Law, Infrastructure and Human Rights

From attacks on oil infrastructure in post-war reconstruction Iraq to the laying of gas pipelines in the Amazon Rainforest through indigenous community villages, infrastructure projects are sites of intense human rights struggles. Many state and non-state actors have proposed solutions for handling human rights problems in the context of specific infrastructure projects. Solutions have been admired for being lofty in principle; however, they have been judged wanting in practice. This book analyzes how human rights are handled in varied contexts and then assesses the feasibility of a common international institutional solution under the auspices of the United Nations to the alleged problem of the inability to translate human rights into practice.

Michael B. Likosky holds a D. Phil from Oxford University, a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and a B.A. from Vassar College. He is currently the Lecturer in International Economic Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His teaching areas include law and globalization, international economic law, contracts, and public international law. He has published three books on law and globalization: The Silicon Empire (2005); (ed.) Transnational Legal Processes (Cambridge, 2002); and (ed.) Privatising Development (2005).