Brigit Toebes - Böcker

There is a clear overlap between securing socio-economic human rights for all persons and arranging adequate access to essential public services across society. Both are necessary to realise thriving, inclusive societies, with adequate living standards for all, based on human dignity. This edited volume brings together the two topics for the first time. In particular, it identifies the common challenges for essential public services provision and socio-economic human rights realisation, and it explores how socio-economic rights law can be harnessed to reinforce better access to services. An important aim of this book is to understand how international socio-economic human rights law and guideposts can be used and strengthened to improve access to services, and assess socio-economic legal and policy decisions.The volume includes contributions from different continents, on a range of different services, and engages with the realities of different regulatory settings. After an introduction that sets out the most important challenges for universal access to services – including sufficient resources mobilisation, private actor involvement and regulation, or the need for improved checks and balances – the book goes on to discuss current issues in services provision and socio-economic rights, as well as explores the place and role of private business actors in the provision of services. In particular, it assesses how the responsibility and accountability of such actors for human rights can be improved . The final part of the book narrows in on the under-explored human rights concepts of ‘participation’ and ‘accountability’, as essential prerequisites for better ‘checks and balances’. Overall, this volume presents a unique and powerful illustration of how socio-economic human rights law supports improved access to essential public services for all.

The book deals with the complicated relationships between national security and human rights, and between public health and human rights. Its premise is the fact that national security and public health are both included in human rights instruments as ‘exceptions’ to the human rights therein sanctioned, yet they can arguably be considered as human rights themselves and be equally valuable. The book therefore asks to what extent the protection of the individual could – or should – be overridden to enable the protection of the national security or public health of the general public. Both practice and case law have shown that human rights risk being set aside when they clash with the protection of national security or public health. Through theoretical analysis and practical examples, the book addresses the conflicts that arise when the concepts of national security and public health are used – and abused – and other rights, including freedom of speech, procedural freedoms, individual health, are violated as a consequence. It provides many interesting findings on the values that states are ready to protect – and forego – to ensure their safety, which can contribute to the ongoing debate on the protection of human rights. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

The book deals with the complicated relationships between national security and human rights, and between public health and human rights. Its premise is the fact that national security and public health are both included in human rights instruments as ‘exceptions’ to the human rights therein sanctioned, yet they can arguably be considered as human rights themselves and be equally valuable. The book therefore asks to what extent the protection of the individual could – or should – be overridden to enable the protection of the national security or public health of the general public. Both practice and case law have shown that human rights risk being set aside when they clash with the protection of national security or public health. Through theoretical analysis and practical examples, the book addresses the conflicts that arise when the concepts of national security and public health are used – and abused – and other rights, including freedom of speech, procedural freedoms, individual health, are violated as a consequence. It provides many interesting findings on the values that states are ready to protect – and forego – to ensure their safety, which can contribute to the ongoing debate on the protection of human rights. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

There is a clear overlap between securing socio-economic human rights for all persons and arranging adequate access to essential public services across society. Both are necessary to realise thriving, inclusive societies, with adequate living standards for all, based on human dignity. This edited volume brings together the two topics for the first time. In particular, it identifies the common challenges for essential public services provision and socio-economic human rights realisation, and it explores how socio-economic rights law can be harnessed to reinforce better access to services. An important aim of this book is to understand how international socio-economic human rights law and guideposts can be used and strengthened to improve access to services, and assess socio-economic legal and policy decisions.The volume includes contributions from different continents, on a range of different services, and engages with the realities of different regulatory settings. After an introduction that sets out the most important challenges for universal access to services – including sufficient resources mobilisation, private actor involvement and regulation, or the need for improved checks and balances – the book goes on to discuss current issues in services provision and socio-economic rights, as well as explores the place and role of private business actors in the provision of services. In particular, it assesses how the responsibility and accountability of such actors for human rights can be improved . The final part of the book narrows in on the under-explored human rights concepts of ‘participation’ and ‘accountability’, as essential prerequisites for better ‘checks and balances’. Overall, this volume presents a unique and powerful illustration of how socio-economic human rights law supports improved access to essential public services for all.

