, based on these findings, recommendations will be put forward for initiating reforms in these nations aimed at ensuring the maintenance of a delicate balance between the necessity to respond tograve threats and to simultaneously prevent undue intrusion on the fundamental human rights of individuals.
Human Rights Education and the Politics of Knowledge (Routledge Research in Human Rights Law)
by Joanne CoyshAround the world there are a myriad of NGOs using human rights education (HRE) as a tool of community empowerment with the firm belief that it will help people improve their lives. One way of understanding these processes is that they translate universal human rights speak using messages and symbols which make them relevant to people’s daily lives and culturally resonant. However, an alternative more radical perspective is that these processes should engage individuals in modes of critical inquiry into the ways that that existing power structures maintain the status quo and control not only how we understand and speak about social inequality and injustice, but also act on it. This book is a critical inquiry into the production, distribution and consumption of HRE and how the discourse is constructed historically, socially and politically through global institutions and local NGO practice. The book begins with the premise that HRE is composed of theories of human rights and education, both of which are complex and multifaceted. However, the book demonstrates how over time a dominant discourse of HRE, constructed by the United Nations institutional framework, has come to prominence and the ways it is reproduced and reinforced through the practice of intermediary NGOs engaged in HRE activities with community groups. Drawing on socio-legal scholarship it offers a new theoretical and political framework for addressing how human rights, pedagogy, knowledge and power can be analysed between the global and local by connecting the critical, but well-trodden, theories of human rights to insights on critical pedagogy. It uses critical discourse analysis and ethnographic research to investigate the practice of NGOs engaged in HRE using contextual evidence and findings from fieldwork with NGOs and communities in Tanzania.
Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons: A Midrash Methodology
by Devorah WainerThis book provides a new framework for conducting qualitative research into Asylum Seeking Refugees based on Emmanuel Levinas’ ethic of the face-to-face encounter. The methodology originates in the term Midrash—a narrative form that exposes; investigates; searches. It reconceptualises encounters between Asylum Seeking Refugees and those researching their experiences in a manner that moves beyond the possibility of ‘Othering’ and the removal of ‘voice’ that can characterise research into refugees. This methodology allows a complex and rich multidimensional text, with heterogeneity of voices, experiences, and subjects. As a phenomenological method of research, the internal phenomena of the researcher—feeling, intuition, and personal perception—are legitimate sites of knowledge and understanding, and are not considered separate from the external, objectively observable world. While the researcher is not researching herself, she is also not separate from the research field and data. The Midrash methodology is an honest and explicit method of research designed to (re)invigorated the passion of academics and researchers.
Human Rights for the 21st Century
by Helen M. StacyIn an effort to defend the necessity of building international human rights institutions, Stacy (Stanford Law School) addresses three broad critiques of international human rights. In response to charges that international human rights is either powerless rhetoric in the face of national interests or perhaps an excuse for colonial or imperial projects that impinge on the sovereignty of nation-states, she argues that a new norm of sovereignty, "relational sovereignty," has emerged in the era of economic and communications globalization and that it requires the sovereign to care for the human rights of its citizens. Against those who argue that civil society is a better vehicle for promoting human rights than international law, she contends that law provides a structure for disagreement, claims, and judgments that can mediate disputes in ways that neither social nor political institutions are able to do. Finally, addressing those that worry about the challenges of cultural difference to universal standards of human rights, she proposes the creation of regional institutions that will be able to offer equilibrium between general international norms and particular cultures. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
A Human Rights Framework for Intellectual Property, Innovation and Access to Medicines
by Joo-Young LeeThis book examines the relationship between intellectual property in pharmaceuticals and access to medicines from a human rights perspective, with a view to contributing to the development of a human rights framework that can guide States in enacting and implementing intellectual property law and policy. The study primarily explores whether conflicts between patents and human rights in the context of access to medicines are inevitable, or whether patents can be made to serve human rights. What could be a normative framework that human rights might provide for patents and innovation? Joo-Young Lee argues that it is necessary to have a deepened understanding of each of the two sets of norms that govern this issue, that is, patent law and international human rights law. The chapters investigate the relevant dimensions of patent law, and analyse particular human rights bearing upon the issue of intellectual property and access to medicines. This study will be of great interest to academic specialists, practitioners or professionals in the fields of human rights, trade, and intellectual property, as well as policy makers, activists, and health professionals across the world working in intellectual property and human rights.
