7. RIGHT TO FOOD.

A Thematic Guide to Documents on the Human Rights of Women is the first volume in a new series: The Raoul Wallenberg Institute Human Rights Guides. As the term 'guide' implies, the series will facilitate orientation in international human rights standards by presenting the content of substantive standards in a systematic way. The Guides map out the entire range of human rights and fundamental freedoms as they relate to specific categories of beneficiaries. Future volumes will be devoted to children, minorities, indigenous peoples, detainees, migrants, and so on. Volumes are also planned to deal with health, information, and humanitarian relief, in which the category of beneficiary is open ended. In all such areas, those who are professionally involved in human rights activities need guidance to substantive standards, which are neither widely known nor readily accessible. This first volume establishes the structure to be followed by future Guides. Part 1 groups the relevant provisions from different instruments according to specific rights and freedoms. Part 2 supplies a chronological list of all the instruments that have been excerpted in Part 1, enabling the user to locate the entire document if wished. Part 3 contains an extensive index of all relevant provisions.

This publication is the second volume of Thematic Human Rights Guides published under the auspices of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. The aim of the Guides, as the title implies, is to facilitate the use of international human rights standards by their systematic presentation. Rather than reproducing full texts of various instruments, substantive standards are grouped according to subject-matter in order to enable users to quickly and easily locate the topic they may be looking for. A detailed index, with references to the many international instruments which address the same issue, reinforces this thematic approach. The choice of human rights and health for the second volume in this series highlights the aim of the Guides: to map out the entire range of human rights and fundamental freedoms as they relate to a specific topic. The sheer size of this volume illustrates the number and variety of human rights standards relevant for health. Many of these standards have been generated by organizations dealing with health rather than human rights, and quite a few are found under medical ethics rather than human rights. Subsuming medical ethics under international human rights law is a novel development, pioneered by the Council of Europe. Elsewhere, the two fields remain separate and the publication of this Guide is intended to overcome this separation. Documents have been included which provide an understanding of human rights within the health profession (such as guidance to medical doctors with regard to abortion adopted by the International Medical Association) and those human rights safeguards that have been elaborated to prevent abuses by health professionals (such as those concerning mental health). All of these standards provide a substantive background for inter-professional dialogue on the evolving understanding of human rights. A Thematic Guide to Documents on Health and Human Rights reflects the full range of issues encompassed by human rights and health. Besides the right to health, a wide range of rights and freedoms can be - and is - affected by the health sector. Priority has been accorded to the crucial human rights safeguards, namely those specifying protection against undue limitations or restrictions upon human rights. Much as with any other human rights topic, those safeguards are best developed for categories that are most vulnerable to denials and violations of their rights. Detainees, prisoners, victims of armed conflicts, children and the mentally ill thus figure prominently.

For in-depth coverage of gender issues in human rights law, from theory and cultural practices to legal instruments and the case law of international tribunals, this major three-volume work is without peer. More than 100 leading authorities in the field offer trenchant analyses of problems and solutions, crimes and abuses, available recourses, areas of empowerment -- the entire spectrum of women's rights, discussed at a level of detail and legal awareness unavailable in any other single source. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint. The print edition is available as a set of three volumes (9781571050946).

This interdisciplinary book by a group of Asian and European scholars provides a deeper understanding of globalization as an historical process with special attention to the regional and national contexts. Globalization, this book demonstrates, has its roots in civilizational dialogues and interchanges.

Africa, with its mix of statute, custom and religion is at the centre of the debate about law and its impact on gender relations. This is because of the centrality of the gender question and its impact on the cultural relativism debate within human rights. It is therefore important to examine critically the role of law, broadly constructed, in African societies. The book focuses on women's experiences in the family. This is because the lives of women continue to be lived out largely in the private domain, where the right to privacy is used to conceal unequal treatment of women which is justified by invoking 'custom' and 'tradition'. The book shows how law and its interpretation is used to disenfranchise women, resulting in their being deprived of land and other property which they may have helped to accumulate. It also considers issues of violence within the home, reproductive rights and examines the issue of female genital cutting. The role of women in development is explored as is their participation in politics and the NGO sector. A major theme of the book is a consideration of the linkages of constitutional and international human rights norms with local values. This is done using feminist tools of analysis. The book considers the provisions of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women which was adopted by the African Union in July 2003.

The human rights project is one that brings together ideas, policies, and laws, as well as national civil society and international cooperation. Yet despite progress, human rights are still being grossly violated in vast numbers in many parts of the world, and the challenge remains to keep expanding the circles of achievements and opportunities for a universal culture of human rights. This handbook brings together a broad collection of documents from different parts of the world, from global and regional institutions, attesting to the fact that the universality of human rights resides in the spirit and aspirations of the peoples of the world. Divided into thematic sections, the volume brings together primary sources on topics such as philosophical and religious perspectives, international human rights policy, sustainable development, economic, social, and cultural rights, among many more, complete with a thorough introduction to each theme. The result is a remarkable collection of documents and teaching materials in support of the universality of human rights.