This timely Research Handbook provides a critical conceptualization and definition of the growing field of global health law. The Research Handbook forms the first comprehensive study on the treatment of health issues in international legal regimes and explores the role of international law in addressing the most prominent global health challenges.The editors have consciously adopted a holistic approach by including 'soft' norms and informal law-making processes in the Research Handbook's scope to give a realistic account of the normative framework that shapes contemporary global health. Despite following a predominantly legal perspective, the Research Handbook also adopts an interdisciplinary approach by looking at health from a governance perspective and using insights from international relations scholarship in forecasting possible future developments surrounding health law. The Research Handbook features contributions from a team of leading international legal scholars who have experience of approaching the issue of global health from multiple angles.International law scholars who are seeking information on the growing role of health in governance trends will find this Research Handbook to be of great interest. Public health scholars who are researching international legal perspectives on health practice and policy will also find it to be a valuable resource.Contributors include: F. Abbott, A. Bellal, C. Brassart Olsen, G.L. Burci, G. Call, A. Garde, C. Giorgetti, S. Gruskin, M. Hartley, J. Liberman, M.M. Mbengue, B. McGrady, S. Moon, T. Murphy, S. Negri, K. O'Cathaoir, X. Seuba, D. Tarantola, J. Tobin, B. Toebes, S. Waltman, S. Zhou

Large-scale adverse health and developmental outcomes related to tobacco affect millions of people across the world, raising serious questions from a human rights perspective. In response to this crisis, this timely book provides a comprehensive analysis of the promotion and enforcement of human rights protection in tobacco control law and policy at international, regional, and domestic levels.This thought-provoking book offers significant new insights to the topic, laying the foundations for a human rights based approach to tobacco control. Addressing the function of law as a tool to help combat one of the major public health challenges facing society, contributions by global scholars rebut human rights claims presented by the tobacco industry. Emphasis is instead placed upon the human rights of vulnerable individuals, children in particular, as a result of smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke.Illustrating ways in which the right to health can be advanced with regards to tobacco control, smoking and the use of e-cigarettes, this important book will be a vital resource for human rights and health law scholars and practitioners as well as policy makers in public health law. Contributors include: D. Barrett, D. Beyleveld, O.A. Cabrera, A. Constantin A. Garde, M.E. Gispen, L. Gruszczynski, J. Hannah, S. Karjalainen, L. Lane, S. Lierman, A.L. McCarthy, A. Mitchell, S. Negri, O. Nnamuchi, M. Roberts, A. Schmidt, M. Sormunen, A. Taylor, B. Toebes, M. van Westendorp, Y. Zhang

'Health and human rights' is an important dimension of international and European human rights and health law. It is multi-disciplinary, engaging scholars and practitioners of public health and medicine, as well as legal scholars and human rights lawyers. Taking a 'health and human rights approach' means applying international, regional and domestic human rights law to a wide range of health-related issues.Human rights law informs other areas of law that engage with health issues, including international and domestic health law, biolaw and bioethics, patients' rights, and environmental law. It brings a new, and often more international, as well as a moral dimension to existing legal analyses of health issues. This is essential in an increasingly interconnected and globalised world, where health concerns are omnipresent and can no longer be addressed solely at a domestic level.This book focuses on the legal interfaces between 'health' and 'human rights', taking both a global as well as a European approach. Globally, there are tremendous challenges when it comes to the protection of collective and individual health. Such challenges include weak (primary) healthcare systems, the spread of infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, and the increase of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), as well as the health effects of air pollution and climate change.In such settings, human rights can, potentially, play an important role in protecting the rights of vulnerable individuals. It is a compelling framework for assessing these and other questions in the health field, as it couples health-related problems with a legal and moral dimension. The international recognition and definition of the 'right to health' is at the centre of this, but there are many other relevant human rights standards, including the right to life, the right to respect for privacy and family life, and the right to have access to information. International case law in the health field has made its mark when it comes to matters like access to health services, abortion, and inhuman and degrading treatment in health settings. Increasingly, links are being sought between human rights and other international standards protecting health, in particular the standards adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO).The European context is, to some extent, a region sui generis, not only in terms of health issues and health outcomes, but also from a political and legal perspective. The authoritative case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) of the Council of Europe has increasingly touched upon health-related issues.Health and Human Rights brings together contributions from human rights and health law experts from three different countries in Northern Europe. Together, the chapters give a rich account of the legal and interdisciplinary aspects and perspectives related to 'health and human rights'.This book is of interest to lecturers, students, practitioners and law- and policymakers and offers up-to-date analyses of crucial human rights issues in modern healthcare, practices and regulations in Europe and beyond.

Avril was an inspired and passionate scholar in the fields of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, human rights law and law in the field of arms control and disarmament.