Redefining Human Rights in the Struggle for Peace and Development

Human rights in peace and development are accepted throughout the nations of the Global South as established, normative, and beyond debate. Only in the powerful elite sectors of the Global North have these rights been resisted and refuted. The policies and interests of these global forces are antithetical to advancing human rights, ending global poverty, and respecting the sovereign integrity of States and governments throughout the Global South. The linkage between poverty, war, and environmental degradation has become clearly evident over the last 60 years. This realization has further augmented the international consciousness to the importance of these issues as interconnected with the rest of the human rights corpus. This book examines the history of this struggle and provides a road map of practical means to implement these rights through a global framework of constitutional protections. Within this emerging framework, this book argues that States will be increasingly obligated to realize these rights by formulating policies and programs through executive powers and national legislatures to achieve peace and development throughout the entire global society.

Terrence E. Paupp is the Vice-President, North America, of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP) and Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), Washington, DC. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Beyond Global Crisis: Remedies and Road Maps by Daisaku Ikeda and his Contemporaries (2012); The Future of Global Relations: Crumbling Walls, Rising Regions (2009); Exodus from Empire: The Fall of America's Empire and the Rise of the Global Community (2007); and Achieving Inclusionary Governance: Advancing Peace and Development in First and Third World Nations (2000).