Human Rights in Africa: Contemporary Debates and Struggles (Contemporary African Political Economy)
by Eunice N. SahleThis edited collection explores key human rights themes and situates them in the context of developments on the African continent. It examines critical debates in human rights bringing together conceptually and empirically rich contributions from leading thinkers in human rights and African studies. Drawing on scholarly insights from the fields of constitutional law, human rights, development, feminist studies, public health, and media studies, the volume contributes to scholarly debates on constitutionalism, the right to water, securitization of development, environmental and transitional justice, sexual rights, conflict and gender-based violence, the right to development, and China’s deepening role in Africa. Consequently, it makes an important scholarly intervention on timely issues pertaining to the African continent and beyond.
Human Rights in Business: Removal of Barriers to Access to Justice in the European Union
by Juan José Álvarez Rubio Katerina YiannibasThe capacity to abuse, or in general affect the enjoyment of human, labour and environmental rights has risen with the increased social and economic power that multinational companies wield in the global economy. At the same time, it appears that it is difficult to regulate the activities of multinational companies in such a way that they conform to international human, labour and environmental rights standards. This has partially to do with the organization of companies into groups of separate legal persons, incorporated in different states, as well as with the complexity of the corporate supply chain. Absent a business and human rights treaty, a more coherent legal and policy approach is required. Faced with the challenge of how to effectively access the right to remedy in the European Union for human rights abuses committed by EU companies in non-EU states, a diverse research consortium of academic and legal institutions was formed. The consortium, coordinated by the Globernance Institute for Democratic Governance, became the recipient of a 2013 Civil Justice Action Grant from the European Commission Directorate General for Justice. A mandate was thus issued for research, training and dissemination so as to bring visibility to the challenge posed and moreover, to provide some solutions for the removal of barriers to judicial and non-judicial remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states. The project commenced in September 2014 and over the course of two years the consortium conducted research along four specific lines in parallel with various training sessions across EU Member States. The research conducted focused primarily on judicial remedies, both jurisdictional barriers and applicable law barriers; non-judicial remedies, both to company-based grievance. The results of this research endeavour make up the content of this report whose aim is to provide a scholarly foundation for policy proposals by identifying specific challenges relevant to access to justice in the European Union and to provide recommendations on how to remove legal and practical barriers so as to provide access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states.
Human Rights in Child Protection: Implications For Professional Practice And Policy
by Elisabeth Backe-Hansen Asgeir Falch-EriksenThis open access book critically explores what child protection policy and professional practice would mean if practice was grounded in human rights standards. This book inspires a new direction in child protection research – one that critically assesses child protection policy and professional practice with regard to human rights in general, and the rights of the child in particular. Each chapter author seeks to approach the rights of the child from their own academic field of interest and through a comparative lens, making the research relevant across nation-state practices. The book is split into five parts to focus on the most important aspects of child protection. The first part explains the origins, aim, and scope of the book; the second part explores aspects of professionalism and organization through law and policy; and the third part discusses several key issues in child protection and professional practice in depth. The fourth part discusses selected areas of importance to child protection practices (low-impact in-house measures, public care in residential care and foster care respectively) and the fifth part provides an analytical summary of the book. Overall, it contributes to the present need for a more comprehensive academic debate regarding the rights of the child, and the supranational perspective this brings to child protection policy and practice across and within nation-states.
Human Rights in Crisis
by Alice BullardThis volume expands our understanding of the pursuit of human rights during the era of the War on Terror. The threat to human rights both in the United States and among detainees in US-governed detention facilities created a widely perceived crisis in human rights. This text explores the broad and complicated ramifications of crisis by looking comparatively at societies in the present era and looking back at the historical and legal foundations of human rights. Human Rights in Crisis contains an element of hope derived from a conviction that the pursuit of human rights happens on many fronts and in many ways around the globe; that a retreat from human rights in the United States does not necessarily signal a global retreat. The essays here include perspectives from History, Anthropology, and Legal Studies, with a resulting interdisciplinary portrait of the complexities of pursuing human rights in wartime.
