-In the post 2015 development agenda preparation, the temptation, to opt for business as usual with a few cosmetic touches must simply be actively resisted. -Unfortunately, the varied and extensive…
1. In truly democratic societies, active participation is the means for people to voice their criticism, to open the gates to class actions, to demand justice and to change negative…
A specter is haunting (not only) Europe: The specter of human rights. The MDGs never were a global agenda for development; now we need one -Even The Economist recognized that…
A cautionary tale 1. Before the law, there is a sentinel. A peasant approaches this guard and requests the permission to enter the law. But the guard responds that, for…
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. (Albert Einstein) This Reader is about human rights learning Human rights literacy has too often been achieved by applying…
In political terms, the birth of human rights was a non-trivial achievement. The human rights principles about development have now become a firm part of the framework of the modern…
-Human rights are philosophical; they are holistic; they are a secular religion with its own commandments. (Shula Koenig) But does the philosophy behind human rights depend on science? It does…
If children were reared for profit (like young farm stock), giving them a diet below requirements-for-health would be financially unsound. (Boyd Orr) Food sovereignty in perspective 1. Food sovereignty entails…
Over 2.300 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said that “if we believe that men have any personal rights at all as human beings, they have an absolute right to…
1. In the language of statistics, uncertainty is a latent variable*(N. Bloom) …particularly when it is mainly statistics that lead to policy-induced uncertainty. In policy making, it too often boils…