[hr-education-na] Call for essays for Human Rights Dialogue

CALL FOR SHORT ESSAYS- Environmental Rights

http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/page.php/prmID/114


HUMAN RIGHTS DIALOGUE (Spring 2004)

  * ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS *

Human Rights Dialogue, a semiannual publication of the Carnegie Council
on Ethics and International Affairs, is seeking short essays for its
Spring 2004 issue. This issue of Human Rights Dialogue will explore the
definition, status and relevance of the concept of "environmental
rights" in law and politics around the world, and the extent to which a
human rights lens is a helpful way to view environmental issues.

Although both human rights protection and environmental protection are
relatively well-developed areas of public policy, recognition of the
linkage between the two has been slow to develop. As activists,
scholars, and policy practitioners have increasingly encountered
situations at the intersection of these two areas, calls for
international environmental rights protection have intensified. In 1994,
a United Nations sub-commission issued an extensive report on
environmental human rights accompanied by a draft declaration of
principles, claiming the interdependence and indivisibility of human
rights, an ecologically sound environment, sustainable development, and
peace.

Despite these developments, no binding international agreement has had
environmental rights as its primary focus. In addition, the issue
continues to suffer from inattention due to the fact that it fails to
fit neatly within the goals of either the human rights movement or the
environmental movement. Few international human rights organizations
have programs devoted to this set of rights; likewise, a movement
focused on protecting the environment does not generally have as its aim
the more human-centered goals of environmental rights, which commonly
focuses on social justice issues such as the disproportionate suffering
of poor, indigenous, and minority communities from toxic industrial
activity.

For the past four years, Human Rights Dialogue has focused on the
obstacles to greater popular legitimacy of the international human
rights framework ­ and highlighted innovative ways in which such
obstacles have been overcome in specific contexts around the world. We
will continue this emphasis in this issue through the exploration of the
development of the concept of environmental rights as a response to
real-world needs.

Submissions are especially welcome from researchers, activists, and
policy practitioners grappling with the human rights abuses connected
with degradation of the environment. Essays should address one or more
of the following questions by analyzing a concrete case study in the
country or institution in which the author has first-hand knowledge:

-What are environmental rights? Why refer to them as a distinct
category of rights?

-What is the relationship between environmental rights and
environmental justice? How does/should the socio-economic context of an
environmental harm influence its characterization as an environmental
rights problem?

-To what extent should environmental rights problems be characterized
as predominately environmental or predominately human rights in nature?


-What is and should be the goal of an environmental rights agenda?
Should it focus on environmental rights as distinct fundamental rights
or as rights derived from other fundamental human rights? Should it
focus on substantive or procedural rights? Should it focus on individual
or group rights?

-What is and should be the relationship between the human rights and
environmental movements? What values do the two movements share and what
are the areas of tension?

-Why do environmental rights play a peripheral role in both the human
rights and environmental movements? Is the concept of environmental
rights too human-centered (anthropocentric) to appeal to the mainstream
environmental movement? Is the concept too nature-centered (biocentric
or ecocentric) to appeal to the human rights movement?

-Does the concept of environmental rights conflict with the right to
development? How do the socio-economic, cultural, and political
circumstances of the places in which these problems occur affect the
answers to these questions?

-How should the environmental rights movement deal with the
simultaneously local, national, and international dimensions of these
problems?

-How does the need of the environmental rights movement to focus on
problems created predominately by non-state actors affect the way in
which it frames its approaches?

-What kind of environmental impact (e.g., from dumping untreated
chemical waste on indigenous lands to the failure to take actions that
prevent the unwanted effects of climate change, such as flooding)
reaches the threshold of a rights violation? From an advocacy
perspective, should the emphasis be on strengthening the recognition and
application of environmental rights to the most egregious problems or on
broadening the scope of what is perceived to be an environmental rights
problem?


  * SUBMISSIONS *

Submissions should be in electronic form, no more than 1200 words, and
written in English. We seek essays written in an engaging, informal, and
testimonial style; footnotes should not be used. Contributors are
encouraged to use excerpts from interviews in their essays. Please see:
www.carnegiecouncil.org/listpublications for past issues of Human
Rights Dialogue.

Publication in Dialogue is competitive. Authors whose submissions are
selected for publication must be prepared to subject their work to
substantial editing and respond to queries. Submissions that exceed the
word length will be shortened. The authors of selected essays will be
asked to submit:

-A short biographical sketch
-Full contact details for the organizations with which they are
affiliated as well as for those mentioned in their essays
-A photograph (head and shoulders)
-Photos or art to be considered for publication with the essay.

Authors whose work is published in Dialogue will receive an honorarium
of $100. Typically we feature 8-10 essays in the publication, which also
appears in PDF form on the Carnegie Council's Web site; some essays are
selected for the online version only.


* DEADLINE *

Deadline for submissions is November 30, 2003. Individuals planning to
submit an essay are encouraged to submit an abstract or detailed outline
as soon as possible. Inquiries should be directed to:

Joanne Bauer
Editor, Human Rights Dialogue
jbauer@cceia.org



  * About the Carnegie Council and the Human Rights Initiative * The
Carnegie Council is a nonpartisan, nonsectarian organization dedicated
to research and education at the intersection of ethics and
international affairs. The aim of the Carnegie Council's Human Rights
Initiative is to engage new and diverse voices from around the world in
global dialogue and mutual learning around human rights concepts and
action, as a means to exploring how the human rights movement could be
better configured intellectually and operationally to cope with the
challenges of the 21st century.  The work aims to address the problem of
"the human rights box":  namely, the human rights movement is
constrained by a set of historical and structural circumstances that
have enabled the human rights framework to gain currency among elites
while limiting its advance among the most vulnerable. First-hand
experience, strategies, analysis, and viewpoints are shared through the
regular publication of our Human Rights Dialogue.



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