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The newsletter of United
Nations University and its international network of research and training centres/programmes |
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Issue30: March-April 2004 | |||
Globalization and human rights focus of UNU discussion
Governments have failed to strike a balance between fighting terrorism and protecting human rights, according to a leading US authority on international law. Many Governments had exploited the opportunity to restrict and derogate from human rights in order to achieve objectives which had all too little to do with rights, Philip Alston, Professor of International Law at New York University Law School told a UN University seminar in New York. "We
seem to have forgotten the lessons of efforts in The seminar, held at UN headquarters on International Human Rights Day (December 10), marked the New York launch of the UNU Press book The Globalization of Human Rights, co-edited by Jean-Marc Coicaud, Michael Doyle, and Amy Gardner and written under the auspices of the United Nations University’s Peace and Governance Programme. Opening the event, Mr. Coicaud said that although the projection of Western power worldwide had left many victims throughout the world, the West had also been instrumental in developing the modern discourse and practice of human rights. The international community, although it feels both the moral and legal need to enforce human rights, has not "expressed a decisive and consistent commitment that goes beyond lip service," he said. He argued that the recognition that human rights are universal, interrelated, indivisible and interdependent has been a significant landmark of human rights education. Mr. Munzu said that the
development activities of the UN were helping to promote economic and social rights
globally but much remained to be done. "In many
failed or weak states and
low-income countries the state is unable effectively to secure the
economic, social and other rights of its citizens, raising the question of
whether human rights are 'citizen' rights to be
claimed from the country of citizenship or truly 'human' rights to be
claimed from the global human community.
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