Making Equal Rights Real
Taking Effective Action to Overcome Global Challenges

Details approaches to implementing equal rights for women in Africa, children in the Middle East and different minorities in Asia and North America.

Jody Heymann (Edited by), Adele Cassola (Edited by)

9781107679146, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 March 2014

420 pages, 2 b/w illus. 11 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.56 kg

"[This] volume provides useful perspectives from scholars and practitioners on how community education, budget policy, participatory legal drafting, and other processes that have only recently garnered attention affect the realization of rights guarantees... of particular use to students, advocates, and scholars of advocacy interested in rights in action."

-- J.D. Marshall, Carthage College, Reviewing for Choice Magazine

Making Equal Rights Real brings together leaders from around the world who have been working effectively to increase equal economic and social rights, ranging from rights in the workplace to property ownership and education. The contributors tell the detailed stories of effective approaches to implementing equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities in North America, women in Africa, children in the Middle East and sexual minorities in Asia. They also describe approaches taken around the world to increase equal rights for people living in poverty, for those living with disabilities and for all people seeking the information they need to hold their government accountable for implementing everyone's rights. The book addresses what can be done by policymakers, civil society, non-governmental organizations, lawyers seeking to implement equal rights legislation and advocates working in the community, as well as those developing constitutions and negotiating international agreements.

Part I. Conventions and Constitutions: 1. Forging effective international agreements: lessons from the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities Michael Ashley Stein and Janet E. Lord
2. Ensuring equal rights in constitutions: public participation in drafting economic, social and cultural rights Jill Cottrell
Part II. Laws and Policies: 3. Putting economic rights into practice: strategies from labor and employment law Benjamin Sachs
4. Promoting equity in economic rights: the case of gender and land rights Elisa Scalise and Renée Giovarelli
5. Equalizing social and cultural rights: approaches to equity across ethnic and racial groups Grace-Edward Galabuzi
Part III. Budgets and Information: 6. Public access to information: the keystone to claiming and defending rights Agnès Callamard
7. Government budgets and rights implementation: experience from around the world Ann Blyberg
8. Budgets, information and participation: civil society approaches to increasing rights accountability Roberto Bissio
Part IV. Case Studies of Successful Cross-Cutting Approaches: 9. An integrated approach to advancing children's rights and participation in Jordan Samia Bishara-Rizeq, Sirsa A. Qursha and Laila S. Abdul Majeed
10. Working within communities to increase gender equity in Zambia Robyn Wisken
11. Realizing equal rights in practice for people with disabilities in Argentina and the United States Mary MacLennan
12. Guaranteeing legal rights for sexual and gender minorities in Nepal Alexandra Lesnikowski.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], Comparative law [LAM], Law [L], Human rights [JPVH]