human rights | Stuffed and Starved

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human rights

Quietly last Monday, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly changed the world. Seriously. As the report below shows, they approved legislation that would transform the planet, and ecosystems, from mere things into entities with legal rights to exist and flourish. It's the sort of thing that will give jurisprudence something to work on for a good long while.

The reason I find it all particularly exciting is that it takes the idea of individual human rights, and gives them to entities systems that are hard to define either as individual or human. As to what this means in practice, and whether it's adopted in the final constitution, we'll have to see. But as to what this means in theory, it's already revolutionary. More below the fold. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 10 comments

Posted on 15 July, 2008 - 18:17

Progress on The Right To Food

It's right there in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Article 25 says

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

But who's going to deliver the right to food? As Jeremy Bentham famously observed, the idea of rights without some organisation entrusted to make sure they're delivered is 'nonsense upon stilts'. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 1 comment

human rights | resources

Posted on 16 April, 2007 - 15:17

Urgent Action in support of Filipino Farmers

Across the world, farmers who organise for land reform are targetted by landowners, and their thugs. As the Asian Human Rights Commission notes:

a leader of a group of farmers seeking land reform was wounded in a shooting at 6pm on 30 October 2006. The attack on Ronald Ocson (41), president of the Asao Farmers and Residents Association (AFRA), took place almost three weeks after he and his fellow villagers were also violently allegedly attacked by armed goons of an influential landlord in Barangay (village) Lawis, Balasan, Iloilo.