Human Rights in European Criminal Law
by Stefano RuggeriThis book deals with human rights in European criminal law after the Lisbon Treaty. Doubtless the Lisbon Treaty has constituted a milestone in the development of European criminal justice. Not only has the reform following the Treaty given binding force to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, but furthermore it has paved the way for unprecedented forms of supranational legislation. In this scenario, the enforcement of individual rights in criminal matters has become a core goal of EU legislation. Alongside these developments, new interactions between national and supranational jurisprudences have emerged, which have significantly contributed to a human rights-oriented approach to European criminal law. The book analyses the main developments of this complex phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective. Criminal and procedural law, constitutional law and comparative law must thus be combined to achieve a full understanding of these developments and of their impact on national law.
Human Rights in History: The Care of the Witness
by Michal GivoniDuring the twentieth century, witnessing grew to be not just a widespread solution for coping with political atrocities but also an intricate problem. As the personal experience of victims, soldiers, and aid workers acquired unparalleled authority as a source of moral and political truth, the capacity to generate adequate testimonies based on this experience was repeatedly called into question. Michal Givoni's book follows the trail of the problems, torments, and crises that became commingled with witnessing to genocide, disaster, and war over the course of the twentieth century. By juxtaposing episodes of reflexive witnessing to the Great War, the Jewish Holocaust, and third world emergencies, The Care of the Witness explores the shifting roles and responsibilities of witnesses in history and the contribution that the troubles of witnessing made to the ethical consolidation of the witness as the leading figure of nongovernmental politics.
Human Rights in History: The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention
by Fabian KloseHow should the international community react when a government transgresses humanitarian norms and violates the human rights of its own nationals? And where does the responsibility lie to protect people from such acts of violation? In a profound new study, Fabian Klose unites a team of leading scholars to investigate some of the most complex and controversial debates regarding the legitimacy of protecting humanitarian norms and universal human rights by non-violent and violent means. Charting the development of humanitarian intervention from its origins in the nineteenth century through to the present day, the book surveys the philosophical and legal rationales of enforcing humanitarian norms by military means, and how attitudes to military intervention on humanitarian grounds have changed over the course of three centuries. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, the authors lend a fresh perspective to contemporary dilemmas using case studies from Europe, the United States, Africa and Asia.
Human Rights in India (Routledge Research in Human Rights Law)
by Satvinder JussThis volume presents an integrated collection of essays around the theme of India’s failure to grapple with the big questions of human rights protections affecting marginalized minority groups in the country’s recent rush to modernization. The book traverses a broad range of rights violations from: gender equality to sexual orientation, from judicial review of national security law to national security concerns, from water rights to forest rights of those in need, and from the persecution of Muslims in Gulberg to India’s parallel legal system of Lok Adalats to resolve disputes. It calls into question India’s claim to be a contemporary liberal democracy. The thesis is given added strength by the authors’ diverse perspectives which ultimately create a synergy that stimulates the thinking of the entire field of human rights, but in the context of a non-western country, thereby prompting many specialists in human rights to think in new ways about their research and the direction of the field, both in India and beyond. In an area that has been under-researched, the work will provide valuable guidance for new research ideas, experimental designs and analyses in key cutting-edge issues covered in this work, such as Acid Attacks or the right to protest against the ‘nuclear’ state in India.
Human Rights in Islamic Societies: Muslims and the Western Conception of Rights (Routledge Studies in Islam and Human Rights)
by Ahmed E. SouaiaiaThis book compares Islamic and Western ideas of human rights in order to ascertain which human rights, if any, can be considered universal. This is a profound topic with a rich history that is highly relevant within global politics and society today. The arguments in this book are formed by bringing William Talbott’s Which Rights Should Be Universal? (2005) and Abdulaziz Sachedina’s Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (2014) into conversation. By bridging the gap between cultural relativists and moral universalists, this book seeks to offer a new model for the understanding of human rights. It contends that human rights abuses are outcomes of complex systems by design and/or by default. Therefore, it proposes that a rigorous systems-thinking approach will contribute to addressing the challenge of human rights. Engaging with Islamic and Western, historical and contemporary, and relativist and universalist thought, this book is a fresh take on a perennially important issue. As such, it will be a first-rate resource for any scholars working in religious studies, Islamic studies, Middle East studies, ethics, sociology, and law and religion.
Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations in the Age of General Muhammadu Buhari and His Successors: Loving the Foreigner as Yourself
by Philip C. AkaUnder the Fourth Republic since 1999, the challenge Nigerian leaders face like never before is how to create a state that matches the expectations of their diverse peoples at home and abroad. Taking this proposition as starting point, this book advances proposals for a human-right policy, referred to alternately in the work as principled foreign policy, for Nigeria under the Fourth Republic, taking advantage of the inestimable opportunity afforded by General Muhammadu Buhari’s departure from the political scene on May 29, 2023, after the famine, domestically and externally, wrought by his two terms of office as President. It is a broad-ranging argument, draped in the less arcane constitutional vocabulary and material of human rights, for thoroughgoing reforms at home and abroad as the only antidote to the nation-building dilemmas Nigeria confronts in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Buhari’s departure marks the end of military teleguidance of Nigerian politics under the Fourth Republic in the camouflage of democratic rule, a birthmark of remote control dating back to the first military intervention in the country in January 1966. These momentous events within Nigeria coincide with equally epoch-making developments in the UK, Nigeria’s former colonial overlord, with ripple effects in Nigeria, signified by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, after seven decades on the throne, and the emergence of Prince Charles as King of England. A new monarch in Britain adds to the opportunity that falls open for the reconfiguration of Nigeria’s external relations with ramifications for the application of human rights in those relations. Despite its known disabilities, Nigeria has the potential infrastructure, including its sizable population, to conduct a human-right policy, if its leaders rationalize the country’s resources more wisely.
Human Rights in Probation: Theory, Practice and Balance (Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice)
by Kyros HadjisergisExploring the application, theory, implications and socio-legal underpinnings of human rights in probation and associated offender management, this book examines the organisation and re-organization of the National Probation Service, from the introduction of the Human Rights Act (HRA) to the end of the Transforming Rehabilitation era.Outlining how the duties of probation officers are interpreted in light of the HRA, this book evaluates applicable case law as a means to exemplify and clarify the direct operation of human rights law in instances of potential human rights violations. Chapters also analyse the current and future infrastructure of probation to demonstrate challenges of awareness, implementation and compliance. Based on qualitative data analysed through a socio-legal lens and a human rights framework, themes explored include crime control and due process, and are reflective of the tensions and imbalances experienced between risk or public protection and human rights. The book also includes case studies of Serious Further Offences that have either shed light on the shortcomings in the area of human rights in probation or highlighted factors linked to human rights, including scapegoating, cumulative systemic failures, miscommunications and over-reliance on risk assessments. Finally, it provides clarity as to what the human rights duties of the Service are, what relevant laws apply alongside the HRA, and how these decisions affect risk and offender management.An important and timely study of probation in England and Wales, Human Rights in Probation will be of great interest to academics of probation, criminal justice, and human rights. It will also be of value to Probation officers (including trainees) and other practitioners working in offender management services.
Human Rights in the Age of Platforms (Information Policy)
by Rikke Frank JørgensenScholars from across law and internet and media studies examine the human rights implications of today's platform society.Today such companies as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter play an increasingly important role in how users form and express opinions, encounter information, debate, disagree, mobilize, and maintain their privacy. What are the human rights implications of an online domain managed by privately owned platforms? According to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the UN Human Right Council in 2011, businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. But this goal is dependent on the willingness of states to encode such norms into business regulations and of companies to comply. In this volume, contributors from across law and internet and media studies examine the state of human rights in today's platform society.The contributors consider the “datafication” of society, including the economic model of data extraction and the conceptualization of privacy. They examine online advertising, content moderation, corporate storytelling around human rights, and other platform practices. Finally, they discuss the relationship between human rights law and private actors, addressing such issues as private companies' human rights responsibilities and content regulation.ContributorsAnja Bechmann, Fernando Bermejo, Agnès Callamard, Mikkel Flyverbom, Rikke Frank Jørgensen, Molly K. Land, Tarlach McGonagle, Jens-Erik Mai, Joris van Hoboken, Glen Whelan, Jillian C. York, Shoshana Zuboff, Ethan ZuckermanOpen access edition published with generous support from Knowledge Unlatched and the Danish Council for Independent Research.
Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region: Towards Institution Building (Routledge Research in Human Rights Law)
by Hitoshi Nasu Ben SaulThe Asia-Pacific is known for having the least developed regional mechanisms for protecting human rights. This edited collection makes a timely and distinctive contribution to contemporary debates about building institutions for human rights protection in the Asia-Pacific region, in the wake of ASEAN’s establishment in 2009 of a sub-regional human rights commission. Drawing together leading scholarly voices, the book focuses on the systemic issue of institutionalising human rights protection in the Asia-Pacific. It critically examines the prospects for deepening and widening human rights institutions in the region, challenging the orthodox scepticism about whether the Asia-Pacific is "ready" for stronger human rights institutions and exploring the variety of possible forms that regional and sub-regional institutions might take. The volume also analyses the impediments to new institutions, whilst questioning the justifications for them. The collection provides a range of perspectives on the issues and many of the chapters bring interdisciplinary insights to bear. As such, the collection will be of interest to scholarly, practitioner, and student audiences in law, as well as to readers in international relations, political science, Asian studies, and human rights.
Human Rights in the Constitutional Law of the United States
by Michael J. PerryIn the period since the end of the Second World War, there has emerged what never before existed: a truly global morality. Some of that morality - the morality of human rights - has become entrenched in the constitutional law of the United States. This book explicates the morality of human rights and elaborates three internationally recognized human rights that are embedded in U. S. constitutional law: the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; the right to moral equality; and the right to religious and moral freedom. The implications of one or more of these rights for three great constitutional controversies - capital punishment, same-sex marriage, and abortion - are discussed in-depth. Along the way, Michael J. Perry addresses the question of the proper role of the Supreme Court of the United States in adjudicating these controversies.
Human Rights in the Council of Europe and the European Union: Achievements, Trends and Challenges (Cambridge Studies In European Law And Policy )
by Janneke Gerards Steven Greer Rose SloweConfusion about the differences between the Council of Europe (the parent body of the European Court of Human Rights) and the European Union is commonplace amongst the general public. It even affects some lawyers, jurists, social scientists and students. This book will enable the reader to distinguish clearly between those human rights norms which originate in the Council of Europe and those which derive from the EU, vital for anyone interested in human rights in Europe and in the UK as it prepares to leave the EU. The main achievements of relevant institutions include securing minimum standards across the continent as they deal with increasing expansion, complexity, multidimensionality and interpenetration of their human rights activities. The authors also identify the central challenges, particularly for the UK in the post-Brexit era where the components of each system need to be carefully distinguished and disentangled.
Human Rights in the Digital Age
by Mathias Klang Andrew MurrayThe digital age began in 1939 with the construction of the first digital computer. In the sixty-five years that have followed, the influence of digitisation on our everyday lives has grown steadily and today digital technology has a greater influence on our lives than at any time since its development. This book examines the role played by digital technology in both the exercise and suppression of human rights. The global digital environment has allowed us to reinterpret the concept of universal human rights. Discourse on human rights need no longer be limited by national or cultural boundaries and individuals have the ability to create new forms in which to exercise their rights or even to bypass national limitations to rights. The defence of such rights is meanwhile under constant assault by the newfound ability of states to both suppress and control individual rights through the application of these same digital technologies. This book gathers together an international group of experts working within this rapidly developing area of law and technology and focuses their attantion on the specific interaction between human rights and digital technology. This is the first work to explore the challenges brought about by digital technology to fundamental freedoms such as privacy, freedom of expression, access, assembly and dignity. It is essential reading for anyone who fears digital technology will lead to the 'Big Brother' state.