National Human Rights Institutions and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ...

National Human Rights Institutions and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Hardcover by Brems, Eva (EDT); De Beco, Gauthier (EDT); Vandenhole, Wouter (EDT), ISBN 1780681453, ISBN-13 9781780681450, Like New Used, Free shipping in the USWhile acknowledging that supranational monitoring mechanisms serve an important function in the protection of human rights, the editors argue that the first and main responsibility for human rights implementation lies at the domestic level of states and call for the establishment of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) to serve as an interface between human rights activists, human rights scholars, and public authorities and to fill the gap between what can be achieved by activist campaigning and court and tribunal proceedings. This volume assesses the practices and achievements of currently existing NHRIs, with a particular focus on their role in guaranteeing economic, social, and cultural rights, an area that is often neglected, but (argue the editors) might be the area where their added value is the most crucial precisely because of that neglect. Opening chapters provide an overview of historical, theoretical, and critical perspectives on NHRIs and a consideration of their place within the constellation of other human rights actors. Case studies are then presented assessing the work of NHRIs in Bolivia, India, Ghana, and Ethiopia, as well as an additional pair of case studies that examine the Dutch and Belgian NHRIs with mandates limited to anti-discrimination. A final chapter considers the conduct of a national public inquiry (first developed by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in the late 1980s) as a tool for NHRIs. Distributed in North America by ISBS. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR ()