Suffering Rights as Paradoxes

Suffrage or suffering? Voting rights for psychiatric in-patients.

Paradoxes and Dilemmas of Institutional Change: Human Rights and Livelihoods in Rural War-torn Angola

This case study1 critiques the conceptual architecture of a United Nations peacebuilding project called the Human Rights Committee (HRC) and suggests areas of further research and potential action to identify mismatches between local context and institution-building efforts that generate disempowering government structures. The committees were designed for implementation in Angola’s war-torn pr...

Litigation as TB Rights Advocacy

One thousand people die every day in India as a result of TB, a preventable and treatable disease, even though the Constitution of India, government schemes, and international law guarantee available, accessible, acceptable, quality health care. Failure to address the spread of TB and to provide quality treatment to all affected populations constitutes a public health and human rights emergency...

Voting Paradoxes

The early work of Condorcet in the 18th century, and that of Arrow and others in the 20th century, revealed the complex and interesting mathematical problems that arise in the theory of Social Choice, showing that the simple process of voting leads to strikingly counter-intuitive paradoxes. I will describe some of these, focusing on several recent intriguing examples whose analysis combines com...

Suffering and powerlessness: the significance of promoting participation in rights-based approaches to health.

In a rights framework, participation is inextricably related to power. Through effective participation, we can challenge political and other forms of exclusion that prevent people from having power over the decisions and processes that affect their lives and health. Yet concepts of power are as contested as notions of participation. Thus, I argue here that, far from there being a formula for wh...