1st Edition
Economic and Social Rights and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security
This text comprises cutting-edge research on one of the greatest global challenges: the failure to address systematic economic and social exclusion, and attendant violations of economic and social rights (ESR), as a driver of conflict. The text explores what the UN's obligation to maintain international peace and security can mean when it is informed by the requirement to protect and promote ESR, rights that play a crucial role in maintaining international peace and security but which are often overlooked. The book considers the extent to which Security Council mandated peace operations have been informed by human rights and efforts to promote economic and social development. The approach is to analyse the extent to which the Security Council has interacted with the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council as well as other Charter-based mechanisms such as the Human Rights Council, and its predecessor, with particular reference to the role of the Special Procedure Mechanisms. The role of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is also considered. In this way, the text shows that the connection between peace and security and human rights is well recognised by these organs. In addition, the text considers States’ ESR obligations stemming from the extraterritorial application of such rights in the context of peace operations. Given that States’ obligations stemming from ESR have often been neglected, the book examines how such provision could be improved using ESR-grounded plans reflecting the rights to health, food, water, education, work and life. The text concludes with a call to reimagine what international peace and security can look like when it is informed by the need to recognise the emergence of post-conflict legal obligations based on broader concepts of international peace and security that draw from ESR. This text will appeal to legal scholars, policy advisors, members of the military, those working in the area of development, NGOs and final-year undergraduate and/or postgraduate students working in the areas of international law, political science and international relations, and associated fields of research.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Significance of Economic and Social Rights to Peace and Security
1. Introduction
2. The Relationship between Economic and Social Conditions and a Stable Domestic and International Order
3. Economic and Social Progress: Introducing a Role for Human Rights
4. Economic and Social Rights in International Law
4.1. The Content of Economic and Social Rights: Some Recurring Themes
4.2. Frameworks for Effective Realisation
4.3. The Nature of States’ Obligations
4.3.1. Challenges to the Existence of States’ Obligations: Questions of Enforceability and Cost
4.3.2. Affirming and Explaining the Nature of States’ Obligations: the Obligations to Respect, Protect and Fulfil
5. The Rights to Equality and Non-Discrimination: Fundamental Principles for Economic and Social Rights
6. Monitoring Economic and Social Rights: the Nature and Role of Indicators
7. Conclusion
Chapter 2: Peace and Security, Socio-Economic Progress, and Human Rights: the Inseparable Roles of the Security Council, the General Assembly and the ECOSOC
1. Introduction
2. Security Council Relations with the General Assembly and the ECOSOC
2.1. The General Assembly
2.2. The ECOSOC
2.3. Staking Out the Relationship between the Security Council, the General Assembly and the ECOSOC
3. Human Rights Mechanisms: Cementing the Nexus between the Security Council, the General Assembly and the ECOSOC
3.1. The Human Rights Council’s Special Procedures Mechanism at the Security Council
3.2 The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
4. The Peacebuilding Commission: Supporting the Nexus between the Security Council, the General Assembly and the ECOSOC
5. Conclusion
Chapter 3: Peacebuilding and Peace Operations: the Nexus of Peace, Economic and Social Progress and Human Rights
1. Introduction
2. Peacebuilding within the Security Council: the Economic and Social Dimensions of International Peace and Security
3. Peacekeeping Operations as a Peacebuilding Tool
4. The Role of Human Rights in Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding
5. Peacebuilding Critiqued: The Marginalisation of Socio-Economic Conditions as an Aspect of Peacebuilding
6. Conclusion
Chapter 4: Economic and Social Rights in Peacebuilding and Peacekeeping: A Measurable Legal Basis for the Economic and Social Dimensions of Peace
1. Introduction
2. The Extraterritorial Application of Economic and Social Rights
3. The Extraterritorial Application of the Rights to Food and Water, Health, Education and Work by Contributing States
4. Measuring the Impact of Economic and Social Rights in Peacekeeping Operations: the Added Value of Human Rights Indicators
5. Human Rights Indicators as a Measure of Compliance of Contributing States’ Extraterritorial Obligations
5.1. Structural, Process and Outcome Indicators Measuring the Rights to Food, Health and Work
5.2. The Rights to Water and Education: the AAAQ and AAAA Frameworks
5.3. ‘Survival’ Rights and the Right to Life
5.4. Indicators on the Rights to Equality and Non-Discrimination
6. Conclusion
Chapter 5: Reimagining Peace and Security in the Post-Conflict Environment
1. Introduction
2. Jus Post Bellum as a Philosophical Construct
3. Positive Peace and Human Security as Collective Security
4. Economic and Social Rights in the Post-Conflict Environment: the Importance of Accountability
5. Conclusion
Conclusion
Biography
Claire Breen is Associate Professor in Law at Te Piringa – Faculty of Law, University of Waikato in New Zealand. She holds a BCL from University College, Cork. She also holds an LLM (International Law) and a PhD from the University of Nottingham. Dr Breen has previously been awarded a significant New Zealand Law Foundation Grant to undertake research on a project entitled 'The National and International Legal Obligations and Consequences for New Zealand Arising from its Peace Support Operations'. Her interest in the legal obligations stemming from New Zealand's peace support missions is a reflection of her interest in the confluence between human rights law and peace operations. She has numerous publications in the area of human rights and peace operations and has also published extensively in the area of children's rights.
'Why do we go to war? A question soldiers, scholars and politicians have pondered throughout the ages. Understanding the reasons for conflict, we hope, may help us avoid its scourge. Dr Claire Breen takes an exciting new look at the imperative to maintain international peace and security. She lays bare the gap between aspiration and reality in that "other" field of rights – the economic and social ones. This dislocation, she demonstrates, has massive potential to generate conflict and instability. [As a former peacekeeper, a lawyer and as an academic I believe that] this is scholarship which will be of great interest and value to all people concerned with peace and security – both from a practical and theoretical perspective.' Kevin Riordan, ONZM, Judge Advocate General of the New Zealand Armed Forces
