What is the contribution of religious discourse to a productive and reconciliatory response to mass atrocities? In this wide-ranging book, scholars address the philosophical, ethical, sociological, and religious approaches to post-violence politics and societies.
The principal and worthwhile contribution of this book is to resituate the debate about moral realism where it belongs, in terms of its pragmatic employment and its ability to accommodate ideals and values.
This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to know what development ethics has to offer, or who wants to engage with arguments on the role of the capability approach and ideas of deliberative democracy in development ethics.
In a book full of thought-provoking questions for theorists of human rights, Ackerly presents an "account of the normative legitimacy of human rights" that is distinctive in several respects.
Is more money for global health always good news? No, argues Esser, who suggests that many of the problems that plague decision-making in global health assistance lie not in the global South but in the North, where the monetary flows originate and where most policies are conceived.
Most of the large-scale violence in the world will continue to occur within societies rather than between or among states. Yet the international community still has not developed the ethical-legal consensus or the institutions required to manage this terrible problem.
Political Geography:
Iraq, Bosnia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, and Rwanda
UNFCCC norms tightly constrain the range of acceptable agreements for the distribution of burdens to mitigate climate change, restricting us to two viable guiding principles: the equitable distribution of responsibilities and the right to development. Both principles place much heavier mitigation burdens on industrialized countries.
Benefit sharing as envisaged by the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a relatively new idea in international law. Within the context of non-human biological resources, it aims to guarantee the conservation of biodiversity and its sustainable use by ensuring that its custodians are adequately rewarded for its preservation. Prior to the adoption of the CBD, access to biological resources was frequently regarded as a free-for-all. Bioprospectors were able to take resources out of their natural habitat and develop commercial products without sharing benefits with states or local communities. This paper asks how CBD-style benefit-sharing fits into debates of justice. It is argued that the CBD is an example of a set of social rules designed to increase social utility. It is also argued that a common heritage of humankind principle with inbuilt benefit-sharing mechanisms would be preferable to assigning bureaucratic property rights to non-human biological resources. However, as long as the international economic order is characterized by serious distributive injustices, as reflected in the enormous poverty-related death toll in developing countries, any morally acceptable means toward redressing the balance in favor of the disadvantaged has to be welcomed. By legislating for a system of justice-in-exchange covering nonhuman biological resources in preference to a free-for-all situation, the CBD provides a small step forward in redressing the distributive justice balance. It therefore presents just legislation sensitive to the international relations context in the 21st century.